6/11/10 It is time

I found out something today
Something I wish I didn't know
but I needed to know
Something that does not sit well
Something that is senseless and sad
like so much of life

Something that forces me to think
of purpose, initiative, productivity and value
of the people I know and what drives each of us
of what it will be like
for so many of us
when things are different, strained, altered and ultimately
gone

what will it be like...

A presence that will soon be gone
a presence that affects me only, slighty
but enormously at the same time
A casual aquiantance that makes me smile
despite the battle she faces every day
a person seen infrequently,
but those random visits, however brief
linger interminably
Terminal and interminable
so similar in sound, yet
extreme opposites in meaning

It is the finality of the terminal
that brings me interminable inspiration



I was once told to write a letter
to someone who has had an impact on me
and send it to them
this someone, has no idea how profoundly she has stirred me
and it is time to write that letter

I'm back

I've been away for quite a while but many things have occupied my mind these past two months.  I have come to realize that the young are plagued with adult pressures, adults face death on a daily basis, tennis has saved two lives that I know of, and the impact one person can have on a population is never realized until that person is gone. 

An eighth grade student is hospitalized after her blood pressure drops to a dangerously low level.  The culprit...anorexia.  How does a 13 year old develop such a horrendously paralyzing disease?  Is the pre-teen population so jaded that they can push a slighty overweight child to the brink of death with condescending comments that linger in a young girls mind and leave her with no alternative but starvation?  These children have given her an insecurity that may take her life.  She struggles with this illness daily, having to make intermitten stops at guidance so they can observe her eating. The entire school knows of her affliction and can not possibly comprehend, what it is like, to intentionally harm yourself until you are on the brink of death and still not realize you are out of control.  Ironically, control is the one thing she thinks she has!   If this is her life at thirteen, what will she know as a teenager or young adult?

Adults face death on a daily basis and become hardened to it's hold on life.  I have seen so many people who battle their own looming death with ferocity and vigilance.  This is their monthly, weekly, daily routine and they have lived it for so long they do not know any differently.  For those that love and care for them, it is a battle that can not be fought by anyone else but the victim, yet they feel the weight and pain of the ordeal as though they were enduring it themselves.  Their helplessness is their affliction and they,  like their loved one, can do nothing to alter the course of the illness.  They proceed with caution and apprehension, until the ordeal becomes such a routine part of their lives, that onlookers can not comprehend how they can maintain such balance and appreciation, when faced with such overwhelming difficulty.

A year and a half ago, tennis saved my life and once again, this year, I was a first hand witness to tennis saving a friends life.  A year and a half ago, it was my tennis friends that talked me into going to the doctors for my abdominal pain.  What would have happened had I not been playing tennis is unknown, but I do know it was my drive to get back on the court that forced my hand into a doctor's visit that uncovered my ovarian cancer.  The silent cancer that so often goes unnoticed until it is too far gone.  I thank God I went to the doctors when I did!  Just one month ago, at tennis practice, a teammate experienced some unusual symtoms while at practice.  In a matter of minutes, she went from serving a tennis ball to nearly collapsing on the court.  Luckily, teammates noticed something unusual and her partner caught her before she collapsed.  The severity of her condition worsened dramatically. EMTs were called and they quickly took her to the hospital.  Her screams of head pain as she left still resonate in my mind.  She had an aneurysm on the court during our team practice.  We all thank God she was with us when it happened as we have all come to find out only 20% of the people who suffer aneurysms survive.  She was so fortunate to be with us when it happened.  Had she been alone, she probably would have died.

A fellow co-worker passed away last week and left an entire gym feeling his abscence.  He was a facility worker with downs syndrome.  He was the mayor of the club, always there with a smile and a sly grin.  I'll never forget one of the first times I met him, he was working with a personal trainer to get his health under control.  He would ask all of us at the front desk to get him a donut or a cookie or candy, and then if his trainer saw him, he'd say it was ours.  It was a daily ritual for him to stop at the front desk and chat with us.  Always calling us gorgeous or sweety. He shocked us when he went on a date and told us how he "made out" on the deck after dinner!!!  Members and workers were all touched by Jack.  He loved life, people and having fun.  He brightened so many lives with his pleasant demeanor and personable ways.  He welcomed anyone with the same enthusiasm and joy.  He truly loved life and the people he met living his life the only way he knew how, with an open heart  and an innocent humor that could brigten even the darkest day.  He is gravely missed by more people than he will ever know and his persona made the "Y" a better experience for all of us who knew him.
 
One can only hope to leave the same kind of indelible, optimism and joy behind for those we have touched with our arms out-stretched, our eyes sincere and our hearts our open, offering.

April 8th a Phonetic Alliterative

Of late, I have been consumed with thoughts of my own aging, what I can no longer control and I wonder, when I will cease to fight what nature wants. Interestingly enough, today's alliterative date, brought me back to a poem I wrote a few years ago after visiting my mother-in-law at a nursing home.  The title, "No Nursing Home Nirvana- An Aging Alliteration", how do you like that?  While my own struggle with my aging has nothing to do with this poem, I still thought it worth the time to post, given the timely coincidence of the date and my current interest in letting nature take it's course, so here it is:

