Thumbs Up! was a great success and very fun! Thank you again and again! Here is how it all went down…

On Wednesday night we were all hunkered down in our hospital beds. I wanted to prep my colored papers with tape but I felt like every sound was amplified and Mark was not yet snoring… I said a prayer asking that I would be able to wake up and complete the surprise while he slept. It was pretty amazing.

With surgery, illness and chemo I think Mark has spent about 35 nights in the hospital. Every time they wake him up around 5:15-5:45 for a weight and vital signs. On this night I woke up to them in the room around 4:30, much earlier than usual. My plan had been to wait until they left and he was back asleep, but 4:30 was feeling really early for me. However, at 5:19 I woke up… completely refreshed and wide awake. I jumped out of bed and began to decorate. Thankfully my sweet sister had been in town over the weekend and rolled about 200 pieces of tape for me! We hid it in a photo album (plastic pages) which made all sorts of noise as I pulled them apart, but he did not wake up.

I looked at the clock as I placed my last photo. 6:19! It had taken exactly one hour! I had been working by the light from the medical equipment in the room – but it turned out that only one photo was upside down. I went back to bed and exactly as my head hit my pillow Mark’s IV pump began beeping. He silenced it and called the nurse who came in right away and took care of it. What a relief that I wasn’t standing in the middle of the room with my hands full of photos.

Mark did not wake up and notice the display until his day nurse came in and she was WOW’d. We had her for two days in a row and she had fun telling everyone what was in our room and how his wife had gotten up while he slept to surprise him. Everyone on the staff loved it. No one loved it more than we did! It was pretty fantastic – just like y’all were there with us! People were amazed that we had so many friends and yes, we did know all of them (except a couple/175).

Here is what was intriguing to me… after a day of looking at the photos Mark thanked me for them and these were his thoughts, “I think that when we die and our life flashes before our eyes, this is what we are going to see…”

In other words – it is the relationships that matter. He brought this up a couple times. The outcome of our activity (did I say thank you enough?) was just as fun as I had anticipated. It was more supportive than I had anticipated. The unanticipated outcome was this introspection regarding our interpersonal relationships.

Here is what to do – imagine a wall in your home plastered with photos of 100-200 important people in your life… have you been kind enough? have you listened enough? have you served enough?

It is not too late and it matters very much.

PS – it is also not too late to send me a photo. I transferred them into an album and still have about 25 open slots…