BROKEN HEART DOCTOR?

It snowed last night, time to get out and clear the driveway, it's March, for goodness sake, what are we doing with four inches of snow on the ground?  Just realized, that doesn't sound like someone who grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan talking, does it?  It was always nice to come in from out in the cold to have Gwen waiting with a cup of hot coffee and something she just  took out of the oven.  It's the little things that seem to break our hearts, isn't it?  Friends and former student would recognize a saying I've used in the past:  "It's not the mountains ahead that wear you out.  It's the grains of sand in your shoes."

Speaking of broken hearts, I had an annual visit with my cardiologist last week.  A little over a year ago I had a stent placed in one of the arteries in my heart.  Everything is fine now, the miracle of modern medicine.  In spite of all the miracles that are performed daily on heart muscles and arteries and veins, there still is no pill that will ease the symptoms of the absolutely broken-hearted feeling of losing a spouse. I've told others how surprised I've been by these feelings of loss and sadness that continue to invade my life.  You won't know what it feels like until you know what it feels like has become my mantra.  I was feeling a little whimsical after my visit with the cardiologist, and I wrote this:

VISIT TO THE HEART DOCTOR

Today was my annual visit

with the heart doctor.

Everything is fine

he said.

Get your cholesterol checked

take two baby aspirin.

Say, I wondered,

are there baby aspirins

for broken hearts,

the kind you get

when someone you’ve loved

for 50 years 

dies?

Take two of these.

You'll get on with life in the morning.

The best he could come up with,

the heart doctor,

 I’m so sorry for your loss.

That's no way for a doctor to talk.

John A. Bayerl, March 3, 2011

I'll try to be thankful, dear, that we enjoyed a relationship where we never ever came close to breaking each other's hearts.  What a blessing, even though it kind of hurts now.