I am a quasi-anti-social, non-hobbyist, non-active type person. Left to myself--which happens regularly--I do nothing. Doing nothing is bliss. I don't do nothing in a mindful, meditative way, either. I just wander around the house in my bathrobe, drinking coffee and staring out the window. I probably look like an advertisement for antidepressants, except that I am content.
Am I a big loser because of this trait? Maybe so. Don't list me under the Movers & Shakers that you know. Am I boring? I rarely get bored, but then, nobody can get up into my head like I can, so yes, being around me is dull as sticks.
My brain is not necessarily a rich and exciting landscape. I do get one illuminating thought after another sometimes and think, "Oooo, I need to write this down, I am brilliant!", and then I write them down and find that they are the usual commonplace banalities only dressed up all sparkly when they are dancing in my head and not coming out of somebody else's mouth. Yep--my mind is mostly a continuous loop of hackneyed big-budget movies that think they are deep (much like American Beauty).
With all this mental activity going on, and so little to engage me in the real world, I guess that would make me prone to picking up obsessions. Fortunately my "down-time" comes in small increments, and my day-to-day life is busy enough to keep me out of serious trouble. I do get little obsessions, though. I don't know where they come from or why, but here are the two most recent:
1) Horse racing. The other day was my birthday (yeah, yeah, another one, whatever) and to treat myself I watched Secretariat. It's by Disney, so that gives you an idea of how slick and watered-down the movie is, and my kids said, "Ew, horse racing," and didn't want to watch it, so they had dinner out with their father and I watched it by myself. (If that underscores some sort of disarray of my priorities so be it--it was MY birthday, dammit.) It was actually a pretty good movie--Diane Lane and John Malkovich made the overt Disney emotional manipulation almost enjoyable--but it set off my latent horse racing obsession. I had to watch all the real Secretariat races on YouTube, and would have started in on Sea Biscuit and Seattle Slew if it wasn't that the kids were home and it was getting late. I don't know what it is. The only trip I want to take is to Saratoga. It's not a gambling thing, either, because I'm one of those people who is karmically destined to work my ass off for a living and I know it. (I'm trying to adjust that, though.)
2) Gerard Butler as the Phantom of the Opera. Okay, what the hell is up with that? I can't watch any of his other movies--300? The Ugly Truth? Oh, please. But pair him up with Andrew Lloyd Webber! Who knew the guy could sing? I need to stay away from Andrew Lloyd Webber scores--I had a major Jesus Christ Superstar obsession fifteen years ago around Eastertime, which is probably as close to a conversion to Christianity that I'll ever get (and I mean that seriously, I finally "GOT" the whole dying-on-the-cross thing, but that's a story for another day). When Gerry flaps his black cape around in a few of the scenes, I can remind myself that it's just a silly movie, but then at the end of "The Point of No Return" when he sings, "anywhere you go let me go too..." with such despair and longing, I am SO sunk. In the depths of this obsession, I found that he has had his New York City apartment featured in Architectural Digest. I tried to figure out whether or not this showed depth of character, then brought myself up short--he's an ACTOR, for crying out loud, WHO CARES!! An actor with an oddly shaped mouth! What the hell!
A few winters ago, I spent every night watching episodes of Sex and the City and eating buffalo chicken with blue cheese dressing, but that was more of a self-soothing experience than an obsession. With obsessions, my head comes off of my body and I float around in the stratosphere in a little bubble. It is unpleasant to come back down to Earth. What is it that I see way up there, precisely?
No harm done. I won't be watching The Bounty Hunter, either.
Ahhhh, Gerry:
This isn't me. It's Night Windows by Edward Hopper.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
A Strange Little Hospice Story
I'm a hospice nurse. I see nursing home patients and hospital patients sometimes, but mostly I do home care. The nursing I do feels like old-fashioned nursing, when nurses wore black capes and carried their nursing bags around the worst neighborhoods in the city, and everybody respected them, because they would walk into the most fraught and chaotic situations and make things better.
