MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

HO! HO! HO! Merry Christmas!

Yeah..hard to believe the last Sunday of Advent is nearly upon us (and I still have a few presents to make! Guess they will arrive at their destination the 27th of Dec or so).

I am off from college right now, and one would think with all the free time on my hands I would be all done with Christmas "stuff"...what is it about free time that slows us down? Perhaps the promise of another day we can do what needs done? Or another day to procrastinate doing the household tasks that we find not so fun (in my case: laundry. I find it immensely frustrating as I know I wear socks two at a time, yet I end up with singles at the end! ARGH! Makes me think my washing machine has a sock fetish).

I leave you with a story from my life about time. Take time, slow down just a little and hug someone today!

Elsie was crippled by arthritis and bothered by the depression that can come with the lingering, progression of it. She could still feed herself (slowly) and wash her hands and face. She could no longer dress without assistance, stand up, or even comb her hair. But she could laugh. Her laugh would come all the way up from her toes and her blue eyes would twinkle as she gave you her special “yeah, right” type of look out of the corners of her eyes. My most cherished memories with Elsie happened on the days when I could snitch an extra 15 minutes beyond our normal 5 or 10 minutes from my self-imposed time-line to sit on the edge of her bed and visit. She spoke very slowly in a soft, shaky voice, and it was necessary to wait for the words to come out. You could not rush her...you had to be patient. Elsie was also on quite a few medications. She could no longer just pop them in her mouth and swallow. They had to be crushed and mixed with applesauce. Any nurse that has to crush medications will tell you: There is an art to perfecting the amount of sauce needed to moisten the resulting powder enough to stick it together, yet allow it to slide...and to not exceed a “bite size”. Once is bad enough, but to subject someone to it two bites? Not unless you have to! Have you ever let an aspirin or a tylenol dissolve on your tongue? Have you ever crushed one of each, put them in your mouth for the time it took you to lean forward in your chair to grab your water glass off the table and wash them down? It doesn't taste like Hershey's kisses!

Anyway, Elsie put up with this routine four times a day, not counting the days where the scheduled pain medications didn't work and an “as needed” dose or two was necessary to keep her pain tolerable. We got comfortable enough with each other over the last two years of her life, to try making medication time a little more fun. I would crush the pills, mix them into the applesauce, then bring them to her. She would give me a wary look, as I came into her line of sight, coupled with a slight deepening of her dimples. I would give her a huge grin and a hearty “HIYA, ELS!”. Then I would pull up a chair, sit down and give a final stir to the “goo” (as we called it). I would then look into eyes that were now twinkling back at me, cause we both knew what came next: the subliminal suggestion. I would ask her what we tried last and she would tell me (our favorite suggestion was “hot, homemade apple pie with a huge ol' scoop of vanilla ice cream just starting to melt on top”). I would suggest a flavor (aided by her telling me if she really liked it or not. If not, I picked another), pull the water glass closer to her reach, and ask if she was ready. She always answered gamely with a chuckle and an “I guess”. I would feed her the spoonful of goo, say “Yum! Yum! Mmmmm that tastes good!” and be ready to help steady her hand while she drank some water. Then to complete the game, I had to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. If I tried to rush off because I felt I was running behind, she would always call me back for her hug and kiss.

Lesson: Time moves inexorably onward. We cannot stop it, but we can make the most of it. When they say it is the little things that count? They are right.

HUGS!