VIDEO: Bottle banned

VIDEO: Bottle banned

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the man behind the curtain

H's home bothers me so much. He lives with his daughter and his grandson (grandson is probably my age) in an apartment in raleigh, but no-one really lives in that apartment except H. There are still boxes everywhere... long since unpacked, but just empty and cluttering up the space. Opened and unopened envelopes scatter the floor around each place to sit- the chair, the sofa, the computer desk. Its mail half attended to.
The place is just so cluttered and stale. Its not a place to live, or die. And yet he is dying here. And dying alone. His grandson left yesterday to go back to California, so now H lives at home alone all day while his daughter is at work. He is mostly blind and in poor enough health to be on hospice. But, he would rather have it this way than to be in a nursing home. "Absolutly NO nursing home!" He is insistant. Can't say I really blame him at all. I would probably be the same way.

But I hate that its not more of a home. California is actually home for him, and he longs to go back, but he is too sick to travel. I wish he was in a place with a giant recliner and pictures of a life well lived all over the wall. Instead its just cardboard boxes. I broke a lot of them down today and hung his clothes up in the closet. I made his bed and brought him an ice-cold coca cola. And he asked to sit in the shower. When his wife died a few years ago, he said he had the hardest time sleeping. So he would get up in the middle of the night, 2am, and run a bathtub full of water and soak in the tub until morning. "the Sorrow would diffuse out of my skin, into the warm bathwater, and go down the drain" he said, "at least for a little while." "And right now, I am just so sad." he told me.
So we pulled a plastic chair in the shower for him to sit on. (sitting him down into the bathtub is pretty impossible for him right now) and filled warm water up around his ankles and sat with the shower water running over his head, his face, down his back and body. He sat in the shower for almost a full hour (How the water was hot that long I will never know). The water-conscious person in me cringed a bit, (scott harrison would have my head) but the hospice employee won out- "whatever makes him feel better". I sat on the toliet with the seat down as he sat in the shower, and we talked through the shower curtain for an long while about everything.. race, life, love, education, regrets. And then for awhile we both just sat, with the sound of water running, rinsing away the weight of the sorrow. at leaste for a little while.

go learn something

Barb, one of my patients, gathered me up today and very somberly said:

"Now Stephanie, I didn't have a daughter that I could pass this along to, so I feel I should pass it along to you. I have some very important advice that my mother told me when I was a little younger than you:

"go learn something."

you won't be pretty forever. And believe me when you start to look like I do, you're going to want to have something intellegent to say. So, sweetie, go learn something. everyday."

"yes ma'am."

homewhere

I went home this weekend. I love driving around the bend on the other side of hickory and glimpsing for the first time the blue ridge mountains, smokey-blue and gentle in their contrast to the sky. Not the real mountains of the west, but whispers of mountains nonetheless, gentler, retired mountains, worn down with time. The familiar things of home are comfortable; Mom's cooking- cookies and bread, tea and fruit. Her long-winded, tangent-rich, epic tales of life in the backcountry. Its the drama of living with Kenny and the chaos of working for the leaderless state. You can barely ask a clarifying question or insert a parallel story to illustrate understanding.... she won't let you get in a word edgewise. So for 2 solid hours I sat inverted on the sofa (legs up against the back, head alternately hanging off the foot or resting on the very edge of the arm) nodding and listening to her. Fairly enough she is ready to listen to an equally long version of life from me... but now I am too tired.

Kenny is always Kenny. Saturday after work and after Mom and I got home from tooling about in town, he is dressed in shorts hiked up to the middle of his stomach, tall gym socks, a wifebeater, and an old gym sock tired around his forhead doing its best to catch the excessive sweat dripping off him. He eagerly greets us and is kind enough to entertain the idea of a bike ride. Its a family event. I convince them to join me on a trip around a long-winding block on my new co-op bike. We head out. "Honey, do you even call those tires?" Kenny asks as he inspects the ultra-thin tires on my new road-bike. "you couldn't pay me to ride that thing." he says. "one little rock in the road, and you're a gonner."

Sunday is lunch with Dora, moms new BFF. Dora is this wonderful retired engineer, probably Marion's first female engineer. She is a brilliant woman who spent her life running companies, running with the big dogs and taking no shit from no man. But she is still gentle, soft and kind as you think a woman should be. Her husband died 2 years ago, and so she keeps herself busy enough to outrun the lonliness and sorrow. She volunteers for the womens' shelter, for hopsice, for her church, and now has taken my mom under her wing. I hope I am as effective and productive in my evening years as she is.

Mom asked me where I felt home was now that I have spent almost 10 years in raleigh. Is raleigh home? Is home home? She asked the question and then first answered it for herself. She has been in the Asheville area for almost 20 years now, but it still doesn't feel like home. She misses the west coast. She misses living on water. She misses the rockies. She misses home. I thought about her question for most of my drive back to Raleigh. I do love Raleigh and there are certain things about it that feel home-like. I love Asheville and there are so many things that feel home-like. But I am not sure I was ever a person to call a place home. Home is my mom. Home is my brother. Kenny is even home. There are people here in Raleigh that feel like home, where my soul stands up and stretches, or lays down and rests. I feel like Neela, my dog, sometimes. She knows a place as home: when I pull into the parking lot of my apartment, she wines and paces the backseat, this place is familiar, its home. When we pull up into the driveway at my parent's house she does the same thing, this place is familiar, its home. But she is eager for the new places too. Somehow she can smell a trail we are about to hike, or an afternoon out of the house on an adventure somehow. And these places arn't familiar, but its as important as the comfort of home.

Don's Million Miles

Don will be in Asheville October 17 to promote his new book.

who's comin' with me?

it appears relegated blog posts are also a side effect of phlegmatic studying. I will capitulate to the temptation, nonetheless.

inventory of mosquito bites:
3 on stomach/chest
2 on back
to count the bites on my feet and legs is untenable.
1 on top of right shoulder... it is the itchiest.

quote from one of my patients today:
"you're a bitch, spelled with a 'w'."

and who cares what the area of the shaded circle inscribed in the square is??!!