February second is Super Bowl Sunday. We're giving some thought to whether or not to entertain, and if so, how and who and what time. Pretty much everything except, so far, to wonder who is playing. We never know. We don't care. We check out the teams as they come bursting into whatever stadium they are playing in and pick our favorites based on uniform color, personal attraction to a player or coach, or some other startlingly random reason of no sensible consequence. I myself never have the slightest idea in advance what is going to happen except for the menu.
For me, for the rest of my life, Super Bowl Sunday will be a heart-flowing memory day. Like the day when Citygirl was born. Like my wedding day. Like the first day I saw my name on someone else's prescription bottle. Like the first day I helplessly held the hand of a dying patient.
Two years ago on Super Bowl Sunday we got out of ICU with Babygirl and her new kidney. The supplies we'd laid in for our party at home languished in our fridge, uneaten and later discarded. The massive IV pole with 24 pumps going full tilt to keep that kidney happy. Babygirl's excitement over being able to eat chocolate and not needing to take huge pills with every meal. Family bringing in a meal and staying to share it with us.
I don't remember who played, who won, what the cool commercials were about. What I do remember is the move from ICU, the LifeFlight helicopters landing on the roof above us, the overwhelming support and care of the hospital staff, and our sensation of giddy relief that all the bad times were behind us now.
Every life has moments of such intense emotion! We have such depths of pain, heights of peace, rivers of fear, tsunamis of joy, avalanches of gratitude - days and moments that twist our hearts into entirely new and beautiful shapes. The fact that one such memory is linked forever to a meaningless sports contest worries me not at all. If anything it proves that I have a good sense of the absurd.
A part of me really doesn't want to share the day. The intensity of my emotional response thinking about this is daunting, and my utterly irrational fear that any display of the crazy range of those emotions at a party might get me labeled as loonier than people already know that I am is a bit embarrassing, frankly.
I haven't asked Hubby if he feels this way. He's a guy, after all, and a sensitive one at that but I'm guessing that he'll be a little surprised by this. I'm surprised by it. I've proven many times that I'm not terribly sentimental about anniversaries or even my own birthday (but if you want to throw me a party, please don't ask me to plan it or cook for it!). But here we are, almost two years out, and like a woman reliving the labor and delivery of a beloved child, I am remembering.
The blog post nearest to this day two years ago was about a frighteningly difficult day: http://kidneedsakidney.blogspot.com/2012/01/terrifying-ick.html. We were in it for the long haul, with no idea how close we were to the end of dialysis and all it's attendant horrors. I didn't know yet that there were horrors still to come. However inaccurate and misplaced my relief at surviving the transplant may have been, nothing I experience again is likely to feel so overwhelmingly wonderful.
DeeDee
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