I met a patient one day when I was still an ER tech whom we put into the cast room; an appropriate choice because he was dying of bone cancer. I've smelled bone cancer. It is so singular I can still call it up, 10 years later, at will.
He was black and had five children and a wife and they lived in a car together. But now he was in a hospital in Prescott Arizona in the cast room smelling of bone cancer and it was close to the end of the line. Homeless, and soon his children would be fatherless.
I remember this man, living - and dying - at the farthest margins of society and I think of the lady I met at Walgreen's today who showed me the way to the eyeglass screws.
"If we go to group health, those screws cost $10 each. Here," she said. "This eyeglass repair kit is only $2.99."
I was in a good mood today. I didn't bother to tell her how many of my friends would love to be able to complain about the challenges of group health, but we live on the margins - we like it there, to be honest - and on the margins, there is no group health.
On the margins, cancer can kill without a lot of grace.
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Erica leaves Prescott and finds rain in Reno
“Pet friendly
Cookies
Free Internet”
- Hotel Sign in Tonapah, NV
Er sez: Cookies?”
In the last two weeks, following a not-unwelcome layoff, I packed, sold and stored my entire life.
Friday's yard sale was resplendent. I made a pile of money and the last truck pulled out at 1 pm with the last bit of my life loaded in the back. Incredible, or as my roommate Carol put it, auspicious. I'm in Reno now in a downtown cafe plotting my next move. I'll be a reporter somewhere, preferably at an award-winning publication with a strong, savvy editor.
Leaving Prescott was wrenching. I have to push through that pain to keep my eye on the future, but it's difficult. Like jumping into cold water. I had to do it and do it quick (life sorted, sold and put away within two weeks of being laid-off) and it's a deep shock to the system. Who in their right mind would leave everyone they love to seek their fortune? Me and every fairy tale hero, I suppose.
My mama always said, though, that nothing is written in stone or blood. I can always come back. That softens the pain a little, but not much.
The drive through Nevada was exotically weird. I crossed Hoover Dam away from my beloved Arizona saying the best prayer I could muster and crying my eyes out. But then I looked up and saw that Homeland Security is building a bridge up high across the gorge and well away from the dam and it was all lit up and little men (they looked little) in orange vests were crawling all over it—it being an incomplete arch suspended by wires—and I was like....whatzat? Like a little kid, I forgot to cry anymore. I'm guessing that's what this trip will be like. Struggling to let one season go, and then remembering that change is exciting, and that air that carries a new scent is always intoxicating.
When I passed through Vegas, it was Vegas, shiny and vulgar. My old schoolmate Lance lives there with his wife Natalie, and together they extolled the virtues of a place where possibility is the singular god, where anything can happen as long as it can turn a profit. A cool sentiment, but still, I gotta say Vegas is not for me. Too much hyper-stimulation for one thing.
The next day, I drove through an old mining town called Goldfield. It's in the middle of freakin' nowhere and the gas station there is also the diner. The creamer they serve is powdered. Goldfield is the kind of place that was absolutely kicking in the 1800's and the worn-out vestiges of gold rush largess remain. Goldfield is one of those worn-in spots, one of those places where the stakes are just not that high and so things are allowed to settle in. It has lots of tall, expensive brick and stone buildings and cute little cottages half-falling down – signs of life remaining just like alligator junipers whose normal growth aspect is one of healthy half-death. It's the kind of place I'd be happy to live.
I think of my last, fleeting boyfriend, the one who liked to find and sequester gold in the grand old tradition that sprouted places like Goldfield. There's nothing left from us but a polished, carved piece of jasper in my wallet and a chest full of doubt and relief, but the memories are fresh and they follow me across Nevada, a half-heeded whisper.
Forgive the digression, but it's my opinion that death is the most powerful and possibly the most positive force in our lives. We have to say no to far more than we're able to say yes to, and still everything ends. Those points of termination provide a preciousness and an urgency that will push me soon enough out of Nevada and into the Pacific Northwest. I've got my rain jacket donned, my résumés in hand and and a bellyfull of hoka hey – the sentiment that it's a good day to die.
