New blog

 I have a new blog about being diagnosed with ADHD as an older adult. It's called ADHDME and it's here: ADHDME

This blog will still be my personal writing blog, so bookmark both please.

The Perfect Retirement

 In my dreams, I would actually get to retire, rather than work until I drop dead. I would have enough money to move away, since I've never lived outside Texas. I would move to Henderson, Nevada or Las Vegas, My dream retirement would involve Nevada, mainly because the cost of living is cheap and it's close to California. Not to mention the fact that although it's in a a desert, there are mountains that get snow every winter, several national parks nearby, plus it has beautiful canyons and an international airport.  I'm not enamored of the Strip like people seem to be, I don't gamble or drink much at all, but Vegas has every kind of food you can imagine to eat and most things are open 24 hours a day. and the neon lights are pretty.

I think I'd like living in the desert more than in a forest, because there are fewer bugs and low humidity. Dry heat IS a thing, folks. Anyone who's endured a sweaty Texas summer with 90% humidity that makes your clothes stick to your body and your makeup run in rivulets down your face will know why dry heat is better.

If I could not afford to move to Nevada, then I'd just move back home to Dallas, where I'd be closer to my friends and family. When you start getting old, proximity to people you know well takes a more important place in your life. Nevada is probably more an "ideal situation" type of retirement, rather than  what will actually be waiting for me in a few years. Hell, Nevada may be completely out of water by the time we could afford to move there.

A perfect life after retirement in the desert would include lots of thrift shopping, selling the stuff on Bay, drives to California, two cats, more cooking, more choice in restaurants for Sunday dinner, writing a book, and enough money to fly back to Dallas on holidays to see friends and relatives who cannot come out to Vegas to visit. Having enough money to travel a bit internationally would be fabulous.

More than likely, my Dallas retirement will consist of lots of thrift shopping, selling the stuff on Bay or in yard sales, hanging out with friends and family, lots of reading, taking part in "Friendsgiving", more cooking, writing a book, and two cats. Since most of our friends don't have kids and are getting older like us, we could all keep an eye out for each other. Sounds pretty nice.

Adult ADHD

This year, I started treating my newly diagnosed ADHD with talk therapy and a small beginning dose of Adderall. I take it only on workdays because they help me focus and concentrate at work. I was told not to take the med on Saturday and Sunday so that any chances of addiction would be minimized or eliminated. The Adderall doesn't help with crushing anxiety. The ADHD that explained so much of my personality and the way I think sits uneasily atop my wild anxiety like a toddler on a bucking horse.

I was very sad yesterday and burst into tears. I haven't cried in months, probably. I was overwhelmed with a sense of impending doom, like death and/or destruction was waiting for either me or my husband just outside the door of the seafood restaurant in which we were trying to enjoy our lunch. A creeping dread wrapped its tentacles into my brain and didn't let go until the evening. Maybe I was just generally overwhelmed. I've had episodes in the past where I was sure that some maniac with a machete was just around the corner or an out of control car was barreling down the street in my direction. I hadn't had one of these episodes in a long time, though. It was similar to a panic attack.

Although most people have an inner monologue, I'm more accustomed to "this is your conscience speaking" episodes, where I'll hear disapproving (and purely self-generated) comments regarding my life or work in my brain as my attention is busy with something else. These episodes can prompt a full blown panic attack: accelerated breathing, a feeling of isolation and a rising sense of fear and dread. I can be busy at work with a pile of records to go though, then a little voice in my ear whispers "you're going to die young like your mother did". The hyperventilating will then start. 

Other hits in this Desolation Row juke box are "something bad is going to happen to you.....your husband....your friends and there's nothing you can do about it"; "you're not smart enough for this job"; "you're going to be fired soon"; "you're going to be homeless one day"; "no one really cares about you, people only tolerate you". Listening to music or podcasts while I work are really the only way I can keep those thoughts at bay. Having other people compliment me on whatever I am doing doesn't even help because I don't believe them. I can only believe myself and those positive thoughts just won't come. I don't know how to think positively of myself. I only know how to tear myself down. I had hoped that age would alleviate this self-loathing but it has not. I honestly don't know what will.

The episode with Morty

Two faded Southern belles named Faye and Noreen are sitting at the bar. A local journalist had found Noreen after asking some people about the club she used to work at back in the late 60s. Her friend Faye had told the reporter that her pal Noreen had loads of good stories about the place: the owner's Mob ties, drunk celebrities making asses of themselves, the one-legged go-go dancer who hopped around in a cage above the dance floor....

"Go on, Noreen, tell him that story about Morty........".

Noreen chuckles, rolls her heavily made up eyes and smirks.

"Oh jeez.........OK." She sighs.

"I used to work in a club in downtown Dallas, back when I was 19. The drinking age was 19 then so I had just started working there as a waitress.
The owner was this ridiculously short Jewish feller named Morty, who had originally bought the club from Jack Ruby back in the early 60s. Morty could not have been more than 5 feet tall standing on his toes. He was about 80-some odd years old then and used to follow the dancers around and have conversations with their tits.....you know the type: always on the make. Always pinching asses and so on. I was just a mousy waitress and not as bodacious as the dancers, so he pretty much ignored me until this one Saturday.

So, Morty asks me to come in early one Saturday to do some cleaning. I'm sweeping the floor in the dancers' dressing room and I hear the door close behind me. I was supposed to be the only one there, you know, so it startled me. I turn around and there's Morty, with not a stitch of clothing on. Stark naked, hands on hips with a big smile and a HUGE boner. 

Now..... I don't see how he didn't tip over. He must have been nicknamed "Tripod". So I'm standing there with my mouth open, staring like a damn deer in the headlights.

This tiny wrinkled old man with a giant prong is leering at me from the door. He winks at me.

"Good morning. I see you're here early today", says Morty, in his thick New York accent.

I stammered out, "Uhhhh, hi Morty, just sweeping up in here! Good lord, where are your pants? You'll catch pneumonia!"

Morty started moving in my direction so I barreled past him through the door, almost knocking him over. I was afraid he would latch onto my leg on the way out and start humping me like a dog. I threw aside the broom and ran out the back door.

He called me into his office the next day. I figured he was going to fire me. He sat behind his cluttered desk, took the cigar stub out of his mouth and smiled genially at me. I squirmed in my chair.

Morty said in his thick Brooklyn accent, "I want to apologize for yesterday. I'm afraid that I may have scared youse. My manhood has inspired fearful reactions befoah due to its awesome propoahtions. But errrr,.......maybe you're interested now that you know what to expect?"

"Uhhhhh, no thanks, Morty. I'll pass." I tried not to gag.

So, Morty didn't fire me. He didn't stop trying to nail me, either. He would have needed a bucket to stand on, anyway. I worked there for a year or so more, then I met my husband and we got married. Now my daughter is expecting our first grand baby." 

Noreen ended up marrying a mechanic. They lived in a little clapboard house in a suburb of Dallas where her husband started his own car repair shop, and had three kids, two boys and a girl. 

