Be Loved

Harriett Louise Bush

Born February 26, 1922

Daughter

Sister

Aunt

Wife

Mother

Grandmother

Great-Grandmother

Died February 26, 2014

All she ever wanted in life 

was to be loved.

Happy Birthday, Mother, with love

Sausage Biscuits, Gravy and Three Sisters

My friend Connie posted the following on Facebook. 


The other day as I was leaving the house I reminded John that there was leftover sausage gravy in the frig and biscuits in the bread box. When I returned home a couple hours later I saw the biscuits abandoned on a plate. John was complaining that it didn't taste good and moaned about being poisoned. I was puzzled that the food had gone bad that quickly. As he reached past me to dump the plate's contents into the trash I stuck a finger into the "gravy" and tasted it. Wait a minute. That's not gravy! John, that's the sour cream vegetable dip!  (Connie's true story)

* * *

Three sisters, ages 92, 94 and 96 live in a house together. One night the 96-year-old draws a bath, puts her foot in and pauses. She yells down the stairs, "Was I getting in or out of the bath?" The 94-year-old yells back, "I don't know, I'll come up and see." She starts up the stairs and pauses;  then she yells, "Was I going up the stairs or coming down?" The 92-year-old was sitting at the kitchen table having tea, listening to her sisters. She shakes her head and says, "I sure hope I never get that forgetful." She knocks on wood for good measure. She then yells, "I'll come up and help both of you as soon as I see who's at the door."

Perspective

Depending upon which scientists you ask, homo sapiens have been around for 70,000 to 100,000 years, give or take 25,000. If you do the math, that means that to date there have been over 100,000,000,000--that's one hundred BILLION--of us born. Subtract 7,000,000,000 from that number--that's how many of us are still here--and what's left are a whole lot of people who have been here, done that, gone now.  That's 93,000,000,000, give or take a few billion, who are no longer with us, yet they have one thing in common with us: No one gets out of this world alive.  (If you started to count 93,000,000,000 right now, you would be done counting in 2,976 years.)

Why am I telling you this, you ask? Well, that is a very good question. Thanks for asking. I have heard that you have been very unhappy about something that is happening to you, something that is a very natural part of living: the aging process.  Sometimes, putting life events into perspective helps. Let's give it a try, shall we?

Perspective

To take your situation and then compare it with
billions of others who have experienced and are
 experiencing the exact same situation, and then with 
the  help  of this perspective,  you can see that your 
situation is not unique to just you, and what 
is happening is not all that unusual...or bad.

                                                                ---Mikidikipedia            

I wanted to share Perspective with you because, over the years, it has helped me navigate through some very challenging times. When I step back from my self-absorption, my center-of-the-universe mindset,  I can see that it's not always all about me.  We are all in this together. You, me, that person over yonder, and all the people everywhere. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. We are homo sapiens, human beings, a unique, one-of-a-kind species--the only one on earth with a brain capable of complex thinking and a soul with a conscience. From the beginning, all one hundred billion of us have shared the same needs, desires, and feelings. We may all look different, but we are the same.

LIAR! LIAR! Pants on fyyyyeeeer!

Okay, I lied. We're not all in this together. It's a dog-eat-dog world; every man for herself. We live in a shallow, fickle world where youth and beauty matter over substance and wisdom.  I was just trying to use perspective to help you feel better about your situation: Ya know, your deteriorating body, brain shrinkage, and imminent demise. But I can see that perspective isn't helping. You're still frowning or is that just sagging jowls? Oh, I'm sorry. Have I hurt your feelings? Would it make you feel better if I told you that you're not alone? There are 7,000,000,000 people in the world right now. Half are women. That's 3.5 billion. One billion of those women are no longer young and have lost the world's lusty focus. That's one billion little old ladies sharing your exact same situation. Isn't that comforting? You're one in a billion. Now don't you feel better? What? No?

Okay, then. Never mind.

What Goes Around

What goes around ...

"Oh, no! What did you just say?!" his mother asked--half  question, half frustration. What had he said? He couldn't remember. Only a minute had passed, a mere sixty seconds, but there was an interruption--the waitress had asked if they were ready to order, but he had forgotten what he was saying. Just as well. His mother was not happy with him. What had he said or done wrong now? It seemed that his behavior--every single thing he did--was an irritant.

"Please! Look at the menu! The waitress will be back in a minute, and she's going to ask what you want to eat," she said as she looked at her watch. Her schedule was chockablock full, and she had taken time away from her busy life to pick him up from kindergarten to take him to lunch. The least he could do, she thought, was appreciate her sacrifice on his behalf and focus on the task at hand. Wait! Wait! Now he remembered what it was he had been talking about earlier, so he put the menu down and started the story where he had left off, but then the waitress was back, and his mother was frowning, and he had to pick the menu back up again.

"Just pick something! It's not that difficult." But it was that difficult because he had been so excited to hear that his mother was stopping by his school to take him to lunch, he couldn't focus. Plus he couldn't read that well either; picking something from the menu would be impossible, so he did what his five-year-old brain told him to do: He got out of his chair, ran across the room to where a young boy about his age, wearing a very large cowboy hat, sat, eating a chocolate sundae. He told the boy he liked his hat to which the boy replied it was his dad's hat,  but the conversation ended there when the mother escorted her son back to his chair and told him to stay put and tell the waitress what he wanted to eat.

"No! You cannot have what that boy in the cowboy hat is having!  You must eat real food before dessert!"  

...comes around.

"Oh, my goodness! What did you just say?!" her son said--half  question, half frustration. What had she said? She couldn't remember. Only a minute had passed, a mere sixty seconds, but there was an interruption--the waitress had asked if they were ready to order, but she had forgotten what she was saying. Just as well. He was not happy with her. What had she said or done wrong now? It seemed that her behavior--every single thing she did--was an irritant.

"Mother! Please! Look at the menu! The waitress will be back in a minute, and she's going to ask what you want to eat," he said as he looked at his iPhone. His schedule was jammed-packed full, and he had taken time away from his busyness to pick her up from the nursing home to take her to lunch. The least she could do, he thought, was appreciate his sacrifice on her behalf and focus on the task at hand. Oh, Wait! Got it! Now she remembered what it was she had been talking about earlier, so she put the menu down and started the story where she had left off, but then the waitress was back, and her son was frowning, and she had to pick the menu back up again.

"Just pick something, Mother! It's not that difficult." But it was that difficult because she had been so excited to hear that her son was stopping by to take her to lunch, she couldn't focus. And in the confusion of getting ready to go, she'd forgotten her reading glasses; picking something from the menu would be impossible, so she did what her eighty-five-year-old brain told her to do: She got out of her chair, walked across the room to where an older, heavy-set lady, wearing a large-brim bright orange hat, sat, eating a humongous banana split. She told the lady she liked her hat, but the lady thought she said she liked her cat to which she replied she didn't have a cat, but the son's mother thought the lady in the hat had called her an old bat and things went down hill from there...until the conversation came to an abrupt stop when the son escorted his mother back to her chair and told her to stay put and tell the waitress what she wanted to eat.

"No! You cannot have what that nasty old hag in the orange hat is having! You're not a five-year-old, Mother. You must eat real food before dessert!"