So I am again seeing the guy I was seeing for a year and a half and then broke it off with, but it isn't what you're thinking. We really are friends.
"He only wants you around for one thing," I was told by a so-called friend soon after. "I'm a guy, too, and I know about these things."
Oh, yeah?--so that's why you are talking to me, buddy?
"If you think it's friendship, you're in denial."
Well, gosh, I know what friendship looks like...a real friend is that rare person you can tell the truth to. That doesn't come around every day, don't I know it.
My father was a talker. He wasn't an emoter, but he liked to think, and he liked to discuss. He particularly liked theology. Raised a Bible-quoting Baptist, he met my mother when they were in their late teens, and by the time I was born (before either of them turned twenty) she'd turned him atheist, merely by listening to his beliefs and replying, "You really believe that stuff?"
My grandmother tried to repair the situation by whisking me off to overnights that culminated in a trip to church on Sunday morning; when I was returned home, my father sat me on the couch for a debriefing. I was six or seven at the time this went on.
"You know, there is no God," he said. I nodded. "You know that all that stuff your grandmother told you is made-up stories," he went on. I agreed. (I particularly didn't like it when my grandmother had informed me "if you made a mistake printing the Bible, you would go to Hell because it was a holy book and had to be perfect!" I thought that was horribly unfair and an odd thing to bring up to a kid. My grandmother was a little whacky, as my father well knew.)
My mother was the quiet and reclusive one. She wasn't the type to have girlfriends over for coffee and chat in the afternoons. She still isn't, and neither am I.
I remember one sunny fall day we were all driving home from the apple orchard, and my father said to my mother, "When I throw this apple core out the window, where do you think it will hit?", and the two of them, only high school graduates, started a discussion about angles and velocity that lasted several apple cores out the car window and most of the way home.
I always had guys as friends. I was unassuming, like my mom, and easy to talk to, like my dad, and boys talked to me like friends. I never had a boyfriend until I was almost seventeen, and that was an overwhelming experience involving lots of hurt feelings and obsessive feelings and the tiny, immature beginnings of a capacity for passion--all too much for a sixteen-year-old, by far. My next boyfriend worked out better--a sweet guy to pal around with, someone I could never have fallen in love with but enjoyed pretending to, and when I broke up with him he was sad and called me hopefully for a long time afterward.
My first boyfriend and I developed an annoying and irresistible pattern of getting together for a few weeks every few years when we were both in between relationships, getting on each other's nerves and quarreling, and then parting ways in an offended furor. We did that for over a decade, believe it or not.
I have been single since my husband moved out in late 2004. A few men have bought me dinner over the years, and that has been nice for sure, but what I really crave is an ear to listen and some sound advice and a laugh or two. In recent months, with this big turmoil going on with me and my ex-husband, the people who have been the most rock-solid for me have been two men. One is a guy I work with who has become a real friend--the kind of friendship that works both ways--and he gives me hugs, and is quite amused and understanding when I start to squirm. The emotive thing will always be a mildly alien area for me, I think.
The other was the guy I was seeing for a year and a half. He was a physics major in college, and I'm sure he could solve my parents' apple core problem in about ten seconds. After two weeks of me cutting things off, I e-mailed him again. I considered it carefully first, but there is always the element of the unknown...is this one burned out? Can we really be friends?
I went to see him last Thursday. It had been three months since we had seen each other. I told him what had been happening with the ex and we ordered takeout. With the Discovery Channel in the background, we talked about other stuff, made each other laugh, ate the food, played some footsie and fell asleep.
I hear that best friends make the best marriages. That's all I'm saying about me and committed relationships. I don't know if that's anyplace I can get to, but I do know that I'll take one good friend over a boyfriend any day...and it sure does help that I know how to be good friends with guys.
This isn't me. It's Night Windows by Edward Hopper.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
"When Will You Be Back?"
I was down on the floor, entertaining a two-year-old, while her mother helped my patient onto the commode beside us. My patient was the grandmother. We were in one of the bedrooms, the one with the most comfortable bed and the TV. My patient cried and wailed with each shuffling step, but her daughter was unfazed, so I decided to let them do what they were doing--this was their life, not mine, I was a visitor here--and keep my focus on the child. She was playing with a toy truck, and had it drive up and down her mother's leg until her mother batted it away with her hand. I thought of blowing up a glove balloon, but decided that she was too young and might chew it.
