The World Isn’t Going to Miss Me When I’m Gone
So I’d just as soon focus on how I made my loved ones feel while I was still here.
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Until about a month ago, I’d never had surgery. I’d never even been to the emergency room unless I was accompanying someone else for moral support and to make sure they got there safely.
But I knew that was probably going to change when I developed a deep, nagging pain in my side that wasn’t going away. I’m not the kind of person who skips off to the doctor at the drop of a hat (or at all), but here I was thinking that I would probably wind up going to the emergency room regardless.
I originally hoped I’d be able to finish out my work week before things got that bad. Instead, I made it to Thursday morning.
Thursday is when my entire left side started developing this strange feeling — not completely numb, exactly, but heavy and weak in this really troubling way. So, yeah. I decided to wake my husband up and ask him to take me to the emergency room.
But first — for some reason — I felt the need to put some things in order before I left the house. The pain in my side felt suspiciously like the kind that might call for surgery. And if I had to stay in the hospital for any length of time, my husband would have to handle the cooking not only for himself but also for my elderly mother whom I take care of. I felt sort of bad about that, especially since my mom isn’t the easiest person to deal with, and I wanted to make things at least a little bit easier on him.
I’m not usually the most organized person as far as how I arrange the fridge or store the groceries. So I tried to rearrange things in a way that made more sense. I took some things I knew my husband would like out of the freezer and put them in places I knew they’d be easy to find. And after I woke him up, but before we left for the hospital, I made a point of showing him what I’d done and letting him know what else we had on hand in case it was needed.
He probably thought I was insane.
And looking back, it doesn’t make a lot of sense that I cared so much about something so dumb. My husband is a perfectly capable person who knows how to cook. But I was anxious about even the idea of…
