Author: colleen arnold

Colleen Arnold is a family physician, widow, mom and freelance writer living in Lexington, Va.

Lessons in the Waves

/ colleen arnold / 4 Comments
watching waves
watching waves

A few weeks ago I got to visit my sister, who lives near the ocean in New Jersey. After dinner one evening, we all packed up and went to the beach, her husband and three sons to play in the water and she and I to just relax on the shore. The sky was a beautiful mix of blue and white, and a gentle breeze blew through my hair as we sat. Without even realizing it, I drifted back to another day at the beach years ago………
I’m standing in the ocean, water up to my knees. Neil is calling me to come out farther, where he is only covered to his ankles. I am not a water person, but he is. The sun is beating bright; people are splashing and laughing all around me. I watch a line of pelicans fly overhead, and I’m suddenly brave. As I walk out toward Neil, the water gets oddly shallow and soon I find myself laughing with him on the sandbar. It gets hot out there is the sun beats down, without a cloud in sight. Continue reading →

Living and loss: how it all started……

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halo: getting ready for heaven
halo: getting ready for heaven

“It’s not a stroke,” the ER doctor seeing my husband said into the phone lines from 500 miles away. Oh thank heavens, I thought to myself as I sat down on my sister’s couch. “It’s worse,” she said bluntly. “He has a large brain tumor, looks like it’s a metastasis from an equally large lung cancer. We’re transferring him down to Roanoke immediately. I’m so sorry,” she said. Absorbing this news, all I could say was “okay, thanks, I’m on my way.” But after I hung up the phone I screamed – a primordial, deep, gut-wrenching, brutally painful scream like nothing I had ever screamed before, barely aware I was even doing it, and totally oblivious to the fact that it was 1 o’clock in the morning and most of the world was asleep……… Continue reading →