Still in the Hospital...

It's pitch dark in Colorado and I'm driving back to the hospital after dropping my Mom and Ainsley off at home.  It's a quiet yet tricky drive through highway construction zones and fighting for space in tight lanes amongst nervous drivers.  Somehow in this 45 minute dance in the dark I paid attention to the lyrics of the Milk Carton Kids…surrendering their souls to strangers like me:

"This don't feel like home anymore

nothing's familiar when I walk through my door

So I thank the heavens or who's ever in charge

This don't feel like home anymore

I don't feel the pain I once did

One day just finished like a milk carton kid

Are your rooftops set free in a hurricane wind

I don't feel the pain I once did..."

And it got me thinking about why it is that life can be so demanding and unrelenting.  Thinking, what in the heck did we do to invite this kind of immense exhaustion into our life?  And then in small moments, and I mean very small, fleeting moments you start to hear the whispers of why.  

Because there is a higher calling, a higher level of consciousness that demands depth and journey.  Otherwise we'd get caught up in the same useless and ridiculous race that so many of the people around us are living.  

It all helps me realize that it doesn't feel like home anymore.  The past five years have been change.  Nothing is familiar to what was before this journey that our brave daughter has taken all of us on.  So you know what?  You can take my roof in a hurricane wind.  It's not the same place…and I'm thankful for it.

This is all a work in progress.  And I'm glad that we aren't falling for the sad fate of getting sucked into the idea of "first world problems."  At some point in your frustration and process of reconciling what has happened to your first born daughter over her short yet very long five years you start to realize that you are living in a different realm.  It is frightening and exhausting and lonely at times…well, perhaps most of the time.  But we are also drifting in a space ripe with so much meaning and honesty that it would be foolish to think that it wouldn't be frightening, exhausting, and lonely.

The lights were off in the car on the way to the hospital.  The lights are off in Meara's hospital room.  Megan is sleeping on the fold out couch thingy.  I'm sitting/laying here next to Meara in her hospital bed.  She's sleeping remarkably after I somehow just got her to swallow Tylenol and zantac while half asleep.  She's hooked up to a drain and IV meds.  The lights are off…and it's quiet.  It's like talking sweet to a dream…wondering when we might arrive back home as a family…searching for when the lights are turned back on again.

Aside from the mess of thinking that I've unloaded just now, let's discuss straight up details…Meara's cultures turned up negative for infection, she is still fighting a fever, and she is still draining spinal brain fluid from her head.  She isn't going home until they figure out what is going on…and they have no idea what is going on.  I mean that in a non-sarcastic way.  They truly are baffled at the circumstances.  But they are also very concerned and sincere medical staff so you can't blame them.

Peace, love, and gratitude,

Mostly Aaron (not at all proof read by Megan because she is asleep on the pull out couch thingy)