the hospital

Her room is a stark white with glossy linoleum floors and harsh florescent lighting. It’s surprisingly a private room; the only sound is the luxurious Rufus Wainright from my laptop and intermittent cries for help from my mother.

“GOD HELP ME!” She yells every few seconds

They had to take her off medicine to prepare for surgery and she is now delirious with pain.

She tries to get move, scared and without any idea of what is happening to her. I run over and calm her down. She stops moving finds a place of peace. But then she repeats the painful action a few minutes later, forgetting what happened. That’s the problem with short term memory; you forget even horrendous pain from a broken hip. Why does this happen to her? Does she deserve to lose her mind and now her body that’s breaking down before me?

So that is my day, I try to process what happened to her. It sounds as if a new nurse got flustered and made a mistake. Unfortunately this mistake could cost my mother what limited mobility she already has and possibly her life, as this injury normally does to people in her condition. So should I cause the nurse to suffer from this mistake or do I let it go. I understand flustered, I’ve been there. But every time I hear my mom cry out my heart is broken. Correct or not, I want someone to pay for this pain.

Her breathing is labored. Now I know what labored breathing sounds like, She sucks in air sharply, taking all air that she can fit, aggressively in her lungs. She breaths out the hail of rocks and nails, coughing like the far off thunder echoing of a thousand hills. Each breath sounds like her last. And then is silent, breathless for what seems like minutes, hours even. This has caused me to stand next to her, placing my hand above her mouth checking for breath, while holding my own.

Asleep, her skin is perfect like alabaster without any wrinkles. Her hair is still a lush dark brown without any grey, even though she’s entering her mid sixties. If you saw her asleep you would have no idea the pain and psychosis trapped within her.

She was so full of fire, my mother when she was more stable. She was stubborn and angry at times, but loving at others. I remember waking up many a night, scared. No matter how late, or early in the morning she would sit with me and make me cheese and crackers or some other yummy snack and we would eat it together. Then she would hold me in her lap, stroking my hair and sing to me as I drifted back to sleep. Safe.

All alone, I sit here with her. Unsafe.

Listening now to John Vanderslice’s Trance Manuel soothing melody, I dream of better days. Of peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate milk, Christmas with the fire going and telling jokes, of dancing like a ballerina on the kitchen floor while my mom claps. I went from being a innocent kid to a angry teenage girl rebelling against a mother that came from a different generation, not just different from mine but so very different from even my friends parent’s generation. Graduating from high school in 58’ was different from 95’, she didn’t understand me either. I went from that to my early twenties with a mom that could barely even remember who I was. I wish I would have had a few years as a adult with my mom. Where we could have looked face to face as adults and I could have told her I understood. I could have said sorry. Our fights were so bitter.

I still think of myself to young to have to deal with a mom with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and now a broken hip. But now at almost 30 I would hope somewhere inside I would be stronger, used to it. Able to cope easier, I don’t know. There’s been too many times sitting in hospital rooms alone with my mom where I’ve been screaming inside.

I am screaming inside right now.

Screaming, alone and waiting.

I never feel lonelier, as a single girl than in the hospital. I can travel the globe alone and feel at peace, I can watch movies by myself and read contently in coffee shops. But hospitals I can’t do. When I think of myself as independent; times like these I wonder how much I’m fooling myself.

I broke down this morning. When I got the call, I broke in my cubical at work. I broke down again when telling the other manager, again when I went to tell Mo at her desk. Thank God she drove me for I would have wrecked for sure. I was broken so quickly. I went from talking to a customer with a smile on my face to cracking and breaking for all my co-workers to see.

My dad came thru for a few minutes to sign papers. Then alone again

I’m here for the long run. If you hear screaming, coming from room 425, it’s just me.

My supplies:

• 1 laptop
• 3 books
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
• Sister of My Heart
• Ten Little Indians
• Chili cheese Fritos
• 1 odwalla juice
• 3 movies
• Garden State
• Door In the Floor
• Arsenic and old lace
• Portable speakers and headphones.

the sea

Sometimes when I am all alone I can see clearly.