Faye says, "What are they gonna call the baby, Noreen? Have they picked a name yet?"

Proudly, Noreen says, "Yes! It's a boy, so he be called Stihl, spelled S-T-I-H-L, like the brand of farm equipment. Doesn't that sound masculine? His little school friends will think he's so cool."'

Faye is stunned. "They're naming that baby after a chain saw? His little school friends will call him Leatherface!"

 

Teen Age Crush

 Like a lot of young girls, I used to fall in desperate puppy love with various musicians: Paul McCartney and Peter Tork were a couple of my mental main squeezes. As I got a bit older, my tastes started to change. Puberty started to turn my world around, and although I knew it was going to happen, I wasn't quite sure how to deal with it. My childhood was tormented and I escaped into music. I was a huge fan of the Electric Light Orchestra when I was a teenager, mainly because of their drummer Bev Bevan. The crush started as most teen crushes do; I collected every picture of Bev I could find, I bought every ELO LP and I watched them whenever they made a US TV appearance. Luckily for me, they were a huge success in the 1970s, so it was fairly easy to locate pictures and articles about them.

Because of my childhood issues, puberty did not come into my consciousness easily. The thought of an actual male in my vicinity taking an interest in me terrified me beyond words. I felt much safer mooning over rock stars who had no idea that I existed. I wouldn't have any chance of actually having to deal with him in person, because he lived in England and I was in Texas; not to mention the fact that I was 12 and he was in his 30s at the time. 

Plus, everything I ever read about Bev was about what a fantastic drummer and a nice man he was; he was not some spoiled rock star poon hound. You never heard stories about him tearing up hotel rooms, being rude to fans or or going after too young girls. He wasn't Jimmy Page, after all.  That bit of knowledge made me adore him a little bit more; I never went for "bad boys". I wanted a guy who my Mom would approve of, one whom  I felt safe adoring and one who I knew would never hurt me. At 12 years old, I had already had enough pain and hurt for several lifetimes.

I used to read all the rock & roll magazines on the newsstand, so I was well aware of wild man British rock stars. To be true, most of them seemed that way. It was fun to read about Keith Moon destroying a hotel room or Ozzy Osbourne getting wasted, but I'm sure an entirely other thing to have to live with a situation like their wives and families had to deal with. I told myself that anyone who made the music I loved so much and made my life worth living for cannot be a bad person. I guess that makes me a rock and roll apologist.

For the most part, I think I've been right. Musicians in general are caring and sensitive people but they can sometimes find themselves in weird situations that most regular people would have trouble dealing with. That's where the drinking and drugging come in. Fame can exacerbate that as well. The public are largely ignorant of what it's like to be onstage in front of several thousand people when you have the flu, or have to come up with a hit record that's bigger than the last one, or to meet hundreds of people who all want a little piece of you because they saw you on TV or bought your record or wear your t-shirt. On top of all that, your band mates and crew also depend on you for their living. Yes, the musicians get the money and the fame, but they have to pay for it in ways you cannot fathom. Too many people saying "yes" to you too often and not enough saying "no" to you can kill you, ask Elvis Presley, or Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin or Jim Morrison or Amy Winehouse or Kurt Cobain or _______________ (insert the name of your fave member of the 27 club here).

I just know that if those guys didn't make their music that meant so much to me and others, I probably would have snuffed it when I was still a teenager. So for that, thanks to Bev Bevan, Keith Moon and Ozzy Osbourne for being great musicians and entertainers, and extra thanks to Bev for being a nice person.

Speed Racer

 I woke up wide-eyed this morning at 3:30am. Usually, I don't wake until 5am so I can start in on my day slowly, make coffee and watch the news and not have to rush. My eyes popped open and my mind was racing at full speed. When this happens (a lot!), it affects my ability to rest. I feel like I'm running on fumes today. My mind is like a horse in full gallop.

Maybe my ADHD is causing most of the depression I've dealt with for most of my life? It's so difficult for me to relax lately. In the past, all I had to do was read or meditate, but I cannot keep my attention steady enough to escape into a book for very long now.

Oddly, pacing back and forth in my house does quiet my mind a bit. I used to love going for walks in the neighborhood that surrounded my work place. Walking outside doesn't help now because I have to be aware of my surroundings. I need to put on my earbuds and lose myself in music. I need to make stop stalling and major changes in myself. 

I need to be creative and write more. I feel mentally constipated, if there is such a thing; like I have so much in my head that wants to come out but just will not.

This is not an ideal way to start my work week. I'm normally pretty keyed up on Sundays evenings because I have to work the next day, but it's on overdrive today. I feel like I'm trying to give myself a pep talk: "you need to eat better, you need to relax more, you need to write more, you need to start playing your guitar again, you need to avoid the news more, etc." I need to do so much, yet I cannot get started.

Why is it so difficult for me to be myself?

This Masquerade

   Many people were blindsided by COVID and the big shut down, but life had vastly changed in my favor by my being able to work from home. I had been asking to go remote for years, because social anxiety had been difficult for me in my job. Part of the world of work is going to meetings and being ambitious in order to "move up the ladder". I'm more comfortable and productive when I'm relaxed. I've always felt like I had to put on a "mask" to be around other people. I don't adapt to change quickly, and my work situation had changed radically a few years back with new co-workers, different duties, etc., but I was still doing work that I enjoyed and thought I did well, with people I liked.

   My chronic depression flared up seriously after the pandemic started; probably from the stress of life changing so radically in such a short time. I learned in my 20s that chronic depression is just that: chronic, and it can return without rhyme or reason. The trick is remembering that it's a disease that has to be managed, like diabetes or arthritis. I don't necessarily need to have a reason for being depressed. Sometimes, I just am. However, I'm much more able to deal with my dark periods as an older person. Depression made my 20s  (and to a lesser extent, my 30s and 40s) extremely difficult. I was hospitalized in my early 20s and have been on antidepressants pretty much ever since. 

  I have good periods when my life is enjoyable and bad periods when it isn't. At least now, I know that "this too, shall pass". When my initial problems with depression surfaced during childhood, I thought I was just crazy, that my brain was wired wrong. Maybe I was from another planet; who knew? I was able to keep up with my friends and my education, but the stress was beginning to wear seriously on me. For a long time, I wasn't a pleasant person to deal with. I thought I would grow out of it with age. 

  In the last 4 or so years, I had started having difficulties at my job. I couldn't seem to retain information about work subjects from meetings, felt that I wasn't performing my job up to my usual standards and did not want to fail my supervisor and my co-workers. I am counting on staying at my job until my retirement in a few years, so I knew I needed to sort myself out.

  I made an appointment with a neuropsychiatrist. Testing was done and three weeks later, I received the news: I was diagnosed with Adult ADHD at age 56. 

  My long-standing relationship with major depression and anxiety were no secret to myself nor anyone I knew. I thought I might even be on the autism spectrum, but ADHD never entered my mind, so to speak. I thought it was something that parents of excitable little kids had to deal with, not middle-aged women counting down to retirement. This was completely another thing to manage. 

