When It Just Gets Too Hard

My grandma, aunt, and I like to go to yard sales.  More often than not, it's just junk, but sometimes you find a treasure. 

We were supposed to go just this last Friday at 7:00 in the am.  I went to pick up my grandma and she was almost in tears.  Her water heater had broke last night and flooded their bedroom.  She told me that she wouldn't be able to come.

**my grandpa has Alzheimer's. 

I stayed and helped her clean up the water off the carpet.  She showered and my dad came and put in a new water heater. 

**we were able to go to the yard sale.  I found a really cool bird cage, but it wasn't $45 cool. 

Then she started talking about life.  How its hard.  How its hard to live with the man that you married and have him not be the same person.  And how its hard for him.  Because he knows that he's hard to take care of, and feels bad.

I could tell she just needed to vent.  Unload.  Get it off her chest.  To someone outside of the situation. 

I let her.

I think trials like that are difficult.  I know when I went through something similar (where someone I loved was sick and I couldn't fix it).  I needed to talk to someone.  But not the person who was sick.  How could I let them know that sometimes I wasn't strong enough for them?  Because of them?  No, I poured out my heart to my mom.  She listened.  Then I could go back and be there for that person.  Support.  Love.  Sympathize.  And when the emotions that I was feeling got to be too much for me, I unloaded again to close friends, my mother-in-law, or my mom. 

I'm grateful for friends.  For those who can be there to support when life gets hard.  Because sometimes you need someone to just listen.  Who can listen to what you say and not have it add to their burdens, but relieve yours.