Good thoughts needed

 So the phone rang shortly after midnight.  Around here that is not a good thing.

It was  Jen.  She was driving home from the local hospital, and she needed to tell me that something had happened to my mother.

My mother is 88 and is not in great health.  My three sisters and Jen live in my mother’s house, my sisters look after my mother.  But she’s getting older…

My mother took a fall while trying to get out of bed.  Jen and two of my sisters were home at the time.  They bundled my mother into the car and drive to the hospital.

We live in COVID world.    Only one person could accompany my mother into the ER.  One of my sisters went into the hospital with mom, and the other sister and my daughter waited in the parking lot.

They were hoping my mother was just bruised, but … my mother broke her hip.  She’s having surgery this afternoon.

In a pre COVID world I’d be heading to the hospital today.  Instead, I must leave everything in my sisters’ capable hands. 

I don’t need to say it, you know I am worried.  You know what I am thinking.   Good thoughts and prayers are most welcome right now.

But interesting side note.  Jen is 31 years old, I’ve had to deliver bad news to her several times in her life.  Tonight the roles were reversed.  And in my daughter’s words I heard my own voice…I always tried to deliver bad news calmly, factually, and reassuringly.  And that’s what Jen did last night.