MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM BETTY AND ME

Greetings to all my regular readers. Thank you for your comments and for your support. Every thought you share is another blessing to us. Although I'm not putting up the comments now, they are each appreciated and mean a lot to us. We hope you will have a warm celebration with your most precious family and friends that will equal the one we are going to enjoy together this week. Here's this week's report on my precious and special bride.

This gritty lady of mine continues to amaze me and her kids, her friends and fellow church goers, and our dedicated Hospice nurse. As an insider to her activities around here, I get to see how determined she to accomplish various activities of daily living and how she continues to “over-reach” herself. Some of the things she tries to do backfire because while her mind understands the mechanics of a task, her body is limited in how well it can perform. The combination of poor balance, and literally reaching beyond the tipping point combined with more weakness than she will admit has led to more than one recent fall and to several serious scares over near flops. I have explained how terrified I am that she might fall and break a hip or other major bone – or any bone, for that matter, as rotten as they are becoming – and unnecessarily hasten her decline. She, of course, promises to be careful. I am holding my breath; however, I’m not supposed to hover too closely either. She needs to have room to do what she can still do on her own.

Never-the-less, as I started to explain, little Miss “I-Can-Do-It-Myself” seems to know her ability and understand her limits better than any of the rest of us. She is getting around the house and getting her own e-mail and ice cream and enjoys helping tend to the grandsons. There are some limits, but overall she still achieves beyond our expectations. For example, Betty has not missed a Sunday of attending Worship because of her disabling cancer and one evening this week she was able to go with me to be part of a prayer group visit to a sweet friend who has just entered Hospice care herself. Since any trip out of the house is now a major effort, Betty’s determination to go out at night (her most difficult hours) to help support a Christian sister who is herself now incapacitated by this wicked disease is testimony to her indomitable spirit and to what John Wayne would have called her “sand”. (An old West word for “True Grit”.)

So here we are only a couple of shopping days before Christmas and we really haven’t had any chance to get her out to join the frenzy from store to store. The blessing of all this is that just a few months ago not a single doctor or nurse or other medical expert was willing to even express the possibility of our being able to share the Christmas Holidays together as family and have Betty still with us. We are trying to convince her that we will not miss presents she might have selected and wrapped and put under the tree for each of us because she herself is the best possible gift any of us will celebrate this year.

Betty is experiencing more pain but she does not complain. I've always known she has a high tolerance threshhold, well beyond what I can endure, but even walking with the walker is a struggle for her now, but she doesn't even think of giving up. So for now, we work around the come-and-go nausea related illnesses and we accommodate quiet times while she works on her napping skills, and we are able to keep everyone else fed even if she isn’t joining in for all the meals. What we could not do is celebrate family Christmas without her this particular year. Another thing we can not do without is the sum of all the prayers in Betty’s behalf that each one of you is offering for every one of her remaining days.

Enjoy the “Lights of the Season” but remember who is the permanent “Light of the World” Please have a wonderful Holiday with your loved ones. Merry Christmas!