What’s Left June 16, 2008

About a week and a half ago I ran into Chris, who is the 29 year old Chief of Police in Parkersburg. I’ve known him since he was very young, as he was the best friend of my daughter’s first serious boyfriend. He also, after he married, bought the little house next to mine, and his first child was born there to him and his high school sweetheart-wife.

Chris has a job I wouldn’t want anyway, as a local boy turned police chief in a small town where he will be known for decades, still, as a wet-behind-the-ears-gung-ho kid.

But on May 25, when the tornado struck, his job became a burden I couldn’t imagine bearing. I couldn’t do it. And throughout everything, I would catch a glimpse of him in the Command Room at all hours of the day and night, in full uniform, conferring with people from a million different agencies.

In fact, now that I think about it, in the hour after the tornado struck, I remember seeing him at Triage, where I was, helping to carry his neighbors and relatives (he has a million relatives) up to the sidewalk to be laid down and assessed and treated and sent on.

Anyway, as I said, I didn’t get a chance to talk to him until about a week and a half later, when there happened to be a quiet half-moment at Incident Command, and I walked up and hugged him. He’ll always be another son-figure to me.

We talked a little bit about how he was holding up, how his pregnant wife and three children were holding up. Chris is a young man of amazing faith. Some of which he talked about with me.

And I told him that from the first coherent moments, the thought kept coming to me that, when everything else has passed away, these three things remain: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love. And how we had all seen that lived out in the past ten days.

His rubbed his hand over his tired face and put his arm around me and said to me quietly, “I’m going to have to steal that one.” We both laughed.

So I’ve been thinking about that.

Faith, I’ve heard tell, is about accepting. It’s in the present. It’s when the babies, amidst everything, are happy and laughing and cooing as long as someone is holding them and cooing at them and playing with them. It’s a feeling that somehow, though the surroundings are unfamiliar, everything’s OK. Under control. As it should be - or soon to be. Faith is what enables our muscles to un-clench. It lets us sleep at night.

Hope, then, is in the future, it’s expectant. That things will get better - that they can’t stay bad forever. It enables us to see crocuses in the snow, the flower in the crack of the sidewalk, and envision things as greener, and safer, and happy again.

And love.

Oh, Lord. Love.

Sorry, kids, it’s not to be found in a song. Or even in a movie.

In fact, it’s so damn over used and bastardized, I prefer the word “compassion” to love.

It’s acknowledging a connection between the most disparate people. It’s caring about strangers, caring enough to put yourself out. It’s when things like being right, and being heard, and being first matter less than understanding, hearing, and sharing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how little love you see in some places, and how much I am privileged to see where I work. I’ve really learned a lot there, and I’m so grateful for that.

I have felt overwhelmed by the sadness of our own tornados, and then the nearby flooding, and the knowledge that it seems to be going on everywhere. Tragedy, unfairness, and sadness, I mean.

And I can’t function that way.

But neither can I close myself off and refuse to care about anyone to save myself.

Thinking about these three things has helped me regain some balance. They remain, as they always have. As they always will.

I believe that there is no “them” - only an “us”. That anything that angers me in someone else, I can find only too readily, if I’m honest, in myself. I believe the greatest contribution I can possibly make in this world is to live compassionately as much as I can.

Including being compassionate with myself.

I read something once that said the most important person in your life is the person in front of you at any given moment. The most important thing yu could do with your life is to attend to the task at hand right now. And the most important time in your life is right now.

I’ve lived far too much life engrossed in navel gazing - that is, the obsessive and constant analysis of my own life, my own feelings, my own whatever. Me, me, me, me, me.

I am suddenly far more interested in the people around me.

The Hardest Thing June 13, 2008

This is a very hard thing for me to write. One I’ve thought a lot about in the last three weeks. One I’ve talked about with my fiance and a little bit with Britt but not with anyone else.

Because you’ll see me in a very unflattering light.

Like being in my underwear in one of those dressing rooms with awful flourescent lighting. With socks on. And believe me, no one wants to be seen that way.

But I have to. I owe it to myself. And to my fiance. And to my kids.

Yesterday, a lovely little friend dared to ask the question that’s been on a lot of people’s minds who know me - who know that I am now planning a wedding with a man I left less than three months ago.

