Maryann

If you stay awake every day, there are many lessons that come our way and help to point us toward who “our dogs think we are”. I think I do better being ill than trying to figure out how to be helping to someone else. I know when I am thrashing like the fish out of water, trying to figure out what is going on with me and what I need, I tend to get annoyed at those trying to assist. I want a bandage and they bring a tourniquet, I want a drink of water and they bring the ocean, I want the ocean and they bring a glass of water. I had a friend in high school and college with a severely enlarged heart. Maryann, missed much school but was so bright it mattered little. She lived with the risk all the time. I was captain of the basketball team and she was a very good player and wanted to play in a tight game. She had been ill and out of school and had just come back looking like she was dragging and I did not want to put her on the list for starting the game.. at the end of the first half, she came up to me and said..what is the deal.. why are you holding back. I quickly added.. I don't want be the one to kill you.. and she said.. I don't want you to be the person that doesn't let me live as much as I can. She played.. we won.. and we both smiled. She died after the birth of her first child at age 22. She knew the risks and would not take anything that would harm the child that she carried. She had Addison's disease at the time of delivery. They lived as a "family" in the hospital room for the last 6 days of her life. We were all friends and the pallbearers were out boyfriends or husbands. As her husband Scott sat in the first row with their child, Christopher - I really knew that she had done what she want to do and lived her life to the fullest an brought to the world a child that Scott would be sure that he knew of his mother. That is 100 years ago now, but I often think of Maryann when I want to be protective and over do. The whole process of assisting someone is the art of learning helping and not helpful. The “ing” gives more of a meaning of co-work when the “ful” gives more of a meaning of dumping help onto someone. Tricky business and I have much more to learn about it.