It's another yo-yo day in paradise.

Some days I open my eyes to an overwhelming feeling of reluctant acceptance. Sigh... still here. Other days I awaken, immediately filled with a combination of despair and anger. Still here!?  Today is an anger and despair day. Why, Lord, won’t you let this purgatory end? The question continues to go unanswered, and I keep waking up. Still here.

I'm so happy to be here in this much nicer, cleaner, larger room with a big window I can look out of. The food here is edible most of the time. It's still hospital food, but it has flavor and isn’t cooked to a dried hockey puck. I appreciate the central air, the ice water, the clean sheets and that the electronic features of the bed work properly. It’s a Western world where there’s hot running water and electricity with lights and WI-FI readily available. Having been in third world and post-Soviet Union countries, I know that those things aren’t available to many of the worlds’ inhabitants, and I truly do thank God for them. Most importantly, the staff here is, for the most part, caring and at least do their best to make me comfortable. So, there too is another reason to be thankful.

That said, I’m finding this stage of my life to be… well, disconcerting at best. Scripture encourages us to always thank the Lord for our blessings, to look for the quiet in the storms, to trust in His plan and delight in His presence. I want to do this. I want to revel in the good things around me. The truth is, though, that I must force myself to try and appreciate what I have here. This limbo I’m hanging in, still very much alive and – most of the time when the pain meds are working – feeling okay, belies the fact that I am here to die. That fact - the fact that fatality is the goal, hangs over every moment. Things have taken on an air of impermanence. Everything seems to hold less importance. I see things and perceive them with a different eye, an altered sense. I watch an episode of a favorite show with the knowledge that I’ll never know how the story ends. So many things that once meant a great deal to me now seem inconsequential, insignificant. Reading news articles, I see stories of events that I’ll soon no longer be affected by, knowing that my loved ones will be, and feel completely helpless and impotent to effect the world around me in any way. I fear I’m leaving them with a mess and that worries and fills me with a disquieting feeling of powerlessness.

Looking out of my window, I see the green grass and the breeze blowing the trees, including the pretty purple leaves of a couple of trees that I have no name for. I see the bright, blue sky and the fluffy white clouds on sunny days. I enjoy the thunderstorms, watching the dark storm clouds scuttle above while the wind whips the trees below. The cars zooming down the streets and the occasional person walking down the sidewalk, sometimes accompanied by their trusty canine pals, add a bit of variety to the scene. I am glad I have these things to look at and I try to enjoy them. I try to count them as blessings.

Still, despite my best efforts, the emotions that I feel as I gaze out at these scenes are more likely to be ones of grief and jealousy. I want to be driving those cars to wherever their destination is. I want to be walking my dog down that sidewalk. I want to feel the sun, the wind and the rain on my skin. I want to smell the scents of fresh cut grass and even the exhaust of the cars going by. I want to be able to get up, walk out of here and do whatever I want to do, even if it’s just to run down to the convenience store and pay an exorbitant price for a candy bar or a bottle of pop. I want to be able to go see my kids and grandkids. I want to be able to take them out to lunch or shopping or sit and play a game with them. The last 19 years of raising five kids on my own, working full-time, trying to deal with all of the daily responsibilites and barely surviving from day to day left no time for those things. I watched those years speed by, hoping that once I retired, I’d be able to make up for all the years that I wasn’t able to spend quality time with them. Life events, disability and chronic illness destroyed any dreams of that happening. Now, I find myself sitting here, wanting so much to be able to do the little things with them that I never was able to, trapped and imprisoned in a body that won’t even allow me to stand up and walk across the room. Life celebrations like birthdays, graduations, proms, weddings and births go on without me and now that I have the time to attend or create them, I am unable to do so. Our current electronic world would have us believe that zoom calls and facetime and texts can take the place of those occasions and milestones in our lives, but nothing can replace the intimacy of gathering with family, laughing and telling stories. No text can replace the warmth of a hug. No zoom call can create the feelings of fellowship. No digital image can substitute for the smell of your grandbaby’s hair as they snuggle under your chin. I love seeing the pictures, hearing the voices, listening to the stories of what’s going on in their lives. Even so, those are hollow facsimiles of the real intimacy that makes life worth living.

The knowledge of that fills me with such deep regret and grief. I wanted so much to be the Nana who made cookies and read stories as my grandbabies cuddled in my arms. I wanted to be the mom who took her adult kids out for lunch or to a movie, her teenagers to the mall, her kids to the pool or the park, but those moments were few and far between. I wanted to be the mom that the kids knew they could always come to if they needed someone to listen, rather than the mom who was too busy putting out fires all day to be able to spend much one-on-one time with any of them. But the reality was that there was no time, no peace and no money for any of those things and distance kept us apart, as well. Hating that reality, I kept promising myself that I’d make up for it when I was finally able to stop spending all of my time simply trying to keep things together and survive. That time will never come now and the realization of that tears me apart. I don’t know whether I want to cry or rage or simply curl up and close my eyes and cease to exist. I just know that I hate it and can do nothing to change it. Yes, if while reading this you feel a stirring of concern about your own life, it is meant to be a warning.

I want to be living, not sitting in this bed, day after interminable day, simply existing until I die. Well, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I’m already dead, my body just hasn’t quite caught up with the program yet. There is no quality of life lying alone in a bed, hour followed by empty hour. It does leave me with ample hours to think back about all the years spent surviving from one day to the next while my children and grandchildren grew up and left me behind, our relationships never reaching the closeness I so very much wanted them to have. If only I could stop thinking about it now.

Faced with these feelings, I’m at war with myself. “Stop,” I tell myself, “Appreciate what you have, be thankful that your kids and grandchildren are capable, strong, healthy for the most part, doing well, managing their own life struggles and standing on their own two feet. Count your blessings, see the good, relish the positives. Stop whining and feeling sorry for yourself!”  Even so, arguing with my feelings and trying to force the negative ones down, I find myself filled with a mixture of grief, regret, anger and frustration, mixed with shame for allowing those other emotions. Having faith in the Lord and knowing that there is, indeed, a much better place on the other side, Scripture tells me I should be at peace – yet peace is far from what my heart is filled with right now. Yes, I’m still here. Still riding this rollercoaster and wondering if the track ever comes to an end. Still here.