I take care of people who are dying at various speeds and intensities. A good day for my patients is a fabulous and wonderful thing, and on the good days I give them the thumb's-up and stay out of the way. On the bad days, I'm liable to do many different things--give or set up medications, change bedding, give a bedbath or a shower, make tea, move furniture (don't tell the boss, we're not supposed to), help to the bathroom and back again, give hugs, hold hands, adjust the TV, amuse the dog or cat, change lightbulbs, make a phone call, or just talk. I talk a lot. I teach, patients and families, about medications, about caregiving, about symptoms, about what we call "the decline", and about death. I do nursey stuff too--blood pressures and wound care and all of that--and engage in the social chitchat all of us need to feel comfortable and comforted.
I listen. I hear a lot of stories--amazing stories--but I am not, by nature, a story collector, or much of a story listener. Even as a kid, I got bored being read to and learned how to read early so I could tell the stories to myself. I work with chaplains and social workers, and they see my patients too--usually not as often as I do, but often--and they collect the stories far better than I can.
My patients sometimes tell me things they can't tell anyone else. I've been the one they have said "I know I'm dying," to and cried, while I sit there and listen. I find myself witnessing a lot of pain, and a lot of letting go, and it keeps me clear in my own life about what is important and what is nonsense, but not for a minute do I go into my work to meet some need of my own. Many of my patients never get close to me at all; sometimes I get closer to a family member than the patient, and sometimes I'm just the nurse, and that's okay. I'm there for them, not for me, and I'm not trying to be anything more than what they want or need me to be.
Sometimes I find myself trying harder than usual, though. Jean from the islands was in his nineties but didn't look it, and he had a smile that was the best I've ever seen. When I would visit him and he was angry about being sick, or simply feeling like shit, and I couldn't get a smile, I'd joke and tease and cajole until I got one. The few times I couldn't I would leave his house feeling a little like shit, too, which wasn't fair to Jean at all but I couldn't seem to help it.
When I started being his nurse we would sit together in his yard out in the sun and talk. His accent was thick and difficult to navigate, but he didn't mind repeating, and when I would say, "Jean, I have no idea what you just said," he would smile and shake his head and repeat it. He worked manual labor his whole life, and his arms were still etched with muscle, although thinner by the week. He had rode his bike everywhere until he got too sick, about six months before I met him. He had a deep belief in God. His issue with the business of dying had much less to do with leaving this world than with his body skipping out on him. By Christmastime he had been bedbound for weeks, and the boredom of being weak and exhausted would make him irritable. Often I would visit and he would be sleeping, so I would not wake him--I would quietly assess his breathing, his color, the appearance of comfort versus discomfort, and talk to his granddaughter about what had been going on and what they might need.
A week before he died he was the brightest I had seen him since the days we sat in the sunshine--he told stories, he laughed, he knew where he was. I sat beside his bed for much longer than I usually gave a visit, because I suspected this was the last time, and I was right. The next day he went to sleep, and he didn't really wake up after that. He died right before midnight on New Year's Eve, in a characteristic decision to live the year out to it's fullest.
I don't go to funerals much, but I went to Jean's. I didn't get to the wake, so before the service, I paid my respects while the casket was still open. He was dressed in a dapper gray suit, looking not at all like himself, but then I noticed--to my great joy--that he was smiling. I had never in my life seen a body smiling serenely in a casket, but he was--the corners of his mouth were distinctly upturned.
A few days later I was in the office, and saw the chaplain I work with, and I mentioned going to Jean's funeral. She had been to the wake. "It's amazing," I said, "but did you notice how he was smiling? I've never seen a person smiling in a casket before."
She gave me a very odd look. "He wasn't smiling," she said.
"What? Yes, he was. It was so clear. His mouth was turned up. You couldn't miss it!"
She shook her head. "No, kiddo, he was not smiling. You saw him smile?"
Now I was doubting myself, but in my mind's eye, I could see him. I could feel him, too--I had felt the happy, boyish, joyful energy of his smile all around his casket as I stood there looking and saying my own version of a prayer for him. "Yeah, I saw him smile. He was smiling."
"That must have been for you, kiddo," she said.
You know? I think it was.