 The psychiatrist suggested that I treat the depression first, then deal with the ADHD when I wasn't struggling so much. I started reading about ADHD in adult women. Apparently, the symptoms consisted of much of what I considered to be my personality: scattered mental state, unless the subject was something in which I was interested; daydreaming in school and not being able to retain information unless, again, it was a subject I liked, then I would excel. I hated math and science classes because they made me feel stupid. Teachers would tell me to "apply" myself in order to learn algebra or statistics or physics and I just did not want to know. Band class, History and English I would excel at. 

 I've felt like I've wasted parts of my life. I tend to compare myself to other people my age (and always come up lacking). and it seemed like most other people my age had careers that they liked, not jobs that just paid the bills. Most of my other friends and acquaintances seemed to navigate the world of work much better than I did. I'm very fortunate to have a great home life, with a wonderful husband and a happy marriage, so that took away a bit of the sting of being different.  When I left my house, though, I was bombarded with signs that I WAS DIFFERENT. I had my DNA tested; I researched my family history; I took every online quiz I could find in order to "find" myself. What was wrong with me? I know I'm smart and extremely creative, but I could not find a way to harness that energy to my advantage. I've only been able to be the "quirky and idiosyncratic" friend who mostly keeps to myself. Maybe this diagnosis will be my way out of my mental funk?

  I have to say that I don't feel like I need to put on an act in order to be around other people anymore. I can take that as a blessing, others may take it as a threat. Maybe it's just getting older and being tired of performing in order to be accepted. As far as what the kids call "adulting" nowadays, John Lennon was right; whatever gets you through the night is all right, even if it means escaping into your imagination where everything goes your way. I'm not a very sociable person, but I love my family and my friends, and I value their friendship more than I could possibly say. I have a strong support system to deal with ADHD and I am looking forward to getting to know myself.  

Anger Is An Energy

I used to be a very angry person. I was angry about so many things: my family relationships (or lack thereof), hypocrisy, the state of the world, my own self-loathing, the role of the woman in world society......the list goes on and on. I could be hostile and negative and I didn't see very much to look forward to in the world. When I met my husband, my attitude started to change slowly. Allowing myself to love someone and be loved in return began to melt my raging heart. Getting older helped too. Anger takes young person strength, and wisdom comes with age.

During the last month of my mother's life, she resigned herself to dying. Mom had seen my misery and rage and she knew how unhappy I had been. She told me that she wanted me to be happy. She didn't want the last part of my life to be as full of despair as my childhood had been. I had to learn to accept things that probably would not change. Since life would probably never be how I wanted it to be, I needed to deal with life as it is. This seemed to be easier said than done, but when I accepted things that I could not change, some of the hardness in my psyche seemed to soften a bit. I learned not to take everything so personally.

Every morning, I make the choice to be happy and grateful for all the great things in my life. I have many wonderful aspects to my life: a loving husband, a nice house, a good job, loving friends and family, and reasonably good health. I notice that people react to me differently now than when I was younger. They don't seem to be as threatening or ominous as before. Sometimes I can even see their "side of the story" and empathize with them: maybe they were just having a bad day and didn't mean to snap at me. I also feel much less guilty about keeping toxic people at an arm's length, or even writing them off completely.

The older I get, the more I realize that although many people seem to love reliving their youth, I would not be young again for all the money in the world. My time is now.

The little house on Henderson Street

During this pandemic, I am fortunate enough to be able to work from home, usually sitting at my dining room table. I have the window behind me open, I can smell the flowers in my back yard and can hear the birds singing and traffic off in the distance. The stillness and tranquility remind me of summer mornings spent with my great-grandmother Marie. My Mom left for work in the morning and I traipsed across the street to my great-grandparents' house, a small gray wood frame abode with 5 rooms and sloping floors. The pier and beam floor needed shoring up badly, so you could set a ball on the floor and it would roll all the way to the back of the house. There were steps that led up to the front porch where my great-grandfather Marvin liked to sit in his wheelchair, then a small front room with two recliners that reeked of vanilla pipe smoke; a bedroom with two twin beds and a dresser; and a small bathroom with a claw foot tub. The kitchen was at the very back of the house, then as you walked back toward the front, there was a tiny dining room with a table and a hutch; then "the parlor", the front-facing, more formal room where Granny and Grandad played 42 with Aunt Lizzie and other family celebrations were held.

Grandad sat in his recliner, watching TV and smoking his pipe, while Granny and I retreated to the kitchen to make breakfast. I sat at the small table by the open window while Granny made me some Johnny cakes or oatmeal. She sat down with me and her coffee and we would listen to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater on a small radio. Granny enjoyed listening to the radio. She would open the back door if it wasn't too hot outside and the fruity fragrance of the plum trees in the back yard would fill the kitchen. The curtains had a yellow haze of pipe smoke that muted the bright sunlight outside. I spent a lot of time with Granny and Grandad in that little house, right up until Grandad died in May 1975. Mom and I would walk across the street every Sunday evening to have dinner with them and then watch the Ed Sullivan Show. Grandad watched me ride my bike in the street out front, hollering when a car turned onto Henderson Street: "Git outta the street! A car's a-comin'!"

After Grandad died of a stroke, Mom and I moved back to the apartments that we had lived in before. Granny decided that she didn't want to live in the house all alone, so Mom arranged to get her an apartment near ours. She stayed there for a few years, then moved back to their old neighborhood to live in a duplex with her friend. She lived there until I was 15 years old and died in 1980. I regret that I was too young to ask Grandad about his childhood, but Granny told me quite a bit about hers. I loved listening to her stories about her mother Mattie and her beloved father Jeff.

I think that my interest in genealogies and family history started with those stories about life in the "old days". I marveled that my great-grandfather's family had come to Texas from Virginia in the late 1800s on a wagon, but he lived lived long enough to see man walk on the moon. Young people should ask their elders about their lives; where they grew up, what their childhood dreams were, what historical events they lived through. Many kids nowadays will be able to tell their children that they lived through Ye Olde Great Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020.

Don't let your family stories die without telling them. It's the best way to link the past with present and the future.

Killing People at Work

The first thing I do every morning when I get to work is kill people.

Part of my job is keeping up with obituaries; entering birth and death dates for alumni in the donor database. It can be depressing if the obit is for a young person or someone who died in a tragic way, but it can also be a way to learn about interesting people with interesting lives. When I first started doing obituaries, I had to decease people who had been working in the Twin Towers on 9/11, a sobering experience.

Obituaries can be short and direct to the point: "John Smith died Monday. He was 76 years old", or perhaps: "I was born, I blinked, and I died".
They can be long and florid: " Grandpa Pete lived a life full of loving grandkids, old dogs, cigars, dreams of the huge fish that got away, and culminated in a journey to the arms of the Lord on May 2nd."

