This was my view yesterday. A nice, warm, welcoming waiting room, so different from the white and sterile feel of how the rooms once were.
I find myself in yet another waiting room, but this time it is different. I’m waiting for someone other than my brother.
Oddly enough, I still expect him to be the one coming through the exit door. If not him, some nurse letting me know we’re getting admitted to the hospital again.
Sure, he has been gone for fourteen years, but he is a constant presence in my mind.
The wait yesterday was different because I was not alone. My cousin and my dad were there, and we actually had some laughs and great conversation.
The same worry about the person who was actually in with the doctor for a medical procedure was still there, but we were assured things were going well, and “the patient is doing just fine,” by the medical assistant.
Just keep waiting.
Jim Carrey, In Ace Ventura: Pet Detective said in the movie, “If I’m not back in ten minutes, just wait longer!”
So many “wait” quotes come to mind while you’re, well, waiting.
As I wrote in my book, The Waiting Room by Anonymous Gent, hospitals and doctor’s offices have always been a comfort to me. They were all I knew from the time I was born in 1981 until my brother passed away in 2008 from cystic fibrosis.
Until that day, he always made it out of them, as “healthy” as he could be…until the next hospital stay.
Yesterday’s wait was different.
I felt a calm come over me as we entered the medical building, but I know there were fears from those I was with. I couldn’t get over the waiting room and how there were actual colors and comfortable chairs.
The hospital folks have come a long way.
As I say in The Waiting Room, however, you can color and comfy it up, but you will never take away the fears, stress, and exhaustion that never seem to leave the room.
It was a different wait yesterday because someone else would be exiting through that door. Someone whom I also care about so much. Someone who waited with me numerous times while my brother was “in there,” and we were just hoping to see him or hear something about how he was doing or if he was going to live.
I’m grateful to have been in this specific waiting room yesterday.
I see how much I have changed and am better able to handle situations that would be scary, stressful, and full of fear if I let them (and I sure used to let them!).
Waiting rooms have been such a huge part of my life that when my brother transitioned to Heaven, I had to get used to not being in them so much.
I’ve learned a lot about myself in waiting rooms.
I’m starting to realize that I was stuck existing in that white, sterile waiting room, but now there are colors seeping in along with a comfort I didn’t have before, and that’s the room I want to be in. I think that is what life is supposed to be, colorful.
“If you’re waiting for a sign, this is it!”
Read the “before” to this “after” in The Waiting Room by Anonymous Gent, available on Amazon. Links are also on our page.
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