Mixed Emotions

Today started out early for me.
With my sweetest love standing over me in the dark, leaning down for a kiss.
He said, "I love kissing you."
I smiled and mumbled something similar and then, in the same soft, calm voice he said, "Would you give me a ride to work? I just totalled my truck."
I struggled to reach consciousness faster than usual, his calm manner preventing me from achieving an adrenaline assisted wake-up.
He told me the details: warm morning, black ice, telephone pole wrestling.
The telephone pole lost hard, round one.
But the truck didn't make it out with its dignity either.
The pole was completely severed.
Air bags deployed, frame crushed.
The speed limit is 45 on our road, where the accident happened, so he is very lucky that he fared so well.
I got the kids all ready for school and took his kids to school, then we headed for the emergency room for a doctor's opinion on his getting-sorer-by-the-second neck.
But not without a stop at a dear friend's house.
You see, I've spent the last couple of weeks helping out a little with my best friend's grandmother.
My best friend lives out of state and when she was here for Thanksgiving she hired me to help out a bit with her dying grandmother.
I loved every second of it!
I would pop by in the morning and make sure she'd had her pills, and see if she was ready for a snack (these old timer Mainers are crazy-early risers!).
We talked some, but she slept a lot and doesn't use her hearing aids anymore, so conversation was minimal.
I've known her for years.
She has been a huge part of my best friend's life and she isn't very old--only 3 or 4 years older than my mother, actually.
But she had fought many rounds against various kinds of cancer over the years, and it was finally taking its toll.
So, I am happy I was able to spend so much time with her over the past weeks as well as the times we stopped by with random casseroles and desserts over the past months.
She raised 3 fine daughters and was a dear soul.
She gave me a week at the cabin by the water for my honeymoon.
So, we stopped in this morning and headed off to the hospital (her daughter was here, so I wasn't needed today).
The wait was short and the doctor was efficient and knowledgeable; a good mark on a very long black list for that hospital.
He prescribed a muscle relaxant and a few days of rest for what appears to be pretty harsh whiplash.
All day I continued to be grateful that my sweetest love had been damaged so little.

My friend spent today driving here, having heard the end was in sight for her grandmother.
I knew she wouldn't be here until near midnight, and when we got a call around 9, my first tears were for my friend, who hadn't made it in time for a last good bye.
I know she will be ok.
She has said good bye before, and she has said goodbye to her grandmother before, but I ache for the regret she may feel at having not left last night but then I remember that she would not waste time with something as useless as regret.

So today has been a somber day, from start to finish.
And the day after tomorrow my little boys head back to Utah to spend nearly 3 weeks with their Dad.
I will miss them so much!
But mostly I will silently worry that he will try to keep them.

I end this day somberly, but with so much gratitude in my heart that I need a TUMS.