Sometimes sense and semblance seem shrouded in a shawl

buried beneath burdens bringing forth some bitter brawls

When will we welcome wisdom's winching ways

leading, luring, leaving us it's languid, lonely leis

Dream no more depression, drowns the doubtful dame

fearing families forgotten and friends forsaken fame

Instant independence, idles in thine eyes

Crumbled convalescence, crushes courageous cries

Elderly ignite, egregious ignorance

hoping home can harbor this horrid hindrance

Mostly morose memories muster minds malaise

oddly old and opulent often ostracize

Kindling kisses kindness, known only now and then

aging able animus, adorn us all again

Greeting gaunt and ghostly grandma, gather gurney side

together to travail, the tender, turning tide

Reasoning resembles resurrection run amiss

Yesterday yanked yonder yielding, yearning youthfulness

No one knows nirvana as nature's noble knight

Please preserve her pride, pursuant to this plight

unsettling unhappiness - unconsciously unhand

unwittingly undertaken

unable to understand

I remember, the horror of the entire experience left me emotionally exhausted.  I am so thankful I had the fortitude to write my feelings down at the time.  This is a place, in my mind, I never want to go back to.  Probably my darkest poem to date.  It is about the agonizing deterioration of an aging parent compounded by the horribly impersonal, inadequate care this particular nursing home lent.

Now this makes my aging woes, child's play.

Orange Emotions 3/22/10

As we sat at dinner, Kerrin asked, "So you wore orange today"...
A simple question, a bit unusual and so I asked "Why orange"
I could feel the emotive heat eminating from his person,
the uneasiness with what needed to be said
the tension built and then the struggled, broken response..."favorite color"
for the first time in many years, he filled up and cried
the intensity of the hurt, visible, passionate and impactful
we all stopped looking at him and looked at our plates
silence,
but for the weeping he could not control
his sadness was contagious
I too, felt my own emotional temperature gage rise
before I knew it, a tear was invading my dinner plate
a quick glance to see if anyone else noticed
and I saw we were all affected
the words were captive in our throats
balled up and stifling any consolation we could express
as he wept, we grieved with him
nothing could be offered but our universal solemnity
so young to have to experience the passing of a classmate and friend
inexplicable,
he was a good kid with a common disease
complications, coma and then
a single color is worn to show support and hope
for a life that would cease simultaneously,
as the school beemed in orange

Kerrin's Poem- A Rainy Nights Walk

a rainy night can cure anything but security

my breath slid across my face as if it was a cloud covering the last of the light

the patches of trees gave me safety in every step I took

I was holding a leash attached to a timid, and horrified puppy

As the leash was pulled to the direction of my house I let out a sigh of relief

No one was happier than I was

My hair whipped me as if I was in a chase scene in a horror movie

The occassional drips of rain hit the dead grass like bells ringing in a church

The drips left me paranoid to every sound I heard

approaching my house I saw the most beautiful sight of all...

the house lamp post made the dew drop, smothered grass glisten, like the stars above

I look forward to my night walk with Stella every chance I get

3/12/10 I Cried Today

 As the conversation came to a close, I could feel the lump growing, the heat rushing to my face, and then I cried, like an over stimulated child. It was the culmination of a week of varied emotions, stemming from a life of distorted priorities and mindless minutia.  I cried out of sadness.  Sadness that my sister will now be living five hours away by plane.  For so long she has lived a short drive away and yet, I spent so very little time with her.  What was keeping me from committing more of myself to my family?  Why do I constantly have this internal conversation with myself, reprimanding myself for having the wrong priorities and yet I continue to make the same negligent choices. Her last words to me were, "look after everyone here", something  I should not need to be told and yet the words needed to be said. I am frustrated with my inability to learn from experience.  The redudancy of mistakes is enough to drown an elephant and yet, the elephant continues to surface. Frustration adds to the tears I shed in an attempt to drown the elephant once more. I continue to be ignorant of what should command my attention, of what is needed to satisfy and bring reward.  My life is a jumble of scattered seconds, mundane minutes, and unheralded hours that leave me with worthless weeks of time. My responsibility record is negligible while my selfishness is the elephant that dominates my world.

  While I'm crying, I cry out of worry for sick family members, my aging parents and what my life will hold for me when I am an empty nester.  I cry out of fear that I will not be able to live up to expectations, deal with difficult situations or handle loneliness.  I cry out of empathy for the unfortunate, weak and elderly.  I cry for my past youth, health and missed opportunities.  I cry for those I don't find time for and realize just how much I'm missing.  I cry for what I have no control over and what I wish I could change but realize I can't.  I cry for the unfairness of life, the harshness of  loss and the forthcoming heartaches and battles, slated for those I love. I cry out of disappointement in myself and the disappointment my children have only just begun to experience. 
 When I think I am done crying......I cry out of relief and appreciation, that I am fortunate enough to have so much to care about and then.......I smile.

3/8/10 Awe-struck

As I meander down the cliff-side expanse, I anticipate an awakening of the senses
The scenery is breathtaking here, the smell of ocean air emanates from the rocks and trails
I'm told this is the path to take, the rewards are abundant
What I experience is...fixating
I am captivated, encapsulated
I am engrossed and absorbed by the surroundings
The earth encroaches on my path
A trickle of sound and sand
The tapping of pebble on pebble increases ever so slightly
Soon, I am  hearing a rush of sound that intrigues and entices me to stop and digest
The cliff-side comes into view
at first slowly then...
it is before me and I can not move
taunting me with it's close proximity,
As the earth falls, I am consumed with a sense of inevitable suffocation
It's harsh jagged edges slide closer and closer, tormenting me
tearing my skin as it severs my drive
Impairing my progress as I struggle on
battered, stumbling, staggering
Impeded by that which drew me in and courted me
the very thing I yearned for is also my affliction
My broken remains, buried amidst the cool brown earth and hard cold stones
Awe-struck in the worst way