Timing is everything…and it looks like we were just in time–or not.
See, part of the reason for the whole house thing–the land transfer from my parents, the building, the moving–was so we could be closer to Mom to be able to help her if needed. My mom has fibromyalgia and has a tendency to overdo things (and thus be out of commission for days afterward) or to lose her balance and fall. Yesterday, the latter happened as she was on a walk. By our house. Like, right next to our driveway.
We were cleaning our apartment at the time.
It was a #fml moment to realize that at the exact moment we were getting most of the last of the stuff out of the apartment my mom needed us. Sure, my sister was with her…but she wouldn’t have had to hobble all the way across our adjoining land (on a broken left foot) to get home, and she wouldn’t have had to wait for my dad to get off work to go to the ER. Even if I had been at work, my husband could have checked on her, made her stay put, walked over and gotten her car, helped her into it, and taken her to the ER right away. Did I mention she hit her head when she fell? Yeah. That too.
She’s okay; she’s in a splint for her foot and I guess testing showed that her head was okay. But still, it was a hard reminder of why we really moved. It wasn’t just to get out of apartment life. It was to be there, extra hands if needed, for Mom.
And we weren’t. We could have been. And there are going to be times when we’re not here. We’ll be at SCA events or I’ll be at work and we won’t have the car or we’ll be at the movies or grocery shopping or whatever. But, for the most part, we’ll be here. Four acres away.
We just weren’t here yesterday. 🙁