Poor Bella is missing Mike, he’s the one who usually feeds her and lets her climb all over him. So she needs a little extra attention.
Plus, I was feeling so badly I figured being mauled by a monkey couldn’t make my day any worse.
It’s not just the monkey... we are all missing Mike and Kathleen. We are so, so glad that Kathleen is out of the hospital and beginning recovery. But it will be a long road… the doctors want to monitor her for months. If everything goes well, we are hoping they will be able to come home in October. That is feeling like a LONG time from now.
Mike and Kathleen are pretty comfortable at Tiff’s house now, but there are long commutes for many medical appointments to monitor her pulmonary embolisms. Kathleen’s blood levels are not yet up to where the doctors want them, so Mike is giving her multiple injections. Daily. In the stomach.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the rest of us got through the crisis of Kathleen’s hospitalization, a delegation, supporting Pat and Kathy as they deal with the ongoing minutia of dealing with their mom's stuff on top of their grief, and the launch of our fundraising campaign for the clinic – Manic Monday is right!
Then we got a chance to breathe, and suddenly I got really scared.
I realized how close we came to losing Kathleen.
I felt vulnerable. And very small. The job of the next few months is looming above us, and I’m not at all sure I’m up to the task.
Kathleen is our heart. She has a way of calling us all to be better people without being smug. She can take a complex issue and break it down into a simple, moving piece. Sarah and I have been doing much of the writing for our Clinic fundraising campaign. What Kathleen – who is so passionate about the Clinic – could say in 10 words, Sarah and I struggle to say in 30. Usually Kathleen does the writing, I edit, and Sarah makes it look pretty and fit on the page. Without Kathleen, we are clumsy, top heavy. We are a two legged stool.
Mike is our visionary. When we lose sight of what we’re doing, Mike distills a job down to its essence and gives us a renewed sense of purpose, a passion. Mike also shoulders a lot of our collective worry. He knows on any given day how close to the wire the farmer co-op finances are, what clients owe them money, which containers have been at sea for months instead of weeks. He carries that constant anxiety so the rest of us don’t have to. Without Mike, I’m the one who knows enough to be worried, and I’m not sure I’m up to that burden. Today I definitely wasn’t. It became abundantly clear that our cash flow is more like a cash drip, but the bills are flowing like a river. The worry began to gnaw at my belly.
So I went out to see Bella the monkey. I brought her shiny leaves from her favorite plant, but Bella left them and climbed straight up onto my shoulder. She sat there while I scratched her head. I talked, she chirruped… one primate to another. After a while, the worry subsided, and I found I could face the wall of emails again.
I don’t know how our finances are going to work out, but I do know we’ll keep putting one foot in front of the other. I know that Sarah will keep high-fiving me when we manage to get something right. I know that Mike will be at the other end of the phone, making the muddle come into focus. I know that Kathleen will be rooting for us and sending us ridiculous pictures of her convalescence to make us laugh. I know that Bella will be chirruping at me from the garden.
If you’re the proselytizing type, we’d sure appreciate you telling your friends how they can help through the Nueva Vida Clinic’s Manic Monday campaign.
Thank you. – Becca
