I write sometimes for an American website called Mothering in the Middle about being a ‘midlife’ (older) mother … but today the term ‘mothering in the middle’ has taken on a whole new perspective.
Hope is still very poorly … too many white blood cells in her urine, temperature going up and down like a yo yo, fighting like a small Tasmanian devil every time anyone (me or hospital staff) come near her with a spoon or syringe of medicine, waiting for the results of the ‘sensitivities’ test on the cultures grown to see if they need to change from the hated Augmentin (antibiotic) to something else … she’s tired, I’m exhausted and all in all this very long week has taken its toll on us both!
This however pales into insignificance beside what her father and his wider family have been going through. Hope’s paternal Granny has been in hospital since Christmas and is now terribly terribly ill. We were going to go down and see her the other day but Hope was showing signs of not feeling herself and then the snow came and we all judged it better that we stayed here, then Granny got sicker, just at the same time as Hope got sick … this week has been a very hard week with Hope but against the backdrop of her Grandmother (in a hospital 3 hours away) slowly drifting away. Yesterday I asked Hope’s doctors if she was ok to travel and we had decided to head down today so I could see her but then her father phoned and said that the ward she’s on has now got the norovirus and that it wasn’t right to take Hope down there incase any of us pick up a bug and pass it on to her.
So, I sit here wishing I could be down there to see Granny, and to be some support to Hope’s father but instead up here looking after our small person.
It probably isn’t fair on Hope to like being with her to being with a ‘rock’, but you know what I mean … poor Roy has been worrying about Hope and suffering the deepest kind of sadness possible sitting beside his mother in a quiet hospital side room.
Too many tears have been shed already this week, this Good Friday doesn’t feel so good … but we did spend a happy peaceful hour this morning at the Salvation Army hot cross bun morning reflecting on the real meaning of this day and many prayers were offered up for both Hope and her Grandmother … and her father and her aunties, siblings and cousins.
