My best friend’s heart broke on the weekend. I watched as he was airlifted from our small town to the city hospital to save it, and to save him.

Now I’ve been through a lot over the last year, and if there is one thing I have learnt is that when the universe throws you a curve-ball, the only way to hit the thing is to shut your eyes, trust and swing the damn bat as hard as you can. But it is tough to come out swinging as you sit for three long hours while your friend is undergoing emergency surgery on his heart, not knowing if he is okay or not.

What did I do? I took photos of the television. Yip! As you do in a crisis. If it helps to explain, I also took photos of my cat and my giant teddy bear. Nope, that doesn’t really make it any better, does it?

When life defies reason and understanding, there is force that takes us by the hand and if we follow, it will take us out of the woods. I followed that part, mainly because it was either that or wallow in a bag of potato chips.

Let me explain… I had a lovely piece of relaxing music playing on YouTube. Ironically, I now see that it was 3 hours long – just the length of time I needed. Anyway, it had pictures of beautiful birds on it, and my buddy is an avid nature photographer. I sat there taking photos of the most beautiful bird pictures that crossed the screen, and since then I’ve been drip feeding those images to him in hospital, to feed that part of his soul.

Oh, and a picture of my silly cat flopped over the back of a chair. One can never fail with a cute cat pic!

Why did I do this? Why was it the right thing to do? Because instead of focusing on the worse possible outcome, I was able to shift my mind onto an image of a future I preferred – one where he was out of surgery, recovering, and enjoying the fun photos I took for him.

Did it help his outcome? Who knows! But it certainly helped me and now he is getting cute pics during his recovery.

Now we are four days on. He is stable, but my world is not. Something that big cannot help but send ripples out into the universe – through loved ones and into the future. In the wee hours of the night my mind cannot fix the cold hard consequences of this event.

So, my big question is: When a heart breaks, what else breaks apart? I suppose only time will tell…