Breakdown

I just don't know what I am going to do. Instead of getting better, I am getting worse.

I can't sleep. I wake up every hour or two all night long.
I really thought I was going to just lose it during the night last night.

Got up and started my pot of coffee..sink full of dishes.
Just went into this sate..GD this and MF that and trying to scream
but my voice just couldn't get to the level of scream. I am so f'ing tired.

And I am angry. So angry. About things that happened during Dad's illness
and about Dad dying. What't the point in anything? We live and we die.
And if we can't make things good in the in-between, what's the f'ing point?

I really feel terribly fragile today.

Try Not To Breathe

I will try not to breathe.
I can hold my head still with my hands at my knees.
These eyes are the eyes of the old, shiver and fold.

I will try not to breathe.
This decision is mine. I have lived a full life
and these are the eyes that I want you to remember. Oh.

I need something to fly over my grave again.
I need something to breathe.

I will try not to burden you.
I can hold these inside. I will hold my breath
until all these shivers subside,
just look in my eyes.

I will try not to worry you.
I have seen things that you will never see.
Leave it to memory me. I shudder to breathe.

I want you to remember. Oh. (you will never see)
I need something to fly (something to fly)
over my grave again. (you will never see)
I need something to breathe. (something to breathe)
Baby, don't shiver now.
Why do you shiver now? (I will see things you will never see)
I need something to fly (something to fly)
over my grave again. (I will see things you will never see)
I need something to breathe. Oh. Oh. Oh.

I will try not to worry you.
I have seen things that you will never see.
Leave it to memory me. Don't dare me to breathe.

I want you to remember. Oh. (you will never see)
I need something to fly (something to fly)
over my grave again. (you will never see)
I need something to breathe. (something to breathe)
Baby, don't shiver now.
Why do you shiver now? (I will see things you will never see)
I need something to breathe. (something to breathe - I have seen things
you will never see)
I want you to remember.

REM

The Seven Sorrows

The first sorrow of autumn
Is the slow goodbye
Of the garden who stands so long in the evening-
A brown poppy head,
The stalk of a lily,
And still cannot go.

The second sorrow
Is the empty feet
Of a pheasant who hangs from a hook with his
brothers.
The woodland of gold
Is folded in feathers
With its head in a bag.

And the third sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the sun who has gathered the birds and who
gathers
The minutes of evening,
The golden and holy
Ground of the picture.

The fourth sorrow
Is the pond gone black
Ruined and sunken the city of water-
The beetle's palace,
The catacombs
Of the dragonfly.

And the fifth sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the woodland that quietly breaks up its camp.
One day it's gone.
It has only left litter-
Firewood, tentpoles.

And the sixth sorrow
Is the fox's sorrow
The joy of the huntsman, the joy of the hounds,
The hooves that pound
Till earth closes her ear
To the fox's prayer.

And the seventh sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the face with its wrinkles that looks through the
window
As the year packs up
Like a tatty fairground
That came for the children.

Ted Hughes

Trying to go to sleep but keep hearing in my head The Beatles

Though I know I'll never lose affection
for people and things that went before
You know I'll often stop and think about them
but in my life, I love you more

Maybe that's how it goes...then I started thinking about women
100 years ago who found it hard to go to sleep at night
and what songs might have been playing in their minds
and then I think women 100 years ago were probably
so damn tired there was no song...there was no radio
but there was music
and then I think 100 years or 1,ooo...makes no difference

loss is loss and there was music and there were words
and there were sleepless nights no matter how tired

and I just want to sleep. I want the words to stop for this night.
Tabula rasa...

The Beatles - In my Life

There are places I'll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain

All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more

I was listening "Birds" by Neil Young (posted below) on the drive back to work today and thought about my dad. Didn't cry. Just created a short film in my mind as it was playing. The film's about a woman who has no destination--she's just driving to be driving (I know, crazy considering the cost of gas!). But, she keeps driving--past the children playing in the schoolyard, past the cows grazing, past some horses running toward a barn, past the signs "Road Work Ahead" "Congested Area" "Speed Limit 45" " Straw For Sale" "Fresh Vegetables" "Prepare for Sudden Stop", past the factories, over the bridges, through each season, across the mountains, next to the coast, on the freeways, through covered bridges--always driving. At one point, her car startles a field of blackbirds and they take flight simultaneously, waving up and down in the air--lifting themselves all at once until she passes and then landing themselves all at once when they know she is nothing to fear. The little vignette played on and on and I just kept hitting repeat so I could keep listening to the song and dreaming along.