Cookies
Free Internet”
- Hotel Sign in Tonapah, NV
Er sez: Cookies?”
In the last two weeks, following a not-unwelcome layoff, I packed, sold and stored my entire life.
Friday's yard sale was resplendent. I made a pile of money and the last truck pulled out at 1 pm with the last bit of my life loaded in the back. Incredible, or as my roommate Carol put it, auspicious. I'm in Reno now in a downtown cafe plotting my next move. I'll be a reporter somewhere, preferably at an award-winning publication with a strong, savvy editor.
Leaving Prescott was wrenching. I have to push through that pain to keep my eye on the future, but it's difficult. Like jumping into cold water. I had to do it and do it quick (life sorted, sold and put away within two weeks of being laid-off) and it's a deep shock to the system. Who in their right mind would leave everyone they love to seek their fortune? Me and every fairy tale hero, I suppose.
My mama always said, though, that nothing is written in stone or blood. I can always come back. That softens the pain a little, but not much.
The drive through Nevada was exotically weird. I crossed Hoover Dam away from my beloved Arizona saying the best prayer I could muster and crying my eyes out. But then I looked up and saw that Homeland Security is building a bridge up high across the gorge and well away from the dam and it was all lit up and little men (they looked little) in orange vests were crawling all over it—it being an incomplete arch suspended by wires—and I was like....whatzat? Like a little kid, I forgot to cry anymore. I'm guessing that's what this trip will be like. Struggling to let one season go, and then remembering that change is exciting, and that air that carries a new scent is always intoxicating.
When I passed through Vegas, it was Vegas, shiny and vulgar. My old schoolmate Lance lives there with his wife Natalie, and together they extolled the virtues of a place where possibility is the singular god, where anything can happen as long as it can turn a profit. A cool sentiment, but still, I gotta say Vegas is not for me. Too much hyper-stimulation for one thing.
The next day, I drove through an old mining town called Goldfield. It's in the middle of freakin' nowhere and the gas station there is also the diner. The creamer they serve is powdered. Goldfield is the kind of place that was absolutely kicking in the 1800's and the worn-out vestiges of gold rush largess remain. Goldfield is one of those worn-in spots, one of those places where the stakes are just not that high and so things are allowed to settle in. It has lots of tall, expensive brick and stone buildings and cute little cottages half-falling down – signs of life remaining just like alligator junipers whose normal growth aspect is one of healthy half-death. It's the kind of place I'd be happy to live.
I think of my last, fleeting boyfriend, the one who liked to find and sequester gold in the grand old tradition that sprouted places like Goldfield. There's nothing left from us but a polished, carved piece of jasper in my wallet and a chest full of doubt and relief, but the memories are fresh and they follow me across Nevada, a half-heeded whisper.
Forgive the digression, but it's my opinion that death is the most powerful and possibly the most positive force in our lives. We have to say no to far more than we're able to say yes to, and still everything ends. Those points of termination provide a preciousness and an urgency that will push me soon enough out of Nevada and into the Pacific Northwest. I've got my rain jacket donned, my résumés in hand and and a bellyfull of hoka hey – the sentiment that it's a good day to die.
Monday, December 22, 2008
My integrated spiritual system: Gratitude and Acceptance
"Hello, goodbye." - Heidi Wilson
This morning I got up before dawn to walk and to watch the darkest night of the year fade into its shortest day. There's a wash behind my house. It runs perhaps half the time. Fifty yards up from the house is a grotto I visited frequently through the summer and fall. There's a little spring, coyote willows choking around it, the smell of water in the desert. One day, I sat down and spent time with a garter snake who made no effort to flee.
This morning, I noticed that the willows were gone. Someone and their heavy equipment had eradicated all the vegetation around my hidden spring. Its secrets lay exposed, the smell of its water dispersed over the open ground.