Specifically - WTF?!?!?!?

And I fobbed her off as I have most people by saying, honestly, all I can tell you is that I’ve done a lot of soul searching, I’m not crazy, thank you very much for caring about me but I really do know what I’m doing.

And then Britt and I were talking on her way home from work about another situation, and she said the sentence, referring to someone else, “You dragged us along with what you were doing, and then you change your mind and you want us to be happy for you and support you, and you’re damn right we’re hurt. We’re confused.” And then, she said, “I don’t feel that way with you because, to be honest with you, I’m used to it with you.”

That’s it right there, ladies and gentlemen. That right there is the crux of the matter.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a drama queen extraordinaire. No. Really. Like no one you’ve ever met.

Not on purpose. I really do feel everything a hundred times more intensely than a normal person does I think. When I’m happy, I am blissfully happy. When I’m pissed, I have been pissed all my ife and this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone and by God someone has to pay.

But because I’m eloquent and also likeable, I have dragged people along in my ups and downs all my life. Especially my kids. You care. They care. And you root for me, and you support me, and you pray for me and send me hugs.

And then I go and switch currents on you - hell, I switch whole oceans. And you have every right to say…

What. The. Hell??????

I’ve done it all my life. Recently a co-worker with whom I’d been butting heads forever, in a tiff, said to me, “I’m not like you - it doesn’t have to be all drama.” I almost jumped across the desk and strangled her. Except I’m too old and immobile to jump across anything.

In my relationship with my fiance, I’ve been all about drama. In fairness to myself, he’s a pretty big drama king himself (he refuses to call himself any kind of queen - heh) but I will only talk about my side of the street here.

When we got together almost two years ago, I was so screwed up I had no business being with anyone. Those two months I spent living in my “tipi” were the best time I’ve ever spent in my life as far as getting my head untangled.

During the year and a half we were together, I had no idea who I was pissed off at - but I was pissed off all the time.

Not only that but I was trying to keep up a persona that, looking back, I have no idea who she was. Or who she was for.

When I tell you that everything changed for me standing there on that devastated street in Parkersburg the night of the tornado, what I didn’t tell you was that what I saw, very clearly, was my own penchant for drama.

My own selfishness. My own arrogance. My own self absorption.

Hell, even this whole blogging thing, for me, is an excercise, most of the time, in self absorption. Not for everyone - I’m not saying that. But for me, yes.

Remember the infamous post I wrote? Do you want to know why I chose that headline? Honestly? Because I knew it would attract readers. Jesus H. Christ. I’m a salesperson, if not in my current job, then at least by nature. I know what attracts attention.

Don’t get me wrong. All of the feelings have been real, all along. It’s been a mish mash. And yes, as I said, getting away, for both of us, was exactly what we both needed. We both were acting like freaking forty something morons.

And I will never ever ever in a million years forget what it felt like on that street that night.

When I was telling him I was sorry, I meant that I was sorry for my freaking bratty, blind, self obsession. I was sorry to him, to my kids, to people who suffer a hell of a lot more than I do, and to the people who love me who I’ve “dragged along” on all my adventures, leaving them worn out and me ready for another “adventure”.

I’m regretful. And remorseful. And ashamed and embarrassed.

And I’m realistic.

I know that I didn’t turn overnight into Mother Theresa, although I wish I could - minus the sari. I saw an interview once with a young woman who had gone and spent some time with Mother Theresa in Calcutta, and she said that the most remarkable thing about the woman was that whoever she was with at the time held her full attention. All of her focus and regard.

How many of us do that?

I want to be a kinder person. One who takes herself a little less seriously.

I want to give joy instead of demanding it and whining about it all the freaking time.

Most of all, I want to be a good wife to a very good man. One I am, honestly, so in love with I can’t find the words. Once I stopped worshipping myself that night, I was able to fully feel what I had been rebelling against for a long time.

The man makes my heart sing. And feel safe. He’s the funniest person I know outside of my own family - what? C’mon. We’re funny people! He’s also the most honorable and ethical. And talented. And he “gets” me. And he “gets” what I’ve been feeling since then - cuz he’s been feeling much of the same.

I want to be a good mom to my grown kids and, more importantly, a good nanna to my grandkids.