A few can be wildly entertaining, making you wish you had personally known the person: "Julie was never one to suffer the ordinary. She lived a life that she once aptly described as "one big unplanned experience," entirely on her own terms. Though her sudden departure on December 9 left each of us shocked and devastated, the way she went was so Julie. She was on a grand adventure in the South of France, when a commercial truck struck her rental car on a road which links the medieval city of Bruniquel, in Tarn-et-Garrone to Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, killing her instantly." Julie does indeed sound like an amazing person, and was really living her life.

Some self-written ones are comical and make you laugh out loud: "It pains me to admit it, but apparently, I have passed away. Everyone told me it would happen one day but that’s simply not something I wanted to hear, much less experience.  Once again I didn’t get things my way!  That’s been the story of my life all my life".

Or: "I'm sure you'll all be crying because I'm dead as a door nail, but never fear; I'll be happy and dancing. Probably naked." 

This lady could have been me in a previous life:

"Pat was world-renowned for her lack of patience, not holding back her opinion and a knack for telling it like it is. She always told you the truth even if it wasn’t what you wanted to hear.
With that said she was genuine to a fault, a pussy cat at heart (or lion) and yet she sugar coated nothing.  Her extensive vocabulary was more than highly proficient at knowing more curse words than most people learned in a lifetime."

Very rarely, I'll see a brutally honest obit that gives me pause:

"Leslie Ray 'Popeye' Charping was born in Galveston on November 20, 1942 and passed away January 30, 2017, which was 29 years longer than expected and much longer than he deserved.

"At a young age, Leslie quickly became a model example of bad parenting combined with mental illness and a complete commitment to drinking, drugs, womanizing and being generally offensive. Leslie enlisted to serve in the Navy, but not so much in a brave & patriotic way but more as part of a plea deal to escape sentencing on criminal charges."

"Leslie's hobbies included being abusive to his family, expediting trips to heaven for the beloved family pets and fishing, which he was less skilled with than the previously mentioned. Leslie's life served no other obvious purpose, he did not contribute to society or serve his community and he possessed no redeeming qualities besides quick wittedd sarcasm which was amusing during his sober days."

"With Leslie's passing he will be missed only for what he never did; being a loving husband, father and good friend."

" Leslie's passing proves that evil does in fact die and hopefully marks a time of healing and safety for all."  

Wow, what a guy. I think I'll write my own obituary.

Cracking Up

I stand at the conveyor belt in a lab coat and hair net, watching the lines of snack crackers come up from the oven room. I was supposed to pick up lines of stacked crackers and fill the metal box on a stand in front of me, over and over and over again. I was covered in cheesy dust and my feet were killing me. Standing on a production line for sometimes 12 hours a day was not how I was supposed to be spending my life, no matter how well it paid. Breathing faster, I felt like my heart was trying to leap through my chest, My co-worker across the belt from me shouted: “Lisa, are you OK?”  Only vaguely hearing her voice, I looked up at her concerned face.

“Oh my God, you’re white as a sheet!” she exclaimed. Suddenly, like a vertigo shot in a movie, my surroundings shot off into the distance; everything and everyone around me seemed very far away. Unable to catch my breath, I burst into tears and my supervisor led me away to the nurse’s office.
“Now we dolly back, now we fade to black…..”.

This had happened to me frequently in the six months I had been employed there: the panic attacks, the nausea, hyperventilating. I started working there on my 21st birthday, only because my mother worked in the office and she told me that I could make very good money working “on the line”, certainly much more than working at my beloved mall record store job. I loved selling records, but I barely made more than minimum wage, even as an assistant manager. I couldn’t afford to move away from home and buy records working at the mall, so I thought I would give the cracker factory a chance.

Big mistake. Chasing money put me into the psychiatric ward in a hospital for a month and started me on antidepressant treadmill. I had suffered from anxiety and depression since childhood due to traumas (that’s a whole book unto itself), but this was a very serious mental illness that had snowballed into major clinical depression. I started having intense insomnia episodes and then I didn’t sleep at all for almost a week. So, off to the psych ward I went.

That Saturday morning, my roommate and good friend Esther, my mom, and myself drove to Dallas to check me into the funny farm. We had lunch at Red Lobster where I tried to lighten the atmosphere by making jokes. My Mom was very upset and I was scared of going into the hospital, mainly because I had never been hospitalized for anything before, and now I had to go into the hospital because I was crazy. Being crazy was normal for me, but hospitalization was not.

We went into the admitting lobby and waited to talk to my psychiatrist, an older no-nonsense woman with a thick eastern European accent. My mom held my hand and I tried not to hyperventilate. I didn’t really start crying until my mom did, then the dam burst. A nurse came to get me, so I picked up my suitcase, hugged Mom and Esther, and left them behind in the shrink’s office.
The nurse and I got into the elevator to the top floor. The door opened and we were in the Locked Ward, where the patients were checked in, sedated and evaluated to see if they are a danger to themselves or others. I would spend a week in this ward and I don’t remember much about it at all. I do remember my first roommate, a small woman with short hair and very thick glasses. She was wearing an old-fashioned flannel nightgown and slippers. I sat on my bed crying, wondering what was going to happen to me. The nurse had gone out to get my initial medications. The other patients seemed like zombies and I was terrified that one would attack me. My new roommate was very heavily sedated and moved like a sleepy zombie. She came over, stood in front of me and said something unintelligible, which I thought might be her attempt to console me, then her head dropped and she started snoring. The nurse had not come back with my medication and I was afraid this woman would fall over and hurt herself, so I gently picked her up and put her on her bed. She was very petite and I come from a long line of big German farm girls, so it was easy. After the nurse came back and gave me some benzodiazepine tablets, I became a zombie too.

Esther and her boyfriend came for a visit a couple of days later, which I don’t remember at all. Esther told me that her boyfriend was so disturbed at my soporific condition that he suggested to her that they should kidnap me and take me home. My first memory after my first week in the locked ward was a visit to my psychiatrist. She asked me if I was suicidal. I told her I didn’t know how I felt about anything anymore. She told me matter of factly that I was so depressed, I would “have to cheer up to be suicidal”. I could go to the unlocked ward a few days later where I would have group therapy sessions with other patients, along with occupational therapy and of course, I would see her every few days.

My psychiatrist convinced me that I needed a more creative line of work that suited my interests. What I really needed was a job that would pay my bills. I had grown up poor, the child of a single Mom, and while I had no intention of working at a job I hated, I didn’t have insurance and now I would have a bill for a month-long stay inpatient stay at a hospital, plus meds and psychiatrist visits. I ended up staying at the cracker factory for another year and a half to pay my bill, but I also started college. My shrink told me I needed something positive in my life, so I enrolled at East Texas State University (now Texas A&M – Commerce) as a part-time music major. I drove to Dallas every Friday morning to buy records and steel myself up to drive back through the tall gates of the cracker factory.

I had met my friend Jimmy when he came in to shop at the Hastings Records store I worked at in my hometown mall. We had very similar tastes in music and he lived in Dallas, so we went to loads of concerts. I wanted to move back to Dallas more than anything, so I compromised and moved to a Dallas suburb while at the end of my cracker factory tenure. I figured it would be easier to find a job in Dallas if I lived close by and then I could finally get away from cracker hell.

