Love

So sometimes I feel like I am the only one on the planet not really getting it.  I’m not.  I’m the only one on the planet in my skin not getting it…… The longer I go and the more I learn the more I know that I am on many levels doing it right.  No one is completely right, ever.  No one is finished learning how to do it better, ever.  I’m no exception.  But let us review and see if I have some things figured out.

Should you help people you love?  Yes, as long as offering and giving that help does not destroy you or endanger you.

Should you help people you love in a different way then you loved them before?  Yes, as long as loving them and paying attention to what they need doesn’t turn into your own self-destruction.

Should you love people unconditionally?  Yes, but that doesn’t mean that you should love them stupidly and blindly.

Should you love someone who has hurt you?  Yes, but that doesn’t mean you should open yourself up to be hurt again.  That old saying about forgiving and forgetting….that’s wrong.  Forgive yes, forget hell!  Never forget.  Remember for your own protection and emotional health is not the same thing as a grudge.

Should you love people you know to be flawed? Well, of course.  Everyone is flawed.

Should you expect to be loved no matter what?  No.  That’s where the “yes, but” answers end.

Did you notice a pattern?  Yes, but.  That’s the pattern.  There is never a clear cut yes and always yes answer.  Grown-ups….real grown-ups know this is the case.  People who refuse to grow up are not so sure of this fact.  Even when it comes to your children…assuming you have them and assuming you love them, which is not necessarily an automatic.  I love my children.  There will never be another answer to that question then yes, I love them.  NOW….there is a but…the but is just because I will always love them doesn’t mean I won’t drop them at the police station if I find drugs in their purses, that’s love.  Just because I love them doesn’t mean I won’t tell them they are absolutely wrong in the way they have treated someone.  Just because I love them doesn’t mean I can’t HATE an act or action on their part.  I am not speaking of them here nor is this motivated by them. (Hi Em & Mags! Love ya)

I guess I am just trying to reconcile to myself that even though I have been hurt in places and by people it is ok to continue to love them.  Insulate from the dangers, but still love them.  I can help at arm’s length and still be a true help.

A friend of mine told my oldest daughter recently that I am the only person that she has ever known that absolutely loves people despite being hurt by them, despite their faults and still helps these people and wants what is best for them.  She said that is the way it is supposed to be.  I guess it is and I don’t know if it is true that I do that, but it sure was a nice thing to say.  I hope it’s true.  I hope everyone I love knows I will try to make it true.  I hope everyone I love knows that I will do it openly, but now very cautiously as well.

You see, by firing people in my life who aren’t doing me any good I have gained the confidence to make the people in my life who are worth my effort really worth my effort.  Weeding out the brush makes way for more flowers to grow.  Firing people from your life isn’t a bad thing…it’s a good thing.

Yeah, yeah…I know all that Christian mumbo jumbo and all that “girl” propaganda about always being nice to people.  But let’s be real, I don’t have to be nice to you if you’re an ass and if you cause me pain.  By not being nice to you that does not mean I will intentionally be mean to you or work to destroy you.  I just won’t….won’t work to be nice to you or work to be mean to you.  You just won’t have my time or energy.  It has been said that living well is the best revenge.  That is the truest thing ever spoken.  Being happy, loving the people you love, knowing you are loved by them and doing right by them….what kind of revenge is better for the people who have hurt you to have thrown in their faces then for them to see you smile and laugh.

I witnessed a beautiful wedding this past weekend.  Someone I truly love married someone she is sure is well worth the effort of being married to and making a new family with.  I don’t know that I will ever have the courage again but I don’t know anyone more worthy of having it work out then she is.  She is strong and loves like no one else I have ever known…consistently.  Anyone who can honor that with her will have a long and happy marriage to her and life with her.

Hopefully, as we have gotten older together this friend and I have learned that even though some people will remain in our lives, they can be fired just the same.  It is possible to do all you can to be civil and fair and not be taken advantage of or take any more sh*t from someone.  That’s maturity.  That’s the grown up of which I speak.  Knowing how to love and how to cut your losses and knowing who a new bond and relationship can be developed with and who it just shouldn't be attempted with is the challenge and the goal.  It’s a gift when you have someone in your life that can help you with the losses that need to be cut and embrace your ability to continue to love others.