The misery in the room was a very basic kind of misery, the kind caused by physical suffering. I felt how huge it was, and how the child with the truck and her matter-of-fact mother took some of the heft out of it. It can be easy to relieve suffering. The first and hardest part is not shutting down in the face of it.
My patient hadn't slept in two days from the pain. Nobody had called me, because they didn't think of it--I was coming Tuesday, right? They would see me Tuesday. I tell patients and families all the time, "You call any time day or night, we can help you," but so many people are so used to getting by on their own that they don't understand what that means. I walked through the door, and saw a woman with a gaunt, shadowed face, her eyes gleaming with pain, and crying. I felt the horror of it (and hers was an especially terrible cancer, with tumors actually starting to push up from under her skin on her torso, and leg, and back; her insides were so full of tumors, there was no more room for them to grow), and felt the battleax nurse in me get annoyed, too-- "This was avoidable, people! What were you all thinking??"--and also felt how great the need was for somebody to steer this ship away from the shoals. Well, I could do that, and I did.
The thing is, I get to leave. I write out instructions, we discuss the plan, I reassure, I stress the importance of calling if there is a problem, but then I get to pick up my nursing bag and walk out the door. I have to make sure that I have left them with more than bottles of pills and written schedules; I have to be sure that I have given them some nameless something that can help them get through the hours before the next nursing visit. I don't choose to identify what that something is. With each person, it's a little different.
I offered the services of the social worker, and the chaplain, and the home health aide, and tried my best to get them to accept one other discipline in their home other than the nurse (because I know how much it helps--they didn't, couldn't), but they turned all of it down. "All we need is you," they told me,"we trust you."
I have another cancer patient two towns over. He once weighed 300 pounds, mostly muscle, 6 feet tall, and photos of him from years ago startle me, because it could not possibly be the same man, save the sparkle in his eyes. He's now about 145. He used to train horses; he's from horse country, out around Kentucky, and never married. "I couldn't, living that kind of life, I travelled all the time and worked from 5am to midnight. Not that I didn't have lady friends through the years!"
I pulled up a chair, and we talked. I've been seeing him for three months now; he hates the pain, so whenever it starts getting ahead of the medication, he tells me, and we adjust it. He was amazed that the pain meds we used on him worked so well--he'd been taking MS Contin from the oncologist and it hadn't done much. A lot of our talks initially were about how wonderous life had become without being plagued with pain all the time. A full night's sleep was next to heaven. He was able to go for walks again, and was happy to be able to get the the grocery store and get his shopping done without having to have anybody help him.
As time went on, he started telling me stories of his boyhood in the Kentucky hills in the forties. "Do you wish you could go back there? Would you if you could?" I asked, and he answered with a slow smile, "Naw, I'm done with that place. I'm content here."
He told me about his travels, and life on the road, and being poor. One day he was wearing a T-shirt with a decal of wolves on it, and he said, "Somebody saw this today and thought that I was an animal lover!" I laughed and said, "C'mon, I bet you're wearing that because it was fifty cents at the flea market and it fit you." "You are absolutely right!" he grinned.
He's a charming but solitary man. He has pictures of the Virgin Mary on his walls, "just in case," he says, but I don't believe him. He's an atheist, and was never a Catholic. I'll bet there is some other reason that he just hasn't told me yet.
He started to fall off about a month ago, and gave me a worry--sleeping all the time, no more walks, the pain in a new place--but then righted himself and had a few weeks of feeling better. Than this week I went to see him and his face, always pale, was gray around his eyes and cheekbones, and his eyes were dull and troubled. "What's wrong?" I asked, and we talked about it. It wasn't so much the pain and the breathing problems as the weakness and the futility of it all. "I know I won't get any better, but I want to. I don't like this."
"I wish I had a magic nursing wand," I told him,"and could take it all away from you."
"So do I."
"Yeah. But I can't. All I can do is see you on Wednesday. And Friday, too. I'll keep a close eye on you. How's that?"
"Yeah, I think I need it."
I stood up to get my stethescope from my nursing bag, and he said suddenly, "You are beautiful."
I didn't know how to respond at first. "Well, I'm having a really good hair day," I answered, and he gave me a grin. The gentle sparkle in his eyes was back, if only for the moment.
He is a man who takes it as it comes, and rolls with it, and looks for the humor in everything. He also takes life very seriously. He's like me in that way.
And I'm his nurse. I'll be back at the end of the week.
