The unseen hand

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10/5/08 Sunday
It’s hard to believe we will be flying to Toledo on Thursday. That’s just four days away and time sure speeded up on that one. This trip we had planned and already obtained the tickets for (Thanks Janie) back before my friend, Eileen, was murdered. She was one of the people we had been looking forward to seeing but now we will be attending a memorial in her honor at the hospital she was dropped off at. The memorial was an unexpected surprise. Her daughter, Suzie, got an envelope with the hospital’s name on it and expected a bill. Instead it was an announcement the hospital was conducting a memorial service and asked how many guests she would bring. We still don’t know how this came to be.

Anyway, we are so looking forward to going. Cherie’s Aunt and Uncle are having their fiftieth anniversary, coming from their home in Florida for it, so the timing is good there. Of course she, and I, will be able to visit with her parents and family too. This will be a chance for me to look up friends I’ve lost contact with and hopefully spend some time with the two son’s I raised with the second wife. One of the great sorrows I have is how my relationship with them was damaged in that divorce. Hell, it was pretty much destroyed. I haven’t been good at keeping in touch with them, just as I haven’t been good at keeping in touch with anyone at all. It’s another issue with the brain damage. I keep thinking of sending emails and keep forgetting. I’ve been going to write my sister for months in reply to her last email where she told me about visiting Oregon or Washington state. I can’t quite remember which one it was. It’s just like everything else I want and intend to do in my life. Little or nothing seems to get done.

I got an email from someone who’s husband suffered a traumatic brain injury just last year, thanking me for sharing my post TBI life on this blog. I looked at her blog and it’s a heart wrenching journal of her life as a caregiver for a TBI survivor. Her husband’s injuries are worse than mine were but the similarities in the issues they must deal with sure revived some memories of my early experiences. Here is her site address. www.aftertbi.blogspot.com Please read it if you could as it will expand your understanding of what the millions of TBI survivors, and those that care for them, go through. And of course increasing awareness and understanding of TBI is one of my missions in life and a reason for this blog.

Cherie lost her job Friday. How did she put it? She was transferred back to the temp agency she works through. Cherie is the seventh temp this firm has gone through. When her friend Cindy? (I’m never sure about names) heard that she said “Do you think their expectations are a little high?”. Cherie was an invoice clerk and is about as good with numbers as I am. That would be not very good. I could run two companies but paid someone to do the math. Plus it is a complex environment that is ever changing and requires a lot of knowledge of the industry so Cherie walked in like an elementary school student in a college class and just couldn’t learn fast enough. Add to that the pressure from the massive end of the month crunch to get everything done and out and it was just too much. Cherie doesn’t do well under that kind of “Do It Now, Get it DONE” pressure. For that matter neither do I, fact is my brain can’t process things fast enough and just freezes up when overloaded, sometimes triggering seizures.

So we are back to just my disability check and that is probably going to be cut off anyway. Cherie was almost crying as she contemplated that and she apologized repeatedly for losing the job. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding and in all your ways acknowledge Him and he will direct your paths” I quoted to her in reassurance. I reminded Cherie of how things always seem to work out, of how there seems to be an unseen hand on our lives that provides whatever needs we have. I’m not worried.