I knew the situation had the potential of turning very serious, very fast. And even though it was a short 2 hour flight, it seemed excruciatingly long! Unable to comfort myself, I fidgeted restlessly in my seat. My baby blue dress shirt made an effort to sooth me with a hug, but it squeezed too tightly, causing beads of perspiration to emerge on my forehead. Gasping for air, I popped open the top three buttons, realizing I misread the strangulation attempt as a loving embrace. With each passing minute, my anxiety and frustration only continued to intensify. The knots in my neck spread across my shoulders and rippled down my back like contagious stress cancer plaguing the body of a grief sickened widow. During one particularly fidgety fit, my knees pierced into the soft spine of passenger 22B. That’s when it became clear, I was infecting everyone around me. I was diseased. And my mind was the vessel responsible for pumping out the rotten poison.
My mind began running away from me, as if often does. Picking up momentum with each depressing thought that cascaded into the next. I lassoed it just before it wondered too far off. Into those dark isolated valleys where grim "what if" questions are whispered in the gulps of icy cold babbling brooks and echoed behind shadowy damp willow trees. I refused to chase it into those menacing woods again. So I began pounding good thoughts into my head and carefully guarded grave scenarios from entering my overactive brain that was already saturated with sadness. But there is no way I would allow this story to play out like a bad, overly dramatic Lifetime movie premier. Well, with one exception. It had to have a happy ending. It just had to.
The call actually did come on an idle Tuesday, but it was a little past 4pm. It’s the kind of call you never expect and the kind of call you never wish to receive. The kind of call that had me leaving a business trip in DC to catch the first flight back home. My sister had been admitted to the emergency room for a ruptured appendix. Having your appendix rupture is not uncommon...and neither is dying from it. I had my own scare with it back in June. But nothing scared me more then when my 4-year-old nephew asked me point blank, "If Mommy has surgery, is she going to die?"
I was in the midst of trying to answer that frightening question and tripping over my tongue when my 6-year-old niece came running towards me when I entered the waiting room. "Uncle D!," she always screams it like I’m an A-list celebrity walking the red carpet for the very first time. Then she hugs my knees. And with a big smile on both of our faces, I scoop her up.
Me: "Hey Peanut! You look pretty in your pink butterfly tee. How are you doing?"
Her: "I’m good. Mamma’s sick."
She wastes no time in informing me of the obvious. And I waste no time in telling her I heard and that’s why I flew home. We pass the time by turning the backs of my business cards into miniature "Get Well Soon" cards. We pass more time drawing mustaches on supermodels in last year’s copy of Vogue magazine and doodling flowery skirts on pro athletes in this month’s copy of Sports Illustrated. We play Eye-Spy in the hospital halls, tease her about what doctor she is one day going to marry and practice our super secret hand shake. None of these activities would normally rank very high on a kid’s fun factor scale. But despite the limited resources and the gray situation at hand, my parents point out that somehow I always manage to make her face light up. My niece confirms this observation when she turns to me and says...
"I’m happy you’re here. You make everything funner."
And sometimes that’s all we need. A little giggle and an entertaining distraction to help us temporarily forget the real troubles of life, the kind that blindside you on some idle Tuesday.
Who makes your life funner?
***NOTE***
Related post of interest by Nicole Antoinette from More Is Better
5 days in denver, 5 days in a hospital, and the things that actually matter
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