Wooohoo!

I got the tickets! I am going to the Of Monteal concert in Hollywood! They are a pretty eclectic band. I can totally visualize the amount of sparkles, jumping, and dancing that will take place at that gig! Rock on dude! Slam-dance-like-mad :p!

The Past is a Grotesque Animal

Recently my conscious is incessantly in deep reflection. I find myself searching for old selves while speeding forward through each hectic day.

A few days prior I faced a chilling pastime when I brought my cherished stethoscope into nursing fundamentals lab. You may ask, “Aren’t you ecstatic about beginning hands-on nursing practice?” And yes, I very much am. Simultaneously, I cannot veil feelings that previously I disregarded though amercing myself in my biology texts.

When I packed for school this year, I included among clothing, texts, and small trinkets, a 1’5” box containing a Littmann stethoscope. This very box had been concealed within the bottom drawer of my dresser ever since the untimely death of my Aunt Ada two years ago. With the sparse money she had to her name she had provided me with this essential piece of nursing equipment on the day of my high school graduation. It means everything to me. The night of July 4^th 2006 she stole her own life.

In lab I was terribly defensive of my stethoscope and was ready to claw any who dared to approach it, like a mother bear with her offspring. I was so afraid of it breaking; I am not sure how I would handle it. My clinical supervisors and peers surely noticed my selfishness, but I had little desire to explain.

I can visualize so clearly the tears in each of our eyes when she gave me this gift. I can hear the minister’s sermon at her funeral who illustrated her generosity to others as a medical technician and her precious gift to me (I could not compose myself and cried desperately my body trembling uncontrollably). I do not deserve this gift. I see and hear these images as if a circuit in my brain were jammed on repeat.

As I now glance at the frayed box containing the last precious gift of her life, the very organ that I will use with my patients pulsates sorrowfully. I do not dare place my nose close to the fibers of the box, for fear of smelling the ominous sent of her exhaled cigarette smoke and the remnants of her living self.

I will need to learn how to avoid treating my stethoscope as my Aunt’s spirit or something of that manner, but have it evolve into an inspirational token.

Dear Aunt Ada, you have lived so brightly, you have altered everything.

Honey, you've been on my mind

Perhaps its the color of the sun
Caught seeping through the trees
A crossroad I am standing at
Caressing zephyr breeze
Or maybe its the weather or something like that
But honey, you've been on my mind

When you wake up in the morning
Baby, look inside your mirror
You know I won’t be next to you
You know I won’t be near
Understand I can't forget you
These feelings won't go away
I'm just whispering to myself so that I can forget
That once again
Honey, you’ve been on my mind
Honey, you've been on my mind

The Long and Winding Road: Tribute to Aunt Ada

She lifts her skirt up to her knees
Walk through the garden rows
With her bare feet laughing

I never learned to count my blessings
I choose instead to dwell
In my disasters

I walk on down the hill
Through grass grown tall
And brown and still
It's hard somehow
To let go of my pain

On past the busted back
Of that old and rusted Cadillac
That sinks into this field
Collecting rain

Will I always feel this way
So empty
And estranged?

And of these cut throat busted sunsets
These cold and damp white mornings
I have grown weary

If through my cracked and dusty
Dime store lips
I spoke these words out loud
Would no one hear me?

There's a lot of things
That can kill a woman
There's a lot of ways
To die
Yes, and some already did
And walk beside me

It's the hurt I hide that fuels
The fire inside me