a place
a perspective so familiar
why give it up?
even if we are here only to be here
that is destiny, my love
a name
a place a perspective so familiar why give it up? even if we are here only to be here that is destiny, my love
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This life a series of breaths,
always short of long or otherwise disproportionate to the actual experience. Why is the life force so compelling to control? Or why is it so elusive? Do the thing
or don't. Why do we have to pave the way for that vast wasteland we feel desperate to reclaim. Now do we? She knew it all but we all knew she didn't. She could lift the Empire State building with one hand. She could let it fall and not look back to see where it landed. Where is she now? When he died his spirit left his body, a shell, nothing left. When she died she never left but now i can't find her.
Is it possible to be born from the same DNA? Is there anything that really connects us beyond the fact that we have to be connected by our struggle to survive? Who the fuck are we anyway?
This thing happens again and again and I can't wrap my mind around it. Lack of trust. Lack of support. Lack of intimacy. Lack of...all things that really matter. I will go to sleep tonight, hoping to dream a better outcome. When your last parent dies, your childhood is in limbo, frozen in time and space. There's a hole that used to be filled with aggravation, frustration, guilt that you couldn't make things right, love when it seemed there was never enough. A hole so cavernous there is no bottom, a hole around which the turbulence roils, unable to penetrate the emptiness. A hole so dark that the stillness of the night brings such clarity that sleep is elusive and the memory of those final days is relived over and over again. mom died. so hard, the process. from confronting the truth, having a conversation about it, moving it forward and backward. moving it. and then the zone where nothing makes sense and everything is so hard to accomplish. not to mention that thing called reality. reality, no matter how real it is, becomes so unreal, surreal, even scientific. this + that - this = maintenance. that - this = that + this = decline. the monitor. the readings. the oxygen, her respiration, her heart rate, her blood pressure, her pulse, her temperature. the morphine, dose after dose, never enough. with a total saturation of ativan, we couldn't make it happen, mom. your heart was beating like a marathon runner when the angel walked in, a hospice nurse turned CIUC nurse, who asked, "do you want me to remove the oxygen?" the very thought of this with your struggle to breathe, the choking, the 30% lung capacity, scary. but she reassured us the sedation made you comfortable enough. your respiration zero. the oxygen in your blood, zero. your heart, beat, beat, beat more slowly. three hours later, we said goodbye. we hope it was soon enough, painless enough, transcendent. we hope it was all you wanted it to be, for as much as you could acknowledge or want. but then how can you be a part of it? how can you not? no work, no play. bedtime at 2 in the afternoon |
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