So here is the moral to the story….love.  It’s gonna hurt every now and then if you are doing it right.  I must be doing it right cause it has for sure hurt.  Smiles have outweighed tears to date in my life, so I’ll keep going and keep hoping.

My beloved cousin told me during my last year of roller coaster emotions that I don't have to work at making someone else work at loving me.  Sit back and let someone else show me and prove to me they are worth my time.  Be chased, be treasured, don’t be low maintenance, don’t accept bare minimum.  It’s not what I give so it’s not what I should get.  Oh yeah…and the most important thing, don’t get in any relationships with men who are more obviously girls then I am….just sayin.

Go out there and tear it up folks, more smiles then tears.  The one who dies with the most smiles wins :o).

Moms and Daughters

So I have wisely decided to take whatever April 26 is through May 3^rd off every year.  There is a good reason.  Last week I was irritable and a little on edge.  Didn’t know why…consciously.  Then I got a call from a family that had a similar story to mine and my sister’s.  I didn’t know if this mother would become a patient of mine but I couldn’t NOT help this family.  Every now and then you get to look back on things in your life and be thankful that nothing truly bad has ever happened to you.  People come and go out of our lives.  Sometimes we miss them and sometimes we don’t.  There are many more that I don’t miss then there are ones I do miss. 

Sisters and brother experience the same people in their lives at the same moment in time in different ways.  My perspective about my mother is totally different then my sister’s.  We had two very different experiences age 1-10….you could almost argue a different woman attended each of our childhoods.  Some things about that woman were static.  Love.  Nurturing. Protective.  That we both got.  That’s the only piece of either of our childhoods that survives or is important now.

For those of you who still have your mother there is something very strange about not having her.  Past the sadness and the experience there is a strange orphaned feeling.  I was an adult when she died, my sister was just a teenager.  I was thrown into making all the grown up decisions that come with death and she was rendered speechless with shock.  I went through speechless with shock a year later on the anniversary of her death.  May 1^st.  That’s why I have decided that this pre-Mother’s Day weekend and the days that surround it I can not work….at least not at my hospice job.

The people I spent the weekend with were not my family but looked a lot like all of them.  Each face losing someone different in the same person.  A sister, a wife, a mother, a daughter.  One day she was having a lucid conversation with myself and her husband and the next day she couldn’t form a clear thought.  When her husband called me Saturday night he just said…..you said to call if I needed you, I need you.  Family had arrived and he had run out of words.  He had run out of the story that brought them to this place and had run out of patience for explaining it one more time.  I told him that if he needed me to help with that I would.  So I went back to the hospital to tell her sister why things were only going to be counted in hours until this woman would die.  The questions came calmly and somehow I sat calmly with these people and answered the questions.  Why is her body failing? Why can’t we fix X or Y or Z?  Can we do something to get her to this one big event we were trying to help her make it to?  By the end of the conversation they only wanted her comfort because the outcome couldn’t change.  Every time I comfort a family through their loved one dying I fight not to cry.  Today I lost the fight.  As her almost 17 year old daughter looked at me all could think about was the look on my sisters face when I rounded the corner the day our mother died….really died, not the day she drew her last breath.  While I looked at this girl I thought, please let this horrible day have been peaceful for her.  Please let this horrible day be the one she remembers least, hates the most and doesn’t dwell on.  Nothing could change it but hopefully it was softened by what palliative care can do for families.  As I comforted her sister I thought of the picture I saw on April 29 that started my tailspin.  It’s a beautiful picture of my mother.  I know the look.  She knew her picture was being taken.  Wasn’t happy about it but gave in to it and braced until it was over.  I’m glad she gave in and I’m glad my Aunt…..who has annoyed the living shit out of every member of our family at some point with that camera…..I am so glad she has snapped pictures with all her might.  Without her even the sharpest memories would have faded.

I can only hope that when a child watches her mother die peacefully that there is a different recovery and set of memories that accompany that passing as opposed to the child her watches her mother die not so peacefully.

Medicine is funny….people don’t understand that some days and in some situations it’s just another day at the office.  We go on autopilot and do our jobs just like everyone else in the world.  Then, sometimes when its least expected a patient and their family will transport you to a place that you really didn’t want to go back to - but you could clearly see that in going back to that place could make this “same” event for them different and hopefully….not better…more recoverable.  There is no better.

