Month: July 2021

Just Be There

/ Ann Coleman / 103 Comments

We’ve had a rough couple of weeks in our household, and things are just now returning to normal.  Once again, my husband had a surgery that went well and a recovery that didn’t.  Honestly, he’s spent so much time in a hospital lately that I seriously considered hauling in his favorite recliner chair and repainting the walls of the room his favorite color.  I figured if he had to be stuck for so long in a hospital room, we may as well make it nice.  Luckily, he was released before I gave in to the urge to redecorate his surroundings and now he’s back home where he belongs.

I’ve always found that when difficult times arrive, I spend all my time and energy just coping, and don’t really “process” what’s happened until later. But now that things have finally calmed down, I find myself looking back over the past few weeks and realizing one very important thing:  there is no way in the world I would have managed without the amazing support of so many caring people.

Hospitals have always been scary places for me (I tend to faint at the sight of blood), but I found out they’re even scarier when the patient is your loved one and and they aren’t doing so well.  And you know what helped me deal with that fear?  The nursing staff who were unfailingly cheerful and attentive, and who always took the time to reassure me when I needed it.  Being an advocate for a patient in a hospital is exhausting, both physically and emotionally, but seeing how good the nurses were at caring for my husband made it so much easier to bear.

I’m also incredibly thankful for the many friends and relatives who took the time to call and text, keeping track of my husband’s progress and offering nonstop encouragement and support.  There were times when those texts were the lifeline I needed to stay (or at least try to appear) calm and strong, and other times when they  provided relief from the boredom of sitting in a hospital room day after day, or gave me a much-needed laugh.  Friends and family are gifts, and you never realize just how much of a gift until you’re in a tough spot and they’re right there with you every step of the way.

It was also a gift to see so many people reaching out to my husband in his time of need.  He had more people praying for him than I could possibly count.  Cards arrived almost daily, some from college friends he hasn’t seen in decades, and all of them helped raise his spirits.  One of his old friends sent him personalized copies of the books he’d written about his own battle with cancer, and the tips for staying positive helped enormously.  Frankly, my husband isn’t usually much for reading, but he not only read those books, he took one of them with him when he was readmitted to the hospital and read from it daily.

This post is more personal than what I usually write, and I hope I haven’t overdone the detail.  But the reason I’m sharing it is simple.  The next time someone you know is going through a tough time, please reach out and offer them your support.  Don’t let fear of intruding or “being a pest” stop you.  Because even if they don’t have time to acknowledge it or respond to you, your care and concern will mean the world to them.  Trust me, it really will.

Sound Advice

/ Ann Coleman / 67 Comments

IMG_7716If there’s one thing we dogs know, it’s that loud noises ALWAYS mean danger.  And even though my parents adopted me from an animal shelter in Missouri, I’m originally from Louisiana, where flooding is common.  That means I know rain can also spell big trouble, and the only sensible thing to do when the rains come is to move to higher ground.  (It’s not my fault that the best “higher ground” in my house is the dining room table, but try telling Mom that.  She has a hissy fit every time I try to climb up there.  Luckily, she’s not always home when I feel the need to heighten.)

Anyway, it goes without saying that when you combine rain with thunder and lightening from a storm, what you get is a situation that strikes pure terror in the heart of your average dog.  Yes, I know that some dogs aren’t fazed by nasty weather, but all I can say to that is obviously, some dogs aren’t all that smart.  I don’t mean to speak ill of my own, but I think we all know that every species has a few members who were obviously not present when brains were being handed out, and why should dogs be any different?  Those of us who know better have a very healthy respect for the horrors that bad weather can bring.  And if you don’t believe me, just listen to the weather forecasters when they think a hurricane, tornado, or some other weather disaster is approaching.  They may not pant and try to hide, but they sure do panic and urge everyone else to do the same.

Which is why I, and every other sensible creature on this planet, hate rain and storms.  Unfortunately, here in the Midwest, they are very common in late Spring and early Summer and basically impossible to avoid.  In other words, this time of year is bad enough all by itself without adding anything else to the mix.  So what do humans do?  They have a little celebration called “The Fourth of July” every year on, you guessed it, July 4th.  And do you know how they celebrate it?  With fireworks, that’s how.  Loud, terrifying, relentless fireworks that begin sometime around July 1st and keep going until the people setting them off run out.

First of all, the only appropriate way to celebrate any holiday is with food.  And I mean lots of food, generously shared with the four-footed, furry members of the family.  There is no need for anything else, much less something as terrifying as fireworks.  I mean seriously, why would anyone deliberately try to make a noise that sounds like the loudest thunderbolt ever, and looks like the whole sky is lit up by deadly lightening?  And see what I mean about every species having a few members who come up a bit short in the brain department?  Fireworks are proof positive of that.

Thankfully, the fireworks are over for another year and the storm season should be winding down shortly.  That means I can get back to enjoying my life with my family and stop being so scared.  And who knows?  Maybe sometime in the coming months people will wise up and ban not only all fireworks, but rain and thunderstorms too.  A dog can hope…..

Love, Finn   

 

Opting Out

/ Ann Coleman / 94 Comments

I’ve hit the wall, and I’m done.  I know we’ve all been through a lot in the past year and a half, and that most of our nerves are truly shot.  I know it’s human nature to want to divide the world into “them and us,” and that isn’t going to change.  I know the easiest way to feel better about ourselves is to look down on someone else, and how tempting it is to do that.  Most of all, I know I’ve been guilty of all of this myself, far too often.  But it seems to me that the ugliness has reached new heights these days, and I have gotten to the point where I just can’t take it anymore. 

I don’t want to live my life in fear and anger, or even in a state of “justified” outrage.  I don’t want to believe that people who are different from me are necessarily bad people.  I don’t want to spend precious time ridiculing those whose behavior and choices I don’t understand, and I most definitely don’t want to indulge in pointless online arguments with those who dare to express an opinion I don’t happen to agree with. 

Life can be tough, and it’s normal to want to find someone, or a group of people, to single out as the cause of all our problems.  But a quick look at history shows us that bad things happen, to all of us, when we begin to believe that our aggression towards someone else is justified and deserved.  (Because isn’t that what every single abuser says about his or her victim?  That they “deserved” it?)  So I have made the conscious choice to back away from that kind of thinking, and instead to look very hard for the common ground that binds all of us together.  Because I truly believe that it’s so much more productive to look for what unites us than to concentrate quite so much on what divides us.

I realize that my choices go against the grain in a world where we are constantly being pitted against each other, and where we seem to dream up new divisions each day.  We’ve always been conditioned to divide ourselves along political, national, and religious lines, and sadly, most of us do just that.  But now we’re also dividing along the lines of vaccinated verses unvaccinated, rural verses urban, vegans verses omnivores, and even battling over our choices about education, gender definitions and about everything else you can possibly imagine.  If we keep going at this rate, I’ll only be allowed to like people who are exactly like me.  Which would mean I’ll only like…. me.

So the time has come for me to say “enough is enough” and I don’t want to do this anymore.  We all get to make choices in how we spend the precious time we have on this earth, and I’ve made mine.  I want to be done with the fighting, the squabbling, the superior outrage and all the rest of it, and I’m going to do my very best to turn my back on it, both literally and figuratively.  Sometimes, if only for the sake of our sanity, we need to choose to simply “opt out.”