The Wind Through My Hair

Today is the day I need to start over. Back on my diet, back into gardening more. Back into reading. Letting go of family issues I have no control over. Taking more time out for me. Bonding with my animals ever more closely. And let's not forget to bead. I have so much jewelry to make..oh and art work...I have bought pastels, and paper. I have officially resigned from the PhD program. I have no need of it. I have decided instead to follow through with a past attempt ( I went to a mini-seminar on it in the past) and become a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. I am going to walk my dog Shilo today and take him down to Morgan Run...just to feel this wind through my hair and to feel his unconditional presence in my life.

When the Vision Goes

Of course our eyes get worse. I happen to think out philosophical vision does as well. Seems harder and harder tostay positive. Yet positivity and being optimistic are what drives forward. There have been those who were delusional or psychotic like Van Gogh or Edgar Allen Poe who have had vision. Funny how those with mental illness; as it is called, are often those who contribute these enormous things to our world and times...like art, writing, inventions.

The Animals Are Special, Music is Therapy

If it were not for Shilo, my golden, demanding my love and attention, I would be less comforted. He only wants food, love, and attention (much simpler versions than humans). Shilo. Add my slumbering dog at my feet, listening to Adele and Sade, with good coffee, some sun outside, and life is good.

I am amazed by all living things, but why do vultures have to be so ugly? I love listening to birds. I would love to hear a live loon's song; it is so smooth and long. The mockingbird is amazing (like it knows a symphony), and the wrens and swallows sing sweet, fun, light songs. Funny how some of the prettiest birds have the less pleasant songs, like the bluebird's and the cardinal's, both aggressive birds.

But back to things great and small, I can even get enjoyment out of watching a furry spider just walk. I have to say there are only two living things I don't like...mosquitos and flies. Lady bugs are getting up there though, as cute as they are. I remember learning a fly regurgitates at least seven times every time it lands. That's how they clean themselves. But when I think of maggots, a fly's larval stage, I want to puke, but thank God that they devour the dead. There is a place for every living thing. It is all connected and amazing.

Music is therapy, no doubt in my mind. I am very musically open-minded. There probably are only a few genres I don't like. I was listening to (I guess you would call it) avante garde music on the way home. I heard a David Bowie/Pat Methany song...it had in it somewhere 'this is not America'. I have to get that. I have liked David Bowie a long time, and to mix him with a jazz artist, sweet. What a combo.
Since the Thailand tsunami, Sade's song 'Pearls', is my favorite of hers; it makes reference to 'a woman in Somalia', where the tsunami made a big hit. I am now listening to Adele-21. Good stuff. It is one of those CDs where all the lyrics and music are very good. She is very sensual and expressive, and has a very unusual, great, raspy, strong voice.

I watched 'The Social Network' last night (this morning?) from 130-330 am...I couldn't sleep. I didn't see what the hubub was all about. If Zuckerberg is anything like that, he is an odd fellow. His affect was very bizarre. But I guess a Harvard sophomore prodigy is allowed that. I watched 'The Queen' with Helen Mirran (sp?), the other day, just to see what it was all about and to just get my mind off things. She did a great job, but again, this movie did not float my boat.

Speaking of boats. I could use one right now. I love the water....brooks, streams, lakes, oceans, rivers, and the sound and water makes is soothing.
Boy do I need soothing. I have Morgan Run down the road from me; I plan to take Shilo there when the weather gets a little warmer so he can swim and I can enjoy.

I Made It ...Almost

My first day back to work was yesterday. It might have been because of the flax and oat bran cereal the evening before, but I had severe diarrhea and hyperstalsis. I could not concentrate and felt very emotion-on-my-sleeve. I usually work twelve hour shifts. I get up at 445 am and leave for work 545am. I get home at about quarter-to-nine. I did not do 'well' my first day. I found myself feeling very self conscious and raw. I could have cried at any given moment. By the time I had had 4 bouts of bad diarrhea, it worked it's way to nausea. Well feeling bad made me more emotional. So that was not helping. So I decided to bite off my pride and ask to go home early ill at 230pm. I drove home in tears and afraid. I was worrried I would, for real, crap my pants sometime during the hour drive I had home. Please God, don't add 'crap my pants' to my misery right now. When I got home I took a bentyl (for irritable bowel), two tylenol for abdominal pain and headache, fixed myself a real Coke and quickly laid face down on the sofa, my whole ventral torso on a long, set-on-medium, heating pad. I had to get up for one more episode in the bathroom, returned to the face down sofa flop and cried over my Dad and being embarrassed at having not made it through test drive number one....my first day back at work.

Today I made it the full 12 hour shift and feel like I have been beaten up ( two days of gardening, worrying about my first day back to work (still feeling raw), and now, with a sore gut and anus. It was a typically heavy day at work where I only got to urinate once, got half a cup of coffee down, and shuffled the care of six different pregnant women who had uncontrolled diabetes, toxemia, a cerclage etc.....I felt proud as I left after the full day staying in the saddle on my get-it-together-horse. Now I sit writing and my whole body is hoping for relief that only my mind can give (at least that's what the evidence seems to show). Yesterday at work I received a beautiful plant and many hugs. Each hug made the tears rise up. When I came home early and ill yesterday, there were three more cards waiting for me. Today at work, I received a card signed by most of those I work with. I then came home to 2 more cards and some perfume and body wash I had ordered for me. I now have two days off to rest again, get more air and sun and wind and just let the feelings flow, keep pushing forward, and push up if the sarcophagus feeling beats me down. Night mom & dad. God how I want to believe there is a heaven. You both were very brave ill and dying human beings. I suppose 'in dignified fashion' would describe how you both left this world in my arms.

