Complicated

Tonight we are in a thunder storm which should cool things off, all the rain, but will probably turn it into a steam bath tomorrow, a regular Pennsylvanian sauna.

I missed the meeting tonight.  It's the first one I've missed since the DC.  Not over the weather either.

Tomorrow I have to go to Pittsburgh over my job.  The main campus calls.  And it's payday and I have things to do.  And this morning, the man needed someone to take him to the doctor.

I call him the man, David, the girls' father, never call him the baby daddy (too slangy) and also hardly ever my ex.  Ex is a stupid way to talk about people.  He may be my former husband, but I still had babies with him.  I have known him 30 years.

In all that time he has never voluntarily gone to a doctor.  I called and they said head for the ER.

We did.  Good thing I went, because he had two doses of morphine and one of dilaudid and could not drive himself home.  We were only there 3.5 hours, which for an ER is something like record timing in my experience.

He is passing a kidney stone, and the doctor said it's like cutting off your arm.  Kind of funny because the girls were watching that movie 127 Hours and I watched parts of it, and cutting off your arm looked worse.

But this was pretty bad.  I had never seen him in pain like that and it hurt me.  Because he has never been sick or asked to go to a doctor, and then he complacently agreed to the ER, I was scared he was going to die.  Seriously, this is probably more than you want to know, but my bowels evacuated before we could leave I was so shook up.

They thought it might be his appendix.  So they had to do tests.  He is better tonight and we are taking care of him.  Maybe it is not my place to do so, but he has no one else, and I'm not going to leave him with no help.  He moved to Arkansas from Oklahoma, away from all his family, when I was accepted at the University of Arkansas.  He came to Pennsylvania, 1100 more miles, because he thought the girls would make lives here, and he wanted to be where they were  He helped us move.

Neither one of us has parents or siblings to help us out on anything.  Once, a brother in Arkansas was interested in me but he told my best friend that he thought I still loved my ex and he was not getting drawn into some complicated mess.

He may have been right.  All I could think of today was I'd be the one to have to call what disinterested family he has back in Oklahoma, that I would be the one to make arrangements, that I would have to tell my girls what happened to their father.  I am so relieved it was a kidney stone, even if it felt like his arm was chopped off.

If loving someone means you want them to have their life, and you do not want them to be suffering or in pain, and you want your children to be part of that life, then I still love him.  I'm glad he is now resting comfortably.  I am sorry I missed the meeting, but I think I did right by this man tonight, knowing there were times when I was married to him that I did not do right by him.  There is no perfect marriage because there are no perfect people to join in marriage.

This is what I do not understand about my mother, or sometimes even my sisters at the hall.  How can we call ourselves members of a worldwide organization of united brotherhood, of bearing the fruitage of Holy Spirit, if we treat each other unkindly?  I would have taken a stranger to the ER if it became necessary.  I would never leave this man stranded no matter how many times he did not do right by me either.  It's complicated, but I've known him nearly 30 years.  I lived with him longer than I lived with my mother. 

And I'm just glad tonight that he is okay.