Waiting for Randot

Remember the Samuel Beckett play, Waiting for Godot? This one rhymes, but his last name does not have the "t".  I spent almost all of last  Monday at Mass General Hospital in Boston while a friend was in surgery.  I have done a lot of time in hospitals as a patient, but not as the patient advocate/support buddy.  The ensuing days were full of commuting to Lowell to work, commuting to Boston to bedside-sit, and then back home late at night. It was a remarkable week, full of insights on the human condition and a reminder of the suffering going on all around us 24/7 and 365.  Overhearing conversations in waiting rooms and hospital cafeterias should be mandated about once a month for all of us - it puts so much into perspective and  allows us to realize not all of our problems are so terrible.  It also gives us the opportunity to enrich our own  souls by praying for the health and well-being of  those lives  briefly glimpsed and overlapped with our own.

Knowing I would have a lot of  time on my hands I packed up my little cathedral window table runner blocks to bring with me,  thinking it would be a good time to finish up the project. (This picture shows it when it was a  work in progress.)  I'm more pleased that it is finished than I am with how it actually looks.  It is one of those projects that looks pretty simple on the surface, but matching those exacting intersections and seam allowances is entirely another matter. It was very therapeutic to be in a stressful situation with some hand sewing.  I found it made me calmer and - in turn - a better patient advocate. I had a few moments when I wanted to go postal and  make like Shirley Maclaine in Terms of Endearment (GIVE MY DAUGHTER  THE SHOT !!!!!) but managed much more successful methods of requesting medication and attention for my friend.  After  a  couple of trips to the nurses desk, the nurse informed me I could just use the call button and request what I needed.  ( I already knew that, but I wasn't going to tell her.)  I just smiled and said it felt good to get up and walk around a little.  While I have enormous respect for the work nurses do, I also know that things happen faster when you request nicely and face to face.  I did not bust chops,  I wasn't a pain in anyone's ass, but I'm not allowing anyone to be a pain in mine (or my friend's) either, and the previous night we politely  waited two hours for a simple  sandwich that never did show up for my very, very hungry patient. I am a reasonable person, but that is the kind of thing that makes  me change gears and ramp it up.  Aside from the fact that I could make Shirley Maclaine look like a piker by comparison, it just isn't necessary to get ugly.    I think anything we do, sew, create, cook or tend to for another person should be done with compassion and love. Judging by what I have seen and heard over the past week,  we could all make an effort to make someone else's life or job easier.  In turn, ours will, too.