I felt sad and rued the stupidity of the fool who removed the native stabilizing vegetation from a flooding wash. And then I remembered my integrated, complete and user-friendly spiritual system of gratitude and acceptance.
I feel grateful for all those moments of escape and grateful for the time I helped the moth with the moisture-pinned wings escape from the side of a clear puddle. I placed him on a branch in the sun and watched him flutter away a few minutes later. He seemed to resent me with that casual entitledness that's charming in children and animals. We trust, it says.
I feel grateful, deeply so, that I spent that time in that eradicated space. Precious shade gone from the desert. And I accept it. Hello, goodbye. Change happens. Health fails, bodies age, and even the halest among us dies. Life is for living, I heard recently, and no matter the misfortune, most of us live it with gusto. We lack eyes, some of us, love, others. But we keep on living. Our bodies fold into wrinkles and our beauty falls away, and yet the joy of watching children and dogs at play remains. The first bite of a good meal, the subtle, unassailable joy of solitude. It remains.
Until it doesn't.
And until we don't.
This morning I got up before dawn to walk and to watch the darkest night of the year fade into its shortest day. There's a wash behind my house. It runs perhaps half the time. Fifty yards up from the house is a grotto I visited frequently through the summer and fall. There's a little spring, coyote willows choking around it, the smell of water in the desert. One day, I sat down and spent time with a garter snake who made no effort to flee.
This morning, I noticed that the willows were gone. Someone and their heavy equipment had eradicated all the vegetation around my hidden spring. Its secrets lay exposed, the smell of its water dispersed over the open ground.
I felt sad and rued the stupidity of the fool who removed the native stabilizing vegetation from a flooding wash. And then I remembered my integrated, complete and user-friendly spiritual system of gratitude and acceptance.
I feel grateful for all those moments of escape and grateful for the time I helped the moth with the moisture-pinned wings escape from the side of a clear puddle. I placed him on a branch in the sun and watched him flutter away a few minutes later. He seemed to resent me with that casual entitledness that's charming in children and animals. We trust, it says.
I feel grateful, deeply so, that I spent that time in that eradicated space. Precious shade gone from the desert. And I accept it. Hello, goodbye. Change happens. Health fails, bodies age, and even the halest among us dies. Life is for living, I heard recently, and no matter the misfortune, most of us live it with gusto. We lack eyes, some of us, love, others. But we keep on living. Our bodies fold into wrinkles and our beauty falls away, and yet the joy of watching children and dogs at play remains. The first bite of a good meal, the subtle, unassailable joy of solitude. It remains.
Until it doesn't.
And until we don't.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
The end of FaceBook
Ok. Not really. But for me, yes. Three days ago, I decided to go cold-turkey from Internet surfing. That means no visiting my news stashes, MySpace, or Facebook at all. Nyet. Nix. Finis. So far, I can honestly say the results have been lovely. More time at work for social interactions and...well...productivity. More time in the evening for reading, music, being alone and content.
The bottom line is that life is really, really freaking short, and being here on earth is really, really freaking cool. Without the slightest doubt, when I'm on my deathbed I won't lament my lack of time-spent Internet surfing. But I will feel the satisfaction of having learned an instrument (when it happens), another language (Que suerte!), having taken walks and long naps outside, having spent time with friends, with kitties, with good books.
I will miss the plugged-in, hyper-aware media hound I was last week. But it's worth the sacrifice. I went to Walden, and it looked a lot like the world pre-1995.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Why leaving home and death are not so fearsome
After my very sweet landlordette told me that she had plans for my house in July, it was tempting to let it all go to hell. Stop feeding the birds, stop playing my keyboard, blow off laundry and shopping and just wait around until the next phase of my life took hold. But then I thought 'There's an end to everything, so why not just embrace the futility on a fractal basis - a little death now, a big death later?'
And so the birds continue to eat, my keyboard to make beginner noises and my washer to churn and rumble the grease of days past out of my clothes. Everything must, after all, come to an end and all we have is today.
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