Category Archives: life

Sep 9

Bonus moments

I wept on my return drive to Illinois.

Specifically, I cried while leaving Newark, and making my way west through Columbus. I am sometimes so struck by grief at the passing moments, and the people who’ve passed; I often feel completely engulfed in mourning and joy, simultaneously. This world, this orb we walk upon is so damn extraordinary. It is weird and beautiful.

As Oliver Sacks recently wrote before leaving this world: “Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”

It is such a privilege, filled with elation and pain.

My mom. My mom, my mom, my mom.

She is my favorite person on this big ol’ planet. She and my father, both, but dad died nine years ago, so he lives with me in a different way.

She is a good listener and good conversationalist. The longer I live, the more I realize how rare are these traits. How often I’ve been with people who ask nary a question after I’ve asked them several. Conversations are hard to start that way. When I find people who are good listeners and good conversationalists, I hold on to them for dear life.

But mom. She’s a good listener and she remembers my stories. If I’ve mentioned a co-worker or a friend more than once, she will remember their names; she will remember my history with them; she will ask after them; if they were facing a particular dilemma that I told her about, she will ask how things worked out. She prays for us. For our guardian angels to keep us all safe.

Mom has cancer. She has been living with cancer since 2000. The first was breast cancer. A lumpectomy, followed by a partial mastectomy and a chemo called the Red Devil because it makes people so violently ill, and the cancer never returned. Four year laters, though, ovarian cancer showed up.

She found the cancer at a fairly early stage through a series of events that seem so random and arbitrary that it makes even a cynic like me wonder whether there is some divine power involved–but that story will be told another time.

For now, mom. Who has experienced chemo side effects that would have been fit punishments in Dante’s Inferno. It boggles my mind to see and hear some of the side effects she’s known in her life with cancer. It’s frightening how much the body can hurt.

But. She has been well as of late. Her tumor markers are rising slowly, but her maintenance chemo seems to be holding them within a reasonable level. And she feels okay. Even after chemo, she feels not so bad. She’s enjoying herself–in spite of her neuropathy, her constantly watering eyes, her leg cramps, her general achiness. When we get ready to go shopping, she pops some pain medication in anticipation that all the walking will make her sore. But, damn it, she is ALWAYS ready to go shopping.

And she enjoys herself. A song called “Honey, I’m Good” came on the radio when we were in the car. “This is the song I told you about!”she said while turning up the radio so I could hear it in the backseat. “Isn’t it catchy?” With its twangy country feel, I wasn’t impressed. “I think I hate it,” I said and she protested and told me to keep listening.

The next day it was just the two of us going shopping in the next city over. “You know, I can play that silly song you like whenever I want,” I said and she lit up and said she wanted to hear it.

On the way to the store we were too preoccupied with chatting, but on the way back she asked me to find the song. “Ugh,” I said while searching through Spotify, and she poo pooed my protest.

When the song came on, she started dancing in her seat. Moving her arms and head with the music, changing up her moves as necessary to fit the beat. And I laughed. Hysterically. If I had video, it would have gone viral. I laughed through the entire song. My sides ached from laughing. And she was totally earnest in her dancing, keeping it up until the song finished.

And this is my mom: so many surgical scars, numb feet, blackened fingernails, thinning chemo hair, yet still dancing. Still laughing.  Still making me laugh. Still shopping.

The Tibetan monk Thich Nhat Hanh had a stroke some months ago. His recovery has been challenging, but he accepts it with grace. A friend of his said that every moment he has with Thay now are bonus moments, and he’s just so grateful for them.

There have been many instances when I prepared for the worst regarding mom. There were scenarios that didn’t look like they’d get better. But then the did. She jokes that she has outlived her expiration date.

And I cry when I leave because I know a day will come when a bad scenario won’t get better. It will happen to us all, of course, but it feels more tangible when the person is going to the doctor regularly for news about her health. 

And I dread that day. Just the thought if it chokes me with grief.

Every time I leave her, I hope that we’ll have a chance for another fun visit where she is feeling pretty okay.

I am just so thankful for the bonus moments. They are precious and fleeting, and bring me such joy.

