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We drove from Natchitoches to New Orleans today.  I slept much of the way.  Well, rested, I should say.  I didn’t sleep all that much.  I lay in the back seat next to Sun in her carrier while CS drove.  I had my eyes closed and made every attempt to sleep, and I am sure I dosed here and there.  But most of the time was spent thinking about (and occasionally gazing with my glasses off at) the microcosm that is my life: my husband and child.  All that matters to me in the world fits snugly in my car.  With room to spare.  God or Fortuna or The Fates have been good to me giving me such a caring husband and an easily-tempered baby.

I write wills and trusts and living wills for folks all the time.  I also handle estates of clients when they die.  Which they do, we all do.  And although my chance of dying this past Monday was slim(ish), it existed.  It always exists when surgery is performed.  And laying on the gurney moments from being taken off for surgery, I had the talk with CS about my living will and what my wishes were should something go wrong.  How do you NOT think about such a thing when you are about to be put under and cut?

He didn’t try to stop me or think I was being macabre.  I had little to say on the topic, and he already knows my wishes but I needed to know he’d be doing what I wanted done because of quality of life issues not matters of money or guilt.  Then I had a split second thought about Sun growing up without me.  I wouldn’t let myself think about that.  I simply told my husband to call on our friends and family if that were to happen–to LET them help.  He agreed.  Then I was rolled off and fell asleep and woke up hours later with things having gone very well.

Today I am elated.  I am filled with joy.  And gratitude.  And love.  And sadness too.  I am sad that I had to think about my mortality; that my body is aging and showing chinks in the armor; that I am tattered and bruised and have racked up scars like crazy for the past five years; that one day Sun will live without her mother as will I; I thought a lot about my grandmother and the time we all spent visiting her in the hospital during her last days.  Hospitals are depressing places.  Even sick, I am usually the healthiest person there.  Unless you are on the maternity floor where life is celebrated, you are moving among folks that are sick or on the mend, but not always healing.

I feel weird that I don’t have a piece of my body, an organ, with me anymore.  My gall bladder is in Texas.  Being biopsied.  Then they’ll toss it, I guess.  I don’t care what they do with it.  I feel different without it, though.  Ironic that the removal of the organ that stored bile in my body seems to have removed a lot of negative energy with it as well.  I am a better person having released my gall bladder, having observed the unyielding support of my husband and family (more than one member volunteered to drive 8+ hours each way to come get me and allow CS to leave to get back to work), and the complete support from my friends too.

So as we left the hills and curves and smooth highways of Texas and came to the straight, flat lands of Louisiana, passing towns with funny names, bayous and cypress trees with their knees jutting out of the water, signs for Boudin and andouille and swamp tours, and Spanish moss hanging in the trees waving in the traffic’s breeze, I never felt more welcomed, more at home, than I did today.  I know where I belong in the world and I know how I fit into this life I have confected.  And I couldn’t feel better about it or be more grateful.

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