I take care of people who are dying at various speeds and intensities. A good day for my patients is a fabulous and wonderful thing, and on the good days I give them the thumb's-up and stay out of the way. On the bad days, I'm liable to do many different things--give or set up medications, change bedding, give a bedbath or a shower, make tea, move furniture (don't tell the boss, we're not supposed to), help to the bathroom and back again, give hugs, hold hands, adjust the TV, amuse the dog or cat, change lightbulbs, make a phone call, or just talk. I talk a lot. I teach, patients and families, about medications, about caregiving, about symptoms, about what we call "the decline", and about death. I do nursey stuff too--blood pressures and wound care and all of that--and engage in the social chitchat all of us need to feel comfortable and comforted.
I listen. I hear a lot of stories--amazing stories--but I am not, by nature, a story collector, or much of a story listener. Even as a kid, I got bored being read to and learned how to read early so I could tell the stories to myself. I work with chaplains and social workers, and they see my patients too--usually not as often as I do, but often--and they collect the stories far better than I can.
My patients sometimes tell me things they can't tell anyone else. I've been the one they have said "I know I'm dying," to and cried, while I sit there and listen. I find myself witnessing a lot of pain, and a lot of letting go, and it keeps me clear in my own life about what is important and what is nonsense, but not for a minute do I go into my work to meet some need of my own. Many of my patients never get close to me at all; sometimes I get closer to a family member than the patient, and sometimes I'm just the nurse, and that's okay. I'm there for them, not for me, and I'm not trying to be anything more than what they want or need me to be.
Sometimes I find myself trying harder than usual, though. Jean from the islands was in his nineties but didn't look it, and he had a smile that was the best I've ever seen. When I would visit him and he was angry about being sick, or simply feeling like shit, and I couldn't get a smile, I'd joke and tease and cajole until I got one. The few times I couldn't I would leave his house feeling a little like shit, too, which wasn't fair to Jean at all but I couldn't seem to help it.
When I started being his nurse we would sit together in his yard out in the sun and talk. His accent was thick and difficult to navigate, but he didn't mind repeating, and when I would say, "Jean, I have no idea what you just said," he would smile and shake his head and repeat it. He worked manual labor his whole life, and his arms were still etched with muscle, although thinner by the week. He had rode his bike everywhere until he got too sick, about six months before I met him. He had a deep belief in God. His issue with the business of dying had much less to do with leaving this world than with his body skipping out on him. By Christmastime he had been bedbound for weeks, and the boredom of being weak and exhausted would make him irritable. Often I would visit and he would be sleeping, so I would not wake him--I would quietly assess his breathing, his color, the appearance of comfort versus discomfort, and talk to his granddaughter about what had been going on and what they might need.
A week before he died he was the brightest I had seen him since the days we sat in the sunshine--he told stories, he laughed, he knew where he was. I sat beside his bed for much longer than I usually gave a visit, because I suspected this was the last time, and I was right. The next day he went to sleep, and he didn't really wake up after that. He died right before midnight on New Year's Eve, in a characteristic decision to live the year out to it's fullest.
I don't go to funerals much, but I went to Jean's. I didn't get to the wake, so before the service, I paid my respects while the casket was still open. He was dressed in a dapper gray suit, looking not at all like himself, but then I noticed--to my great joy--that he was smiling. I had never in my life seen a body smiling serenely in a casket, but he was--the corners of his mouth were distinctly upturned.
A few days later I was in the office, and saw the chaplain I work with, and I mentioned going to Jean's funeral. She had been to the wake. "It's amazing," I said, "but did you notice how he was smiling? I've never seen a person smiling in a casket before."
She gave me a very odd look. "He wasn't smiling," she said.
"What? Yes, he was. It was so clear. His mouth was turned up. You couldn't miss it!"
She shook her head. "No, kiddo, he was not smiling. You saw him smile?"
Now I was doubting myself, but in my mind's eye, I could see him. I could feel him, too--I had felt the happy, boyish, joyful energy of his smile all around his casket as I stood there looking and saying my own version of a prayer for him. "Yeah, I saw him smile. He was smiling."
"That must have been for you, kiddo," she said.
You know? I think it was.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Am I An Idiot?
