Bitterness and Grief

Call me shallow, but I'm really upset about how my roommate (I try not to focus on how he's also my brother... makes it too personal...) murdered my daffodils the other night. I was so proud of myself. It's the first plant I've ever had that I've remember to water. They have a really nifty "vase/pot" that's a like a fish bowl but open at the top with a downwards slant, cool little rocks and foilage stuff in it, and it had two beautiful blossoms that became three thanks to my nurturing. I'm trying to prove that I can nurture plants because if I can nurture plants I can probably nurture pets and if I can nurture pets I can maybe nurture babies. Maybe I've got something to prove here.

But regardless, the point is that he sabotaged my attempt at proving I could nurture by opening the window upon which sill my plant was resting (for optimal sunlight-- it was not left there out of negligence!!) and exposed it to freezing temperatures, crippled it with frost, and thus made me a failure. It doesn't look like she'll recover, though I still have faint hopes.

And I'm very upset about this. Even bitter. Possibly in the first stage of grieving.

Sigh.

A Winter Prophecy

Sitting on the sofa. Minding my own business. Researching. Silent clickety-click of computer keys.

Matt's voice.

"It's coming you know. The hour of apocalypse."

Glance over at him with awkward skepticism.

"The snow parking disaster. The snow parking apocalypse.

I don't know what we're going to do.

In those bleak days young men will see visions. Old men will dream dreams. Many of those old men will not survive the journey back to their apartments from their parking spots.

Look out there. It's bleak."

I look. We look.

"Look out there. Way out there is probably where we might be able to find parking."

Silence.

Matt's voice.

"Do you have a window scraper?"
"yeah."
"Do you have two?"
Exchange of a glance.
A sigh.
Silence conquers.

Maggomaly Mouse

Since all the flooding we've had a minor mouse problem. By that I mean one rainy morning Matt and I were sitting at the kitchen table over a cup of coffee, and Matt coolly inquires, "Is that a mouse on the counter by the sink?" So I look over. "Yep. Most definitely a mouse." We turn away and continue sipping our coffee and discussing our plans for the day. No, kidding, we actually bickered because it was MY book he picked up to smash it's skull with and I most definitely object to mouse-blood on my books. In the meantime the little bugger scampered off to safety. That afternoon Matt launched his attack, and the next morning we had mousage (portmanteau--> mouse + sausage) with our eggs and oatmeal.

The landlord in the meantime purchased several expensive noise-emitters that are supposed to keep away mice, spiders, and things like that. Okey-dokey. We plugged those suckers in, and haven't had any problems since. Until it rained wayyy heavy yesterday. Now all of a sudden the "fixed" roof is leaking again, and one of the "leftover" mousetraps we never deactivated had a dead mouser in it. This occured between the hours of 9am and 10am this morning while I was cleaning. I SWEAR it wasn't there at 9am when I was cleaning up around the apartment, but it was most DEFINITELY there at 10am when I went to vaccumm.

And this brings me to my Maggomaly (portmanteau--> Maggie + Anomaly). I not just move, but touch, clean and do all sorts of things for dead HUMAN bodies at work all the time... but I absolutely could NOT bring myself to dispose of this piddly ol' dead mouser. I didn't even have to TOUCH it, and I couldn't do it. Like, we're talking total hysterical breakdown just crying about this stupid mouse, all the while inwardly scoffing at myself with embarrassment. I even went so far as to humiliate myself by paying my sister Becca $80 to come remove it, which she did. Okay, fine, I OWED her the $80 to begin with, but still. It was pretty shameful that I got her to drive over to do this simple task for me. Especially seeing as how I'm the girl who kept mice around to feed to her snake on a regular basis! Grab the sucker by the tail and throw him in to be destroyed! I'd also watch with fascination as my constrictor snake sssssttreeetcccchhhheeedddd out their little bodies and wiggled it's neck as it swallowed them to audibly crush all their bones and aid digestion. I still think that's pretty nifty about constrictors and have no problem watching it. So what is my hang up with this darn mouse?? I feel so lame. THIS SHOULD BE NOTHING FOR ME.

And I just couldn't do it. Man. What a Maggomaly.

Learn to Drive, Asshole

Today I nearly died.