Apr 14

Adventures

I should still be writing the sports feature I’m working on, but I feel like I’ve used the best material I have, so, until I speak with the coach again (today or tomorrow, I hope), I’m going to set it aside. I have another feature to write over the weekend, and I’m a bit daunted by the amount of material I have, and the amount of material I’ll be collecting from my last source on Friday, and where to start with it all. That’s what takes me the longest…deciding how to begin. If I can come up with a snazzy way to kick off the piece, it makes the rest of the process smoother. I’m also trying to visualize an illustration for the story, and I think I’ve succeeded. (I say “think” because I’ve yet to create the illustration, and until I do, I don’t know if it will be successful. But in my mind’s eye, it’s fantastic

It’s all fun though. Everything about the process is fun. I thoroughly enjoy sitting at my desk, looking out the window, turning over the structural/verbal/illustrative possibilities in my head. It’s a great way to spend the day.

I just returned from a road trip to Denver, where me and my pal JG spent the week attending AWP. Actually, we spent 3 days at the conference and the rest of the time traveling. I have to say it was a great time. JG and I travel well together (which we didn’t know before setting out on this adventure), we made decent time, we had a fantastic hotel with a great location to the conference and to Starbucks, I went to some great panels (one on narrative nonfiction was particularly worthwhile, and possibly worth the entire trip), bought a load of books, ate at several great restaurants, found an outstanding jewelry store where I bought a beautiful pendant, had plenty of opportunity for people watching (one of my favorite activities), heard JG and VA read their poetry at a wine and coffee bar, was invited to hang out with a participant from the narrative nonfiction panel, had a nightmare about a drunk, boisterous poet, met one of the nicest poets (people) around, and was generally inspired to try some new ideas with my writing/photography/visual poetry. I’m actually motivated to try and get some work published in journals. I’ve got to make the motivation/inspiration last.

So much fun. Everything.

Feb 9

On Pain (Project 52, Week 7)

My headache was intolerable. It radiated to my spine, or perhaps the pain in my spine radiated to my head. There was a burning sensation in my neck, between my shoulders. I was visiting family in Juarez, Mexico and while there, I found myself often popping aspirin. Quite unusual for me. When I complained of the pain to my mom, she translated my complaint to my aunt who suggested we invite her friend to the house to crack my back. “No, no, no,” I said, shaking my head. My head and back might be making me miserable, but the idea of a stranger from down the street coming in to manipulate my spine was utterly unappealing. “I’ll wait and go to a chiropractor when I get back to Florida,” I told mom.

I excused myself to go take a nap in hopes of relieving my headache. I woke up some time later to laughter and screaming from the living room. I didn’t know what they were doing–all the conversation was in Spanish–but the sounds were not enough to prompt me out of bed. A few minutes later I heard everyone enter my room. I was still half asleep, but I felt activity on my bed that caused me to crack open my eyes to see what the hell was happening. My aunt was lying prone at the end of the mattress and a woman I didn’t recognize was rubbing oil on her bare back. I closed my eyes and bitched to myself. They had invited the woman over after all. The one who cracks backs and lives right down the street. I was aggravated not only because I was woken from my nap still feeling like shit, but because now I had to figure out a polite way to repeatedly decline the opportunity to have some stranger from down the street manipulate my back. While I thought this to myself, my aunt let out a gasp as the woman pressed  down on her spine, sending out a series of snaps that sounded like someone popping gum.

I opened my eyes and lifted myself on to one arm; the women greeted me with enthusiasm, glad that I had finally joined them. I watched as my aunt adjusted her shirt and then sat in a chair that was brought to my bedroom from the kitchen. The neighbor woman massaged my aunt’s neck and toggled her head around until it moved loosely between her hands. Then she wrenched it to one side quickly and sharply, sending out snapping noises again and scaring the hell out of me. I thought her neck might break from the force. My aunt had a stunned look on her face, obviously caught off guard by the force of the twisting action. Then she burst into laughter as did the rest of us. She was able to relax enough for the woman to crack her neck again, this time in the opposite direction.

Soon they were calling for me to take my turn. I waved my hand in the air. “No, I’m okay,” I said. The neighbor lady moved on to someone else and my mom whispered to me that my family had invited her there because of me. They thought she could help me. They were paying her. She said the woman had worked on her foot and ankle when they were in the living room, and it had been incredibly painful–she was the one who had been screaming, and my cousins were the ones laughing. However, she said she felt great now. Her feet weren’t bothering her at all. “Really?” I asked. “You feel better?” My mom’s a bit of a skeptic, so for her to participate so willingly, and to recommend it so heartily, well, it helped to change my mind. And my neck and back and head were really hurting.

I agreed to have my back adjusted. When I took off my shirt and turned so that my back was facing the reflexologist (that’s what the woman had studied in school–reflexology), she made a big deal about one side of my body being lower than the other. Since she spoke only in Spanish, I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but she was pointing out various curves and knots in my back and at the base of my neck, and speaking with great emphasis. My family responded with mumbles that sounded concerned and surprised. She had me rest on the bed and proceeded to crack my back and work out a knot in my neck. I felt better afterward, but I emphatically declined having my neck cracked.

