Et vink med en vognstang is a Danish saying I struggle a little with translating, I put it in google translate and it came out as "a hint of a pole", not exactly what I was looking for. I will do my best to explain what the saying means, and why I have chosen to title this entry "Et vink med en vognstang". Loosely translated, you can consider et vink med en vognstang a combination of "not seeing the woods for trees and being oblivious to something that is clearly pointed out to you".
In my last post I wrote about the loss of our very good friend, Mike. There was never any doubt in our minds that we had to go down to Boca Raton for the memorial service. Mike passed away Thursday, and the details of the memorial service were not made public until Friday. If the geography of Florida is not your strong suit, I can tell you that the distance from our house to the funeral home is about 420 miles. We called a friend of ours to ask if we could stay with her while down there, which was no problem. Later that same day, we found out that she lives on the third floor without an elevator. I don't think I need to explain the issues with that. However, going to Mike's memorial service was bigger than me, or us, and Tom and I agreed that we could make it happen. Tom could help me up three flights of stairs. Saturday morning while on our merry (or somber) way towards South Florida, I start getting anxious and stressed about the stairs. I got some coupon books at a rest area near Orlando and started looking for cheap hotels. The price for a night in a dump in Palm Beach County is about the price of a four star hotel in Tallahassee. We had not budgeted for a hotel, and my stress levels increased more and more. Suddenly the stairs were bigger than Mike, and I lost sight of what was important this weekend.
We knew that some of our friends from Tally were going to be in the Palm Beach area this past weekend, and when they found out that we would be going south as well, we agreed that if there was time we should meet up, nothing was agreed upon due to all the short notice. While I was stressing more and more about making it up three flights of stairs, or getting a hotel room we could not afford, I got a text message from our friend, asking us to join them at the party they were at. We decided that might not be a bad idea as we otherwise would have just sat in an empty one bedroom condo feeling miserable while eating Little Caesar's pizza. I said we would come by, and also asked if he would mind looking up cheap hotels on his iphone, so we could find a place to stay. At that point the stairs were completely out of the question, I just could not even imagine making an attempt. The response back was, that they could accommodate us. We went to the party, which was great, free food, lots of alcohol, and friendly people, a way of getting our minds off of Sunday. We got to stay at my friend's daughter's one story house! Our problems were taken care of when we needed them taken care of the most.
The memorial service on Sunday afternoon was beautiful, Mike was celebrated as the amazing person he was. The service also gave me reason and opportunity to reflect on my life. Mike was the person who "outed" me last year when I started writing my blog. He was always so open and honest about his fight, and his feelings etc. He inspired me to open up to the world about my struggle with MD etc
I am apparently a little dense, as it took until late this afternoon before I realized that God gave me a "vink med en vognstang" this weekend, that he played a huge part in making what could have been a disaster into what it should be, namely remembering Mike. He taught me to redirect my focus towards what is really important. When I started to loose focus on our way down, I got the text message, solving all of our problems at once, when we "socialized" after the memorial service, I was able to have a regular conversation with people without being embarrassed or nervous, I was just a person speaking to old friends, not an anxious person trying to pretend that everything was ok.
I am so incredibly sad that Mike had to die, but God made it that way, but that is not all, God also used Mike's life and death as a teachable moment for me. Mike was God's tool to help me start to recover from my turtleitis, he used Mike to show me what it means to fight, and last but not least, he used this weekend, to "smack me upside the head with a pole". He helped me get into the "right" mindset, that this was about honoring Mike's life, and not about me and three flights of stairs. However, when my confidence and focus started wavering, he did take my hand and sent the help I needed in the form of a text message.
P
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