A Lonely Bottle Of Wine

I've never been a big wine fan, although thanks to my wife and some of her and my friends, we have often enjoyed a bottle together in front of our fireplace in the bedroom or more rarely, our firepit next to our deck. God willing, we will again. I have been  trained to broaden my horizons from beer and whiskey!

Tonight is the first night she will spend actually alone in the hospital after her accident. She is ready.  I stayed last night and we pretended that "I wasn't there", and indeed, I was not needed -- I woke up the couple times she had spasms and needed to call the nurse, and she and the nursing staff were able to work through it.

But she has had someone there every night since the accident, just in case.

I got home a little late due to visitors at the hospital and put in some ravioli that had been left by friends. I decided that wine would be appropriate with it -- but felt some pangs of sadness because opening a bottle of wine is something that has always been a "shared decision".

For some reason, the wine and the great meal made me realize that had she not survived her fall, I'd likely be on the road on my Gold Wing. That would NOT be a "wise decision", but my guess is that I would have made it -- no doubt I'd visit some remote friends as well as my sons and granddaughter,  but I would need that time out on the open road with God, the bike and nothing else to ponder what had happened.

Instead, I'm planning on selling my bikes. If I was a cartoonist, I'd draw a cartoon that showed me selling both bikes because I now have far too many responsibilities to take the risk of riding motorcycles in one frame. In the next frame, I'm struck by lightning. The third frame shows me with burns and smoke coming off me at the Pearly Gates. St Peter says "Moose ... oh, You are the SLOW learner! Didn't your wife's accident give you any hints that YOU ARE NOT THE ONE IN CHARGE! ???"

At one level I KNOW that fact to be true! I AM NOT IN CHARGE! But at another level, I can't face the imagination of Marla being told that "Bill was hit at an intersection today and passed away from his injuries",  or more likely I just broke an ankle and made the time of her coming home a LOT more problematic. It is easier to accept that being struck by lightning or falling on our patio are CERTAINLY acts of God (or randomness), and decisions we made are meaningless when that happens

We all would DEARLY like to believe that we have some level of control over our lives, even though it is absolutely clear that we do not. What we love the most can be gone in any moment -- the news or discovery that is too terrible for us to contemplate can arrive at any instant.

All any of us really ever have is Christ Alone ... all else is vanity.