I was recently told that grief doesn’t go away.  The cliché about time healing all wounds is just that, cliché.  It doesn’t heal the wounds.  They stay open they just bleed less.  The brilliance of that horror only fades….when we are lucky.  What I have found in 12 years is that sometimes the grief fades into the shadows and I don’t even notice it lurking until the day is past.  But sometimes, like this year it’s a rattlesnake waiting to strike.  This year the rattlesnake let me help someone, some family before it attacked me.  The venom, I thought had all but gone, but when she died today it all rushed back into my system……..it’s gonna take a little while for it go again this time.

I know mothers who are an absolute waste of space on the planet and oxygen.  And still losing them will hurt their children.  So when one goes that was loving and thoughtful, the children who were loved and the children who merely survived are the same.  Level playing field.  Something not said, good or bad, is left hanging.  Some event in the future will happen and there will be someone important missing from the picture.

On Mother’s Day this year….if anyone wants to snap a picture of me I’ll let them.  Someday it might be the picture that one of my girls finds out of the blue that makes them glad the picture was taken.  And if you have children and they want to take your picture, who cares if you think you’re too fat or too skinny, if you face is breaking out or if you are tired, if you hair is a mess and your makeup is smeared.  Who cares?  The person looking at that picture with a smile on her face in 12 years may need that picture.  Don’t keep it from them.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.  I miss you.

The Education Conundrum

So here is what I have noticed.  The more education you have the more you think all people should have more education.  The more education you have the more you think people who don’t have an education are missing out, doing something wrong.  Sometimes…when you have too much education (and some of you will say no such thing!) you pontificate from on high about your worthiness and accomplishment.

So here is the other thing I have noticed.  The less education you have the more you think you don’t need it.  The less education you have the more you think people who have an education are doing something wrong, somehow missing out on living because of their wasted time in school.  Sometimes you pontificate from on high…wait..from on low….about how people who become too educated become snotty and forget where they are from and suddenly think they are better than everyone else.

At one time or another in my life I have belonged to both of these groups.  Sometimes I flow easily from one to the other and then back again.  Here is the problem, there are many people with no formal education that are brilliant and successful and have no beef with those who are educated and brilliant and successful.  If you are uneducated and brilliant and successful those who said you should attain higher education think you brilliant and successful and are impressed by what you achieved in SPITE of your obvious shortcoming.  People who are uneducated and brilliant and successful are looked at from others who are uneducated in two ways.  Either you look like you are hardworking and brilliant and successful and admired or clearly you were handed something and didn’t deserve it as much as they did.  Lucky, perhaps.

Here is where it gets good! (Cause it wasn’t already??)  So if you have no education and you have no hope and you are useless…people who are educated say it is because you are uneducated.  Waste of oxygen=no education.  If you have no education and are a waste of space then people who are uneducated but who are brilliant and successful say you are lazy, good for nothing, need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps.  Now…if you are educated and brilliant and successful but you serve absolutely no purpose on this planet but to make others miserable to try to impress others…most people who are highly educated will only comment on the fact that you are highly educated and brilliant and successful.  So I say it follows that if you are well educated and brilliant and successful you still are a waste of oxygen if you serve no good purpose.  Confused yet?

So here is the moral to the story.  Get your education, keep your humility.  Get your education, keep your humanity.  Become successful but don’t lose your smile.  Be brilliant but don’t think you are brighter than the sun.  Get your education and know that all of your accomplishments are yours as are your failures.  Get your education and know that if you are still a rotten human being and a waste of oxygen and space that no matter how brilliant and successful you ever become that waste of oxygen and space will come back to greet you in the form of a little thing called karma.

Karma cares not how educated you are.  Karma cares not of your success to the world or your brilliance to others.  Karma could give a big rat’s ass if you think you’re special.  It will find you and return to you what you have given or not given.  Karma is patient and doesn’t work on anyone else’s time table.  The message in that is no one can predict when the karma will come around for good or evil.  Unfortunately you can’t be in the right place at the right time to know if it has come back to someone who should seriously be on the lookout for it (and to whom you would like to see it delivered….not that I know anyone like that, but still.)  Unfortunately you can’t avoid it if it’s coming back to find you and you can’t ask for it in a specific time.