But dealing with the daily pain in Juarez helped me to come to this realization: I’m scared of chronic pain. Consciously scared of it.  As in, when I have a pain that lasts for a day, I immediately wonder if it’s going to last forever. This occurred to me this week when I started getting dull headaches and neck aches, and knew it was time to have my back adjusted again. I have the great and happy privilege to be pain free nearly every day, which is something I don’t take for granted. I think of my mom who has a pretty high level of pain in her legs every day thanks to all the chemo her body has been subjected to. I think of my dad who had incredible back pain toward the end of his life because his cancer was playing with the nerves of his lower back, creating a sensation so severe that he popped Percoset like candy and it had next to no effect on the pain. Hospice eventually created some Morphine/Oxycontin cocktail that finally  provided some relief. Knowing what they experience/experienced reminds me to be grateful. But the other thing about these two people, the two heroes of my life, is that they never showed their pain. I sat next to my father for weeks on end and he never said a word about the pain in his back. Never. Didn’t grimace, didn’t bitch, didn’t say a word about it. I run around with my mom whenever I can, and I have to remember to ask her how she’s feeling. Her legs could be blistering with pain, but she pushes through without complaint.

I’m also amazed when I read about what life was like for people prior to the invention of anesthesia and pain medication. For example, the harrowing description of the surgery Samuel Pepys went through to have bladder stones removed (bladder stones, themselves, being excruciatingly painful):

There were no anaesthetics, and alcohol was certainly not allowed to a patient undergoing surgery to the bladder. The surgeon got to work. First he inserted a thin silver instrument, the itinerarium, through the penis into the bladder to help position the stone. Then he made the incision, about three inches long and a finger’s breadth from the line running between scrotum and anus, and into the neck of the bladder, or just below it. The patient’s face was sponged as the incision was made. The stone was sought, found and grasped with pincers; the more speedily it could be got out the better. Once out, the wound was not stitched–it was thought best to let it drain and cicatrize itself–but simply washed and covered with a dressing, or even kept open at first with a small roll of soft cloth known as a tent, dipped in egg white. A plaster of egg yolk, rose vinegar and anointing oils was then applied.  —Samuel Pepys: The Unequaled Self by Claire Tomalin.

This description makes my hair stand on end. No anesthesia for this procedure; I can’t begin to fathom the pain, and I’m glad that we’ve progressed to the point we have today in our medical technologies.

I wonder if chronic pain is an inevitable way of life as the body ages. A woman came into the vet clinic last week and asked for help carrying in her cat’s carrier. She is a regular client of ours and had never had any problem carrying in the carrier before. I walked to the car with her and she explained that she was having some back and arm problems. She had had surgery once already and seemed to think she’d have to have it again. When her appointment was over, I wished her well and said I hoped things improved soon. She thanked me and said she was in pain pretty much all the time. “Getting old’s a bitch,” she said as she walked out the door. My dad used to say the same thing.

There is another client who comes in pretty regularly who wears a body brace to support her neck, arms, and legs. I think she has rheumatoid arthritis. Her movements are very slow and the brace looks like it would be quite cumbersome. I understand that rheumatoid arthritis is painful and I believe she’s had it for many years. Yet she is so friendly, patient, and pleasant–an upbeat spirit who seldom dwells on how she’s feeling.

And so I’m thankful for the privilege of living pain-free; I’m aware that this can change at any time, either due to changes in health or unforeseen accidents; I’m conscientious in how I treat my body in hopes of keeping it in the best shape I can for as long as I can; but, ultimately, should I find myself experiencing situations like those of the people noted in this post, I hope to find the same strength and grace. Because right now I’m spoiled, and if I have a headache/neck ache/backache that lasts longer than it should, everyone near me is going to hear me whine about it (ask my husband). And surely that’s no way to handle such things.

Nov 11

Unknowable

I wish I could be more daring in my day to day interactions with strangers–more humorous, flirtatious, outgoing, cheerful, talkative, sympathetic. I wish I met more daring strangers. I wish to be that daring stranger. There’s too much silence between me and the strangers around me. It’s not that daring, really, to just open your mouth and talk. Yet it’s so easy and comfortable to be silent. But who knows what interesting character I’m passing, or what stories I could hear from someone new while sitting next to him/her in the coffee shop?