I hate people who drive their cars in crappy weather when they clearly have no idea what they are doing. Take this morning for example.

TIME: 7:47AM. Rush Hour Traffic.
LOCATION: Milwaukee, WI
OFFENDER: AssholeInTheDirtyRedCar.

CONTEXT: So here I am in the right hand lane on a three lane road, going with the flow of traffic at 40mph in a 50mph zone. Reasonable considering the roads are not clear and it's slippery. The flow of traffic was working as one beast in unison. Until the AssholeInTheDirtyRedCar came along. Just AS I'M PASSING the right hand turn lane, whatshisface decides to swoop ahead of me at the last second, cut me off and swerve right, making an illegal right hand turn.

OPTIONS: The road conditions are such that stopping in time is simply not an option. My choices were as follows.
1) Slam right into the S.O.B. Tempting, to be sure, but my car would likely take most of the damage and I'D be hitting him (complicated) and I'm uninsured. No go.
2) Swerve left and hit the SchoolbusFullOfLittleKiddies. Yeah. I avoid schoolbuses when driving as a general rule in the winter. The only thing worse than an accident is an accident where little kiddies are involved.
3) Swerve into the HugeAssSnowDrift that's literally 3X as tall as my car at 40 mph. Seriously. It was unfathomably huge and looked like the equivalent of slamming into an iceberg.

CONCLUSION: So right, I took one for the team. It sucked. I was yelling "WWWHHYYYYYY?!?!" as I slammed into the huge-ass iceberg and spinned out. First of all, the impact really sucked, I nailed my head pretty hard (still have a headache). Second, my car whipped around after the nose got stuck in and I nearly hit the SchoolBusFullOfKiddies any way... some angel must have squeezed between us at the last second and acted as a buffer, cuz it was damn close. And by that I mean I'm a damn good driver and controlled my spin. (*twiddles thumbs*) Third, the iceberg- I'm NOT exaggerating.. iceberg.. FINE, snowdrift.- avalanched down on top of me. Fortunately there was a car-full of kindly consctruction worker guys with lots of muscles behind me that helped dig/push my car out the iceberg (*glare*) it was so deeply imbedded in.

AFTERMATH: My head hurts. I am SO MAD that AssholeInTheDirtyRedCar and he'd better pray I don't find him (Yup. He didn't even stop.). And I was late for my Anatomy&Physiology Lab. On the bright side I didn't seem to suffer any brain damage cuz I aced the quiz/test thingy postponed from the snowday on Wednesday. But I suspect that one was because it was easy-- I'm NOT on my "A"-game in that class... Yet.

At any rate, I guess this makes me a Hero... y'know... protecting the LittleKiddies and masterfully manuvering my spin so I miss them by a hairsbreadth. Talk about finesse. Or something. But in all earnestness, I've decided that the real trick to being a good driver in inclement weather is Avoidance. I mean this. I really do. Avoidance of other drivers primarily, avoidance of slippery sludgy icy snowy crap secondly, and avoidance of potholes thirdly. This is the trick. Avoid these things like the plague and you can be a masterful life-saver, iceberg-demolisher too.

rest in peace

In the room, about to help Walter to the toilet. In walks the new girl. Never worked here before. From House Pool. I've been training her on the other wing. She got Rosa up in her wheelchair and took her to the toilet. Rosa doesn't use the toilet at night. Too much effort and strain. Diapers. Rosa fell asleep in her chair? Can't get her back into bed? Okay. I'll come take care of it when I'm finished here. Rosa and I understand each other. We really get along.

