Get a Grip

So, I was sitting around this weekend moaning and groaning about how I was too stupid to play bridge yadda yadda yadda.  And meanwhile.....

....come to find out that Jerry, a bridge colleague, 79 years old, known as the Cookie Man because he always brings home-made cookies to bridge, had a head on collision with a drunk driver, resulting in a broken back, a broken clavicle, and 4 cracked ribs.  After a five hour surgery, he lived, but he may wish he hadn't...

...and Russell, a friend from the gym, is in the hospital with Stage IV blood cancer, and, oh, by the way, when testing his blood they discovered he was HIV positive, and none of the medications are working, and when another friend and I visited him in hospital yesterday, we thought we had been sent to the wrong room, he was that aged and wasted and incoherent to boot.....

.....and friend Elaine has shattered her ankle, and is immobile for god knows how long, and is stuck in Alberta in the snow of all places....

.....and friend Philip (who I have known since law school some 45 years ago), who has for 40 years been devoted to his wife, called me the other day at his wits' end because what with her drinking and smoking and drug taking, has gone ga-ga (the details are horrifying, and not to be repeated even in a sanitized blog), and all of the money in the world (of which he has more than his fair share) can't help, and neither can I.....

......and (dead) friend Alison's son Jon reached out to me  to tell me that, at 48, he has had a massive heart attack, and that caring for his (crazy) mother for the last 10 months of her life have not only cost him his health and his long-term relationship but also left him financially destitute, and once again, there is nothing I can do....

.....and Carol, a friend both here in the Desert and in Vancouver is in the final stages of an inoperable brain tumor...

....and another friend is planning her assisted suicide....

....and, altogether, the world is going to hell in a handbasket..

And I, who have beautiful places to live in two beautiful parts of the world, and enough money to get by if not lots and good friends and good health, have nothing to worry about but the qualiyy of my bridge playing?

GET A GRIP, NORA!!!