The misery in the room was a very basic kind of misery, the kind caused by physical suffering. I felt how huge it was, and how the child with the truck and her matter-of-fact mother took some of the heft out of it. It can be easy to relieve suffering. The first and hardest part is not shutting down in the face of it.
My patient hadn't slept in two days from the pain. Nobody had called me, because they didn't think of it--I was coming Tuesday, right? They would see me Tuesday. I tell patients and families all the time, "You call any time day or night, we can help you," but so many people are so used to getting by on their own that they don't understand what that means. I walked through the door, and saw a woman with a gaunt, shadowed face, her eyes gleaming with pain, and crying. I felt the horror of it (and hers was an especially terrible cancer, with tumors actually starting to push up from under her skin on her torso, and leg, and back; her insides were so full of tumors, there was no more room for them to grow), and felt the battleax nurse in me get annoyed, too-- "This was avoidable, people! What were you all thinking??"--and also felt how great the need was for somebody to steer this ship away from the shoals. Well, I could do that, and I did.
The thing is, I get to leave. I write out instructions, we discuss the plan, I reassure, I stress the importance of calling if there is a problem, but then I get to pick up my nursing bag and walk out the door. I have to make sure that I have left them with more than bottles of pills and written schedules; I have to be sure that I have given them some nameless something that can help them get through the hours before the next nursing visit. I don't choose to identify what that something is. With each person, it's a little different.
I offered the services of the social worker, and the chaplain, and the home health aide, and tried my best to get them to accept one other discipline in their home other than the nurse (because I know how much it helps--they didn't, couldn't), but they turned all of it down. "All we need is you," they told me,"we trust you."
I have another cancer patient two towns over. He once weighed 300 pounds, mostly muscle, 6 feet tall, and photos of him from years ago startle me, because it could not possibly be the same man, save the sparkle in his eyes. He's now about 145. He used to train horses; he's from horse country, out around Kentucky, and never married. "I couldn't, living that kind of life, I travelled all the time and worked from 5am to midnight. Not that I didn't have lady friends through the years!"
I pulled up a chair, and we talked. I've been seeing him for three months now; he hates the pain, so whenever it starts getting ahead of the medication, he tells me, and we adjust it. He was amazed that the pain meds we used on him worked so well--he'd been taking MS Contin from the oncologist and it hadn't done much. A lot of our talks initially were about how wonderous life had become without being plagued with pain all the time. A full night's sleep was next to heaven. He was able to go for walks again, and was happy to be able to get the the grocery store and get his shopping done without having to have anybody help him.
As time went on, he started telling me stories of his boyhood in the Kentucky hills in the forties. "Do you wish you could go back there? Would you if you could?" I asked, and he answered with a slow smile, "Naw, I'm done with that place. I'm content here."
He told me about his travels, and life on the road, and being poor. One day he was wearing a T-shirt with a decal of wolves on it, and he said, "Somebody saw this today and thought that I was an animal lover!" I laughed and said, "C'mon, I bet you're wearing that because it was fifty cents at the flea market and it fit you." "You are absolutely right!" he grinned.
He's a charming but solitary man. He has pictures of the Virgin Mary on his walls, "just in case," he says, but I don't believe him. He's an atheist, and was never a Catholic. I'll bet there is some other reason that he just hasn't told me yet.
He started to fall off about a month ago, and gave me a worry--sleeping all the time, no more walks, the pain in a new place--but then righted himself and had a few weeks of feeling better. Than this week I went to see him and his face, always pale, was gray around his eyes and cheekbones, and his eyes were dull and troubled. "What's wrong?" I asked, and we talked about it. It wasn't so much the pain and the breathing problems as the weakness and the futility of it all. "I know I won't get any better, but I want to. I don't like this."
"I wish I had a magic nursing wand," I told him,"and could take it all away from you."
"So do I."
"Yeah. But I can't. All I can do is see you on Wednesday. And Friday, too. I'll keep a close eye on you. How's that?"
"Yeah, I think I need it."
I stood up to get my stethescope from my nursing bag, and he said suddenly, "You are beautiful."
I didn't know how to respond at first. "Well, I'm having a really good hair day," I answered, and he gave me a grin. The gentle sparkle in his eyes was back, if only for the moment.
He is a man who takes it as it comes, and rolls with it, and looks for the humor in everything. He also takes life very seriously. He's like me in that way.
And I'm his nurse. I'll be back at the end of the week.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Pasttimes and Obsessions
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:
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:
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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