A large part of me thinks it a heart wrenching mercy. In 1997, I was 24 years old, a married mother of three. November 10th my Mom and I had done some shopping together and we had a good laugh about a number of things. Namely the 24lb box of bananas we had ended up with. It was the last day I seen her 'alive'. Normally, we were as thick as thieves, I'd spend a lot of my days just hanging out at her house, and vice versa. So the next day, I was feeling under the weather and so was she, so we decided to just stay in our respective residences. Later that day I got a panicked call from my Mom's boyfriend, who stated that my Mom had a heart attack and they were taking her to the hospital. It never dawned on me that she'd actually die. I figured, okay, heart attack, she's still alive, we should be able to come back from this. Holy Kindergarten Batman, was I wrong. We got there, the nurses and doctors were working on her, after she stopped coding, they finally let us in. Her eyes were open, and at that point, I knew she was no longer there. See, I have a medical background, I've seen dead eyes before, and they were dead. She wasn't there. Yet, the machines kept forcing her to breathe, and her heart muscle, while still beating was damaged beyond repair. At that point, I don't know what to do and I remember begging her to stay with us. I'd like to think she heard that, but in some respect I almost hope she didn't. It was such a selfish thing to say with her in such a condition. Mom, please stay, we can't live without you..... She kept coding, and I kept asking them to stabilize her. I left the room, and while they worked on her some more, I sat in a calming room, a photo of a tree in the rain with lightning flashing across it brought to mind the words from a James Taylor song 'Fire and Rain'. Just yesterday morning, they let me know that you were gone. Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you. I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song, I just can't remember who to send it to. I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, But I always thought that I'd see you again. I can't recall if I prayed or not, but I remember feeling a calm wash over me. In that moment, I knew I loved her enough to let her go, and so the next time the nurses and doctors came out I went in and said to her... Mom, I love you enough to let you go.... It wasn't long before she began coding again, and I took the nurse aside and said, that's enough. It's enough. She had coded 22 times, I had talked to the cardiologist who assured me that the only thing happening with her was that her heart muscle was in fibrillation, I had allowed her to go through that several more times, still hoping for something, anything and then she was gone. My brother, my husband and myself formed a triangle in the hallway outside her room, this having gone long into the night of Nov 11, our arms linked, faces wet with the tears of disbelief and unbearable grief. In so many ways I was thankful that November 11 is our military remembrance day here, because it would be years before I could go through that day without wanting to step in front of a bus. And so, with that my thoughts are that sometimes its a mercy to let someone go. If their time has come, if their illness too great, I think we have a responsibility to discuss these things with them and to be able to make these hard decisions when they're unable to. My mother Pauline and I had these discussions. I knew her thoughts, and I knew that I loved her enough to let her go.
I actually laughed outright at this question. I'm a fairly G-rated person, I wasn't always this way, but I am now. My first thought was at a resort with a pool. The next was the Venetian in Vegas and then lastly Disneyland. My husband's answer: A room full of puppies. I like the thought of the above, puppy breath, cute roly-poly little chubsters, and just general mayhem. I don't like to think any further than that because then rationality sets in. I shall ignore puppy poop and non-stop whining.
