Restored to glory

Our dad's grave no longer looks like a shabby, sad and neglected grave, thanks to the heroic efforts of my brother and his girlfriend. On Memorial Day, they went out to the cemetery and tore out the dead yew trees that were on either side of our dad's headstone, planted new ones and put in some lovely, albeit late-in-the-season purple phlox, perennials which I have been assured will bloom in their glory next spring around the time of my birthday in April. Last year, I made sure that our dad's grave site got a WWII veteran's marker so that each year on Memorial Day, he'd be recognized for his service during that conflict. So between that, the new trees and the flowers, which admittedly right now don't look like they will next year, it makes me proud to see our dad's grave site look newly restored and obviously tended to. The old yew trees that had been there for over 40 years were, well, accidentally killed by our obviously well meaning brother, who overpruned them back to their stumps and promised us that they'd grow back....which they didn't. But now these new yews are pretty young little trees which we hope to keep small so that they do not grow so much as to hide the headstone as they have in years past. There are other headstones in the same cemetery whose yews have grown too big as to be able to see the headstones they grace, and we don't want our dad's headstone to fall victim to the same fate. When we were kids, we used to feel sorry for the grave sites that looked neglected and we used to wonder why they were. I never wanted our dad's grave site to look that way and for any number of years, it did look sad and ignored, simply because none of us ever bothered to go out and tend the headstone. Now it seems like we're being more attentive and wanting Daddy's grave site to look tended to. And I'm glad. I'd hate for someone to look at it and wonder why the family never came out any more to spruce it up occasionally and feel sad that it looked so neglected, like no one cared anymore. Well, I am glad that we are making an effort again to clean, tend, prune and plant to make it look like someone does care and still loves and remembers our dad, even though we were mostly too young to remember him when he died.

OK, I CAN DO THIS.......

I've been freaking out about the almost certain fact that my right leg will be in a cast until the end of summer, but now I am reaching a point of acceptance, where I know that no matter how much railing against it I do, there is nothing I can do to change this fact that I will have to lug around this heavy thing for 3 long hot summer months. It's just the cold, hard reality of things and the quicker I accept it, the faster I can move on to deal with other things in my life. Three months is the medical standard for what I have, which is degenerative tendinopathy of the Achilles tendon and my doctor pretty much indicated that I can expect to wear it for at least that long. He didn't pull any punches or try to sugar coat things with me and it could still mean surgery at the end of the 3 months I am stuck wearing this thing. I won't know until the end of summer what the ultimate verdict could be, but for the time being, I am coming to accept my fate of gimping around in a heavy cast for the rest of this summer. I'm quickly learning how to walk in it and to try to find ways of adapting, since I have to wear it full time and can only remove it to drive or shower. Stairs are a real challenge. I can only take them one step at a time, both up and down, and this is maddeningly slow to do. I don't know how I am going to be able to do laundry, since it's going to be tough to haul a heavy load of laundry up and down the stairs. I'm almost wishing now that I lived in a ground floor level apartment. But again, I will learn how to adapt to this new situation in my life over the long months that I will be living with this cast on my leg. Over time, I am sure that I will master doing things differently and it won't be so hard once I am a little more used to it.