Thursday, September 21, 2017

For Those Who Wait

We didn’t get any decent tomatoes all summer long. Harold left for town this morning and gave me a call. “We have three or four semi-ripe tomatoes.”

“Okay, I’ll go out and pick them,” I said. I walked out to the potted tomato plants expecting to pick a few and bring them inside. Ripe tomatoes were everywhere. The saying, “Good things come to those who wait” popped into my head.

You wouldn’t think that I’d even think of this expression since patience is not one of my virtues. Sure, I have a lot of good qualities: empathy, a good work ethic, general optimism, and so forth. Patience does not make that list. Nope, not even as an afterthought.

My lack of patience gets me into trouble sometimes. I get really frustrated when I’m trying to open a file on the internet. I absolutely hate waiting for that little circle to stop spinning. Or for an ad to pop up and obstruct my view. Life is too short to wait, and wait, and wait. Often, I’ll just close it and figure that I didn’t really need to know the latest “shock and awe” news story.

Patience. I know men don’t usually have any patience, but everyone expects a woman to have it. I used to have a certain amount of patience, but I guess years of budgeting my time has zapped what was left of it.

My saving grace is stubbornness, or bull-headedness if you ask certain people. When I don’t have the patience to complete a task, I’m stubborn enough to see it through.

I’m starting to lose patience with a cure for Alzheimer’s. People die every day from Alzheimer’s and related dementias. We can’t find a cure soon enough to suit me. I can’t wait for the first survivor.

We thought about that first survivor at the Walk to End Alzheimer’s this year. During the opening ceremony, we hold high pinwheel flowers in various colors to represent the walker’s connection to the disease.

I always choose a purple flower because I’ve lost someone to the disease. Yellow is the color for caregivers, blue for those who have the disease, and orange for those who are supporters. This year, a new flower was introduced. Two young children held up the white flower that represented our hope for the future. The white flower is for the first survivor. That person does not exist at this time.

After the ceremony, they gave me one of the white flowers. I hope before much more time passes, I can take the white pinwheel back to the walk and personally hand it to the first survivor in our town. I hope to see our walk filled with white pinwheel flowers.

No, I will not patiently wait for the first survivor. I’m going to be walking, advocating for more research funds, and doing all I possibly can to push, cajole, and become the squeaky wheel.

Patience is not one of my virtues. I might as well make the most of my shortcoming.   

Copyright © September 2017 by L.S. Fisher

#ENDALZ #GoJimsTeam

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