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Looking for the Similarities

© Victoria Tallman Freudiger

The sun came up around 6:45 a.m. with an orange tinted glow. Winds blowing in from the south at ten miles an hour could not actually be felt but could be heard through the rustling of the leaves. Fall, oh what a beautiful spiritual time of year! A wonderful season and 68 degrees, what a pleasant temperature most people would be thinking this particular morning. Most of earth's elements seemed perfect to the majority of the people in Dallas, Texas on October 3, 1985.

RoseMeade, waking in her old fashioned home in Irving, heard the music blaring from her musical alarm and began to open her eyes to approach the day. She turned off the alarm and turned the television on. Usually she would listen to what was going on in the world so she would know how her health would react that day to the day's weather. Tim Presley, the weatherman forecasted the 68 degrees as a low temperature for the day and he reported the high temperature would be 76 degrees. RoseMeade's mind was already busy telling her this cool of a temperature could mean only three things for her. She began to frantically obsess about how the weather was getting too chilly for her to be comfortable without a sweater. The sweater had to be worn while she was inside as well as outside now because once she got cold she had too much trouble feeling warm again.

The fall season is not generally the cold season for people who are healthy in Dallas. For those who suffer from illnesses easily, the winter worries start when temperatures start dropping to 68. Up RoseMeade rose to prepare her winter wardrobe in a fall month. To this hypochondriac her worries had barely started for the day. Her last surgery having been just a few month's back, she still had so much trouble with pain she was thinking.

Restroom rituals came next. While brushing her teeth after the extra hot, extra long bath, RoseMeade opened her medicine cabinet and peered up at four long rows of pill bottles. Top row held eight prescriptions bottles (tiny, small and large) containing either pain pills or muscle relaxants. The second row was crowded with different sorts of cold remedies and breathing sprays. Third row held a jar of Vicks and so many tubes of ointments crowding their way on one shelf that one could not even read what they were unless they were removed from the shelf. Finally, on the fourth row, there could be seen a bottle of Excedrin (for fever,) Motrin (for body aches,) and Tylenol (for actual headaches.) Then, each of these brands had a bottle there with the PM letters of them. RoseMeade would decide on these when her sleeping prescriptions just did not work well enough. The largest bottle in the cabinet was the Midol bottle. This was policed regularly to be sure she did not run out of the pills. On this particular morning RoseMeade got out her little tiny notebook and began yet another morning ritual of writing down what products she needed refilled.