Save one: Misty still needed walking.At the beginning, when friends offered to take her through her paces, I declined because I knew they had their own households to deal with.
As the months went by,I began to realize that I actually wanted to walk Misty.The walk in the morning before I headed to the hospital was a quiet, peaceful time to gather my thoughts or to just be before the day's medical drama unfolded.The evening walk was a time to shake off the day's upsets and let the worry tracks in my head go to white noise.
When serious illness visits your household, it's , not just your daily routine and your assumptions about the future that are no longer familiar.Pretty much everyone you acts differently.
Not Misty.Take her for a walk, and she had no interest in Joe's blood counts or bone marrow test results.On the street or in the park, she had only one thing on her mind: squirrels! She Was so joyous that even on the worst days, she could make me smile.On a daily basis she reminded me that life goes on.
After Joe died in 2009,Misty slept on his pillow.
I'm grateful一to a point.The truth is, after years of balking, I've come to enjoy my walks with Misty.As I watch her chase after a squirrel, throwing her whole being into the here-and-now of an exercise that has never once ended in victory, she reminds me, too, that no matter how harsh the present or unpredictable the future , there's almost always some measure of joy to be extracted from the moment.