Escape Artist

A cramp forms in the arch of my foot forcing me to stir. I have not really been asleep again, but wish it to avoid thinking. Better to dream and believe it reality than face what appears to be reality.
My body shudders with the silent uncontrollable racking sobs that want to escape. It is hard to breathe.
I avoid the mirror but am drawn to it with a weird curiosity. I need to look. I need to see if the image that was there the last time I looked stares back at me.
I am transfixed. It is not my image I see but something akin to what I am used to, yet not.
A grotesque gargoyle with slits for eyes and all the pain stares back.
I bury my face in my hands thinking I can wipe away this image and look again...it is still there.
Not able to look anymore I put on my glasses. This masks some of it, but the image is still looking back at me.
I cannot watch in morbid fascination any longer and rise hoping no one else will be up in the house, knowing someone will be.
I walk the dog. My breathing is shallow, and comes hard. I light a cigarette and suck in the familiar smoke.
It is not the deep pull, I am incapable of that this morning. tears come unbidden and there is a pain in my chest, in my stomach, my back is aflame with muscle spasms.
The dog is ready to go back in. I wipe away the tears and go to my computer which has mysteriously put itself into some kind of sleep or off state which it does not want to come out of, much like me I think.
I look at my watch even though I know the time. I know they have turned off the machines. I spoke with Charlie last night.
It was the longest conversation we have ever had. I heard in her voice what I saw in my mirror at the beginning.
I heard her relax by the end of it. She needed reassurance that she was not a heartless bitch from someone who she knew loved her sister.
I cannot breathe. There is a pain in my stomach, and empty ache, my lungs struggle to pull in oxygen and I wonder if I can’t breathe because she cannot breathe.
I wonder if I will ever breathe again. The pain increases and I struggle to appear semi-normal as I do not wish to worry my parents.
They know someone I care for is dying. They heard my end of the conversation with Charlie, it could not be avoided.
I put my cell phone on the desk next to me so I can see it has not been turned off, in case Charlie calls to tell me it is over.
Will I be able to breathe again then? Or will I continue to suffer?
I tell myself she will be out of pain. I know she had the gift of being able to talk to folks who had passed. I wonder if she will come to me if only in my dreams to give me the chance to tell her I love her, that I want to hold her.
I imagine myself telling her I see she is going to be late for our date to take her children to Europe, by a lifetime.
It was a joke between us. We only ever had one "date" it was the set up meeting we had. One of the children was sick and she had to postpone the date for a week. I told her she was a week late for our date.
I find myself talking to the deaf diabetic cat. I think, God is a deaf cat. I think of all the times I have asked for God’s intercession. All the times I have offered myself in the place of someone I love dying. Let them live, take me instead.
I remember someone, maybe many someone's telling me that God answers our prayers, it is just that sometimes the answer is no.
I think, the answer for me is always no. It is like talking to a deaf cat. Independent of me or my feelings, the deaf cat will do what he wants.
The knot in my stomach tightens. I try to relax and find my muscles also acting like deaf cats. Uncooperative, stubborn painful.
I think of her children, picture them in my mind weeping for their mother, and weep silently with them. I think how winter is always when losses seem to happen for me.
I think how the holidays will not be very cheery for her children now. It is 10:55am. My breathing is somewhat less labored. I wonder if that means she is dead and out of pain. Another wave of silent racking sobbing shudders through me. I am not gifted with visits from those who have passed.
The distractions of daily needs come, and I end this here.. knowing it is not over for me.. the grieving has just begun.

When it became apparent I would be needed on a 24/7 basis to care for my parents, I determined I needed to find a way to make a living online. In the pursuit of this end I have joined an affiliate program, created a website and been putting together content which search engines prize when ranking pages.

I found a way to open a shop for free that sells my designs on shirts, mugs, coasters, handbags and mousepads. (they also do ball caps but since they do not yet recognize xara files as vector graphics I have not been able to include these in my line of products. ) The upside is they do the order taking and fulfillment, they do the shipping and pay me a commission which I dictate when setting up each article in the shop. The down side is I do not have a lot of say in the price of each item other than my commission. This allowed me to add a gift shop to my website for zero cost.

I added a Graphics page to my site that has a 3-D sampler where you can create your own 3-D header, read about the Xara software programs that make creating vector graphics easy for anyone. There are also links to try the software for free or purchase it, as well as some of the graphics I produced in under an hour playing with the Xara program for the first time.

I added an Adventure and Travel page where you can search for the best deals on air fare, hotels, tours and more. There are links to my own photography, online published stories, and a link to free screensavers or wallpaper photographs.