So, um, there. Now you know. I sorta suck. Oh, I have awesome things about me but in this particular regard, I suck a lot.

And I don’t want to anymore.

When I tell you that I have felt ambivalent about everything all my life, and that now, today, I feel 1000% sure about my choices, believe me when I say that I mean that.

I’m an ass. He’s an ass. But he’s my ass, and I’m his.

And I’m grateful as hell - as hell, I tell you - to be marrying him next Saturday.

Whaddya Know? Does This Make It A “Destination Wedding”? June 12, 2008

Ahhhhh. What little girl hasn’t dreamed of a “destination wedding”? Somewhere ocean side or lakeside - sun setting dramatically on the water, blah blah blah.

Besides me, I mean. I think I was the only little girl who never once planned her wedding as a little kid. I was going to be a world class war correspondent capturing the horrors of war and its effects on women and children so brilliantly that the world would wake up and go “Whoaaaaa - we have to stop this.”

Or a circus clown.

But I digress. (And I wasn’t kidding. About either.)

So we were going to get married on July 12, because that was going to be our first day off together. We, of the schedules-written-in-stone-that-can’t-be-changed.

And then his boss changed his schedule. Out of the blue.

My response. “Are you freaking kidding me?”

No. Apparently he wasn’t.

So after some schedule swapping around, our first day off together is now going to be Saturday, June 21. So my darling accosted his friend-who-happens-to-be-a-judge at home grilling in his backyard, and the date is set. 10 am on our deck that morning with just our kids present - minus that little Florida one - er - what’s her name? heh

And grilling out in our backyard that evening with whoever shows up.

Except that the weather does not stop here!

Two and a half inches of rain again last night. Darling is out right now doing traffic for what he refers to as “the city boys” who are pumping water on Main Street. Basements are flooding everywhere, and this ain’t shit.

Yesterday he went to a fire (he’s also a fireman) started by a sump pump that self immolated in the basement of an accounting office.

The entire freaking state has become lakeside property. My little pharamcy delivery guy came in last night, white faced from trying to reach us. His dad’s house is gone. Foundation crumbled, windows blown out.

They have taken, I hear, to preemptively flooding some basements all the way up to the top of the foundation in the path of the flood waters because at least that will keep the water pressure - uh - the same? So it doesn’t rush through and crumble the foundations with it.

Because unlike tornado damage, which is covered by insurance, flood damage is not.

Which means everything you see on TV washing away, and everything you don’t - furnaces dead, water heaters, cracked foundations, blown out windows, everything ruined - well, kids, that’s just tough cookies. Act of God and all that.

Another goddamn tornado hit a Boy Scout camp last night in western Iowa, killing four teenage boys and wounding 30-40 more that we’ve heard about now.

And somewhere around midnight the page went out and Darling (see how stringently I’m avoiding the term “my man”? Hmmm?) hopped up, jumped into his clothes and headed out the door to do “spotting”. This time, with me on his heels.

“What are you doing?” he says to me.

“I’m going with you.” He gives me a strange look and I say, “I’m never going through another two hours searching for you like I did in Parkersburg.”

So I sat in the front of that fire truck with two fireman, scanning the horizon, trying to see funnel clouds whenever lightning lit the sky enough to see something through the rain. My teeth clenched. Silent as a stone. When I get nervous, I chatter. When I get really scared, I clam up.

“Hey honey,” he says to me, trying to lighten the mood. “You can talk. you know.”

I look sideways at him and say, “Remember you said that.”

hahahahahahahahahahaha

Seriously. Is God mad at us all?

Some Things Are Just Too Big June 6, 2008

It would be nice, I suppose, to have a blog about low carb living or style things. Ha. Like I could do either. But when all I write about is the vagaries of my life, there are times when things are just too big to write about.

So I haven’t. Written, I mean. As you can tell.

I have been busy, that’s true. Either working extra hours at work, or working relief stuff in Parkersburg, which thankfully now is slowing down as progress is being made and the major relief stuff is gearing down as people are able to do a little more for themselves.

Like feed themselves.

As usual, my baby and I were discussing this this morning, and I hung up the phone with her in tears at the profound relief it was to be able to talk about this with someone who understands.