Be educated and encourage others to be educated, but don’t pontificate.  I know for a fact that I would rather spend time with the least educated fun and sweet person then the brightest and most brilliant educated millionaire.  Don’t be educated, but don’t hate on those who are.  You’re shortcomings belong to you as do all of your decisions.  Hard work is not taught in adulthood and sometimes it simply isn’t in the character of a person.  99.9% of time there is a direct correlation between effort and reward.  If my effort equals my dream ride at some point in life, know that I got there because I worked to get there, it wasn’t handed to me.  I’m going to assume, until you prove otherwise to me, that what you have you worked hard for and it wasn’t given to you.  We’ll both be better off and we might learn something from each other.  Maybe I am karma coming back to find you………..maybe you are karma coming back to find me.  I hope we are good karma, both of us.

George Eliot said…”It is never too late to be what you might have been.”  I’m working on it, George.  I’m working on it.

Some People Have A Bucket List....mine is a little different

So if you have a Bucket List I am glad.  That's the next list that I would like to work on.  Presently, however I am working on my FU list. That's right.  It means what you think it means.  That's it.  So the latest on the list was completed yesterday and dropped in the mail.

When people continually F with you for years and you just take it and take it cause you feel like you have to.....well that has to come to an end sooner or later.  Circumstances change and suddenly you are in a place where you have nothing to lose by saying what you really think.  Did I ever.


Here is the challenge.  As you grow up you realize that when you are going to send someone packing you have to get past the anger of anything and everything that has happened.  First and foremost...the anger.  You can not intelligently support your points if you are busy shouting obscenities.  Not that I am against that sort of thing, but I want to be really heard...listened to.  The anger will get in  the way.

Here is the next piece, specific examples.  I read an article lately about firing your boss.  I don't need to fire mine but the article was interesting.  It mentioned not just saying "he always, she never...."  Specific examples need to be applied.  I can do that.  I did that.  So firing is more then just for a boss.  It can be for friends too.

People in my life that don't do anything positive for my life or the people I love are no longer welcome.  I don't care if they are women, men or brilliant alien life forms from Mars.  Everybody has them.  The people that you have known forever and have been friends with forever and they piss you off.  Continually.  You take that.  Then they start to really go over the line and you don't feel like you are in a place to be able to say anything about it.  You have something to lose by saying what you really think.  And then, as if by magic you forget about them and you are living your life and doing your thing.  You haven't forgiven and you don't really have any interest in talking to them.  You just don't think about them.  But these people are relentless.  They need to F with someone and when they don't have anything going they FIND you again to stir things.  They send you a note that is so ridiculous you have to laugh.  And you know....you just KNOW, its time.  She's next.

So the letter is written.  It's articulate.  It leave no room for interpretation....it is so very clear.  That monkey is now removed from my back and if she listens...really listens this time....I will never hear from her again in my lifetime.  She won't listen, right?  You know that as well as I do.  Sooner or later she will try again cause she won't have anyone to F with.  I'll ignore her.  Completely.

So here was the last paragraph of the letter.  It may be the last paragraph of every FU letter that is sent from the list cause it was EPIC (Hi Jessa and Emily;o))

I wish to have no further contact with you on any level.  Don’t send me any letters through my children, don’t email me, don’t write me.  If you see me in KY, at church or on top of the Eiffel Tower do not pretend to be my friend and approach me with the platitudes and phony kindness you have over the last 5 years.  I will do you the same favor.

2 Down...as of right now....none to go.  Beware if you see a letter in the mail from me...it could be bad.  I'm kidding.  If you think you might get one of my FU list letter's then you know you are going to.  The people who have irritated me know who they are.  I am just not taking it anymore.  No time.  Honestly, I probably have more years behind me then I do in front of me.  I am the dreaded "middle aged."  I'm ok with that.  But there will be no more wasting of time.  Emotional energy on people who don't deserve it is over.  And that feels realllllllyyyyyyy good.

