Intimations of Mortality

I got a phone call yesterday from one of my aunts, the one who's most likely to call if there's a problem.

I've gotten to an age where good news pretty much never comes in a phone call, but bad news does, and so this was bad new, but not horribly bad or scary. And I'm grateful I have an aunt who will call.

Within a couple of hours, I'd talked to my Mom, who was, by then, in a hospital room (and our call was interrupted by the doctor entering, so she talked to him instead of me, which makes perfect sense to me), and I'd talked to my brother a couple of times, mostly, I think, because we were both making sure the other knew what there was to know (not much at that point) and was doing okay. I'm especially grateful right now for my brother. I grew up watching our Dad be a big brother to his siblings, and was jealous of them having such a brother, but my brother has grown up to be very much like our Dad in that respect, and a very, very good big brother. We may disagree sometimes, but I have such confidence in his judgment and caring for people. He may even be better at big brotherness than our Dad was.

I spent a good bit of time last night thinking that someday I'm going to get a phone call and it's not going to be just a problem that's not horrible. It's either going to be pretty darned horrible, or done. I would rather done, so long as it's not painful or scary.

Today we've been waiting for news. Apparently, there's something that needs to be done, but the doctor who needs to do it doesn't know yet, because s/he is busy with someone who is far sicker than my Mom. I'm guessing pretty much everyone else in the hospital is far sicker than my Mom. So I don't know when what needs to be done will be done. (Do they do things that need to be done on the weekend? I don't know.)

But until that's done, I don't know what to do, except call every few hours to check in.

I'm guessing that the hospital staff is thinking that this woman's children are absolutely despicable because neither of us has shown up there yet. Nor are we likely to show up any time soon, because what needs to be done doesn't need us to be there, and we wouldn't actually do anyone any good just hanging about looking worried.

I am SO the wrong kind of a doctor to be at all useful about these things. If I were the right kind, at least I could probably have a job within a couple hours drive, and I could take a day and say reassuring things. But no, I'm the sort of person who reads Titus for a good time, and that doesn't lead to anything reassuring.

It's a lousy way to approach Mother's day, though.