The past two months have been such an introspective and reflective time for me anyway. Probably the best time of my life in terms of honest self evaluation.

And then the tornado experience on top of it - I have been flooded with - gosh, I don’t even know how to tell you.

New insights not polite enough to be kind. Glaring revelations - mostly about myself. No, that’s not true. ABout everything.

I have had a recurring mental visual image of myself standing naked in the midst of unimaginable rubble (yuck - thank God it was only a mental image!). But I still see it - and me - with so much stripped away.

Anger. Self righteousness. So much false “certainty” and at the same time so much uncertainty.

I’ve said this several times over the last two weeks but I feel a clarity and a certainty and at the same time a strength in myself and a vulnerability that I’ve never felt in my entire life.

I could tell you how dumb and sad it was for my man and I to ever have gotten involved with each other two years ago when we did - how pathetically wounded we were at the time, and clinging to those wounds, lingering over them, chewing on them. And grasping at each other, trying to shove each other into the hole that had been left there by previous relationships. Taking out our anger on each other, and our suspicions and our raging, unrelenting pain.

We treated each other like shit and had no idea why.

No - actually, we both kind of knew what we were doing. We were just powerless to stop.

Over the past two months, we talked. And we actually talked more honestly than we had in a long time. But we kept banging into the same stuff.

If you haven’t lived through a life changing experience, you will be bored of hearing about this. And although you will understand my words, they won’t have the same gut meaning that they do for me.

But if you have, you will know that there can come a moment in life when absolutely everything changes.

It’s like. Shit. What is it like.

Like growing new eyes.

I have gone back to abusers in my life and justified it to myself and everyone around me, and I know what that’s like.

I have deluded myself and everyone around me into believing anything I want so badly to believe.

This is different.

What my beloved and I did to each other in our relationship was sad and lonely and hurting. In fact, I know for my own part, a good 50% of me was never present. It was back there, still chewing on the corpse and mourning and howling and pissed off.

And how we both look at each other now is totally and completely different. And there’s no way for me to explain that.

It’s just too big.

But I can tell you this.

We picked up our marriage license yesterday. We picked up our wedding rings the day before. And we’re getting married at 10 am on our deck on Saturday July 12. Because that’s the first day off we have together.

Think about that. We won’t have a day off together for 36 days - and then only because I did some begging and stuff to get my weekends switched.

I am more fortunate - on every hand - than I can ever express to you. My life is not without its problems, like anyone else’s.

But kids, don’t kid yourself. We are all in the middle of one shit storm or another. If you look around, there are some real tragedies around you all the time, and real pain.

And yet, here I stand. Naked and stripped down in the rubble. I am so freaking fortunate to still be standing. To have a very kind and honorable man standing beside me. To have a kid who embodies loyalty and heart to understand me when some things are too big to say.

To have people who care about me and my family.

I really do mean this - thank you so so so so much.

I’m Sorry June 2, 2008

…but I just don’t know what to say.

The ability of word craftsmanship has completely left me, at least for the moment.

Honestly, no one can say it better than my daughter has.

I have never seen a more beautiful and precious face than hers - tear stained, exhausted, strained, her little chin stuck out in determination and frustration.

Boys from the high school football team dug graves by hand with shovels for the first two residents of the town - a husband and wife - to be buried. That sticks in my head. Who ever thinks their teenage kid will be called upon to dig a grave?

Britt’s right. The spirit rises. And there is laughter amidst the tears. On Saturday the Iowa State football team was in town working on a site - clearing away the rubble. They asked a girl to take their photo together - not knowing it was our own rabid University of Iowa fan Molly, who said, “OK everybody, everybody say…HAWKEYES!” Hehehehehehe

My friend Betty came back in to work. I said, “Why are you using that walkie talkie, I thought you had your own? Where’s yours?”

With a perfectly straight face she looks at me and says “I don’t know. Wisconsin maybe?”

Life is so so good. So precious.

And a good huge percentage of the bullshit around which I have whirled most of my adult life is nothing but crap.

I’m talking about the shit in my head. The mental gymnastics.

I’ve been seeking some Zen kind of “meaning of life”? I found it. In the rubble, racing around town on a Gator trying to get to people who are getting hurt afterwards, trying to clean up.