I started working at Collectors Records in August 1989. Jimmy had worked there part-time for years and knew that I hated my job, so he suggested my name when a job became available. He introduced me to Dorothy, the owner of Collectors Records in east Dallas. I talked to her for a bit and she called over Chuck, the manager (and later owner) of the store to speak with me. They both seemed impressed with my musical knowledge, so I was hired.

My last day at the cracker factory was one of the best days of my life. I didn’t even stay until quitting time; I just threw my hairnet and my coveralls in the garbage and drove happily back to my apartment in Dallas, crying hysterically and whooping and hollering all the way. I started work at the record store a few days later. My life immediately got better.

Granny and Grandad Turner

My great-grandparents married in Greenville, Texas on Christmas Day, 1919. Robert Marvin Turner had just returned from his Army duty in World War I and Mary Marie Jones was 20 years old. Marvin was a mechanic and achieved the rank of Sergeant in the Army before being discharged in 1918.
When he came home from his service, Marvin was a farmer, working on his father Alexander Kyle's land. A.K. Turner was married 3 times.  He had brought his second wife Laura Stapleton Turner and his children from both marriages to Greenville from Lee County, Virginia in a covered wagon in 1895.
A.K was also a farmer, was 6'7" tall and had an impressive mustache. After Laura's death in 1912, he remarried, to Mary Ann Rorex. A.K. died in 1926.
A.K.'s mother Araminta Linkous Turner was the grand-daughter of a Hessian soldier who had been brought from the Palatine district of Germany by the British to fight the Americans in the Revolutionary War. He was captured by the American forces and kept as a prisoner of war on the Shiflet farm in Montgomery County, Virginia. When the war was over, he decided he liked the Americans and he married Farmer Shiflet's daughter, inheriting the farm when the old farmer died. Their family still owns the farm.
The Turners originally came from Cornwall, England and were practicing Quakers. Laura's family the Stapletons came from a rather aristocratic background; originally from Scotland, descending from the Barons Beaumont of Carlton Towers. Her ancestors were Oxford and Cambridge University graduates and one was a member of Parliament who narrowly escaped execution by Oliver Cromwell.

Marie had lost her father Jeff Jones the year before her wedding. He had been underneath his Model A Ford when it fell off its jacks and ruptured his intestines. He died 2 days later. Jeff was a hack dealer, selling wagons and buggies as well as the horses needed to pull them. He also worked on the railroad for a time. Jeff was a member of the Greenville Volunteer Fire Dept. Jeff's mother Susan Daugherty Jones was a distant relation to both Queen Elizabeth II and Captain Meriwether Lewis. Marie's mother Mattie Honeycutt was the daughter of John Honeycutt III from Union Parish, Louisiana and Sarah Ann Warren from Mississippi. John Honeycutt's father was the first European settler of Union Parish. He obtained a grant from the Spanish government for a lease of land along the Bayou D'Arbonne. John Honeycutt III tired of his role in the Confederate forces in Hunt County and with a few friends, set out for Mexico, planning on sending for Sarah and his children when settled. When no word came, Sarah and the children set out looking for him. They got as far as Williamson County when they got word that John and his friends had been waylaid and murdered either by Confederate bounty hunters looking for AWOL soldiers or unfriendly Comanches. Sarah and the children returned to Hunt County and she remarried.

Marvin and Marie immediately started their family: Jack Robert was born in 1920; Charles Franklin in 1922; Rosemary in 1924; Mattie Joyce in 1926 (she died in 1927); and Alice Marie in 1930. They lived close to downtown Greenville their entire married lives, eventually settling in a little house on Henderson Street. Marvin worked as a groundskeeper at the cemetery he and Marie are now buried in before retiring. My mother remembered going to the cemetery with Grandad and playing while he was working. He would put her to work gathering old and faded ribbons and floral displays for the trash.

My own memories of their house on Henderson Street were that there was a small sitting room, where Grandad's recliner was and Granny's chair and sewing kit. The TV was also in that room and Mom and I would spend Sunday nights there with them watching the Ed Sullivan Show. From there, you either walked straight back through their bedroom, which had two twin beds on either side of the room and a bathroom at the back with a claw foot tub and the kitchen entrance; or if you turned left, there was a bigger parlor, which was used for gatherings, such as holiday parties or playing dominoes with friends. Behind the parlor was a tiny dining area.  It was connected to the kitchen, which ran along the back of the house and had a severely sloping floor, from the pier-and-beam foundation needing repair. Everything was covered in a thick haze of many years of pipe tobacco smoke.

The back yard of the house had several plum and pear trees, all of which gave succulent fruit. Grandad's years at the cemetery helped him keep the luxurious St. Augustine lawn pest-free. I used to roll around and even nap in the grass and never got so much as a chigger bite. Granny would grow huge hydrangeas at the side of the house. She would push long iron nails into the soil to make the flowers a brilliant blue.

Grandad's recliner always had pipe tobacco sprinkled in it. Grandad smoked a pipe and smelled like vanilla tobacco. He was about 6'4" tall and rail thin, with a triangular shaped face, jug ears and a thick head of gray hair. He would say things like:
"Don't run in the house! You'll fall down and break your journey!"
"Laws, laws, laws!" - Quakers couldn't swear and that was as close as he would get.
There was a small corner store at the end of the street and my aunt Vicki would pester him to walk with her and buy her some candy. "I can't walk, honey. I got a bone in my leg." She would always reply, "Oh no! Does it hurt?"

Grandad was a very kind and sweet man and I never remember him ever losing his temper or raising his voice. He developed phlebitis when he was in his 80s and had to have his leg amputated at the knee. He used a wheelchair afterward. One day in May 1975, I was sitting with him on the front porch of the house on Henderson Street. Mom and I were living in the rent house across the street at the time. I was showing Grandad my new doll when he suddenly slumped over. I called out for Granny and Mom and they called an ambulance. Mom took me to my Uncle Larry's house. My Aunt Jackie was there but Uncle Larry wasn't home yet. My cousin Mathew was just a toddler. My Mom called a few hours later and told us that Grandad had died. A bit later Larry came home from work. Jackie told him about Grandad and I remember him slumping in his chair and putting his hands over his face. Jackie and I both put our arms around him.

Mom and I moved to the Spanish Trace Apartments we lived in off and on through most of my childhood, and we convinced Granny to move there as well. She took an apartment facing my elementary school on Stonewall Street, and I would come by to visit every day after school before Mom got off work. Granny looked stern and humorless in photos but she had a great sense of humor and loved to laugh. She and I would watch Match Game. Granny would cackle at the racy answers, and insist that Charles Nelson Reilly had "sugar in his britches" long before I knew what that meant. He was Granny's favorite person on that show. She laughed uproariously at anything he said.

Granny then moved into a duplex on Division Street for the remainder of her life. Her friend and cousin Mrs. Quattlebaum lived in the other half of the duplex. Mrs. Quattlebaum had a hearing aid that she always kept going full blast. When you talked to her, you could hear your voice feeding back, like Jimi Hendrix was buzzing out of her head. It made you want to  t a l k   v  e  r  y     s  l  o  w  l  y.

