Aging Hypochondriac

The Aging Hypochondriac

If you have followed my blog at all, you know I am a hypochondriac.

It has been the bane of my life and I am not that way on purpose.

It is just a bucket I have carried that is at present completely breaking apart with real stuff.

I can tell you, real stuff is not much worse than imagined stuff. 

 It all hurts joy.

And it all teaches you stuff.

Real? Imagined? What diff.   Eventually it is over.

So what's the point?

The point is to learn & experience and help put other people to their test.

Help put other people to their test. 
I can't stress that enough.

It's the very least we can do for one another!

So.....the imagined and the unreal happen to be …..real?  

Yes.  
Real and Powerful.

I wish my mom could have lived to “see” cyberspace! Maybe she would have had more understanding of my keen imagination and  been sorry for saying to me with contempt when I was about 20, “Oh for god's sake. You have been dying since the day you were born! Think about something else!”





  "I'm sick. I think I might die."

The reason people, like my mother, cannot bear to listen to the whine of a hypochondriac is because they have buried their own fears and emotions and they do not want reminded that they are mortal.
    
Shut up!!

But I have learned much by being a hypochondriac.

I have learned compassion. 

I was one of the most understanding nurses who ever walked the halls of any hospital. 

“It's ok to scream, honey. My own position in life is I can suffer but not in silence.Go ahead and scream. Swear if you want to. 
Here, let me wash your feet.

 
                                               

Let me hold your hand.  





 I will listen to you.

 I will listen to you.

Would you like me to say a prayer right now for you?”

My mother's voice comes back to me in my mind, (cyberspace?).
”You are making sissies of your kids and everybody else! You better be teaching people to BUCK UP!”

She wasn't a nurse.   But she bore resemblance to some nurses I have known!

Hey, Mom!  Can you hear me? I finally figured out why I am a hypochondriac. 

It is because I am “in touch” with my physical innards in some sort of cyberspace. 
I say this because when I attended my first autopsy as a student nurse, I was simply not learning anything I didn't already know. 
Seriously.
But then the surgeon doing the autopsy comes to the spleen. What a surprise! He shows us how friable it is, a tender organ, if you will. I am stunned. And I instantly know my own spleen is abnormal in some way. My spleen is not like that spleen!  My spleen is smaller and much less friable.  Maybe even tough.  By the way, I was the only student who fainted during that first autopsy. 

 


As the surgeon said as they helped me up, "Well, some people just aren't strong enough."  HELLO!  Why don't you try ventilating this room!?  A little piped in oxygen wouldn't hurt!  
Even people in antiquity knew to string popouri around dead bodies!!

If ever they do an autopsy on me I am sure they will find an abnormal spleen.

And speaking of autopsies, you do know. don't you, that I intend to have my body be cremated after I die. 

Or I did intend to do so. 
But yesterday I stumbled upon a cremation in progress in a movie!  
I would never watch something like that on purpose, but seeing it, I was mesmerized.

Now I don't want cremated!

I don't want buried!

I am all in a pickle.

Hey I don't want pickled either!

Maybe float my body down the river Nile.  That sounds ok.

Well, as my mortician.......yes, you need to know a mortician......my mortician “candidate” told me that after I die, others can change my, you know, funeral plans.  He said at the moment I die all my legal rights stop instantly.       Instantly!

I have been around a lot of death, and I have been able to discern that the dead are not really dead. Gone, yes. Dead-dead , no.

But when that mortician told me at the moment of death all my legal rights are gone, I finally understood what death is! 

I now get it!

Death is the absence of legal rights!

Dear God. No legal rights.

And I finally understood why everybody wants to come to American (even though they hate us). America is the land of legal rights.

We have tons and tons of legal rights.

We are so alive in America!

No wonder Jesus told us he was paying our ransom for us. 
I think we are going where there are no legal rights for us.  
Thank goodness we have an Advocate for us on the other side.  
Someone who wants us no matter what we are like.

Hypochondriac?   "I want that one."

Stupid?   "I want that one."

Soiled with sin.  "I paid for that one."

Cantankerous.  "I want that one."

Unbeliever.  "I paid for that one."

Drunk.  "I want that one."

Homosexual.  "I want that one."

Homophobe.  "I want that one."

I think His list includes us all.  
We are covered by His legal rights.  Rumor has it He loves us. 

Thanks for sharing your moments with me because getting old is a time when you need friends,
Bunches of love,

Riverwatch