In the face of my child, and her husband. And my neighbors.

The meaning of life is to live. To get up every day and attend to the task at hand - and in the meantime to encourage the person God puts in front of you at that time.

To hug the babies, because I’ve seen that a baby can lose their whole house, and they could care less, as long as someone still picks them up and plays with them and gives them their full attention.

I haven’t slept in my proud little tipi since the tornado. Not at all because I’m afraid to, but because I’m afraid to spend one unnecessary minute away from the man I ran away from two months ago.

I can’t imagine what I’ll write about in the future. Although I know that I will. I write as I breathe, like Britt does, like Selma does. Like so many of you do.

Time to go to work. Because that’s what I do. And darlings, that is so much more than enough for me.

Nerves Are Frayed May 30, 2008

Yesterday was my day off of work. Which was amazing, actually, considering the number of co-workers who aren’t coming in to work right now, having lost their homes. I expected to be called in. But I wasn’t.

So I spent the day with The Man manning the First Aid Station in Parkersburg. You may wonder, as I did, “WTF? Why do they need a first aid station now?”

Because people are picking up debris and cutting stuff down and - whatever. They step on nails and whack themselves in the head with pieces of lumber and steel.

Because people get chest pain, or break open stitches and staples from a few nights before.

And because until sometime yesterday there was no potable water in town, so one of our duties was to run around town on golf carts and gators handing out water.

Some genius at Incident Command (I kid you not, they use that term), at 10 am, decided to test the tornado siren yesterday at 10 am, once it was hooked back up. Without warning anyone. And yesterday was a day of rain and thunder and black skies again.

People freaked.

And last night there were more storms. Tornado watches and suddenly a small something blew into Aplington, Parkersburg’s sister town 4 miles to the west where my little domicile is. Knocking over trees, one house, one barn and one shed. Knocking out power.

There is no grocery store for 20 miles now.

There is a junk car graveyard set up on the east edge of town where they’ve been hauling the mangled wrecks. There are lots more still scattered all over the town.

I know I’m not conveying anything well here.

I think in bullets.

The Man was out all night in Parkersburg patrolling with a deputy from Benton County. They’re taking cops from all over the state because - well, I hate to even tell you this. But there’s been looting. And also, of course, to keep people out of dangerous areas after dark.

Where I work - we’re full as of yesterday. There are elderly coming out of the hospital with injuries with nowhere to go - their families have nowhere to take them either.

So they come to me. The ones who were a little confused to begin with - how do I even tell you? One man asks me fifty times a day, “Tell me again what happened. Why am I here? These aren’t my clothes.”

Thank you so much, guys.

Thank you so so so much.

I’m Fine May 28, 2008

Thank you everyone.

I’m fine.

And Britt, Jared, and the kids made it here safely, thank God. I haven’t seen them yet because, rightfully so, their focus is on helping their Jared’s parents and Jared’s brother and sister-in-law and their babies.

I can tell you that everything is changed. Nothing is the same, and I don’t know that it ever will be again.

That I have seen horror and heroism I have never seen the likes of before - and never want to again.

That the photos and videos you see don’t begin to capture what it’s like.

That it’s like walking on the face of the moon. You can’t tell where you are in a town where all your kids grew up - a town you know every inch of - because all the landmarks are gone.

And that I have come to the humbling realization that most of the shit upon which I have been spending my precious time, energy, and thoughts - just doesn’t mean shit.

Whether or not someone likes me, how someone should act or respond to me, or think, or speak, or dress.

The man I ran away from at the end of March - when he heard a tornado was on its way toward me and Creed and he couldn’t get me on the phone - he jumped in his car and headed right into it to get to me to make sure I was safe. Luckily, all he hit was the debris, and made it into Parkersburg minutes after the 15 second toranado took everything. He stayed there because there were bodies everywhere, and he is trained to handle those things. And with phone service out all he could do was attend to the task at hand, and pray for me.

I have heard a lot of songs and read a lot of books and magazine articles about what love is, and I could have told you very clearly on Sunday afternoon what I believe love is.

A few hours later I knew it in my bones.

Being a nurse, as soon as I was assured that I was OK and my residents were OK, I raced into the same war zone and spent the rest of the day helping people I’ve known most of my adult life,

And searching for him. Asking every fireman I saw where his crew was. Asking every familiar face if they’d seen him.

