mental notes

"They're mental to me!", he said.  

"You mean senti-mental?", I clarified.

"Uh huh.  I want to keep them for when you're dead".  

I tried to find the compliment in that and avoid the ugly truth.  One day I would be dead.  On the upside, he liked me enough to already be hanging onto little mementos, things to help him remember me.

Only moments before, blood curdling screams had ensued as he peered into the kitchen trash.

"WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!"  

Why did I do that?

I guess I thought they were junk, these crumbled up, scribbled on post it notes.  I don't really know why I threw them away when I cleaned out his lunch box this afternoon.  I just found a wad of paper scraps in a ziploc that had seen better days.  Looked like nothing of importance.  To be quite upfront, I barely recall writing these notes each day.  I just sort of do it.  It's become almost a mindless habit, but maybe not.  Maybe half awake, putting lunch pails into backpacks each morning and slipping in a little  message and sometimes a stick figured cartoon of he and I living out some fantasy is more then reminder of how I feel about my kids. It has seemed like just second nature, but maybe it's my nature, my true nature?  Maybe it's mindful and not mindless.  Whatever it is, he counts on it.  He holds onto them and it all matters to little him.  This tiny, two second effort apparently means a whole lot.  

So we sponged off the bits and globs of food and what-have-you that had sadly splattered across them while they lay in the garbage.  We spread the soggy little messages on the counter to dry.  I ran my fingers over them, I stared at them and then I took a photo.  Suddenly I wanted to remember something too.   I wanted to remember how wonderful it feels being the mother of an eight year old boy and a ten year old girl who also saves her mental/sentimenatal notes.  

"Will you always do that Mom, will you always write me these things?"    

"Count on it", I answered.  

Count on me to love you, even when I'm dead.

Otherwise Engaged

"And have I shown you my ring?"   I find the sunlight streaming through the windows and I aim my diamond straight at it, let brilliant little reflections sparkle for just us.    Shy rainbows appear randomly on the walls all around the square room.   The bed opposite her is empty.  It is Valentine's Day 1999.  I became engaged the night before.  I am a nursing student and I have to spend my day, my first day of promised matrimony otherwise engaged.    I am fulfilling some of my zillion hours of required clinical training at a hospital near the beach, on a perfect Sunday.   My patient, old and riddled with cancer was subdued when I came in at seven o'clock this morning, but my mood has lifted her spirits.  I'm all about the ring on my finger.  I gush endlessly.  

The bath I gave her has breathed life into her and she talks to me about places she lived,  houses, parrots, vacations she took long ago and about swimming in the ocean.  I feel close to her.  I pat her hand, let my fingers circle her frail wrist.   I gaze at my ring and I marvel at how it looks against her pale, sagging, speckled skin.   I like holding her hand.   I don't feel like letting go.  When her son comes in, she livens up further still.  

He seemed amazed to recognize his mother in the bag of bones lying on the bed.  The woman I'd shown my newly acquired engagement ring to over and over, seemed to be nearly born again.  

I leave them be.  I go spend some quality time with my ring.  "Have you seen this?".  I flaunt it to the nurses at the Nurse's Station.  A few roll their eyes, but not before I say again, "Take a look at this!!", as I shove it in front of their computer screens.  It looks strange on my familiar hand.   I'm fooling around; boasting, bragging.  I'm happy.   I want to make a nuisance of myself and conveniently enough for me, I'm an expert at it.  

It is a strange thing when someone dies.  

The room was quiet when I entered it again.  Sunlight no longer struck my diamond.  Rainbows were not dancing on the walls.  She'd stopped breathing.  I'd stop asking her if she wanted to see my ring and my finger stayed in line with the other ringless, less boastful fingers on my hand, which hung at my side.

I called her son.  He seemed angry with me.  It was sort of unexpected, I guess.   She had been terminally ill, though on this particular day, she'd seemed so extremely alive and now she was gone.   He wanted to blame me and so I let him.  But, when he came back to her room, where I waited for him with my ringed finger tucked into the pocket of my nurse's jacket, he hugged me and he cried.  For this I was ill prepared.

To be honest, I felt unworthy of hugging him back.  Who was I?  Just a person who'd given his mother her medications and her last bath and forced a ring into her face too many times for anyone healthy or not, in one day.  

She was my first patient to die while I was her nurse.

Things I thought while attending to the newly dead;

What if she isn't really dead?

Can she hear me?

If she can't hear me, can she read my mind?

Was she scared?

Is there a God?

Did she go to heaven or  H E double toothpicks?

