Some days I feel so lucky!

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I volunteer occasionally for the ‘Volunteer Driver Service’ which provides transport to medical appointments and the like for those who can’t get there otherwise. But sometimes I can’t decide if it is uplifting or depressing. Last week I did two journeys. First I took a woman and her mother to the eye hospital. The patient had a learning disability (hence her Mum coming along – although I have to say she did pretty well having a conversation) and was deaf as well as having eye problems. They both walked with sticks. The mother sat in the front seat and on the journey she told me that as well as having a disabled adult daughter, she had at least two other children (she didn’t go into that), six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. But sadly she hadn’t been able to see three of her grandchildren for years. Two of them (twins) had been adopted and the third was in foster care because her son and his partner/wife were addicts. When children are taken from their parents for their own safety it is of course sad for the children and the parents, but also for the grandparents and other relatives – often they are forgotten about. Then another day I took another woman to the orthopaedic hospital. She had had to undergo several painful surgeries for a spinal condition, and she lived alone. As if going through the excruciating and frankly terrifying surgery wasn’t bad enough, she had been told not to bend or lift anything for a year! Well it’s hard even to live like that – she was previously a very active person and a keen tango dancer, but she now had to pay other people to do the shopping, clean her house and tend the garden. She had planned to retire but now she had postponed that as she needed the money to pay people to do all the things she couldn’t do herself any more. And she also had a daughter with mental health problems and post-viral fatigue who wasn’t able to hold down a job and needed psychiatric help at £250 a time which she and her ex-husband paid for privately. I’m glad I was able to help these people just a little bit but I am also so thankful that so far at least, I’m healthy both mentally and physically and so is my partner and my daughters. We all still live together happily and no-one is addicted to anything. These are the most important things. I don’t want to sound self-satisfied in the face of other people’s misfortune, we all know the situation can change faster than the blink of an eye, but I just feel I have to appreciate every day in case the next day is when it all changes.