Pondering What is Really Important

Thursday my partner was rushed to the hospital with weakness, dizziness, and a fever.  She may have a kidney infection, she may have pneumonia.  Today she is worse.  I sat by her bedside from 3 to 9 pm.  She was delirious a lot of the time.  She didn't want to eat.  I kept saying to myself I would go home when she had dinner, but she didn't want dinner.

I finally left when she was able to pull herself together and tell me to leave.  Also, I like and trust the night nurse.

I held her hand and she said she loved me.  At one point she said "I have to go" and it sent chills through me.  I have edited enough articles about palliative care (not to mention sitting at my mother's death bed) that I know those words could mean what they say.

I cried with the nurse, who said no, she doesn't think my partner is near death, only that she has a bad fever.

A month after we first got together, in December of 1976, we each had pneumonia.  Actually her fever was higher then than it is now.  Hers was 105, mine was 102.  I wasn't in the hospital, but after taking her there I was told to stay home.  Back then I was still smoking.

Yesterday when I got home from the hospital at 6:30 (when she was not as bad as she was today) I tried to sing through some of my big arias and was too tired.  The whole back of my throat felt raw from lack of sleep and bad speaking habits.

If I (or anyone else) wonders why I keep singing in that choir that doesn't pay me, here's why.

I posted something on Facebook about my situation (being discreet, because my partner does not know I use Facebook) and in less than an hour a group from the church got together to make a prayer circle for me and for my partner, even though I am not Christian.  This is what is important.  If I were singing a big role with a small opera group (basically the extent of my ambition at this point), that would not have happened.  People might not even care all that much.

Tomorrow morning, barring a crisis, I am going to sing with the choir.

Requiem plans continue.

But right now I know what my priorities are.