Walter's taking his time. Lonely. He asks about my boyfriend in the army. Walter's a WWII veteran. You heard from that boyfriend of yers? That's good, I guess. Do they get supplies? Me? Oh, we always got supplies. We were with Patten. What was it like? Well, we'd sit around in a circle counting. COUNTING, I said COUNTING. Yeah. We'd get past a thousand, and they just wouldn't know what to do. We'd sit there and one of us would start "thousand..." and then one of them would jump in, "...five!" and we'd all be so excited. It was a big deal. You can't blame them y'know. No one taught them consecutive numbers, y'see. Later it'd be... "thousand....... six!!" and then that's where it'd stop. At first it was okay, sittin in the circle. counting. but after a while you just got plain bored and you had no patience left for counting. you didnt want to count anymore. And then you'd start callin them dirty names. goddamn arabs. it wasnt their fault, goddamn arabs, nobody taught them to count consecutive numbers like that, but you just didn't have anymore patience. What? What's that? Yeah, Patten. Yeah, that's the very same one. He was one queer duck. But he was a damn good leader. They all feared him cuz he could count thousand-SEVEN. And that's why he was a damn good leader. They all feared him. Action? Oh, boy did we see action. Did we ever see action. Killed those goddamn bastards by the dozens. They could hardly count past thousand-TWO. Oh. Okay. Goodnight.

Walking briskly down the hall to Rosa's room. Already been a good 10 minutes. The light's off. Flip the switch, cooing "Ros-." Stop silent. No need for language. One glance reveals the vacancy. Stillness. Sallow, yellow-green beneath her tan, cuban skin. Slumped ever so slightly. Icy stillness. Maybe it's a mistake. A false alarm. An overreaction. Creep closer and slide fingers across her smooth, cool wrists. Impossibly still. Hand moves to her chest. Still warm there. Is that her moving ever so slightly? or the illusion created by the pounding in my breast. Nothing. Her lungs are deflated, just like her shoulders. CPR? Thought dismissed immediately. She's DNR. Everyone on this wing is DNR. Not that it would have made a difference at this point.

Inform the new girl on your way down the hall to the phones. Her theatrical "NO! Really??" Makes your stomach turn. She already knew. Maybe she couldn't accept it either. She's not dealing with it well, though for very different reasons. Poor girl. What must that have been like. First day, first time she set eyes on this woman, she dies on her watch. She was only unconscious when she left, though... not sleeping... not vacated... Rosa slipped away to the Lord alone in her chair in the dead of the night. There was no blame in her passing. Maybe that's the hardest thing to accept.

Post-mortem care is not as horrifying as I had expected. Unreal would be a better word for it. It's too easy. Caring for someone can only be difficult if the person is there. Rosa was not there. Only something nearly 300 lbs. Deadweight. Dead deadweight. A nurse gives a terse laugh at her own joke. Stare blankly. Six people needed to transfer her from her wheelchair to the bed before she stiffens, and so she can be prepared for her family to come pay their respects. So I can prepare her. Six people. Urgent voice, "NO skin tears, ladies! Caaaareful of the shoulder, there!! NO BROKEN BONES!" Realizing with shock how insanely fragile the human body is when its muscles aren't being used to counteract force applied to it. How excruciatingly fragile is the human body. Gown slipping. Flesh exposed. What is flesh? Her diaper is soiled. Nurse says it's common for the strain of having a BM to kill the elderly. Rosa was already compromised. She didn't have a BM on the toilet, though. She had it after she'd passed. "This is the cacapoopoo that killed her." I thought as I wiped her clean. Strange thought at a time like this... but that's how she always referred to her BM's to me every morning. "Bring extra paper... I made a cacapoopoo!" she'd call from the bathroom as I made her bed. Part of me felt like I ought to save that soiled diaper for her family. Immediately embarrassed by the impulse. It wouldn't have any significance to them.

There was no peace until everyone else had cleared out. I said a rosary with her at her bedside while we waited for her daughter to arrive. She would have liked that. She was Catholic and very religious in an earthy sort of way. She was in the habit of talking to the Lord as I got her ready for the day each morning in spanish. It was endearing.

I was blind sided by Rosa's death. When you walk into as many people's rooms while they're sleeping as often as I do, you come to take for granted that they'll be alive. None of the people I care for are in good health. But I wouldn't have thought that most of them were that close to death, least of all Rosa. Rosa was probably the most together, at least mentally and in some ways physically, of my residents. Now it dawns on me the reality of the situation: I am walking amongst people with one foot already through that door. Funny how you can know these things without KNOWING them.

Rosa's death was a blessing. I can honestly say that praying at her bedside I found true joy at her passing. He life was like a job well done. And now she can rest. Looking at her lying peacefully still in bed, her sheets pulled smooth and tidy, her seemingly translucent skin by the soft light of the bedside lamp, I saw I think for the first time ever that death is not just natural... it's beautiful. Perhaps you need more personal separation from the one who has left in order to be able to appreciate that.

