Pain is subjective

…and I’ve been subjected to it long enough to know.

At doctor visits you are now expected to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the worst. They even have emoticons on an insipid chart for you to determine your level of dis-comfort based on a frowny face.

Believe me, if you are close to an 8 you aren’t getting out of bed, much less showing up for a scheduled check up appointment to point at a yellow circle faced sliding scale of smile to frown.

Chronic pain is far different from an acute case of the hurts. It goes far beyond a frowny face emotion. 

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One Heart

I showed my mom my Blog the other day. I had my homepage open on the screen when she walked in the room. She didn’t understand what she was seeing, but I tried to explain my purpose – without much  conviction – and I demonstrated how each category photograph slides into a full view when the cursor  moves over it, and by clicking she could access my posts under these different categories. I could see I was baffling her even more.

I wrote about you and Dad,

I said as I opened my post titled Mom and Dad. I printed out the post so she could read a hard-copy (I know she can’t read on dark backgrounds, yet I insist on having a black theme). I stood beside her, on edge,  trying to read my mother’s response.

She giggled. To what I don’t know, but she read on and at another point she giggled again. Towards the end she leaned into it. More focused. When she finished she turned to me, looked me in the eye, and gave a curt nod. Not enough for me, I had to ask what she thought of it. Mom looked down at the last page and said out loud,

One form, one destination, one heart.

She looked at me again.

‘Nough said.

Mom and Dad

My parents met at Loring Air Force Base in Maine during WWII.

My dad saw my mother from across the room, first noticing her legs, then finding out she was the best jitter bugger. They married on a three-day-pass before my dad was shipped out to Pearl Harbor to peel Potatoes.

The barracks he slept in were riddled with torn and shredded metal from the Japanese air attacks prior to his arrival.

During the six months they were apart, my parents wrote to each other.   

We recently found a metal box, that my tin knocker father made, in the cellar filled with their love letters. 

We  have never pried into their privacy regarding these letters, but my father wanted to burn them. I put them away where my mom knows they are safe and Dad won’t find them to throw on the wood stove without a second thought, his Dementia denying their worth.

How many more generations will be able to celebrate their 64th wedding anniversary with their one and only love, lover, husband, wife?

At present Dad can’t see and Mom can’t hear and neither of them get around well…and with the two of them we laugh and cry and whisper and yell. We lead and follow, step this way then that. One is up and one is down as they both try to get in step again.

Last week as Mom, Dad and I left a neighborhood restaurant, full from Fried Clams and a day in Portland with another doctor appointment, I had Dad by his right arm, catching up to Mom as she reached the end of the ramp. Mom was wobbling with her cane and no longer moving forward without the handrail. Parked in the closest Handicapped parking space we still had 20 feet to totter to the car. Dad stopped walking and told me to help Mom and he would wait for me to come back to help him, though he would have to stand, without support, legally blind to his surroundings while I helped his wife, his life to safety.

“No Dad, we’ll get there together. We’re the three musketeers.”

I threw my right arm around my mother’s waist, and my left arm around my father’s waist, leading the three of us as we slowly waddled towards the car.

One form, one destination, one heart.