while making other plans…

Today is July 1st and I am rapidly coming up on the date for my second knee replacement. I chose to have this surgery in July because  I will be 9 months out from the first replacement and sufficiently healed to start the process all over again. I do not relish this opportunity but have kept my focus on the end result and was reminded the other day no one anticipates surgery with  great joy!

Much as I approached the first replacement I’ve been in the studio wrapping up some projects and beginning a few small ones. I thought for sure I would get one more large piece done before I was rendered studio-disabled for while. That is until two weeks ago.

That was when we received word that my father’s health was rapidly declining.  He died this past week at the awesome age of 88 years. He had been afflicted with dementia for 7 years so in essence a part of him died some time ago.

Years ago after losing two of my closest friends to cancer I became a hospice bereavement volunteer where I became familiar with the cycles of grief. And while I believe I was prepared to lose my dad and am ‘handling’ that pretty well, I had forgotten about the first phase…shock!

I am in a brain fog.  I start to talk and cannot think of what I wanted to say. If I write it down I just stare at the paper. Nothing seems to compute. And yet I have verbal diarrhea where I can talk non-stop to anyone who has the patience to listen long enough.

Now I know I am not going to get one more piece made before surgery. I will be fortunate  if I get my work out to exhibits it is committed to and send images where they need to go let alone attend to details for the memorial which is 3 days before surgery. I will be lucky if  I get the design table cleaned up.

It is always a challenge for this  ‘human doing’ to slow down and give the body the time it needs to heal …both from surgery and from life that happened while I was making other plans.