I stopped seeing the guy I was seeing for the past year and a half. I miss him. I wish things could be otherwise. I tried to be just friends for a couple of months, which meant e-mails a few times a week, but it didn't work out. That was my deal, not his.
It is so true that you can't be friends if feelings lean you in another direction, and why is that? He certainly was more a friend to me than anything. There was a lot to build on, there. So what is my problem? Why doesn't it feel right to just be friends?
We hardly even had what you would call "dates". I would drive to his place on Thursdays, generally--the night my kids stay over their dad's--and we would eat takeout and curl up on the couch and watch stupid TV. He was asleep by 9--he's a morning person, and I am not. About half the time, he wouldn't even talk, he'd be half-asleep when I got there. We went out to the movies about three times, I think, and out to see a band once--that was totally my doing, believe me--and out to eat maybe five or six times, the first three within the first four dates back in the summer of 2009. Yeah, I counted. Is that pathetic? I asked him...
"Are you some sort of recluse?"
...and he laughed at that, good-naturedly, and didn't confirm or deny.
"Bring your kid out my way this weekend to hang with my kids," I asked, about four months in, and he said, "Sure, why not?" and then didn't answer his phone that entire weekend. "You could have just said no," I told him Monday, and he said, "Why? I see no reason why I shouldn't meet your kids," but then he never did.
He never suggested we get together to do anything. Never. Ever, not once. That's odd, right? So I looked up... "schizoid personality", and believed it fit, for a minute...but the well-rounded truth was, this guy had way more Facebook friends than me, was playful and teasing, and he had actually done many social activities in a past I had not been a part of, and even enjoyed them. So I asked him...
"Do you just want something light and casual, here? Because it's clear that we like each other, we get along really well, but if you absolutely don't want anything serious I want to know..."
"No, I don't want something light," he said, without hesitation. He was drying dishes at the time, and I was frustrated and annoyed with him, pacing around his kitchen. I had stayed over on an actual Saturday, and he told me 11am Sunday morning that it was time for me to go, because the guys were coming over to watch football in a bit. (My kids were with their dad again. Every-other-weekend and all that.) I was incredulous. When I got mad, he didn't even get mad back. He would not fight. He would smile and say, "Okay," in a sort of checked-out, not exactly indifferent but trying to be, kind of way.
Okay, I am an idiot. I broke it off about three times before the last time, even though it was clear from about the word "go" that nothing would come of this. But...
I felt comfortable at his place. I would walk through the door and "aaahhhhh," would exhale through my body. Sure, it was respite from the challenges and responsibilities of my life, but no other home I've been in felt so much like home-away-from-home as his place. It just did.
He was smart as hell--slightly smarter than I am, but not crazy-genius, so we could talk. We would discuss things, usually in the mornings when he was chipper, and usually some current events topic, and we would take contrary sides sometimes. (He watched Fox News in the mornings, which horrified me, but listened to NPR in the car. About watching Fox, he said, "You have to know what the other guy is thinking.")
He was sarcastically funny. He made me laugh, often. I could make him laugh. We made eye contact at times that spoke understanding without words. The first time we did that I thought, "Whoa, and we've known each other just a few months, wow," but he also had a habit of looking straight ahead (at the TV, you know) while talking to me, so it didn't happen a lot.
"I like that color blue on you," he'd say. "You've got spine," he said, another day. "I respect you. I kinda...admire you," he said another day, a day I was telling him that it really didn't seem as if we were going anywhere, seeing as he didn't call, answer his phone, make an effort to see me, or take any part in my life at all, or seem to want to--and he was trying to tell me how much he really did like me.
He really did like me. "I need a hug," I would say, and he would wrap me up. When I hadn't planned for the change in weather, he'd dig out sweaters for me, without me asking. When awful things were happening with my ex-husband last summer, he was attentive (answered the phone!) and supportive and gave good advice, and he listened to me with patience and kindness. When I was trying to dump him, he's send sweet "I hope you are well" e-mails that would suck me right back in again.
Yes...I was that easy.
This last time will be the time that sticks.
