Live life without the what-ifs

Just got a really, big dose of how life can change in the blink of an eye. Cliché? Maybe.
 
It all started when a group of us had big dinner plans downtown and our 7 p.m. reservation turned out to be at 7 a.m. No wonder it was so easy to get. Have you tried getting a reservation at an upscale place in Charleston at the last minute recently? And during restaurant week? 
 
So late afternoon, my husband and I made a deal – he would go to the grocery store to get the ingredients and I would make a pasta dish and a salad. About 30 minutes later, he called me and the minute I heard his voice, thank goodness I heard his voice, I knew that something was wrong. He told me that while chasing his rogue shopping cart in the parking lot – hoping to keep it from hitting the car directly in its path – he tripped on a big sewer grate and fell flat on his back, “cracking” his head really hard.   
 
I immediately went to that very, very dark what if place and tasted bile coming from wherever bile comes from. He said he was very nauseated. I couldn’t remember if nausea after a head injury was good or bad. Two men and a police officer helped him to lie down in the car and they were waiting for the EMS to get there.
 
My son-in-law rushed over to where they were and once the emergency vehicle drove off, he came to get me.
 
We raced to the hospital and found him sitting alone, other than the patients who were also waiting in the emergency room. When I looked at him from a distance, he looked so thin and pale and frightened. I don’t like it when he is frightened. His job has always been to keep me from being frightened.
 
At our ages, our mortality is closer to the front of our everyday thoughts. Falling is something we try to avoid, even though our physical changes make it a more common happening than ever before.  
 
I guess those words that kept running through my head like hematoma, brain bleed, etc. were not priorities in the understaffed emergency room. I can’t even imagine what my husband’s worries were – a retired surgeon, he surely had a lot more words and scenarios playing out than I did.  
 
Five doctors later, four administrators, three scans, two blood taker people, one nurse and a breathing/blowing apparatus, we left with a very swollen head, a fractured rib and lots of instructions about how to avoid lung problems. Those scary horrific words that both of us were worrying about – thank God were for naught. Even so, it’s so hard not to play it back thinking “what if.”
 
I have always thought that someday when I was 99 and he was 104, we would do a Thelma and Louise and go together. I guess moving on after an experience like this can make people fearful. But we will shake it off because that’s what we do. That’s what we have to do.
 
Ernest Hemingway said, “Live life to the fullest.” 
 
Eleanor Roosevelt said, “If life were predictable, it would cease to be life and be without flavor.” 
 
Maya Angelou said, “Success is loving life and daring to live it.”
 
And I said, “If that man thinks this will make me think twice about sending him to the grocery store – he doesn’t know me as well as he thinks he does.” 
 
Vicki Bernie is a freelance writer, wife, mother, grandmother, and dog person...loving “Chapter Two” on Daniel Island.
 

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Daniel Island, SC 29492 

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