When my husband and I first met, I was actually with someone else. The someone else had moved in with me because he was having a challenging time financially, and we were 'dating' but I had told him the month prior that it was best he started looking for his own place because I had caught him sending off spam type email to other women offering 'dates'. Yeah. I'll just leave that there. It still angers me. So when I met the man who would become my husband, it was a bit of a weird time because part of me still felt like I was in a relationship. The future hubster and I met at work, he was a technician who had came in to do work on our security system and I was the receptionist of the company he had come to do work for. I remember seeing him for the first time, I had ran from the back of the office area to the call of the buzzer and had nearly chinned myself on my desk. His eyes and voice were what I fell in love with first. What's super ironic is, as I write this, we just finished an argument and its 13 years later and I'd like to strangle him and dump the body. However, this piece of writing isn't about that argument, its about our first 'date'. As he worked around our office, I didn't set out to become romantically involved with him, I was simply just being myself. Small talk. I'm not really great at flirting, in fact, I really stink at it. I just don't understand all the idiosyncrasies of it. Sometimes I think I may be a guy with boobs. I had asked him in a round about way as he was installing a key panel if he had ever been married, I have some pretty strict morals and I don't poach on other women's territory. He replied yes, and then was silent, and I thought figures, one of the very few men I'm attracted to, he's married. I didn't let on though and just thought well good for him, when he finished his pause and said, but we divorced a long time ago and I've been single for about six months now. My heart leapt and skipped half a beat and I said, 'well you know maybe that's not such a bad thing. Being single means that you'll be single for when the right woman comes along'. A passing thought entered my head 'wouldn't it be weird if I were that woman?' and I gave it no more thought. I just kept on working away. The next day was hotter than hades, and he and his coworker had returned to do further work, one was over in our other shop across the parking lot, and the other in a stuffy telephone closet out back that was about 50C in the shade. So while I was out for lunch I grabbed a couple of extra Cokes and two ice cappuccinos and stopped at the closet on my way back into the office. I said 'hey, I know its pretty hot, so I got you this'. Nothing else, just gave it and left, again, no intention of anything. This is just me being me. The next day was much the same, so I offered up one of the Cokes to the future husband, because he was the first one I had seen, I actually had the both of them out of the fridge around 1 in the afternoon, because my intention was to give them both something to drink. Yet, the other guy didn't come over to the main office until later. I gave him his drink then, he sits down and starts talking about his marriage and sex life. Imagine me sitting there, mouth near open and I'm thinking 'Dude, you shouldn't be discussing this with a stranger'. He then switched topics and asked if I were married, pointing to a ring my grandmother had gave me. I said, nah this is a ring from my Grandma. Letting the conversation fall silent again. Then out of the blue he goes 'hey you know future husband is single' he should ask you out for a coffee. I said nothing, and thankfully at that point the phone rang. Prior to leaving that day, I mentioned some girlfriends and I were going out to a night club downtown to the future husband. He goes oh, well maybe I'll see you there, I live in the apartment next to it. I said, great I'll look for you, if you show great, if not that's okay too'. Fast forward to that evening, I can only laugh as I think about that evening now. I've always had an eclectic group of friends, having friends of all ages and cultures. I was with Lana a svelte and savvy Russian woman. There was no mistaking she was mature, and yet in full command of herself and her sensuality dressed in a leopard print mini skirt. I'd have never dared to wear such a thing, but knowing her and her personality, it was a perfect thing for her to wear. I was also with Michelle, a gorgeous Indian woman, who had purchased a leather skort/short to wear with black leggings. I was the odd woman out as usual. While most women expose everything they own, I had covered it head to toe. I wore a neatly tailored collarless jacket, dress pants and boots and was drinking water the entire evening, because I don't drink very often and that night I was poor. I like to dance, so that's what I did, same with Michelle. Lana simply sat and the men flocked to her like bees. At one point of the night, a man was at her feet rubbing them in the bar. I just shook my head, again, this was Lana. The future husband finally showed up, wearing a thick chain and basically mirrored my own dress in colour and form. I actually cringed at the chain and thought, oh god, not one of 'those'. Yet, I wasn't too hard on him, I had never seen that chain at any point during the week while he was working, so I let it go. We danced one dance, but I could see that this place wasn't his usual thing and he too was drinking water. The evening ground on, and I finally said, I think I'm going to go home. He's like well, I'll walk you to your car and so he did. We spent the next two hours talking by my car and the conversation just flowed freely. Finally I said, hey do you want to go get a coffee? He's like, yeah sure, I was going to go get one anyhow after we finished talking. So we hop in my car and I drive several blocks toward the coffee shop when I realize I barely have any gas in my car, and I had started the night with $10 in my pocket, and had spent $5 of it on an over priced pop at the bar. I also notice the time, 12:30 a.m. I hadn't realized we had talked for 2 hours till that point and I go... you know... I'm really sorry, but I think I'm going to have to let you go for that coffee alone. I didn't say I was worried about running out of gas. I simply said it's getting late, my kids are home alone. So, I ended our 'date' by dropping him off several blocks away from home, in the middle of downtown and just left him there. We actually laugh about this to this day.