Notice the future tense? It hasn't quite taken hold yet. Am I an idiot? He's a wonderful man, who was too flattened by his last bunch of relationships to bring himself to do it again, and that is pretty much the story. So be his friend, right? I'm sure I could use another friend.
Not him, though. I fell in love.
It is so true that you can't be friends if feelings lean you in another direction, and why is that? He certainly was more a friend to me than anything. There was a lot to build on, there. So what is my problem? Why doesn't it feel right to just be friends?
We hardly even had what you would call "dates". I would drive to his place on Thursdays, generally--the night my kids stay over their dad's--and we would eat takeout and curl up on the couch and watch stupid TV. He was asleep by 9--he's a morning person, and I am not. About half the time, he wouldn't even talk, he'd be half-asleep when I got there. We went out to the movies about three times, I think, and out to see a band once--that was totally my doing, believe me--and out to eat maybe five or six times, the first three within the first four dates back in the summer of 2009. Yeah, I counted. Is that pathetic? I asked him...
"Are you some sort of recluse?"
...and he laughed at that, good-naturedly, and didn't confirm or deny.
"Bring your kid out my way this weekend to hang with my kids," I asked, about four months in, and he said, "Sure, why not?" and then didn't answer his phone that entire weekend. "You could have just said no," I told him Monday, and he said, "Why? I see no reason why I shouldn't meet your kids," but then he never did.
He never suggested we get together to do anything. Never. Ever, not once. That's odd, right? So I looked up... "schizoid personality", and believed it fit, for a minute...but the well-rounded truth was, this guy had way more Facebook friends than me, was playful and teasing, and he had actually done many social activities in a past I had not been a part of, and even enjoyed them. So I asked him...
"Do you just want something light and casual, here? Because it's clear that we like each other, we get along really well, but if you absolutely don't want anything serious I want to know..."
"No, I don't want something light," he said, without hesitation. He was drying dishes at the time, and I was frustrated and annoyed with him, pacing around his kitchen. I had stayed over on an actual Saturday, and he told me 11am Sunday morning that it was time for me to go, because the guys were coming over to watch football in a bit. (My kids were with their dad again. Every-other-weekend and all that.) I was incredulous. When I got mad, he didn't even get mad back. He would not fight. He would smile and say, "Okay," in a sort of checked-out, not exactly indifferent but trying to be, kind of way.
Okay, I am an idiot. I broke it off about three times before the last time, even though it was clear from about the word "go" that nothing would come of this. But...
I felt comfortable at his place. I would walk through the door and "aaahhhhh," would exhale through my body. Sure, it was respite from the challenges and responsibilities of my life, but no other home I've been in felt so much like home-away-from-home as his place. It just did.
He was smart as hell--slightly smarter than I am, but not crazy-genius, so we could talk. We would discuss things, usually in the mornings when he was chipper, and usually some current events topic, and we would take contrary sides sometimes. (He watched Fox News in the mornings, which horrified me, but listened to NPR in the car. About watching Fox, he said, "You have to know what the other guy is thinking.")
He was sarcastically funny. He made me laugh, often. I could make him laugh. We made eye contact at times that spoke understanding without words. The first time we did that I thought, "Whoa, and we've known each other just a few months, wow," but he also had a habit of looking straight ahead (at the TV, you know) while talking to me, so it didn't happen a lot.
"I like that color blue on you," he'd say. "You've got spine," he said, another day. "I respect you. I kinda...admire you," he said another day, a day I was telling him that it really didn't seem as if we were going anywhere, seeing as he didn't call, answer his phone, make an effort to see me, or take any part in my life at all, or seem to want to--and he was trying to tell me how much he really did like me.
He really did like me. "I need a hug," I would say, and he would wrap me up. When I hadn't planned for the change in weather, he'd dig out sweaters for me, without me asking. When awful things were happening with my ex-husband last summer, he was attentive (answered the phone!) and supportive and gave good advice, and he listened to me with patience and kindness. When I was trying to dump him, he's send sweet "I hope you are well" e-mails that would suck me right back in again.
Yes...I was that easy.
This last time will be the time that sticks.
