This is the Stuff

As I sit here and listen to my mother-in-law, nephew, niece and son play Apples to Apples this morning, I know this is where I am supposed to be.  This week has been full of ups and downs, but this kind of family time is the handrail I hang onto when things throw me off balance.  This is the stuff that gets me through the hardest times.
Minor daily disasters (and we know I have MANY of those), just do not matter when someone you love is facing a life threatening disease. Through everything that happened this week, I just kept my brother-in-law Philip in the forefront of my mind.  This is nothing, I thought.  This will pass, I thought.  Nothing is going to get in the way of this weekend with family, I thought.
It was the perfect family weekend.  I watched my kids play with their cousins.  I laughed with my sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law as we all made inappropriate jokes.  We ate lots of great food (too much perhaps), the kids swam and played Rock Band.  Philip joined in when he felt well enough and rested a lot.  We all worried.  We are all very worried.  We all want to fix this.  We are willing this "call" to come and save our son/husband/father/brother/uncle from this unfair sentence. So, we laugh as we worry.  We pray and hope as we worry.  We try to enjoy this time with each other while we are screaming in our heads, "We NEED this call, NOW!!!"
Through it all, we LAUGH!  As my mother-in-law said, "Why cry over spilled toilet water?"  Indeed, Sandra, indeed.