When my parents had divorced, my Mom had sold her wedding ring to Granny, who had it refashioned into a dinner ring. She told me that when she died, I would get it because it had been my Mom's ring. I was very close to Granny since Mom and I lived in a small house next door to her when I was in junior high school. She lived until 1980, when I was 15. She developed stomach cancer. Mom and I were at the hospital with Aunt Alice and Mimaw. We were all there with Granny when she passed. I didn't get the ring, by the way. It went to my Aunt Alice. I think that bothered my Mom more than it did me.

The value of rituals

When my mother was in remission from what was her terminal illness, she was at home for a while and tried going back to work. She told me that it was the first time in her life that she actually enjoyed going to work, because she had a new appreciation of life from being so close to the edge. She told me that coffee never smelled so good, food tasted wonderful and she was happy to see almost everyone. She didn't even mind doing laundry, because it beat lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines and unable to do anything for yourself. At the time, I appreciated what she said, but I couldn't really understand it.

Then.....

A year ago this week, I was in the hospital with a pulmonary embolism. I went to work out and couldn't catch my breath, and I assumed it was just bad allergies even though they had never been that bad before. The next day, I could barely breathe and I knew something serious was wrong, so I asked my husband to take me to the ER. They ran some tests and told me to my astonishment that my lungs were full of blood clots and I was lucky to have made it there in time. I spent two days in the hospital and had a surgical procedure to filter the clots out. The doctor took me off birth control pills, which I had been taking to control migraines, and put me on blood thinners. The nurses seemed to delight in telling me stories of other patients with PE who weren't so lucky.

"I was talking to this one lady who was in bed and suddenly she just keeled over, dead as a doornail! She threw a clot and it went to her heart. Gone, just like that!"

"There was one guy, younger than you, who dropped dead in the waiting room. that was a PE too. You're really lucky they got yours in time".

I was very surprised when they told me I had the clots, but the nurses' stories made me realize just how fortunate I really was. I had a genetic test to make sure that I wasn't genetically inclined to have blood clots; it seemed to be just a freak occurrence because of the birth control pills. I stopped them immediately. I was happy to go home, because I might not have had the chance to do that again.

I was thinking about how important the little rituals in your day can be to your mental outlook. If you're feeling rushed, you can be annoyed and anxious the entire day. Taking time to appreciate little things like enjoying your coffee or tea, writing a letter or email, petting your dog or cat or listening to music in the morning can put you into a more positive mood and will help you enjoy your day more, even you're having to do something not particularly enjoyable. If you can enjoy the little rituals in your life, the big things will mean so much more. Your circumstances can change in the wink of an eye. Appreciate what you have and who is around you. If you lose them, you'll miss them more than you'll know.

Who I am

I am a woman.
I am a daughter.
I am a wife.
I am a friend.
I am a citizen of the world. 
I am an American.
I am a Texan.
I am a worker.
I am an atheist.

I believe that, if you can help other people, you should.
I believe that you should always try to be kind to others.
I believe that if you see something wrong, you should speak up about it.
I believe that, if someone or something causes you pain or is toxic to you, you should remove them from your life.
I believe that you should try to appreciate the beauty in your life.
I believe that you should take good care of yourself because a lot of people love and depend on you and would miss you if you were gone.
I believe that you should believe in whatever you want to believe, but you should not tell others what they should believe.
I believe that you should try and learn something new every day of your life.
I believe you should speak more than one language, even just a few words or phrases; anything that will help you communicate to more people.
I believe you should learn and pay attention to history. History does repeat itself.
I believe that we only have one world and we all need to learn to get along. All of us.

I do not believe that religion should have any part in education or government.
I do not believe that you should tell others how they should live their lives, and they shouldn't tell you how to live yours.
I do not believe that you should cut others from your life strictly because they believe differently than you do. You should talk to them and try to understand them.
I do not believe that you should hate other people because they look or believe differently than you do.
I do not believe that men should have any say in what happens with women's bodies. It should be strictly the woman's decision. Men may have their opinions, but it's the woman's body, woman's decision.

All my life, I've felt that the people around me have been trying to keep me in progressively smaller and smaller boxes. As I got older and my personality and intellect got bigger, those boxes got more and more constricting, until I felt that if I didn't break out of them, I would be strangled.

I've always been told to act a certain way: don't swear, that's unladylike; don't complain if you're unhappy or disagree with others; don't make other people feel foolish if you know more than they do.  Don't brag. Don't act weird. Dress like other girls. Go to church, even if you don't believe because people will talk. "Don't act above your raising".

Of course, I'm a female. Being an unorthodox woman has its own set of challenges that men have no clue about, but of course, men are also affected by these societal rules. I'll leave it to men to write about their own issues. I only wish they would leave women's issues to women, but that's not the way of this country anymore, not that it ever really was in the first place.

I've fought against these rules my whole life and for  the most part, the struggle has wounded me both psychically and emotionally. It's been a constant battle to prove to myself that I am an intelligent person and I do have talents. I am funny and I am worth knowing. Most of the time, I cannot prove it even to myself anymore. Thanks to my mother, I did believe in myself for a while, because she believed in me when no one else did. I get very discouraged, especially in the current political climate. Empathy with other people simply does not matter anymore.

Sometimes I think about some little girl in a some small town who doesn't want to wear dresses, who isn't interested in fashion, or Jesus, or having a houseful of kids, being pressured into believing that there's something WRONG with her; because good little girls want to get married and have kids and they don't want to play music or make art or act or write, or tell dirty jokes.

There's nothing wrong with you, little girl. Listen to your mind. You know yourself far better than anyone else, and anyone who tries to put limits on you simply cannot handle what you are capable of. Keep an eye out for others like you and send out an empathetic thought into the ether. Maybe they can also have a shining moment of self-realization before it slips away again.

Funerals

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I cannot bear funerals anymore. I went to my share of them when I was younger and other than being upset to see my loved ones sad, it didn't bother me that much. I would go on with my life afterward as usual. My grandmother's funeral in 1999 was different, maybe because I was so close to her. I hate that my final and overriding memory of her is lying in a casket. For a couple of years after her funeral, I would be overwhelmed with sadness, thinking of her in that box, out in the cemetery, all alone. I could not deal with it. I vowed then that I wouldn’t attend any more funerals. I just cannot handle it anymore.

I know that most people feel that a funeral will give them the closure they need when a loved one dies, but just the fact that I won't see them anymore is closure enough for me. My family is very important to me. You can always make the argument that the funeral business is a racket: it’s prohibitively expensive and people can guilt you into going into debt so you won’t be dishonoring your loved one. And there are people who feel that unless you show up at every family function, then you obviously have no regard for your family. I prefer to visit my family while they’re alive.