I find this such a difficult thing to answer. When I was younger, I hung around my aunt and uncles house a lot. My uncle had been doing paintings in acrylic and water colour for years. He had literally hundreds of paintings of still life he had done, and while good, it wasn't what I would have said was superb. I really shouldn't be one to critique though, as I couldn't do any better. Due to his influence, I began to take an interest in drawing as well. Most of my subjects were animals as I was a kid who loved animals. Always a heavy reader, I began illustrating some of the characters in the novels. While I had a huge range of drawings eventually at one point, one of poignant recall is that of a young woman sitting on floor of the ocean wearing a garment of seaweed nursing a dragon. In the last years of high school, it became radically apparent that my artwork was vastly different from those of my classmates. Such comments as 'if you really see that, you should probably get your head checked'. I always loved those, namely because these were the ones in which I had stopped being firmly grounded in reality and just explored the boundaries of my imagination. Then as I kept drawing, I was drawn (pun intended) to the human form, and found beauty in sometimes the seemingly grotesque and thus my favorite paintings became the rubeneque woman. I loved the extra, the roundness and softness. I looked at Monet, Van Gogh, Klimt, and so many more that I couldn't even begin to name. Yet, Da Vinci's art work, and his insatiable curiosity is what captured and held the love I possessed for both art and science and as I began to look at his works, read coffee table books on him, I began to form an opinion of who he was as a person and I often thought if I could sit down with any painter/artist it would be him.
My sister gifted me with a 300 writing prompts book, and it asked me to entitle the chapters of my life. I thought this would be an interesting topic to bring to the blog, because its likely I'll have this electronic record longer than the little blue book of depression, otherwise known as the writing prompt book. One of the questions within the book instructed me to break up my life (up to this point) into 3 chapters, and give each one a title. I've never been one to follow directions carefully, but what I ended up with was both hilarious and pathetic in all the same breath. 1973-1983 Hatched, Dad's on scheme in the Military, almost born in Germany 1984-1997 My Bipolar Mother: The Other Woman 1990-1997 Holy $#@! This kids really mine x 3. Hatched 3 of my own in 1990, 1993, 1995. Mom's Dead, Now What? Raising my 13 year old brother 1998 Ascent into Hell 1999-Present God saves me, but I'm an idiot. 2004-Present I'm in love with an Atheist. 2009-2012 My Son committed an Armed Robbery, and is spending 2 years in Jail. I'm so ashamed. 2016-Present WAIT?! WHAT? I'm a Mom again. (Grandma steps in to save the day.....and various other blathering) 2017-Present The Second Ascent Into Hell I got started on the Not Happy thread about some of the things I've faced these past few years. In writing it all down I had one of those epiphany moments, where I realized that I'm still sane when I probably have right to be approaching insanity. I've gone through a lot in the approximately 16060 days I've been alive. Yet, this past year and the one prior to it just seemed to be the years to keep on giving. This year seen my husband and I nearly divorce, on account of my trying to remove my grandchildren from the foster care system. It seen us be grilled by every agency I think anyone trying to adopt a child would be, but in this scenario, I'm trying to remove my own flesh and blood from the clutches of what I can only describe as a nightmare. For all the good intentions the social workers have, for all the good intentions the care facilitators have, the fact remains the foster system is a broken system which needs to be overhauled in the worst way. I spent my weekends travelling over 300km both ways to visit my grandchildren whom I hadn't seen in nearly 4 years. My eldest granddaughter was just a mere 3 when I had seen her last. She barely remembered me, but thankfully she did. My youngest, I had seen her once, a tiny little bundle wrapped like a burrito. These two scared little girls, living with complete strangers, instead of me, their paternal grandmother. My months were filled with visits from the various agencies, and a grilling and intense process which investigated even my sex life with my husband. They'd always say it was a very intrusive process, my version of intrusive and theirs were two different things. They couldn't have been more intrusive if they'd done a full glove anal inspection on the entire family. It was that brutal. I won't even get into the battle fueled by racism. My granddaughters are first nations. I'm white. I think that should at least explain some things. Then just as these things were wrapping up, literally a few weeks before the private guardianship order was signed, my husband had lost his long term, full time employment all because of the whim of some jerk he worked with. While he received a decent enough settlement, he shouldn't have lost his job in the first place, and wouldn't have if his manager wouldn't have had his head firmly shoved up his posterior. This caused our already stressed and strained marriage a further blow. As if that weren't enough, the year that just