Making My Rounds...

After I got off of work today, I picked up my daughter's friend and brought her to my house to work on their science project.

After dropping her by her house, my daughter and my youngest son and I hit the highway to downtown Atlanta.

I am the trainer for the restaurant that I work at, and one of my most recent trainees is a girl of 18 or 19.

Her father (only a few years my senior) had a massive stroke on Saturday night. He was pronounced brain dead last night and is being kept alive to harvest his organs. I applaud this decision by the family and it is a wonderful thing that they are doing for so many others in their own time of despair and grief.

All the employees and regulars at the restaurant signed a card for this young girl, and my kids and I took it up to the hospital.

It brought back many memories for me of the time in the hospital with my own father in a very similar situation.

I was relieved to see a tremendous showing of friends and relatives. The family was being tended to by at least twenty people in the ICU waiting room.

She seems to be holding up well...as well as can be expected when you are in total shock and despair AND losing your father.

I wrote her a rather lengthy note on the back of the card (all my notes seem to be lengthy) because I can identify with her situation so closely.

My heart just breaks for her and her entire family. Only time (a LONG LONG time) will eventually start to heal her pain.

We will all be there for her at work, and I have told her she can call on me day or night...either to talk or listen...what ever she wants or needs.

Then my little entourage headed to another hospital in Atlanta where a dear sweet customer has just had open heart surgery for six by passes.

I wouldn't dare guess her age, but she is retired and a fixture in our restaurant for lunch MANY days of the week.

She was sitting in a chair eating her dinner and looked absolutely marvelous for an older woman coming out of a major heart surgery.

She seemed in good spirits and loved my two kids coming to see her as well.

We chatted briefly and I told her I would come back on Wednesday when I didn't have to be at work til 4PM.

It makes me realize that I am an extremely lucky woman.

I have had many tragedies in my life, but I have had even more blessings and feel grateful to have teenagers that will tromp around the city with me to let others in need of company know that they have friends that are not only thinking of them, but take time to come visit, even if for a short time.

I am am firm believer in "What comes around goes around".

It saddened me to see a family watching their loved one being kept alive by machines, and it lifted me up to see an older woman improving so quickly after such a major trauma.

Life goes on, the pages turn...lessons are learned...battles are fought, won and lost.

Treat every day on this earth with the respect that it deserves.

Sometimes you will be let down and sometimes you will be uplifted.

YOU JUST NEVER KNOW !!


Til next time.. A reflective feeling COTTON