Saturday, December 30, 2006

Chinese Dinner

It was a nice evening to get out
Away from the swirling tension
and apprehension.
First a nice ride
Saw a man about a dog....so adorable..
A stop for happy to accompany
Then a fabulous Chinese dinner.
Me! Chinese!
Still serving after 10:30......
So unpretictable for us......
The dinner that is.
Time with my best friend.
It always makes my day brighter.....

Friday, December 29, 2006

Deathbed

Time spent in a hospital room
A deathbed, machines, a few chairs.....
Walls loom high above the starched bed.
The taller they get the closer together they come.
Looking up, the portal seems almost in sight.
Ready to open, ready to receive.
She lays there struggling
For every breath forced in her.
Plastic, tubes, oxygen
All taped to her face.
Forcing her muscles to contract
To react..
Comfort care they call it,
Torture, what I call it.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Learning to Live, Learning to Die

I feel so much the continual death of everything and everybody, and have so learned to reconcile myself to it, that the final and official end loses most of its impressivesness.........

While I have thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. In my very short life I have had to suffer the loss of a husband, the father and protector of my daughter. At twenty-four years old when most have found or are close to finding their course in life, tradegy struck. In a split instant death interposed.

Time has passed, but unforgivingly. Time dosen't ease the pain of one suffering from the devasting destruction of death.....regardless of what anyone may say. The hour which gives us life begins to take it away. Looking at life is looking at death head on. I see it. In everyone, in everything, at every moment.

Today death is settling into two of the strongest women in my life. At any moment, anytime, they will both take their last breaths. My heart is aching and my mind is remembering how life used to be for them both. Both of their bodies are wretched with pain, they've both been clinging to the life that is leaving their body and suffering as the pain of death is taking them away. The pain and the hurt of death live inside of me. I live it everyday.....hoping that I have felt and suffered all it had to offer, to not let it hurt me anymore.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
WILLIAM JAMES, 1890