Gotta go to the grocery and then home to cook. Need a glass of merlot. Need some sleep.

"Birds"

Lover,there will be another one
Who'll hover over you beneath the sun
Tomorrow see the things that never come
Today

When you see me
Fly away without you
Shadow on the things you know
Feathers fall around you
And show you the way to go
It's over, it's over.

Nestled in your wings my little one
This special morning brings another sun
Tomorrow see the things that never come
Today

When you see me
Fly away without you
Shadow on the things you know
Feathers fall around you
And show you the way to go
It's over, it's over.

Neil Young

Death Beds


The ancients were talkative on theirs,
so many agencies needed to be addressed:
the gods of departure who controlled
the seven portals of the world,
the ferrymen leaning on their smooth oars,
the eternal pilots, immortal conductors,
and that was just the transportation.

Japanese monks would motion for a tablet,
sometimes, an inkwell and a brush
so they could leave behind the dark,
wet strokes of a short poem--
a drop of rain on a yellow leaf.
One described the night clouds
and the moon making its million-mile journey.

Medieval Christians who could read
could read a treatise on the subject:
De Arte Moriendi, On the Art of Dying,
pages of instruction on what to do in bed,
how to set the heart right
how to point the soul upward
and listen to the prayer of one's own breathing.

Some pale Victorians in their tubercular
throes would ask for a looking glass
so they could behold the seraphic glow
the dry fever brought to their faces.
A few even had a photographer summoned
to open his tripod in the sickroom
and disappear under the heavy black cloth
as the subject, more or less, was doing the same.

Then there were the wits,
using their last breath to exhale a line,
a devastating capper, as if the world
were simply a large gallery buzzing with people,
and now it was time to throw on a long scarf
and make an exit, leaving
it to someone else to close the door.

Some lie on their backs for months,
students of the ceiling,
others roll over once and are gone.
Some bellow for a priest
and make the one confesssion no one doubts.
And you, and I, too, may lie on ours,
the vigilant family in a semicircle,
or the night nurse holding our hand
in the dark, or alone.
There will be no ink, mirror, or Latin book,
though the wallpaper may be tasteless
and you may feel yourself entering a myth.

I would hope for a window,
the usual frame of reference,
a clear sky, or thin high clouds,
an abundance of sun, a cool pillow.
And I would expect just at the end
a moment of pure awareness
when I could feel the solitary pea under the mattress
and pick out the dot of a hawk lost in the blue.

Billy Collins

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West.
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W. H. Auden



Overall, I am not that impressed with this Auden poem, but those first few
lines remind me so much of the way I felt the first time I found someone
dead. I was 18 and had completed an on-the-job training position with
the hospital for the position of Certified Medication Technician. I gave all
the routine meds and all the PRN (as needed meds). All IM's, subcutaneous, by
mouths (po's), and suppositories. I was also involved in all codes on my floor.

Mr. Johnson was my first code. I was going in to give him a PRN shot for pain
and could tell from the door that he was dead. He was upright in bed and had vomitted.
I wasn't far from the nurse's station so I yelled Code 5 and within seconds (literally), the room was filling with people. The charge nurse, the nursing supervisor, doctors from all fields,
respiratory therapy, and I. I was popping vials of lidocaine and whatever else
the doctors were telling me they needed. They actually revived Mr. J and took him to surgery,
but they lost him 45 minutes later on the table when his lung ruptured. I just
remember thinking how I felt after I came out of his room and he had been taken
downstairs to surgery. I kept thinking how odd it was that nothing stopped for death--nothing.

A woman who was there visiting someone fainted and we had to get out the ammonium
carbonate (I think!), the phone was ringing off the hook, people were being wheeled up from surgery, PRNs were hanging on my door, televisions and radios were on, people were laughing.
It all seemed so odd. I was barely 18, still had braces on my teeth and hair down to my waist,
and had only ever seen a dead person in a casket. I just felt that Mr. J deserved things to stop
and take notice of his leaving this life.

I wonder how my dad felt that last night of his life. We had all gone home because he was
supposed to be coming home the next day, but an hour and a half after we left, they coded
him. They told us he was talking when they got to him, but I didn't think to ask what
he said to them. I couldn't think. I couldn't believe my father was gone. That just couldn't
be my dad with his intubation tube still down his throat, eyes wide open but not full
of life and color. I just kept saying to him over and over

Breathe, Daddy, breathe! Please, Daddy, breathe! You can't be gone, you can't be gone,
you can't be gone! Oh no, Daddy, no! And all around us, in every room, in every hallway, in all the world, life just kept going on.