During
preparation, you are told and come to peace with the fact that your call takes
you to distant lands, and that means you won’t be there if something happens at
home. You’ll have phone calls and internet (if it works), but you won’t be able
to feel your family’s arms wrap around you. You won’t be able to say goodbye.
Your tears are yours alone. I was glad when my mom called me to tell me my dog
had needed emergency surgery. I knew what was happening. I knew everyone was
pulling for her and the outlook was favorable, so when my ringing phone woke me
up the next morning, the news of her passing hurt, but it wasn’t completely out
of the blue. I still got up. I still went to work. I kept my grief to myself
during the day and talked to my mom regularly. I went to a fellow missionary’s
house, and I was able to talk through it. I felt better, but the guilt of not
being there when she needed me still eats at me sometimes.
Maybe I should
have warned you this wouldn’t be a happy go lucky kind of post…
I think that God
knew I needed someone. He looked down and saw past my crumbling façade and
reached out his hand in the form of sending Martha to me. While I was enjoying
my friend and a light of happiness, the phone call came again. My mom had left
work early because my uncle wasn’t doing well. I knew when I left the United
States that he would likely not be there when I return in three years. I
expected him to just fade away. What I didn’t expect was how sick he would get
right at the end. Growing up, I just sort of figured he’d drink himself to
death. When that’s the thought in your head, you don’t think he’ll end up in
the hospital with raging sepsis and pneumonia likely from aspiration. It’s
strange, but what I feel most guilty, most sad about is that I wasn’t there for
my brother, and I’m not there now to help my dad make sense of the insanity
that was my uncle’s world. A year of training as a case manager under my belt,
and when I could use that to help my family, I’m thousands of miles and a poor internet
connection away. It was as though a second massive wave had hit me before I
could get a full breath in. Having Martha with me those first few days was my
saving grace. I was able to vent, to cry and to smile. She helped me…Okay, she
kicked my butt into high gear…get my apartment looking and feeling more like
home. We played games (her wiping the floor with me in Phase 10 and me
returning the favor with Rummy, a game I haven’t played in years). We went to
the market. We watched movies. We relaxed.
When I was little,
we prayed to our guardian angels. As strange as it may sound, that was one of
the easiest things for me to believe. Maybe it’s because my imagination really
likes the idea of an angel walking beside me steering me out of danger or helping
me make decisions, or maybe it was an easy explanation for the little things. I
used to keep a “Blessings Journal” filled with the little things I was thankful
for and the instances where I could look back and say, “I had help”. Anyway, I
started one again. Being here, it’s easy to identify the things taken for
granted while living in the U.S.; things like hot water, or heck, even running
water, regular electricity, high speed internet, grocery stores, and paved
roads. While Martha was here, that once familiar feeling of someone looking out
for me was back in the form of a latte (something else we take for granted).
Seeing “latte macchiato” on the menu almost brought me to tears, so she
and I made a special trip back just to enjoy liquid human happiness with foam
so think it could almost support the weight of the teaspoon. You see, it’s the
little things. It’s the little reminders to smile or the latte when all you
need is a touch of home or the quilt to curl up in when all you need is a hug.
Is it a stroke of luck or a guardian angel? Like the number of licks needed to
get to the center of a tootsie pop, we may never know.
