Tough Times and the Freelancer

What’s on the iPod: The Way It Goes by Dispatch

A rough week so far. We had a wonderful surprise party for my mom’s 80th. She was truly surprised despite my having everyone show up randomly. Facebook was the excuse — I’d told her I’d broadcast that I’d be home, so a few people might come over. There were nearly 40, but she didn’t figure it out until I called her onto the front porch, where we had a cake waiting.

She cried. A lot. And she smiled for the first time in months.

The tears weren’t all about feeling loved, though that was a large part of them. The tears were because two days prior, her brother suffered a massive stroke, one that debilitated half his brain. One he won’t recover from — today, they remove the tubes and if he survives, they’ll move him to hospice.

He’s her only sibling, and one she’d found when she was 65. My mom was adopted, though her parents eventually reconnected and married. Hence her brother, who is five years younger. When she wanted us to find her mother for the medical records, we uncovered what turned out to be a joyful surprise.

The family she’d always wished she’d had was suddenly real, but now she’s forced to say goodbye. The tears my mother was always too tough to shed are streaming.

Plans and lives are suspended right now as we await a likely outcome, praying hard against it. I pray for him (though I don’t know him well, I love who he is) and for my mom. She was a rock when she lost her mother to Alzheimer’s, her father to old age, her stepfather to heart failure. But he’s what she has left. He’s her piece of family that keeps her grounded.

She’s also dealing with a husband whose emphysema has him hooked to oxygen and has robbed him (just slightly) of some of his reasoning and memory. Dad’s an independent man who’s now needing help — help he doesn’t want and help he’s fighting against.

It doesn’t help that she’s dealing also with her own broken back. A fall (from a tree, for she’s not the type to slow down at her age) cracked a vertebrae. She sports a back brace and tries to do for him when all she wants is to rest. For her, rest has always been a foreign idea, but now that she wants it, she feels its elusiveness.

Today will reveal how the next few weeks will turn out. Despite living the farthest away, I’m called on first — I’m more mobile, my office is portable. So that five-hour ride will become a more frequent trek for me in the coming months.

Project deadlines still call, and I have to push the turmoil to the side. For the next few hours, the time is dedicated to my clients. After that, I help out my daughter with something, then I have to piece together a semblance of holiday busy work — gifts, decoration, and tree. The tree must go up. It’s in the driveway waiting.

The life of a freelancer is never easy. The blessing of being able to call the shots, set your hours is offset by the fact that when bad things happen in your personal life, you can’t just take the time off. Deadlines are set and clients have their own deadlines to meet. You have to press on, get through what you need to get through, then allocate time for emotion and life.

Today, I’ll push back on one deadline only because I know it’s flexible. I’ll coordinate the shopping with my husband, and I’ll make decisions about travel and transportation whenever they’re needed (at least freelancing affords you the skills to know how to organize). And I’ll keep sending good thoughts, healing energy, and prayers toward Medina, Ohio where one man who means everything to many people is in the fight of his life.