kept on giving seen my sister frantically calling me to inform me that our Dad had been rushed to emergency with what we later discovered was a perforated bowel. I paced the hallways, and couldn't sit still until the nurse who had attended the surgery came to tell me that they'd found the hole, and Dad was out of surgery, but still recovering. Meanwhile my cousin sends me a message to let me know an aunt had died. My own fires so many, I couldn't even begin to be there for them. I had hoped to attend the funeral, I had hoped to be there for them mentally, but in truth, I was treading water so badly that I couldn't even begin to throw them a life saving device, because I was too busy clinging to my own. Then the real kicker, one morning Tuesday morning, I just woke up and I couldn't do what I used to do. I kept having chest pain, I kept feeling such a relentless fatigue and since my mother had died at the age of 42, I checked myself into the emergency department. Much the same as they had done for her, and much the same symptoms, nothing showed on her EKG, other than an elevated heart rate and blood pressure, nothing too high, but just abnormal for me. The crushing feeling in the chest, and the fatigue was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I checked myself out of the ER and then went to my doctor the very next day, since the hospitals where I live aren't very good at listening to the symptoms people have. My doctor immediately sent me for blood work, immediately sent for more testing, but all details were inconclusive, yet the fatigue and the crushing feeling in between my rib cage and left scapula kept persisting. More MRI, more stress tests yielded a tumor in the chest, which seemed to be encroaching on the lung. Yet, this didn't explain still the crushing or the fatigue. A preliminary diagnosis of congestive heart failure was given. Something I had been suspecting for some time, given family hx, and the fact that my legs had swollen so much it looked like I no longer had knees. Yet, I didn't dare seek treatment for fear my granddaughters would be left hanging in the foster system. I supposed had I died, there would have been no choice, but it would be literally over my dead body that these girls who have already been through so much, would go there. I've been hanging out at home now since the middle of October, trying in vain it seems to recover. Yet, my body allows me so very little in terms of actual days where I feel 'normal'. The fatigue is still there, and the chest pain is still there, albeit reduced thankfully now. My days have become my nights, and I find my world has been turned upside down in so many ways. Yet, as much as I hate this, I am hopeful. I am hopeful that the nuclear medicine tests will possibly reveal what the true issue is with my heart. It could be as simple as the tumor sitting on a nerve, but I think that's too much to hope for, considering all the things that have gone on and how I feel. I will know after my surgery on January 23. I'm expecting it to hurt like a son of a gun, considering they're drilling through my chest wall, and all the muscles within. They're expecting a recovery time of at least a month, but knowing how slowly I've healed from other surgeries, I suspect it will be closer to two or three. Now my battle starts with long term disability. I only wish I felt better. I love working, even though my work is incredibly stressful, we have a dynamic and fun team that I miss dearly. These things though pale in comparison to my husbands uncle, who has received a death sentence. I just pray that his death doesn't coincide with my surgery, because I truly don't think my husband could handle that kind of worry all at once. I also wish we could have been there for him, but thankfully we had made the time to go in the summer, before any of us knew this storm was upon us.
I dreamed the other night I was a tiny purple octopus/squid. No, I'm not on drugs. Well, recreational ones anyhow. I am on some metroprolol and nitro just in case the ticker gets out of rhythm. I was on a brief hiatus from the site, for a bit, seeing how my body decided to experiment with how well I would function without a regular heart rate and a tumor in my chest. Who knew a lime sized tumor would wreak such havoc on my 44-year-old body. I surely didn't. But I didn't come here to talk about that. I came to talk about the cute little octopus/squid I was in my dream last night. Here in my mind's eye, I was following myself around a number of maze-like obstacles, with my tiny tentacles and my wide eyes. I was pretty cute, if I may say so myself. Now, I'm not entirely certain what this dream is trying to inform my conscience of, but it's a heck of a lot better than some of the others I've had. Until about the middle of the dream. During this maze of confusion, and my trying to make it who knows where comes a sound of large crunching. Like the walls are being eaten away by some ferocious predator, who is also coming to eat the maze I'm in. Five bucks says that if I were to have recorded myself last night, I was probably grinding my teeth and that's where the crunching came from, but that's just a guess. The crunching came to a crescendo, and just when I thought my cute little octopi/squid was a goner, the alarm began clanging. Saved by the bell. I sure as Sam Hill hope I don't resume the dream where it left off last night. I don't want to be someone's calamari.