Raison d’etre

This morning, I type one-handed. Hunting and pecking away on my keyboard, my other arm is occupied. It cradles my precious baby grandson. He sleeps, cuddled in my arm. He breaths, I listen. I smell those fragrant smells that only emit from babies. Pink lips are pursed and nurse an imaginary bottle in his dreams. He pulls on my hair and tugs on my heartstrings. My eyes periodically fill with tears as I watch him, peaceful and secure.

He is much too young to know what his life has meant to me. He does not yet fathom how he was born for and has become my raison d’etre. My “reason to live” – that he is to me. My body hurts too much and multiple medicines wreck havoc. Quality of life, for me, has slipped down a precarious slope over the past months. Infections have invaded and irritated me. Too many hours each week are spent moseying through medical mazes of appointments, insurance appeals, refilling prescriptions, and time attached to IV lines.

Yet, I rejoice in the midst of these tribulations, that I have my precious raison d’etre to share these times with me. Lil Man – my reason to live – makes all things medical suddenly endurable. His smile and cackling laughter are infectious. My heart, on its heaviest days, bursts forth with inner joy and outer laughter when I see his two-teeth grin. His morning wake-up call each weekday – to be certain Grammy has not overslept – instantly catapults me out of bed, despite the sleepless nights sated with treatment side effects.

I have been blessed with other reasons to live – including our three daughters. Yet for this time and season, when the three of them have married and left our nest very empty, our precious “baby bird” has filled our nest and this Grammy’s life with much love and life – and to think he does not yet even realize that he is one of my dearest raisons d’etre.