How to learn Patience

Today started with a false alarm literally.

I accidentally set the alarm for p.m. instead of a.m., so the whole household unintentionally ended up having a day off.

In the end, maybe everyone needed it.

Everybody’s sick, exhausted, and running on empty after a huge few weeks.

Even with the slow start, I got a lot done.

Finished the garden, caught up on everything I needed to do, and polished the car while the sun was out.

One of those crisp sunny days where you try to make life feel normal for a little while.

I also took my dog over to my daughter’s house because her dog seems so lonely since the little dog died.

Animals grieve too.

The house probably feels quieter for them as well.

And strangely, there’s relief mixed into sadness because now I don’t have to stress about kennels anymore, there’s a spare kennel sitting empty.

The hardest part of the day was the hospital.

We thought my daughter was finally coming home today, even with the NG tube still in.

We got there, only to find out she wasn’t being discharged after all, so we turned around and came home again.

Another false start.

Another emotional swing after more than two years of hospital visits, admissions, setbacks and waiting rooms.

When you realise she’s probably spent nearly half of that time in hospital, it changes everybody around her too.

And honestly, I can feel how much it’s changed me.

I have a very bad temper.

My patience feels worn away. Maybe life’s trying to teach me something through all of this, because empathy gets hard when people are exhausted for this long. Illness changes people.

Survival mode narrows their world.

Sometimes it feels like my daughter worries more about her nurses than the people carrying everything outside the hospital walls, her kids, her family, the life still waiting for her out here.

But getting angry doesn’t change any of it.

So today becomes another reminder to keep trying to let things go.

Let it go, let it go, let it go.

Some days surviving the emotions quietly is the biggest achievement of all.