Patience is A Virtue

I'm not a patient person...and as I approach 50 I'm becoming less and less patient...actually I think I'm impatient...especially with my husband's illness (My Soulmate - June 17)......he is getting better...I can tell by his vital signs that he is getting better...and I just have to be more patient..."take one day at a time," I keep telling myself.

I miss not being able to talk to him...he has a tracheotomy so he cannot talk...but at least he has been awake the past two days...as the nurse said, "we're giving him a sedation vacation...he just gets the morphine for pain...no more sedation"...and he is more aware of who I am and what I am talking about...however, it is hard to keep the conversation going for long periods of time when the other person just nods and cannot talk back...it's either "yes" with a head nod up and down or "no" with a horizontal head nod.

I was thinking today of how many words my husband will have stored up that he can say when he starts talking again. I just read in a recent article in the New York Times that according to conventional wisdom...women use 20,000 words a day and men use 7,000 words...I'm sure I use that many or more...and now with my added impatience...I am using up my husband's 7,000 too.

My husband had asked our landscaper to plant flowers in the front of our house this summer...that was back in April...but the landscaper forgot...and now that my husband cannot talk...he cannot tell the landscaper to plant the flowers (I can tell him to do this...but I'm impatient and don't think I can wait any longer...the summer will be over before I get my flowers in my front yard)...maybe I'll just plant some flowers myself (I'm not very good at planting flowers...or taking care of flowers...unless they are cut flowers that I can put in a vase)...maybe planting flowers will be good therapy for me now...maybe I should plant impatiens flowers...yes...I think impatiens are just right for an impatient person like me.

According to the About.com website, Impatiens flowers take their name from the Latin, impatiens, "impatient." They are so called because their ripe seed pods will sometimes burst open from even a light touch (as if they were "impatient" to open)....these are my kind of flowers...and they don't require sunlight either...and maybe if I water them (if I remember...and talk to them too...with some of my 20,000 words each day...they will actually grow)...and my yard will be filled with vibrant flowers to welcome my husband when he returns home.

Hopefully, he will come home soon...I'm going to get those flowers this weekend...impatiens...I've already put them on my "to do" list...if not my front yard...maybe I'll try a little window box of flowers first...patience is a virtue I need to cultivate little by little.

Judi