And then I found him.

And I got down on my knees in the rubble and the rain and with the shell shocked people wandering around me and asked him to forgive me for my self indulgence, my arrogance, my holier-than-thou bullshit.

This morning is the first morning that we had more than a few hours’ worth of sleep at a time. I will go back to work here in a few hours because the most productive thing I can do is to calm the fears of those I am resposible for, many of whom lost their homes, or their families did, and can’t comfort them.

And work for co-workers who have lost everything and don’t know when they will be able to come in again.

Everyone has been touched and I know, more than anything, that I am blessed beryond measure. None of mine went to the hospital while the rest of us searched for them. There was one terrifying moment on Sunday night when the man and I searched frantically for Creed, who had spent the day pulling people out from under destruction, carrying food and water from one staging area to the next and had given his cell phone without a thought to a woman trying frantically to reach her family.

Running from place to place, asking everyone “Have you seen Creed? Have you seen my son?” And the mud stained, bleak faces of my friends and neighbors, shaking their heads. “He was here a while ago.”

I could give a shit now about karaoke or - gosh. Anything.

Except my children and grandchildren. And collecting underwear for people, and diapers and formula. And holding the hands of the elderly refugees who have come to us, bandaged, fractured, lacerated and sutured, who ask over and over again, “Tell me again what happened. I don’t understand what happened.”

Hug your children and grandchildren.

My Sunday Advice - Do It Anyway May 18, 2008

Actually, this makes me laugh. I am the least qualified person I know to offer anyone advice - and typically people don’t want anyone else’s “advice”.

But I had to come up with something for a headline, right?

Don’t Wait Until _____ To Be Happy. We can all fill in the blanks with any number of things - which would be a fascinating survey in itself.

When we get these bills paid off. I do that one myself. In 2-1/2 years my financial situation will look a lot different than it does now. Unless I get hit by a feed truck and die in the meantime.

When I lose ____ pounds. This one breaks my heart. I’ve never met a woman who doesn’t chain herself to some stump with this one.

When the kids are grown. Or in kindergarten. Or when summer gets here. Or when school starts up again.

When my kitchen is “done”, I will have friends over. Unless, as I said, I die first. Which could happen. Do it anyway. If your friends don’t want to come into a screwed up kitchen, get new friends. Furnish your kitchen first with warmth and memories. The rest will follow.

When I’m done with my degree, then I can start doing stuff I want. Except - uh - you won’t. Because then you’ll be working at your first big job and exhausted and buying stuff you could never afford before and then working more to pay for it. Creed. Do stuff you want right now, and treasure every minute of it.

When we move in together/get married/have kids, our relationship will really blossom and settle into an idyllic fairy tale. Until I get the flu and shit the bed. Or you have a heart attack and can’t work anymore. Or get sent off to war and come home a paraplegic. Or in a box. Make the fairy tale now. Or shut up.

We’ve all talked about the movie “The Bucket List” and even I, the last person to ever get in on anything, saw it. Loved it.

And I don’t have a grand list like “See something truly majestic” on it.

Because I see something majestic every single day of my life.

And so do you, if you truly “saw”.

My baby is going to New York next month because it’s something she’s always wanted to do, and I am very very proud of her.

But it doesn’t have to be that big and grand of a thing.

Get a pedicure if you’ve never had one. Or even if it’s just been too long since you’ve had one. Unless, like me, you’re kind of “meh” about pedicures. Nice, but, eh, I can live without it.

Don’t let anyone else tell you what you should want.

Just want. And then go do it.

This weekend, I really want to make gumbo and eat it with my son. So I’m off to the store to buy the ingredients.

In my life, I have known the following people:

A young man in his early twenties who went out hunting with friends for a day, and came home a quadriplegic. Who then finished college, bought a house and fitted it all out for his needs, and got an awesome job. Who has a wicked sense of humor.

A man who worked all his life the way he was “supposed to”, saw his lifelong employer go belly up and his pension disappear, and his wife develop and live with Alzheimer’s under his care until she died. Who is one of my best and most favorite friends.