What did I do wrong?

Why did this have to happen today?

Does her son blame me?

Did she think my ring was pretty?

How come I can still feel her?

And every time anyone died while I was their nurse from that day forward, I felt mostly the same things.

Are they really dead?

Is there a God?

How come I can still feel you?

half heartedly

"She looks like you when she does that", he said.  That little She, is holding her head in her hands.  One arm propped on the table with the soft palm opened at a 90 degree angle, holds stable the base of her head, her precious chin.    The other elbow also set on the table, with the open palm stretched upright, comforting the side, length of her face.  She, to me, looks lost, half hearted at best.
Note to self... no longer set head in hands for any stretch of time.   In future, hold head high and remember, impressionable people are observing.  
*Set a good example.


I had good examples around me while I was growing up.  
I had these nifty gifties, called "sisters".  
One came here yesterday.


Sometimes I feel like coming to my home is an actual sacrifice for those who come.
I live far.
In the rain like yesterday's, it seems farther still.
I am in a state of transition, which infers mild duress on those emotionally close to me.  
I have youngish children, who refuse to condition their hair on their own and so there are interruptions.  
Dogs here behave badly.  They give themselves baths (you know what I mean).
Sometimes I feel exhausting to others.
Sometimes I feel like my life is so alive that I can't possibly impose it on those who's lives seem under control, even though they love me and want to be a part of it, want to be "here".
Oh boy.


Another She in my life, a grown up She came here for me yesterday afternoon   She, who is nearly perfect, was extremely giving and polite.  
She gave me encouragement. 
She gave us pumpkins.
She gave them cookies.
She and I went allllllll the way out to the movies, at night, to see a film she'd already seen, but she watched again anyway, for ME.  
She talked softly to me as we drove home in the dark, all the way to where I live.  She listened to me tell stories about the "horse with no name", who stood in the middle of the road one night.  About the boulder in my hot tub, the frog in my toilet.    She listened with all of herself, while I half heartedly talked about my whole, little life.
When we arrived home in the dark, in the rain, at my house, in the middle of nowhere, we got out of my car and walked to my entry door and found it literally covered with teeny frogs.  We laughed at them.    We laughed at my door, at my frogs, at my life, at this situation.  We laughed with all our hearts.  
She reminded me, without words, to embrace all my life, whole heartedly, because it goes by so quickly.  It goes by too fast.  
She made me notice myself, my life, my door, my night, my frogs, my life.  She silently pointed out to me the noticeably unnoticeable oddities of my everyday existence.   In her laugh were the words, "Don't waste it".   In my mind are the words, "I'll try not to...

sign significance

The first time I watched this video clip, I laughed till I cried.  The second time I watched it, just a few days later, I actually threw up.  What does that tell you?

My reaction was strong.  

When my body reacts strongly to something, I should pay attention.    

This afternoon a bird, a Mourning Dove, landed on my car about 4 feet away from where I sat outside on a porch step.    It was beautiful and it was so near, I wanted to touch it.  When my kids and dogs came out, the bird quite smartly moved to the low eve of the roofline, then eventually back to my car.  It stuck around, uncomfortably comfortable while my kids and dogs created  commotion enough to drive away a thousand birds.  Something was clearly wrong with it, or was it a sign?  If so, what did it mean?  It was not exactly a bird in hand, but a bird on car might be similar enough.

When my body reacts,  when something out of the ordinary persists, when I feel a sensation all the way to my core, some part of me says, "pay attention", but I don't always listen and I now sit here and wonder what would've happened if I actually heeded those signs.  What would come to me if I opened myself?  What is there for the taking or harvesting that I've passed over and over and possibly even over again?  What have I missed?  What did I lose out on?  

When I sat in Barbuta, on Washington Street in NYC with an old friend and a new friend and a soon to be friend, I laughed till I cried watching that crazy video.  I can feel everything about that moment, that whole night.  The food was out of this world, but maybe it was the company that made it taste that way?   Did I miss something?   Was there a sign in there.  Why did I laugh till I wept one night over something rather horrendous, when another night it made me completely ill?  

I don't really have regrets from my life, despite the way things have gone, how can I regret anything when I have you?  But I wonder what would have been there for me if I'd have paid attention to the signs in life.   

More then thinking about the signs I've walked past without changing course, are the signs I've presented to others.   Watching others ignore them is even more profoundly disturbing.   Have you ever given a green light to someone and watched them simply stay still?  Nothing more frustrating.
Eddie says it quite well, "oh the rusted signs we ignore, choosing the shiny ones instead"....