This morning after sleeping in for a bit Cheryl was still sleepy when I checked on her and asked about breakfast. She decided cereal was good and I dressed the bed. She used the bathroom and when she returned began searching through things setting on the dresser in front of the mirror on her side of it. I asked what she was looking for and at first she did not want to tell me . Eventually she told me she was missing an earring.

She had worn her little star sapphire earrings to watch our grandson’s ballgame last evening. One was still in her ear. one was at that moment unfindable.

I had to attend a meeting at school this morning, so I would be gone for a couple hours. I promised that I would help her find the earring when I returned. Although I had extracted a promise from her that she would not disassemble the house looking for earrings, I knew that she would be thinking and searching the whole time I was gone.

Later after I came home from my meeting I looked for and found it. She had taken off one and put it in the jewelry box. She had left the other in her earlobe when she went to bed last night. She was very tired last night when she went to bed. She had had a long day.

Anna and the girls had come to take her to her exercise class. They went out to lunch at one of Cheryl’s favorite lunch places. That allowed me to go to my caregiver’s support group meeting at lunchtime. In the late afternoon we watched Max play baseball. It was a long day for her but she enjoyed every minute and she told me so on the way home from the game. “Thank you for the nice day, Dear.” she told me as we drove home.

The little ditty about my son John jumped into my head when I found her earring and became a hero to her this afternoon.

Diddle diddle dumpling my wife Cheryl

Went to bed with her life in peril

One earring off and one earring still

Unfindable in the morning chill

I find that I love her more each day and the debilitating disease of Parkinson I hate even more.

Carpe Diem