A woman who left all she knew and had to follow a man to another continent, only to have said marriage dissolve, and then created a fascinating and colorful life for herself with her own two hands. Not without its mishaps, but without her, I would not exist. She was my mom.

I am acutely aware of how precarious life can be, how comically our plans can turn out, and how very very unaware of how much joy there is to be had - that we blithely and irresponsibly ignore.

If we want a more joyous world in which to live, we have to start being more joyous people.

And we already have everything we need right now to be at least a little bit joyous.

Do it for me. I need more joyous people around me.

Cynical, whiny ass people suck the life out of me.

I’m your girl if you need a sympathetic ear when you’re going through a rough patch.

But if you want to stay there and build a cozy little nest in misery, constantly cataloguing everything that’s ever not turned out your way, everyone who’s ever disappointed you or not appreciated you or hurt your feelings or broke your heart - please go elsewhere.

Bring me your gifts of joy, and I will share mine with you.

Or get the fuck outtahere.

*giggle*

Random thought: A long time ago I met a guy who told me, very seriously, how “vulgar” he thought it was to hear a woman use the word “c*cksucker”. And actually, I kind of think so too. But being who I am, what word do you suppose I used 48 times in the next five minutes in every possible combination I could think of? Hehehehehehehehe

What Love Feels Like - All Of It March 23, 2008

Seriously. My Catholic faith means everything to me, as it does to my daughter. And yet I will not be in church today, and I will not be doing the Easter dinner thing. I have to work.

So it was the strangest thing this morning. The very very first thing when I awoke, this is what I thought.

It was just starting to get light out - roughly 2,000 years ago , not having “clocks” it would have been the signal of the end of the Jewish Sabbath, and thus the end of the restrictions placed on Jewish people.

Little Mary Magdalene, who no doubt hadn’t slept a wink in the last few days’ horror and brutality other than maybe to fall into an exhausted stupor for a few minutes at a time - she was up and trudging to the tomb where her Jesus had been lain.

Stumbling in the dark over stones and rough ground, probably clutching her cloak around herself against the chill pre-dawn morning air. What despair must she have been carrying with her. How must she have felt numb - and yet retreated into that numbness as protection from reliving the visual memories of what she had seen and heard over the last three days.

Watching the torture of the person she loved above all else in the world. The person who had seen her worth for the first time in her life, whom she had eaten with and walked with and listened to and watched and laughed with.

To watch hm beaten and flayed and whipped and then, even worse, to watch him hanging on a crude piece of wood, spikes slammed through his tendons, hanging there helpless and suffocating and bleeding while all his friends had deserted him - and the rest of the community mocked and ridiculed him.

She must have thought, as she walked in that half darkness, “I won’t think about that right now.” She had a task to accomplish.

And then to arrive at his tomb, to find the stone rolled away, to find his body gone. She must have collapsed to the ground and thought “Just kill me now.” What could not possibly have gotten any worse had suddenly become incomprehensibly more so.

Imagine going to the funeral home to care for the body of someone unfairly taken away from you in a horrible way, to have them tell you they couldn’t find the body. Imagine if that were your son, or your mother, or your spouse. Imagine what she felt.

And then she sees him. Only - in her grief, she doesn’t recognize him. She must have been mad with grief and rage, keening and insane. And besides, do you think she looked up, saw the face of the man she knew was dead and said, “Oh, hey, wow, you’re alive?” No - I think if she did think something was up, she just took it as further evidence that she had gone irretrievably around the bend.

And then he says her name.

You know how it is when someone you love with all your heart - someone who is your soul connection, who you trust beyond trust loves you back - what that sounds like just to hear them say your name?

She looks up - she recognizes him And she falls at His feet.

Of course she does.

What must that have felt like?

God. The mental picture thrills my soul and makes me want to at once cry and leap up and dance around the living room.

And I adore Him even more for showing Himself first to her. Faithful her.

My daughter is struggling today because she’s not been part of the Easter ritual we both love and that means the world to her. The Easter Vigil. The Mass and the incense and the holy hushed Eucharist.

And I told her this story today and told her, darling, He knows.

If we were perfect, this whole scenario wouldn’t have needed to be played out.

He would have been just another Jewish radical who got his at the hands of the people charged with dealing with those pesky Jewish radicals.