Even so, there is now a subtle urgency behind every kind word, every gentle touch. Nagging in the back of my head is the knowledge that I may very likely be the last human interaction that any of these people come into contact with. It has to count. It's like hanging out with the wrong crowd... while no one can make you sin, they can certainly lead you to it. I am capable of being an occasion for grace to each of these people before their death. I can choose to have positive interactions with them, those productive of joy and hope and goodness. Or I can be short tempered and impatient and brusque, and lead them to despair and contempt and hatred. And that might be the context in which they die. The spiritual state in which they face their Judgment. That is the true burden of my job.

Walking out to the car the even greater burden hits me... the same is true of EVERYONE whose life is in any way intertwined with my own. Nothing can be taken for granted. No one. And in the words of Father Zossimo in the Brothers Karamazov, "We are each responsible for all."

It's been a rough couple days.

My grandma died early yesterday morning. I got there two minutes too late. I then went straight to work. My panic attacks have been coming back. At work. It was all I could do to resist my manager taking me to the emergency room. I'm ashamed to go back in tomorrow. My ex physically moved on. I found out when I called him for help coping with my grief. I need to be supportive for my family members. My days have been hectic and planned down to the minute. Work made me literally fight for my day off to go to the funeral. I almost quit. My best friend's out of town and unreachable. I probably haven't been confiding in the most appropriate family member. I haven't slept more than two hours per night the last 3. I drink too much. Way too much. I can't quit smoking.

And the scary part is it could get way worse and I can hardly deal as is. I guess this is supposed to be one of those times where you're supposed to realize you're insufficient by yourself and you're supposed to turn to God.

Then, God... help me do so.

facing mortality

so the people around me seem determined to make me face their mortality and acknowledge how fragile the human mind and body is.

it looks as though my grandma isn't going to live much longer. she has alzheimers and has deteriorated immensely in the last couple weeks. i knew she wasn't doing well, but there is nothing that anyone can do or say to prepare you to see a loved one, an elder, who in the past held a position of authority in your life reduced to a mumbling babbling incoherent uncomprehending collection of bone, skin, and empty lifeless eyes. she wasn't even using words anymore. just sounds. i tried telling her stories and memories i had of her. i told her stories about her when she was young that she had told me. i dont know what i was expecting, i guess i just hoped i could say something that would at the very least make her eyes betray a spark of life. i pray that today was just a bad day for her. i'm not even sure if she knew if there was another person in the room.

my cousin michael was in an accident saturday night on his bike. all i knew was his face got bashed in pretty bad, he had a concussion and contusion and a broken collarbone, and as of last night he hadn't regained consciousness yet. it sounded really bad yesterday. but now today my aunt called my mom and apparently it wasn't quite as bad as it sounded, and it looks like he's going to be okay, though i still don't know too much situation. it was wretched the last 24 hrs wondering and not knowing if this was a life or death situation or not. you don't realize just how much you love someone until their premature demise is a real possibility screaming in your ear. i cringe thinking about how much i take those around me for granted.

and then there was this afternoon. i saw a man die today. when i was dropping phil off at the airport, there had been an accident going there on the freeway that was being cleaned up. on my way back the rain picked up again, big meaty drops, and as i was getting to where this accident was on the other side of the freeway about a quarter mile up in front of me some guy, i'm not even positive what happened, but i guess he hadn't seen the cars stopped/slowed down from the accident on his side, well he had hydroplaned (it was raining) or something and hit the barrier so hard that his car flipped up over it so it came down upsidedown half on our side, half on his, and was pretty much instantly a mass of flames and black smoke. so of course my side stopped and some men in the 5 or 6 cars ahead of me (also stopped)ran over right away to try to help (as well as the cops who ran over from the OTHER accident), but the car was flaming and the guy, well. yeah. it was horrible. i couldn't quite register it, standing in the pouring rain on the freeway watching the thick black smoke and huge flames from this bashed in car knowing full well that there was a person, a HUMAN BEING, trapped inside. someone with family friends, hopes, dreams... someone who might not have been ready for death.