April 23 – “A bit of love and a few tears”

I did make it to water therapy yesterday.  I could sure tell I missed last week.  Although, I’m not as sore as I thought I would be today.  I spent most of the morning working on paperwork about the baptisms from Easter morning.  I knew one of the ladies wasn’t from Galveston, but I found out in reading over her papers that she is from Colorado.  That’s a long way to come to get baptized.

Josh came back to spend the morning and afternoon with us before heading back to Waco.  Oh, back from Crosby.  After we decided to bring Mom back to the house, he took Christi and the boys up there.  It was really good to have him around, even though there was not a whole lot he could do.  He finally headed back home to get some work done there.

Our regularly assigned hospice came over for her first visit.  She reviewed all the medications again and went through all the start-up paper work she had to get done.  She recommended that we give Mom the pain medication on a regular basis to keep that under control.  That meant another prescription, though.  But they have a contract of some kind with Kroger, so all I had to do was go by and pick it up. 

Mom is still sleeping most of the time.  She stirs from what we think are maybe some cramps in her abdomen, but that doesn’t usually last long.  And she has obvious pain when we have to move her to keep her cleaned up and to rotate the parts of her body in contact with the bed all the time.  But generally speaking she seems pretty peaceful. 

Our long-time neighbor Alice brought over a big pot of spaghetti and some garlic bread for lunch.  Good stuff.  Christina later brought us one of those already-cooked chickens and some wheat rolls.  We cut up the chicken and added it to some leftover salad Fran and Jay gave us before we left the hospital the other day.  Mom’s best friend Betty stopped by to share a bit of love and a few tears.  Oh, and Anne from home group stopped by with some flowers.  I know … who cares about our visitor log or what we had for supper?  But hey, it gives me something to write about on a day when frankly not much happened.  I guess I could have just said it like this: “People cared.”

Matthew 27:55 says, “Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs.”

Father, I hadn’t thought about it much, but there were people around doing their best to take care of your needs, too.  Thank you for those you have put in our path who want to give us care.  Amen.