The God of the Universe went through all this because He knows.

And baby, He loves you. He adores you.

Imagine Him saying your name with the same tenderness and intimacy with which He said the word “Mary”.

Shiver.

What If Jesus Had Alzheimer’s? March 12, 2008

Disclaimer: I am one of those crazy in love with Jesus, the person and my God, people. Not so good at being a “practicing Christian” always. I swear too much, plus a whole list of other sins. But this post is written from that standpoint. If that makes you sick - move along. You’ll have a better day.

So, I have this little thing that I do - have done for a long time. I actively look for the face of Jesus in other people. Truly - it makes for interesting interactions.

I also work as a registered nurse in long term care, interacting every day with people with Alzheimer’s and the less specific “non-Alzheimer’s dementia”. I was sitting the other night at the bedside of a lady who has just come to us in the last couple of weeks. The thing is, when a person with any kind of dementia is moved from their regular environment (like home) to a new one where their entire environment and routine is completely turned upside down, what looked like a sorta functional person before now looks horribly confused. It’s a terrible adjustment time for people, very frightening, and very very common.

So, this lady was in that situation, it was night time, and I had some extra time, so I was sitting by her bedside, stroking her forehead like you do with your kids, making soothing mother noises and telling her I would stay with her, it was OK, she could rest a little while.

And of course, I saw the face of My Beloved, that is Jesus, in her face.

And I thought to myself, we think so much, expecially now during Lent, about the story of The Passion - the horrible torture and humuliation and murder that Jesus endured during the last 36 hours or so of his life on earth. And truthfully, it’s hard for us 21st century Westerners to really “get”, crucifiction not being practiced as capital punishment anywhere in the U.S.

But we are, sadly, becoming more aware of the plight of some of our elders.

Jesus was executed in the manner most befitting the most heinous Roman criminals of the day - and was innocent. Alzheimer’s, too, strikes people with no regard for whether or not they’ve been a “good person” all their lives.

What if, instead of being born 2,000+ years ago and dying a horrible death at the hands of a Roman execution squad, Jesus had been born, oh, 92 years ago, and was instead condemned to die the slow, humiliating death of dementia. Forgetting the people he loved and had shared his life with, waking up every day to strangers he has lived with every day for a year or more - people he believes he has never seen and doesn’t know. Forgetting how to feed himself and eventually even how to swallow. At the mercy of other people for his most basic needs.

What if, when you were trying to remove a soiled shirt from him, he lashed out, not understanding, believing you were stealing his clothes? Before you answer, I should tell you that being hit, whether you know the person is confused or not, hurts just as bad as when you’re being hit by someone in full control of their faculties - whatever in the hell that is. Would you be able to be patient and loving when a blow to your nose has brought tears to your eyes - even if your assailant was your Lord and King?

What is He voluntarily submitted to that way of life - and death - for us, to save us all from an eternity of separation from God?

I can absolutely hear His voice crying out, cracking and frustrated and frail, saying “My God, my God - why have you forsaken me?”

Because I’ve heard adult men and women - people who have been parents and business people and civic leaders and professionals - crying out pitifully for their moms and dads, their long-dead spouses, their children and friends. Why? Why? Why have you forsaken me?

I think about the women who stood at the foot of the cross, helpless, dying inside themselves, and then I think of the sons and daughters and wives and husbands I see every day, looking at the person in front of them and not recognizing their loved ones. Grieving for their loss, helpless to stop the progression of the disease or even to bring comfort.

And I kind of get a sense of solidarity with those women at the cross - the people who have always been my favorite people in that story anyway.

Here I stand, and here I will stand. I believe it brought comfort to Jesus, if such a thing was even possible, to see them there. I believe it brings a small measure of comfort, if such a thing is even possible, to the men and women whose bedsides I sit at, just to sit there, holding their hands. Nothing I can do, really. Just sit there with them and face it with them. Maybe the real comfort is to me.

And when they bow their heads and say “It is finished”, I close their eyes, I turn off the machines, I smooth their pillows below them and the covers over them, and kiss their foreheads and hug their family members and thank them for the privilege of sharing in their mom’s/dad’s/husband’s/wife’s lives with them.

What if Jesus had had Alzheimer’s?