Hold the Morphine till he does what I say! Part 2

Story Continued:

So the whack job Fundamentalist.  This is the person that can turn off more people to Christianity faster then any act of terror I can think of.  For those of you who didn't read the post I had I fill you in quickly.  I had a patient who was dying (its what I do) and his daughter would not allow him to have any pain or comfort medicine because she wanted him to accept Christ before he died so he wouldn't go to hell.  In talking to her I mentioned that there is a woman in the hospital who deals frequently with people who are ready to cross over into whatever is next.  She walks in a room and can feel the loved ones around the dying individual...their spirits there to take someone home.  In mentioning that to this daughter her immediate question was...is she a fundamentalist?  That's what I love about a good Christian Fundamentalist .... they have the corner on the market of everything.  How did becoming a Fundamentalist translate into becoming an exclusionist, sanctimonious tool for torture to the masses that don't believe what she does.  Isn't there something in that book she is ready about kindness?  I thought there was.  Isn't there something in that book about hating the sin but NOT the sinner?  Was she a fair representation to the world of the kindness of Jesus Christ?  I think not.  And for those of us who have been more hurt by someone who claimed Christianity then those who claimed allegiance to no entity in particular, I can say that the masses of Christians will have to do without me.

I want you to believe what makes you happy.  You must follow your heart.  Again, I've read it....I understand.  The difference is I don't feel the need to tell you if I think you are wrong.  I don't have any interest in you telling me if I am wrong.  I want you to see who I am and wonder what love and what I fear based on how I love you.  How I love you as a friend, as a person, as a nurse, as a person who helps you through the dying process for you or your loved one, as the person who holds the door open for you, the person who lets you into the traffic, the person who tries to respect what you believe and learn what I can from you.  I take a piece of every person with me.  Good or bad.  I remember it, I try to make what is good part of me and what is bad I try to recognize in myself and get rid of.  Your opinion matters to me only if you are someone I love or if you are someone who truly loves me.  If I ask for your opinion, I really want it, honestly.  If I don't ask for your opinion, I really don't want it, honestly.

More people die every day and throughout history and into the rest of the existence of man, in the name of some God or another than to any other cause.  You believe what you believe.  I'll believe what I believe.  Everyone will be surprised at who is on the other side and what the other side is.  In the meanwhile, if I love you, I just love you.  No conditions in this life or the next.  If you love me, you'll do the same for me.

And finally....if you are there when I am dying and you don't give me morphine to ease my passing I will haunt your sorry ass until the end of your days and if I am with some sort of devil or evil entity I will sacrifice all that I am eternally to make sure no one else suffers like that.  Its needless and cruel and NOT Christian.

Hold the Morphine till he does what I say! Part 1

Recently I posted on my facebook that I wanted someone to explain to the the theory behind denying someone medicines to relieve his distress and discomfort because someone else wanted him to be coherent enough to accept Jesus Christ before he died so he didn't go to hell.

OK...listen.  I've read it, ok?  I know what the Bible says.  Now for those of you who have read it I need for you to tell me where it says that if people don't accept JC you should do your best to strong arm them into believeing in their final hours.  A very smart lady once said to me, when someone asks why I am a Christian and why I believe all that crap she said.....it doesn't matter what I believe or what you believe, if I am wrong what will I have lost in living my life this way, if you are wrong you stand to lose a lot more.  I don't subscribe to the exclusionist theory, but her message was....do what you want, it's your decision.  I've made mine, you make yours.  Maybe we'll see each other on the other side and maybe not.  She defused the criticism without slaying the critic.

So the most effective Christian I have ever known is a lady I knew in Frankfort.  She was funny, smart, loving, honest, open, caring and humble.  She didn't wear her Christianity like a medal of honor won on the battlefield.  She wore it in action and attitude.  People are drawn to her and love her because of who she is AND what she is spiritually.  She's magnetic and even if she is talking about dog walking or the blessings in her life she is just as passionate and positive.  That's the Christian I am drawn to.  That's the person who is walking what she is learning and NOT talking.  She will tell you about her faith, if you ask.  She will invite you to church or bible study, if you show interest.  She will engage you in conversation frequently that will gently lead you to asking about going to church and open the door.....but she never attempts to drag you up the hill and into the church door.  When you think about someone you want to be like and the spark you want in your life and the loving attitude you wish you could have....that is the person you are drawn to and want to understand Christ with and through.

So I guess I am here.....

A funny thing happened on the way to read a friend's blog.....I got swept into the loop and created my own.  More to follow.  2 papers and Deb's Dance Night to come this weekend so there is much to do!