The calendar page I added is for purchasing 2006 calendars that I have created using my own photography, the favorite seems to be "Grandpa's Cats". This is all automated to use paypal.

One of the affiliates with the same program happened upon my pages and suggested to me that on my links page I should not include other hosting programs for websites... I wrote back and suggested having a look at what they offered since they did not beat the deal we had, and by including them I was not only giving my visitors other choices, but showing by comparison that we indeed had the best package deal for domain name and hosting. (there are cheaper hosting options but when you add in the domain names they are no longer cheaper.)

I guess it is not out of Nothing at all, it is out of my creativity, and determination to make it all work... not just for my current need to be here for my parents, but also so that when I am not needed here anymore, I will be free to travel and probably relocate to Europe.

Tonight finds me filled with anguish, trying to think of anything I can do... I learned this morning upon rising that my best friend... no we are actually more than that.. is on a respirator in a hospital in Tucson. It took me about an hour of phone calls to find out she had been unconscious and sedated for about three days now.

Having had a bone marrow replacement her trips to Tucson battling with various problems that often arise from such procedures. The steroids have done some damage to her kidneys, but she opted for the respirator early enough that mostly the other organs are not damaged. Now it is a wait and see situation.

My chest hurts. Tears well up but do not fall, as I try to maintain.. I will cry later when it will not be grist for the mill of upset to my parents who I now care for. Sherryl's oldest child has left the hospital and gone back to protect his job where he is relatively new, while her two other children are in Tucson on the life watch. Her sister is there, and has said she will keep me posted. She may not approve of me, but she knows I care.

I was tempted to have her tell Sherryl, even if it was in an unconscious state, that I did not mind if she was late for our date.. a date tentatively set for about 3 years in the future as that is how long they said it would take to know if she was going to live or die following the bone marrow transplant. We are going to Europe, where she knows I will try to convince her to live with me.

I actually was surprised when she agreed to go to begin with. She is very big on family and has a very big one of those here in the states.

We have had one date, many moons ago... and she was a week late for that one, something I have teased her about now and then just to remind her. It was a sort of blind date arranged by mutual friends (one of who still misspells her name) and attended by a large consortium of co-workers to insure no one felt they needed rescuing. Back then she had decided she needed to focus on her children and was not ready to pursue any relationships with anyone. I finally went off to live somewhere else for a bit, lost touch, tried to regain communication.. and was finally successful with the help of mutual friends who worked at helping me search when she was nowhere to be found. It was on finding her again that I learned about the bone marrow transplant and all that had been happening.

I want to go there. I know she is sedated, not awake. I have no one to leave here to care for my parents. I have an obligation. Mother has become more and more dependent upon me on a 24/7 basis. Dad has become less and less able to care for her and more dependent on me as well.

Because the trips to Tucson were pretty much weekly for treatments, I gave her my laptop computer so she would have a way to communicate with her kids during these trips as only speaking to them at bedtime on the phone was pretty unsatisfactory for both her and the kids.

grief is a strange thing. I have buried more than one loved one so clinging to hope when they say things are this bad is hard to do. Yet I am clinging. I find myself offering a swap to God. Me for her. Holding back tears that would only cause concern from my parents who do not need to be stressing out.

I have almost forgotten that I am due for a mamogram, and I expect certain results there that will require some attention. I ache in places I am usually unaware of. I know that I am stressing out here, but do not know how I can stop that process. I left word that any of her kids can call me if they want to collect. I do not really expect to hear from them. They want their Mom.. I do not blame them. So do I.

A little bit about me. As you can see I was ready to go way back in 1954 (the date on the license plate in the picture to the left.) Impatient, impetuous, inspired, are all terms that probably fit me like a well worn glove for most of my life.

I have returned to the scene of the crime, or crimes as the case may be and now am putting my globe trotting and adventuring on hold while I tend to the business of caring for my aging parents who after 3 years of my saying, "Do you need me to come?" finally said, yes we need you to come.

In the two years I have been back here I have discovered a vast number of lies I grew up with.. Some blatant, some suggested, some of omission... Like, eat your bread crusts it will curl your hair.. Little did they know I did not want curly hair.. But this made me think Mother liked the crusts of bread.. Which she now removes from her sandwiches before eating.

More shocking was that she used to tell me the best part of the baked potato was the skin, which she no longer eats.. and she denies memory that she ever said such a thing to me..

I digress. I have started this blog to tell the stories of my life and the stories of those in my life, or at least those stories that are printable. (and maybe a few that are not time will tell.)