PROLOGUE IN THE BEGINNING LOSS WAS EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE (3RD installment)

PROLOGUE

IN THE BEGINNING LOSS WAS EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE

(3^RD  installment)

As my life spiraled out of control, my faith in God began to waiver.  No matter how much I told myself that God only tests us to the point of our endurance, I was convinced He had taken me beyond that point, and I was afraid I couldn’t find my way back.  Anger at God, and an overwhelming disappointment in his majesty, mounted with my losses.  Even solace in prayer eluded me.

I sank deeper into despair as my losses were measured in the prolonged illnesses and then deaths of family members, trials lost, clients sentenced to prison, and finally the disappearances and deaths of beloved animals.  For eighteen months the losses overwhelmed me. 

First, my mother, who was my best friend, suffered a stroke and was hospitalized.  This was after she had recovered from a broken knee, then a broken hip and eventual hip replacement followed by a knee replacement.  She had been in and out of hospitals for more than two and a half years and confined a wheelchair for most of that time.  The stroke and heart attack were just layers of pain my father had suffered; he despaired at the physical and then mental decline of the woman he had loved for more than sixty years.  It was only after the stroke that my father finally had to make the devastating decision to find a long-term care facility for my mother.  She was destined to live out her final days among strangers, away from the man she had loved for the majority of her life.

My father was not the only one destroyed by my mother’s declining health.  I had long ago promised my mother that I would never let her languish in a nursing home.  But I couldn’t keep that promise; I lived on the other side of the county, too far away from my father for my mother’s comfort.  So, for more than a year I carried the guilt of failing my mother in her time of need.  She died in a bed that was not her own.

But during the time my mother was hospitalized I suffered a failure of confidence in my ability as a lawyer.  I lost three trials I thought I should have won, blaming myself instead of the facts presented to the jury.  The comforting words of my husband/partner were lost on me when he told me my client’s guilt was unavoidable.  My ego was either too large or too fragile to hear his words.

Then, my physical health began to fail in the winter of that year.  I became ill with pneumonia then pleurisy.  The illnesses sent me to the hospital.  For six weeks I should have been too weak to work, but I kept up the pretense of health by working and then collapsing at home, giving off an air of indifference to hide my weakened physical state.  That summer I went under the knife for a surgery that was more complicated than expected, and three weeks later I was back under the surgeon’s knife.  For more than three months I was virtually unable to walk, much less drag a briefcase.  Worst of all, my memory was severely affected by post-anesthesia dementia, leaving me worse than useless in the law practice.

With the loss of the trials, my health destroyed, and my confidence in tatters, I was unable to communicate with my prince.  I shut him out of my life; my sense of loss was too personal to share with anyone, especially someone I admired and aspired to emulate.