One Bad Month

We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.     
Martin Luther King, Jr.

 August was not an easy month for me (Michael).
 
It started our okay – with my wife’s birthday and few problems on the horizon. But then it went downhill. Fast. Furiously:

• My 96-year old grandmother, who has been in remarkably good health and vibrant until now, quickly lost her ability to walk. She wasn’t eating. She wasn’t drinking. She was always cold, even on 90+ degree days. Her decline into weakness and total dependence on others to do everything was stunning for someone as active and vital as she has been. She was hospitalized three times during the month and spent several days in a rehabilitation facility. It all came about because, at least in part, she was severely dehydrated. It’s been hard to see her so diminished.

• My 24-year old son Matthew was admitted one night to the hospital at 1 in the morning on suspicion of having a stroke or a series of strokes. He had lost his ability to walk without great help and his right hand suddenly couldn’t grasp a thing. He had a severe urinary tract infection. Normally very animated and energetic, he became suddenly quiet and subdued. After days of tests, a CT scan and two MRI’s it was determined that he had a compressed spinal cord that needed surgery to be decompressed.

Two beloved members of our family, both scaring us greatly. Both in distress. Both needing intensive round-the-clock care to begin to gain strength and mobility again. There were many late nights. A lot of medical information to digest. Too many bad hospital meals. Hours and hours of waiting. Complicated decisions to make. Countless phone calls to report and check up on both. The narrowing of our world to little else but uncomfortable chairs, pill schedules, growing fatigue and pervasive anxiety.

To just make it more interesting, the alternator on our minivan stopped working, literally in the hospital parking lot after we loaded Matthew in to take him home. We had to have hospital security jump start us to get home. It cost $650 to have the alternator replaced, money we didn’t have. Then our lawn mower, in seeming solidarity, wouldn’t start. There was virtually no time to cut the grass anyway, grass that was growing like out-of-control weeds because of the hot, humid temperatures and generous rainfall all month. A mower I borrowed stopped working too. Our 15-year old dog Cocoa, perhaps signaling to us that she didn’t like us being away from home so much for over a week, welcomed us home many nights with puddles on the dining room floor. Just what we needed to clean up at the end of some long, trying days. To put a coda on all these events, our eight month old granddaughter had a seizure, brought on by a sudden spike in her body temperature. She’s fine now and no worse for the wear. But her parents and grandparents were rattled by this middle-of-the-night scare in her young life.

There were other frustrations and inconveniences too, other moments that gave us great pause, wondering what would be next. The month went by in a blur and we hope this new month brings far less intense challenges. We wouldn’t mind a break.

We all have challenges, and at times, some of them pile on us all at once, wearing us down and pushing us back against a wall. It would be very easy, and sometimes we succumb, to be tempted to believe that life will always be this way, that the weight of the burdens will now be the norm. It would be easy to think that we will continue to be bombarded by constant challenges to our security and our well-being. It would be easy to give in to despair, disillusionment and distrust of the possibility of better seasons and days. It would be easy …

But giving in, thinking only negatively, succumbing to temptations to see only the darkness and never the light, would not be right. It would not be right, because it is not true. It is not true that we have to live always struggling, always fighting against, always merely keeping our heads – barely – above water. If we see life as being that way, well, then it probably will be. If we can only acknowledge the troubles and the strains, then that’s all we will experience.

But if we can believe that our troubles can pass, that our burdens really can begin to be lifted, that goodness does come to us even with the bad, that life is ultimately meant to be filled with contentment and joy, that love is stronger than hate and that peace of heart and mind is meant to prevail, then, well, we can live what we believe.

One bad month, one difficult season, doesn’t have to be the final word. A new month will come. A new season will turn and when they do, then life can turn for the better along with them too.

Photo by Zachary Young on Unsplash