Wait, Hold the Phone.

When you live however many ungodly miles away from home like I do, you have to get used to the idea that life is going to go on for those you love back home regardless of whether you speak to them or not.

For example:

I am terrible at keeping in touch.  Just a glance through the publication dates on my blog will give you some idea if you don't already have one.  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it's not that I don't care, I think about everyone back home every single day.  I am simply very easily distracted.  And also the world revolves around me (I sometimes would like to think, as I am often accused) so it is very easy for me to believe life stops when I am not around.  And then I get phone calls.

These phone calls are some of the worst you can get when you are this far away from home:

"Now, honey, first of all, everyone's fine..."

Those words can incite only one reaction: commence panicking.

I have been on the recieving end of this phone call twice now, only once have I recieved a worse one.  The first time I recieved this call, I lost my marbles.  Never in my life would I have imagined how terrible phone calls can be when you can do absolutely NOTHING about the situation.  This phone call went somewhat better.  The first call we didn't know what was wrong for about a week, I think.  It seemed like a week, it may have only been three days or so.  This call, there was something wrong, but the situation had already been resolved.  It does not make the words "heart attack" any easier to hear.  It just furthered my resolve that I need to go home and spend some quality time with my family because holy moly do I miss the hell out of them, especially right now.

Amazing how a phone call can change your life so dramatically, is it not?

The first time I was ever knocked off my proverbial bar stool by a phone call, my great grandmother passed away the day before I started my first ever big girl job.  She had been sick for a long time and she hadn't been the woman we knew when we were younger for a few years either.  Dementia is a sick and twisted way to go.  But she had her clear moments and I will never forget when I lived with Bitsy (my grandmother) and Mommie Ree and Mommie Ree had one of her bad nights.  But then her mind cleared and we talked about her rose garden and what kind of roses she had in it.  That woman loved flowers and had some beautiful gardens at her old house in Lake Charles.

Not attending that funeral was a decision made for me and while I appreciate not having to make that decision, it didn't make staying in Louisville rather than travelling back home any easier.

Nor was that first "your loved one is sick" phone call.  Same year, coincidentally, a couple months after Mommie Ree's passing.  Staying in Louisville until after the diagnosis, surgery was agonizing.  I did get to take an emergency leave for a couple days to reassure myself and gain peace of mind.  Still hard.

This time, home was not really an option again.  Everyone's fine, but I hate that helpless feeling.

Phone calls like that make you remember just how fragile life really is and if I were to kick it tomorrow (remember: Southern.  We are nothing if not inappropriate: don't hold it against me...) where would I want to be?  Who would I want to have around? What would I want to have done?  Said?  Not said?