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Emergency Contact (Jeanne)

This is a sad story. I'm not 100% what year it was (2011-2013?) but I had to fill out the same old paperwork for work. Every year, the same stuff! Phone number, address, blah blah blah. (I was super tempted to write "Nothing's changed.")

 But on the section where it asked for a secondary contact in case of emergency, I paused. And cried.

 


Louie is always my first contact. But my mom had always been that second one, just in case. And it must have been the fall of 2011, because I remember the struggle I felt knowing she wouldn't have the mental acuity to take an emergency call on my behalf. The realization that her role in my life had changed and I needed to be strong for her . . . rather than me being able to lean on her . . . that was hard.

 

I asked Morgan if I could put his name and number down in case of an emergency if they couldn't reach his dad. Of course, he said yes. 

 

I am incredibly blessed that I had my mom around for 48 years of my life and that she was very, very present for 44 of those. I still miss her . . . 


And the photo is the actual telephone that used to reside in her kitchen before they got a cordless phone. (Which my dad always called "the walking phone!")

 

<Originally published on 12.8.21. Adding below on 2.20.23.>

So . . . I'm not sure what happened to this entry. The picture of our actual phone was a broken link. I think  I got rid of the actual phone, so this image that I grabbed is from Google. Also, the storytelling . . . I was filling out forms for school. It was the same old, same old start-of-the year paperwork. But my mom was stricken with temporal arteritis in October 2010. That and the prednisone she was given changed our lives.

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