How We Stay Kind to One Another

When everything just seems so hard

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

It’s been hard lately — everything, all of it. Is that true for you too? Things are challenging out there in the world, and they’re hard at home.

My sweet crazy uncle died a few weeks ago, victim of his demons, his lifelong grief, and his more recent grief at losing his sister — my mother — last summer. I’m getting uncomfortably good at writing family obituaries: item number one on the list of “skills you never wanted”.

My husband and I flew to Los Angeles for my uncle’s funeral last weekend, and to deal with the absolute mess he left behind. It was truly awful, and heartbreaking.

Things had been stressful already around here. The dishwasher broke, then my husband’s computer died; and that was before we got our horrifying tax bill. My shoulder was already bothering me before the trip — I’d tried to see a doctor for it, but all the providers in our little rural clinic were out sick with the awful flu that’s been going around.

So I ended up in Urgent Care in LA the morning of the funeral, in tears from the pain, begging for any kind of relief. I was given opioids and steroids, and that got me through the weekend, more or less. We took the ferry out to the emergency room on the mainland the day after we got home, and added muscle…