Oh. Em. Geeeee. What a day! I finished packing and hit the road with a full cup of coffee by 10:00. I got to mile marker 82 in I-77 when traffic came to a dead stop. I mean like, get out of your car and meet your neighbors stop. One of the most important things I recommend for travel is a smartphone with access to the internet. While my GPS neglected to tell me there was traffic congestion on my route, Siri informed me there had been a truck fire and emergency crews were working to put it out. Three hours later , I drove past this charred hulk of a semi, a tanker truck still hosing down its contents strewn all over. I couldn’t tell for sure but it was loose bags of something orange. I stopped in Wytheville, Virginia for gas and found this painted rock. It’s all the rage right now…paint rocks and leave them places. When you find one, you take a picture of it and say where you find it, then you hide it again. I know a lot of people who do this and it’s fun. I’ll take it to the beach and leave it there.

It’s been a heck of a time the last couple of weeks. A friend had a health scare, my houseguest fell last week and had to go the the ER (she’s great, camping this weekend with the Sisters on the Fly and has a great new campfire story!), another friend fell this week with another trip to the ER, then there was yesterday. Oy.

I went for my followup visit with the neurosurgeon. My subdural hematoma is all healed up but I’m still getting wicked headaches. As I sat in the office talking to her, I had something weird happen to my vision in my right eye. Suddenly I started getting this weird flicker then floaters that swirled around like black tendrils of smoke in my field of vision. Freaked me out a bit, I have to tell ya. I stopped mid-sentence and said “Wait a minute…something’s wrong here.” I told her what I was seeing and she looked in my eye and said I had to see my eye doctor before the end of the day. I got in at around 3:00 and they did a thorough exam. The good news is, it was not a detached retina! It turned out I have a “posterior vitreous detachment”. It sounds a whole lot worse than it is. It’s not dangerous and there’s nothing that can be done for it. It doesn’t affect your vision except as it separates at which time you get floaters and flashes. Over 75% of people over 65 get PVD. I got it a little early. She doesn’t think it is related to my accident since it has been two months. I still was seeing one floater late last night but my brain will soon adjust to that and it shouldn’t bother me. I am at a greater risk of having a detached retina in the next month or two so I have to be a princess for a while and take it easy. The really good news is, it will not interrupt my beach time! I’m leaving today to drive halfway down and the rest of the way on Saturday.

I am fortunate to be sort of a tomboy. Ok, in a girly, tiara-wearing princess kind of way. I’ve never shied away from getting into difficult jobs and pulling them off. When my mom died, I remodelled her house almost completely by myself. I hired the electric and the outdoor painting. And I couldn’t hang the cabinets alone because I wasn’t strong enough to hold them up and screw them in on my own. I tore the kitchen out to the walls. I did the countertops, sink, garbage disposal, GFI outlets, tiled the backsplash, put in under cabinet lighting, installed Pergo flooring, coped the baseboards, tiled the entryway, sweated pipes, installed the appliances, refinished hardwood floored, installed a new front door, new light fixtures, painted the whole interior and redid the bathroom clear down to the sub flooring. It was crazy!

I hated burying my mom on the coldest day of the year. It was late January and while the sky was blue, there was a bitter wind blowing on that hilltop. My Aunt Rosie and I were the only ones at the cemetery. It was just too cold for any kind of formal gathering. I could not let them put her in the ground alone though. So, I stood with a borrowed coat wrapped tight beneath my chin, shivering in the thin, January light.

Bathing al fresco by the light of the moon was a necessity in the mid ’90s. Having a total hysterectomy caused me to wake up from anesthesia with complete menopausal symptoms on top of the surgical pain. I struggled for the next seven years till we finally got my estrogen level up to something I could live with. I had hot flashes that sat at a ten on the Richter Scale and no one wanted to be anywhere near me. I didn’t blame them…I didn’t want to be near them either. It was miserable.

I had company for supper yesterday which was lovely! A simple Easter meal of roasted chicken, fresh green beans cooked with bacon, mashed potatoes and gravy. It was delightful. After my company left, I looked up at the darkening sky threatening rain. My dishes were done, my leftovers put away, and nothing left to do but write. Now, I could write like I have for the last six months…OR, I could go camp out in TOW-Wanda! Guess which one I chose?

My friend Jamie is doing some really hard stuff this weekend. Her dear friend Angie is dying. Actively dying. Cancer is such a brutal disease. It robs everyone of time, health, dignity. There is nothing good about cancer. Yet, in this midst of dying, there can be moments of grace. Angie has a young daughter she won’t see graduate or marry or have babies. In some of her last lucid moments, she was able to dictate three letters to be given to her daughter on just those occasions. What a gift that will be for this young woman to have her mom reach out to her from beyond, just when she needs her most.

Ok…I said I wasn’t going to post till Monday. I tried not to. I really did. But I can’t NOT WRITE! Writing is like breathing. Brushing my teeth. Making my bed. It’s what I do. Every…single…day. I can’t help it…it’s just so much a part of me now, so here I am.

Yesterday was the perfect spring day here in West Virginia! I slept in, had my French pressed coffee and breakfast al fresco on the front porch, then headed to the local state park to hike. I did three and a quarter miles. It was warm and slightly overcast so it was very comfortable. And the wildflowers were amazing! There were several people out on the trail and a guy fishing nearby caught a good sized trout. Afterward, I had a very affordable (and yummy) dinner in the lodge. I came home and sat on the porch and watched as day turned to night. It was truly a perfect day.

I could never understand why today would be called “Good Friday” and not “Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Friday”. After all, today is the day Jesus died on the cross. The images Hollywood has created are mild compared to what really happened that day on that hilltop. There are places in Europe that call this “Sorrowful Friday”. That is appropriate. And some people think the English “Good” evolved from “God’s Friday”. Whatever the origins, it wasn’t until the last few years when my faith was challenged and ultimately deepened that I understood why the death of Jesus was good. It fulfilled prophecy. It saved souls.

High anxiety. Even with four years under my belt. Even with good grief counseling and EMDR treatments. Even with plenty of prayers, introspection, and traveling 55,000 miles. One medical emergency sends me into a tizzy. I worked in medicine for years. I x-rayed accident victims long before they got cleaned up. I’ve had babies and surgeries and countless trips to the ER. Doesn’t make one iota of difference. I don’t handle emergencies well since Mr. Virgo died. I have a tendency to melt down and throw up and then I berate myself for being weak. Even though I know I shouldn’t. It’s not my fault my brain works differently now. It just does. Grief has altered the way my brain functions, physically as well as emotionally.