The Hospital

My third daughter, Eva, was having a medical procedure done at the hospital today. While not life threatening, it did require that someone drive her home, so I got there early in the morning to be with her for as long as needed.

I spent some time in the waiting room and read several magazines while sitting there. Then I began thinking about that particular hospital and my family. We used to live in a town nearby so that particular hospital is the one where we have gone for one reason or another---to be born, to give birth, to have emergency surgery, or to the emergency room for various unexpected ailments.

As I reflected on our relationship with that hospital, I made a list of all the times I could remember one of us ending up there. Of the six members of my immediate family, not a one has escaped a visit there, if not two! Some of those were joyful; some were terrifying. Yo was born there. That was a joyful occasion, but also, I had emergency surgery. A year later she was there with a seizure. My oldest daughter went to the hospital for emergency surgery when she was fifteen. At the time, the doctors were not sure she was going to make it. Many years later, she was there to give birth, more than once. Gerry went there via ambulance with emergency pain, which turned out to be kidney cancer. Later in surgery, that kidney was removed. Every one of us has been there. It is a place that evokes all those memories.

Some of the greatest dramas of our lives get played out in the hospital. Life and death take place there. And sometimes, you don't know exactly how that is going to go!

I am so very fortunate and blessed to have thus far escaped any major life-threatening illnesses! I know that cannot last forever, but as long as it does, I'll be happy to keep my distance from the hospital, despite it being a very nice place.