When my father-in-law passed away, he wanted only to be cremated with no funeral. I was astonished; I never knew anyone who died and didn’t have a funeral. He was also the first person I knew who wanted to be cremated. My Mom was impressed with that too. We discussed it when she became terminally ill. I asked her what kind of funeral she wanted, where wanted to be buried, etc. She told me she wanted to be cremated and to not deal with a funeral. If I wanted to do a memorial service, that would be fine. I told her to tell everyone, so they wouldn’t be mad at me when she died, but some of them still were. It wasn’t my decision. If I had had the money, I would have given her a full Viking funeral with fireworks, dancing bears, cheerleaders and the Rolling Stones playing, if she had wanted it but she didn’t. Her co-workers and friends at the hospital where she worked gave her a memorial service that I didn’t attend. I wasn’t able to handle that either.

My wonderful, sweet, big, gorgeous uncle Larry is gone and his funeral is on Saturday. I won’t be there. I want to remember him the last time like I saw him earlier this year: sitting at his kitchen table, laughing about some book he had read. I want to remember his snuffling giggle and his stories about the cool things he found at the flea market, or what his grandkids were up to. He was a good man and I’ll miss him very much.

Turning Points

1. When I knew I didn't want to be a parent

I never particularly liked children I wasn't related to, even when I was a child. I adored my little cousins, but other little kids mostly annoyed me. I figured that as I grew older, my biological clock would start ticking and I would want a family of my own. That's how it works, right? My mind was made up by an incident when I was 17 years old.

My aunt lived in an mobile home with her husband, who was away working, and their young son. She called me one day and said that she was sick with the flu; would I mind staying the weekend at their place and taking care of the toddler? She could barely get out of bed. I adored my little cousin, so naturally, I said yes.

The first night, I was asleep on the sofa right outside my little cousin's room.  He woke me up by screaming. I opened the door to his room and a wall of stench poured over me. I turned on the light and there he was: standing up in his crib and shaking the slats on the side, brown smears all over his face, his body, the wall, the ceiling, the carpet.......it was a world of shit.

Gagging for all I was worth, I gingerly picked him up, taking care not to get any more shit on me than was necessary. I took him to the bathroom and washed him off, then got him settled on the sofa so he would fall asleep again. I wiped up as much of the shit as I could see and tried to clean the room as best I could. The shit was EVERYWHERE, he must have been flinging it like a monkey at the zoo.

I looked at the sweet toddler sleeping peacefully on the couch and thought to myself, "I don't ever want to have to do this again. Babies are shit machines, so I don't think I want to have kids. Nope, I do NOT want to have children".

You know, I'm 50 years old now and I've never regretted that decision. I made sure to marry someone who felt the same way. I don't get pangs of regret when I see cute little kids. I like hearing about my friends' grand kids, but don't ask me to baby sit.  I recoil when asked to hold newborn babies. Babies are like elephants. I like them just fine, but not in my house, 24 hours a day. As for toddlers, I prefer to get them all sugared up, then send them back to their parents.

2. When I knew I wanted to be married

I was introduced to my husband by a mutual friend. We were attracted to each other from the start; there was an immediate spark between us. He was not in a good place mentally or physically when we met; he was terrifically depressed. Lest the pot call the kettle black, I had also been only a year or two of a psychiatric hospital myself for depression and had battled my "black dog" since I was a child. We both seemed to know that we were each others savior and that we needed to be together.

We moved in together about a month after getting together. He started in with the "when we get married, we'll......." talk right away. I was shocked; I thought no one would ever want to marry me because I was too damaged. Even his father was in on it. As his Dad was calling for a part to my POS Renault, he told the guy on the phone that it was for "my son's fiance" and he winked at me. I blushed furiously. He's told his parents? He must be serious! It started to seem like a good idea and a feasible one at that.

Several years went by, and I was finally able to attend the University of North Texas, but only if I could qualify for financial aid. Being married would solve that problem, so I told him that we should probably go ahead and get married. Nothing would be different, we had been living together for the past 4 years anyway. So we did it. I've never regretted it, I knew it was absolutely the right decision. We've had our problems at times, like every couple, but he's the one for me. Our separate weirdnesses complement each other perfectly.

3. Moving away from home

My Mom had been dead for a little over a year. Every time I went home to visit family, it was painful to me that she wasn't there. I couldn't call her every day anymore. My husband's sister had been living in Austin and we would go down to visit her and her husband for wild weekends, always enjoying ourselves and marveling at what a great place Austin was; wouldn't it be great to live there? There was always something to do: cool places to shop, great restaurants.....why not move here?

My husband had been supporting me after Mom died while I was getting her house ready to be sold, then I started working at an antique mall in Dallas, a job I loved but it didn't pay. We decided in late 2003 that we should go ahead and move to Austin. One of our friends also lived in Austin and he was able to hook me up with a job at a mortgage company. In February, 2004 I came down and found a rent house close to the in laws and we were set. Life has been pretty good since then.

My sense of humor is not shared by everyone

I suffer from depression. I've had it for most of my life. The way I've always tried to relieve that depression is through laughter. If you can laugh at it, it doesn't seem so bad. When I can't laugh about something, I will plummet into the abyss of sadness. I don't think there's anything that doesn't have some element of humor to it, even the most horrible things. Sometimes, they're difficult to find.

I have what could be described as a complex sense of humor. There are times when things like a relatively sophisticated Monty Python sketch about "woody" as opposed to "tinny" sounding words will have me in hysterics, while on other days, a fart joke will make me giggle for hours. I was the only female I knew who enjoyed the Three Stooges.

Whenever I hear something that prompts a wise-ass response, I cannot resist responding to it. People will either laugh or roll their eyes. Sometimes I'm paralyzed by anxiety that my mental filter has once again failed to subvert a wildly inappropriate remark. I'll let loose with an offside remark I think is witty and an uncomfortable silence will ensue, making me think "why on EARTH did I say that out loud?" But yes, I went there, as the millenials say.

I love to make people laugh and I love to hear people laugh. I've had a lot of pain in my life, so I try to find the humor in anything, just to relieve the heaviness in the atmosphere. Whenever I've met people who seemed to enjoy or share my sense of humor, I've held them close to me and I perceive  them as close friends, even if I've never met them in person or know them only superficially. People who can make me laugh are rare, so I consider them precious to me.

A lot of people I know consider being funny an "immature" response, when an adult should be somber and solicitous. Some situations demand solemnity.  I can be as sober as a judge on the outside, but inwardly, I am usually trying to think about what can be amusing about the situation. Laughter is important. There are scientific studies proving that laughter can help to cure illnesses. There may not seem to be much to laugh about in the world lately, but there's humor in everything.

