Falling Apart

I have plenty of issues, but anxiety usually isn’t in my top five.

It is today.

I woke up with a headache and a racing heart.

Afghanistan. COVID. Our overloaded healthcare system. Tropical storms Fred and Grace. Earthquakes. Fires. Story and book deadlines. My boys growing up and leaving me behind Are my parents safe?

My best friends are in healthcare. They’re angry, stressed and exhausted.

Hamp went back to Alabama yesterday. He has already missed much of the college experience and the best years of his life. But is he safe at school?

People I know are dying. There’s a new phrase: “younger, sicker, quicker.”

We quit trusting the media, science, numbers, preachers, teachers, nurses and doctors. Meanwhile the Coronavirus evolves and spreads. Now what?

I’m not alone. I know you and everyone else has just as much racing through your minds. Or more.

During times like this, the people I meet through Our Southern Souls give me hope.

My latest is Gail, a flight nurse in Mississippi. The phone interview was about how COVID was affecting her job. At the end, I asked for a picture of her hands. She laughed and said it will be a picture of nine stubs and one thumb.

Gail caught Sepsis after a surgery and lost her fingers and toes. A mother of young children, she had no choice but to learn how to do everything in new ways.

“I taught my kids that in this family we don’t quit,” she said.

She didn’t quit. She kept nursing and became the best needle jabber at her hosptual. She also became more compassionate and understanding of what her patients go through.

Maybe this is the hard time that makes us more compassionate

A note taped to a bench in Fairhope reads: “Today you could be talking to someone who is trying their best not to fall apart-so whatever you do today, do it with kindness in your heart.”

COVID will continue to make life difficult and uncertain. We will go through anxiety, stress, fear, loss and desperation. Most days we’ll do our best not to fall apart.

We can’t quit, but we can treat each other with kindness in our hearts.