A pie for Mikey

I work in health care. I work in home care. I work with the sick and sometimes the dying. Many of the people I see are more in the ebb than the flow. It is what I do and I feel that I am in it because I do it well.

Over my years in home care I have come to appreciate so many things; the way people feel when they are finally home, in their own clothes, surrounded by their familair things, allowed to have their routines. I worked for years and years in the hospital setting; the world of gowns that lay you literally bare when you dare to move out of bed. Later I moved to the rehab setting where you are allowed to wear your own clothes but you cannot because your left arm and leg do not work so your spouse goes to walmart and gets a hideous pair of pull on sweats that leave your frame swimming and exposes you in a totally different way.



I am trying to say I love home care, love what I do now. And I am digressing far from what I was trying to actually say. Friday night I made a pie. I made it because of a father and mother, husband and wife, family and life that was broken by unforeseen tragedy. She asked for pies in his memory and I felt as if it was a small thing to do in light of the wave of huge loss, maybe a small current sent her way as she reshapes everything that she is.



I see loss on a weekly basis because we have a hospice component to our services. I take hospice patients regularly. It sounds a bit anomalous, rehab in the hospice setting. In these times I go into the home to teach a family member or caregiver how to help make their loved one more physically comfortable, I teach them how to protect their bodies as they struggle to not only care for this dying person but take on roles they never imagined. It is a great privilege to be a part of this but it is never not wrenching.

So, I see death in many forms daily. But this death, this loss, it strikes a different chord. It is one thing to try to accept the process of loss, another to have no say, no warning, no time. It is truly a terrible loss. And so despite the fact that she is a stranger, a person not met yet, I made the pie. I read her post and made the pie and cried as I shopped for the needed items and felt that the loss was not distant.



The pie is still being eaten. My sisters are in town and the little cousins keep running in and out and people keep scooping bites and pieces and asking how to make it and hearing the about the loss of this man. Loving the pie but not the reason for its presence.



Yes, we will all go someday. And none of us know the how or when or why. Won't know. But I do know we are here now and can live best by embracing it all, the big huge messy picture that is our Life. It is not too late to make some pie. Or give some love. Or change things you do not like.





My beloveds.