Misery Needs Company

Most people get the Sunday night blues. Not me. I'm more of a Saturday night blues kind of girl. I look forward to Sunday nights because that means it's Monday Eve. On Sunday nights I go to sleep with visions of backpacks dancing in my head. Backpacks dancing right out the door to school.

After such a hectic weekend, I was looking particularly forward to Monday. I had big plans to tackle my piles. But Wyatt woke up sick. Birthday Sugar overdose, I imagine. I administered inhalers and liquid elixers and nose sprays and little blue pills. Mom I'm really sick, he said, so I patted him on the back and said You're fine, son. I learned this technique from Alan who believes that if you say something positive like "you're fine, son" it will magically become true. I thought I'd give it a whirl, but the realist in me let out a defeated sigh. Come ere I told him as he walked out the door coughing up a lung and wiping his nose on his shirt sleeve.

We snuggled together watching Deadliest Catch. The crab hunter said somthing that caught my attention. Misery is part of my job. I wonderegld why anyone would want to do a job that included misery, but then it hit me. He loves it! Misery is part of everything we love. I thought of the twins early life, how he and Garrett had underdeveloped lungs which left them vulnerable to every bug and how they were sick every other week for the first two years of their life and were even rushed to the hospital on several occasions. I thought of all those sleepless, night-biter nights. And then I thought of how the things that bring us the most misery is the price we pay for the things that bring us the most joy. And sometimes the things that make us most miserable are the things we love most.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 2023 Me here. I accidentally found this blog a few months ago when I googled my Mother-in-Law's obituary. A family blog that I started for her popped up and this blog, Theframpfamdotcom was on the sidebar. I had forgotten all about it, and was stunned to find it. It took me months of trial and error to figure out the email address I had used to create this blog. When I finally cracked the code, and logged in I could see several unpublished drafts. This was one of them. I began looking publishing the drafts, but before I hit PUBLISH, I had to go back to the original draft date so it would appear in 2008 and not 2023. Clicking backwards through the calendar made me unexpectedly emotional. I was flying through the years, month by month. 15 years of life, chock full of moving and missions and marriages and births and deaths, a whole life lived was whizzing past me in few clicks. All the things that 2008 me couldn't see coming. So innocent in her carefree voice, philosophizing about misery. What a silly goose. I want to give her an approving nod and tell her she's right about misery. And also tell her that she made the right choice to put off her piles and carpe diem by watching Deadliest Catch with her sick 10 year old. Because misery needs company. This post was one of the drafts. She had left things unsaid and sentences unfinished. I felt her reaching for the words, and I handed them to her. 15 years later, from another place and time, she cannot see future me sitting in the dark, finishing her half-baked thoughts. But I can see her, in the thick of things, and I want to reach back and offer her my hand and assure her she has a beautiful life up ahead. A full life. A joyful life, (full of misery and love). And so much growth. In a year she and her little family will be living in Utah. They will buy their first house, and then a dog. And then they will buy another house and these kids that she writes about will grow up and go on missions and go to college and get married and have cute babies. She will teach high school and the dog will die and both of her in-laws will die, and her brother-in-law will die. She will get over all of her fears and heartaches she harbors now. It will all be okay. But then again, maybe she did see me, and this blog was her way of talking to me, and beyond me. I hope in 15 years, 2038 me will reach back and nod approvingly at me, and smile and say, it's will all be okay. All the joy and the misery and the love and the grief. And maybe she will thank you for taking the time to talk to me and tell me what you're thinking and how you're doing. or maybe in 15 years 2038 me will be reaching back to her from Heaven.