Cold air and Cigarettes

I used to think that men should smell like cold air and cigarettes, like the scent of my father when he came to pick me up for his weekend visit; or earthy and sweaty, like my grandfather when he came inside from milking cows or baling hay in the hot Texas sun. Dad always smelled like he just stepped out of an air conditioned room or car with a cigarette hanging from his lips, beer on his breath and cologne on his collar. Dad always wore loafers, I never saw him in oxford type shoes. He wanted shoes that he could slip in and out of easily. He seemed to sweep in and out of my life just as easily. Now that he's old, he wears comfortable shoes, but he doesn't seem to be very comfortable in general. He used to be 6'1", but now I can look him directly in the eyes. He seems small and vulnerable. I don't have much anger left to direct toward him anymore, just pity. He's not happy with himself. I'm the same way. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Papaw smelled like sunlight, tractor grease and freshly tilled soil. He wore cologne only when attending weddings or funerals, also the only times he took his precious Resistol cattleman's hat out of the box. It wasn't a cowboy hat. He wore straw cowboy hats in the hot weather, but cooler temperatures and fancier occasions called for the cattleman's hat and the pointy toed boots. Papaw always wore overalls for work with long sleeves and a neck cover even on the most oppressive summer days. He wore a gimme cap to keep the sun off of his bald head and round toed leather work boots, suitable for slogging around in blackland mud and cow manure. He didn't complain about his life, he just got on with it. He didn't have to drive his tractor very often then, but he tooled around in his scooter, played his electric guitar and drove his big red pickup truck. He enjoyed his life. He worked hard since he was a child. When he sold the dairy and retired, he made it a point of pride to go fishing whenever he wanted and played music most of the day. He died at the age of 94, only being seriously ill for the last 2 months of his life.

I'm glad that I had both my father and my grandfather in my life. They were the male yin and yang in my social awareness. If all men were like my father had been like when I was a kid, I would probably have grown up to hate men.  I also had my grandfather and my uncles in my life,  who were all good solid men who took care of their responsibilities and treated their loved ones well. They gave me hope that I could someday find a good man to be with. They certainly showed me how men should treat the women they love.

As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that men are flawed human beings, not terrifying mythological creatures with the ability to wreck my life or make me hate myself. If only men could feel this way about women. We're both human beings and we have only one world to live in, so we have to learn to live together. We also have to learn to be honest about ourselves. That may be more difficult.

A will to live and a time to die

I'm sitting beside my mother's hospital bed, reading a magazine. Mom was finally calm and asleep, after undergoing yet another pleural draining. A full liter of black, slimy liquid was taken from around her lungs, making it easier for her to breathe, and with the aid of morphine, she had fallen into a drugged oblivion. I read my magazine, trying to calm myself after witnessing the traumatic procedure.  A drain tube had been inserted into her pleural cavity to drain off the liquid, and although heavily sedated, she had moaned and cried throughout the ordeal.
Before she had been wheeled down to the procedure room, I had taken Mom outside to the parking lot. She cried, big tears sliding down her face and wheezed, "If I'm going to get better, I want to get better, but if I'm going to die, I want to go now. I can't take this any longer". She had been ill with ovarian cancer for 2 years then, once going into remission and actually going back to work for a short time. She got to see me, her only child, graduate from college. She told me that it was the proudest moment of her life. We spent the graduation weekend together, shopping and just enjoying being together outside of a hospital room. She felt like she had her life back after venturing too close to the other side. Then, the cancer came back. She had been back in the hospital for two weeks now.
I sat on a bench next to her in her wheelchair, holding her hand. I wiped the tears from my eyes and I didn't know what to say. I knew she wasn't going to get better. People with Stage 4 ovarian cancer didn't get better. I didn't want to lose her. I was afraid of losing her. How would I cope without my mother? She had been all I had for so long, and even though I was married now, I completely depended on her for so much. I had tried for 2 years to prepare myself to be without her, but I could not imagine it. What could I say to her but I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry.

Mom breathed deeply and quietly, sleeping peacefully. I finished my magazine. It was getting dark, so like I had done so many times in the past 2 years, I kissed her forehead and whispered that I would see her in the morning and to sleep well. I walked out to the parking lot and drove home to my husband. We didn't talk much, we just watched TV in silence then went to bed. I slept exhausted but dreamed fitfully.

The phone was ringing. I sprang up out of bed and ran to answer it. This was the call I had been dreading. A nurse told me that I needed to come to the hospital. IMMEDIATELY. That word reverberated in my head. My husband started to get dressed to come with me, but I told him to stay home. He wanted to come with me but I said no. I had to do this alone.

I got to the hospital and stood outside her door, watching 5 people huddled around her in bed. One of them was frantically trying to resuscitate her. Mom's naked left leg was hanging off the side of the bed. One of the night nurses noticed me standing there looking horror struck and she pulled me back towards the waiting room. She told me that Mom had woken earlier that evening not long after I had gone home. She had forgotten where she was and had tried to get out of bed to go to the bathroom. Her heart had given out and she collapsed on the floor, pulling out her IVs. The nurses heard her IV alarm go off. They had almost gotten her breathing again and were still trying. The nurse asked if Mom had a living will or a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) Order. Mom had filled one out a month before, when she realized that she was not going to get better.
 I whispered to the nurse that Mom had told me that she didn't want to be resuscitated. She had told me that she never wanted to be a "vegetable".  She didn't want to be hooked up to a lot of machines, depending on a mechanism to keep her breathing, a tube to carry away her waste, a pump to keep her blood circulating. That wasn't living, she had said. If it came to that, please let me go, she said.

The nurse told me to wait there. She went back into the room and came back out a few minutes later. She sat beside me and took my hand.
"I'm so sorry. She's gone."

I stared at the nurse uncomprehendingly. My Mom was dead? I had just been with her a few hours earlier and now she was dead? After all the pain and misery she had gone through in her 58 years, after two failed marriages and so many years working hard to raise her only child by herself? She was gone? I guess I should tell everyone. That's what people are supposed to do, right?
The nurse gives me a phone and the code to dial an outside line. I called my Uncle first. He was stunned and asked if I wanted him to come there to get me. I said no. He told me he loved me. Then I called my grandfather, letting the phone ring a long time. He burst into tears, the first time I had heard him cry. I couldn't bear it. I called a couple of others, then I went back to the waiting room and sat down again, staring at the floor.

It dawned on me what I had told the nurse. Had I told them to kill my Mom? They were keeping her alive when I got there, now she wasn't alive, all because I had told the nurse about the DNR Order. A loud moan escaped me and the nurse rushed over. She put her arm around me and said that Mom was not suffering anymore. She wasn't in pain anymore. She said that I had followed my Mom's final wishes to the letter and to not worry. I calmed myself down after a bit. I called my husband and told him that I would be home in a little while but I had to say goodbye first.

I was allowed me to go to Mom's room a few minutes later. All of the life saving equipment had been removed from the room, and Mom was laid out on the bed, covered except for her face by a blanket. Her forehead was cool and smooth and she looked so peaceful. I held her face and kissed her temples, smoothing her hair. I told her I was sorry that I had not been able to buy her the diamonds I had promised her when I was a child. I wouldn't be able to buy her a fancy new car that wasn't always breaking down, like I had planned. I said I was sorry I had worried her so much through my depression and suicidal episodes. I told her I was sorry for everything.

I stayed in her room, my lips on he forehead, for quite some time, until a nurse came in and asked if I was all right. I was not and I would not be for some time to come.