Sometimes it's not a great New Year...

Today I received one of those messages that leave you wondering how to reply.

After I wished Alexandra a great New Year, she replied that her year could have started better. She said that she had been waiting for this year. The year of the Allessandra she had named it.

Alas, 12 hours after she wished Happy New Year to her mother at 12.05 am on January 1, 2007, her mother tripped on a mat and went flying through the air. She knocked her head on the dining room table, and, in reaching out to stop the fall, snapped her wrist and broke her hip!

The hip break was too bad to pin, so they put her under and were rebuilding her with a partial hip replacement.

“She is, as I type,” said Alexandra, “refusing to wake up after surgery.”

So Alexandra is sitting there waiting - either her mother will pull through or she won't.

“I am trying to be philosophical,” said Alexandra. “Other times I put my hands over my eyes like I remember my daughter doing as a wee tot, her thinking being that if she couldn't see me, nor I see her…”

“But,” Alexandra said., “perhaps I am just getting the worst of the year over and done with early.”

I think all of us who have lost one or both parents knows how she feels. How helpless, how alone, and how sad.

If I could reach out and hug Alexandra, I would, but she lives at the other end of New Zealand.

So what could I say?

In the end, I just said “Let's look at this another way. If mother is as extraordinary as her daughter, one would be led to the conclusion that mother is, at this very moment, away inspecting heaven to see whether it is sufficiently salubrious for her, in case she has to spend a bit of time there before she moves on to her next life.

That being the case, if she wakes up you’ll have the mixed emotions of being really glad you have your mother back, yet knowing that heaven isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Ya just can't win, kid!”

I don’t know whether that helped. I just hope it did.

(I have just received a joyful message from Alexandra. Her mum is breathing on her own and out of recovery .. high five!!!)

--
Allan