From where I sit today I look from a cliff high above the ocean. The beach stretches before me like a blank canvas. Like specks on the beach I see little people grouped together in pairs. They walk sometimes side by side, sometimes apart but always coming back together again. Farther down the beach I see the only speck that is alone. He (or short haired she) is literally walking between a rock and a hard place. On one side of him stands a giant rock, or boulder that sits halfway above the surface of the beach like a whale with his head crashing above the water. On the other side of him the ocean was crashing closer and closer following in the moon at tide. As the waves pound, trying to reach his feet he just stays. Just stands staring out past the sea like waiting for a reply. Before he is taken by the waves he looks up as though given the answer he was waiting for and sprints off. I watch him (and now I can see it really is a HIM) as he runs to his car, jumping in impatiently as if he needs to share to the world what the sea had said.

I know how he feels, for I have waited for the ocean to speak, and it has. Sometimes it says “I dare you to jump in and try to ride my waves!” but I know it’s just trying to drown me so I ignore it till it gets pissed off and starts talking to someone else.

Sometimes, however, I come and sit on driftwood by the sea pondering life, hard questions and the ocean speaks to me. The waves crashing calm my mind till I can hear freely. The answer becomes clearer with every breaker that reaches earth

Far away I see the rocks jut into the sea where a lighthouse rests at the far end. The sky is that color of muted grey today, the same color as the lighthouse so the only reason I know it is there is the faint outline and the light flashing at me. I count how long before the light comes back around. One-one thousand, Two- one thousand, Three-one thousand, and four, the light flashes back.

The thing about this lighthouse is that there’s at LEAST a couple thousand feet of rock beyond it and a space of water and another island of rock. I wonder if, hundreds of years ago, on a dark night. A ship was sailing northbound hugging the shore trying to stay away from a storm that was hovering just beyond the horizon. The captain was trying to navigate away from the rocks when he saw the lighthouse flashing lights every four seconds, to guide him,. He yelled back to his crew “We just made it mates, were clearing the lighthouse now!” As he turned back to his ship steering wheel thingy he saw in horror his ship crumble as it smashed upon the rocks. His last words as he sank below the freezing-cold-dark-northwest water was probably “Why didn’t they build that damn lighthouse closer to the tip?!?” as he reached for a plank of wood that was just out of his reach.

The sun is now coming down at a rapid rate and the sky is now the color of the ocean so it’s almost impossible to tell where one ends and the other starts. It looks like a bad fake background in a movie set. I wouldn’t believe it was real if I hadn’t walked the shore earlier.

Sometimes when I sit in hotels such as this, my mind wanders. I stay in hotels at least four nights a week, that’s a lot of wandering.

My rooms are always the same, no matter which hotel. But my wanderings are always different. Sometimes after watching too much cable TV I’ll just sit staring out the window and let my mind dance in daydreams and get lost for a while.

Good daydreams are hard to come by although a bad daydream is usually better than real life in some ways. I believe that sometimes, this is the door way of insanity. For when we would rather daydream than experience real life, we can come to a crossroads of sorts. To embrace the daydream life and reject reality. I wouldn’t be surprised if most would rather daydream. That is another subject for another day.

For tonight all there is the invisible sea. The darkness now is impervious and it overtakes my view. For now all I see is black, except the light that will pass by in four seconds. The sound though, never disappears. It is rhythmic and soothing, angry and sullen over and over again.

It is a constant. No matter what shore I stand on, no matter what country or state. The Ocean may be Pacific or Atlantic, Mediterranean or Nordic. I’ve found the one constant, although varying in intensity, is the crashing and lapping of the waves as it finds land. For there is always an ending to the sea. There is always land that it finds. And there is always some one standing on land looking over the sea’s vast expanse and wondering as it crashes to their feet, if it has answers for them. And it always does. It always does.