Drunk and Wasted Where I Should Be

I try hard as I can to move forward after the second of my parents died April 4, 2011. My Dad and I had a special bond. I understood what he could not say or express. Because I was his blood, his genes, perhaps that is why I perceived him as he truly was. I knew of a handsome man...one my mother could not resist. I knew of a son who was born from the reunited effort of his parents, seven years separated. I knew of a sensitive man, because he told me once, "I am sensitive". I endured unrelenting flagelation from my mother upon him. I endured a woman who cried at night alone in her bed because she was so distraught and left alone....all except that I heard her. The youngest of seven, not spoiled, yet forsaken and enduring.

Getting On With It

Today I am going to do something positive for me, to help me. I am going to do- something- which will be another small step out of the frozen sphere I am in. Yesterday, I pushed and went out and did a lot of yard work. I trimmed and transplanted. The sun warmed my face and the wind was sweet. My lillies are coming up. My hasta are showing their heads. My red cedar is going from bark to a beautiful green giant. In June/July my majestic red mallows will push up their bamboo-like stalks and give me 8 inch red, habiscus-like blooms. Outrageous and sweet. I love to garden. Today I am sore from yesterday's digging, raking, and weeding. And as the birds sing and begin to nest in their usual places, life cyclicly goes on.. If one measures one's life by their favorite season, a short life is realized in line with eternity. How many springs do I have left (so to speak)? Bring on the blessings God. Give me strength. Help me push forward and reap my rewards and realize the life you have wanted me to have.

The Sarcophagus

This is the second day in a row I awoke with a rough headache. But this morning I was able to cry. That was the positive.Why the title 'sarcophagus'? Because I lay like one for 4 hours this morning. I was motionless, like I was dead stuck in a box, just thinking of the loss of my parents, looking out at the birds and nature, hearing the birds sing, and feeling empty. It was the sun and song that finally pushed me to get up (in addition to my head). I had a small grasp of a positive and PUSHED myself up to the sitting position. My golden Shilo, was and has been at my side every step of the way. Even my cats have been sitting with me and being close. Animals are amazing. How can anyone abuse them? Ghandi once said 'that if we all gave an eye for an eye, the world would be blind'. Something like that. Still I think people who set animals afire after dousing them with gasoline, should be doused with gasoline and set afire. I think known child offenders should have their genetalia cut off and maybe their fingers and then cut out their tongues. That should cover any further abuse. Animals and children....love them...protect them. They are innocents. I believe we should also bring back public executions for witnessed offenders of heinous crimes. No trial. You did it, now you get it. Our legal system wastes too much time. It always brings me back to the thought of ethics/morals....what if they are emotionally unstable/sick? Seek help before you hurt another living thing. It is troubling knowing that prisoners receive the best education and healthcare than many of us, and we, the tax payers are paying for it.
I think an eye for an eye is certainly better than 'turn the other cheek'. Life is too precious to allow people to end it with evil intentions.

It's Like When Your Second Child Comes

When your first child comes, you take so many pictures, do so much documentation. When your second child comes, that child is no less special, but often, the pictures and writings are fewer. That is what it feels like for me right now, but it is with regard to the death of my father which followed my mother's by 2 years. It has been 2 days since my Dad was buried. All I have been through, I have not lifted a pen to my journal which I kept during the last days of my mother's life. I suppose I am not ready yet. I remember his time of death. I remember giving him his morphine, of bathing him head to toe the morning of his death. But I have yet to write of his last days, the last year or even of my memories of him. Still in a blur, I feel like I am in slow motion.

A Place I've Never Been Before

Today, April 11, 2011, my father was buried with full military honors at the Crownsville Maryland Veterans' Cemetary. When the soldiers in full Army dress uniforms shot the rifles and when 'Taps' was played...I cried.
To watch the soldiers in dress uniform meticulously fold the casket-covering American flag, and to see it given to my oldest brother (who also served twice in Vietnam) filled my heart with bittersweet memories. It was a sunny day, but even the delightful, cool breeze and the smell of spring in the air did not fill the void opening me up raw while watching them lower my Dad into the ground atop my Mom.

One Foot in This World, One Foot in the Next

Sunday, April 3, 2011

I remember sitting on my Dad's living room sofa just this Sunday passed. I was listening to him breathe, pulling, with his oxygen on, in his hospital bed. I was reading through the hospice booklets. I had just gotten off work and came to see and stay with him for I knew the time was close. It was one of the most difficult emotional days I had to get through while trying to focus on patient care for 12 hours. Little did I know, but still sensed, my Dad would die tomorrow. The hospice literature talked about the dying having one foot in this world and one foot in the next. Another vision they expressed was  that of a sailboat riding into the horizon and sunset. From our side we were saying "There he goes...bye..bye..". From the spiritual side, heaven, the hereafter, family long gone, army buddies, they were saying, "Here he comes...it's him at last"!

                                                         1-08-2011

That thought helped me as I slipped into a pair of his pajamas and grabbed a blanket to keep vigil with him thoughout the night. In the morning I would bathe him. We were both exhausted. I simply told him as I kissed him on the cheek, "Mahala loves her Daddy". His eyebrows raised and he actively squeezed my hand in his when I took his hand in mine and I laid my head on his shoulder to sleep.

This is a picture of my mom and dad, both age 22, in 1944, on their wedding day.
My Dad just passed away at 732 pm on Monday, April 4th, 2011...2 days ago.
My Mom passed away in July 17, 2008....which only seems two weeks ago.
Now I am without them both. Somehow the whole definition of who I am has changed and a big hole has been left in me. I cry, sleep, cry, do laundry, cry, clean the kitchen, cry. And there are still 4 days until his viewing.