Notice the future tense? It hasn't quite taken hold yet. Am I an idiot? He's a wonderful man, who was too flattened by his last bunch of relationships to bring himself to do it again, and that is pretty much the story. So be his friend, right? I'm sure I could use another friend.
Not him, though. I fell in love.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
The Lighthouse
I went down to the lighthouse this evening. That place has always been particularly special to me. My father would take us kids down there after supper as often as once a week when it wasn't the dead of winter. He'd say, "Let's go to Chandler Hovey Park and throw rocks in the water!" One of my favorite pictures of me is age three, standing at the base of the lighthouse with a warm coat and hat on, smiling. It's a nice perspective--someone must have squatted down quite low to get it, as it looks up at my face and at the lighthouse rising above me.
The waves were crashing hard--there must have been a storm out to sea; we were supposed to get rain today, but got nothing much more than a low, gray sky--and the white foam shone in the dusk. I sat in the car, parked down the end of the lot looking out toward the open sea rather than the harbor and Beverly. It was too cold to wander out on the rocks and not be distracted and shivering, but warm enough to sit in the car for quite some time with the engine off and just be quiet.
Nobody else came the entire time I was there. I think sitting at the lighthouse tonight was the first time in a long, long time I have completely stopped and been where I was--not in my head, but in a place. My head is often in good shape, so I can be up there fairly comfortably with all my thoughts rattling around each other in a gentle way, and I don't tend to seek solace in places anyway. I've got my notebooks for that, and music, and driving around when the traffic isn't a hinderance (I used to love very early Sunday morning when the sun was coming up). I remember being a kid and knowing all the rocks and tree roots in the backyard, and finding them magical, but those days are long gone and have not been replaced.
Tonight I watched the waves, and after a while it came to me that I was the only human being on the entire planet witnessing them. This small, jagged bit of land on the edge of an ocean was mine, for this short time, because it had no scruple about sharing itself with me.
Dusk had turned to night by the time I left, and I thought of the edges of land and water all around the continents, and the people along them looking out over the expanse of dark water and choppy seas like mine, either now or yesterday or tomorrow, and there was some tremendous comfort in that. There's something about feeling deeply connected that gives me peace.
Edit: The next morning, the 8.9 earthquake and tsunami had devastated Japan. Which has nothing to do with me posting about coastlines and permanence the night before, but gave me a bit of a start. Coastlines can change. Nothing is permanent. Practice peace in the turmult. Easier said than done.
The waves were crashing hard--there must have been a storm out to sea; we were supposed to get rain today, but got nothing much more than a low, gray sky--and the white foam shone in the dusk. I sat in the car, parked down the end of the lot looking out toward the open sea rather than the harbor and Beverly. It was too cold to wander out on the rocks and not be distracted and shivering, but warm enough to sit in the car for quite some time with the engine off and just be quiet.
Nobody else came the entire time I was there. I think sitting at the lighthouse tonight was the first time in a long, long time I have completely stopped and been where I was--not in my head, but in a place. My head is often in good shape, so I can be up there fairly comfortably with all my thoughts rattling around each other in a gentle way, and I don't tend to seek solace in places anyway. I've got my notebooks for that, and music, and driving around when the traffic isn't a hinderance (I used to love very early Sunday morning when the sun was coming up). I remember being a kid and knowing all the rocks and tree roots in the backyard, and finding them magical, but those days are long gone and have not been replaced.
Tonight I watched the waves, and after a while it came to me that I was the only human being on the entire planet witnessing them. This small, jagged bit of land on the edge of an ocean was mine, for this short time, because it had no scruple about sharing itself with me.
Dusk had turned to night by the time I left, and I thought of the edges of land and water all around the continents, and the people along them looking out over the expanse of dark water and choppy seas like mine, either now or yesterday or tomorrow, and there was some tremendous comfort in that. There's something about feeling deeply connected that gives me peace.
Edit: The next morning, the 8.9 earthquake and tsunami had devastated Japan. Which has nothing to do with me posting about coastlines and permanence the night before, but gave me a bit of a start. Coastlines can change. Nothing is permanent. Practice peace in the turmult. Easier said than done.
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