Administration Pain Management

I know nothing of Dilaudid
Except the PCA pump while
Laboring to give my dead child

And in the fall the sun scatters
Sideways through the trees losing leaves
At suppertime on a slow run

Running is what I have to do
To carry me through the days of
This current administration

The chronic ask for it by name
Chased fast by IV Phenergan
Its not right to give it like that

I don't know the stories and it
Only takes a second to lose
Your light on a cold day today

I quit when I went back to school
Charging down a different path
After the remnants of the crash

All that did was make me angry
So I'm chasing that light scattered
Across the freshly oiled road

This was written after reading a loving obituary written by a sister of a young lady who lost her life to opioid addiction. I had just finished instructing first semester nursing students on a clinical day and planned to do some reading for graduate studies after checking my emails, but I received a very disappointing email, and decided to run instead. 

Regina

Regina Reprise 8/23/1967-11/12/2011

Back when I drank like I would never die

I had a friend, Regina

We dreamed together in the lazy space 

Before adulthood stole us

Bridges to Babylon with wind at Vandy Stadium.

We said goodby as I left with my spouse

For Nashville in our brown Ford 

Over the years we gained and lost

[Regina]….I always thought that
I'd see you again.

On the internet I searched your face, Regina

And found you in old news

Down Hardscrabble Pinnacle a woman fell

Slipping on leaves into another plane

It’s the only picture I recall ever seeing of you

My memories together are much clearer

Sure’d like to see you standing on that rock

So we’d light a fire in the rain again

Suicide on My Mind

I hesitate to write this, as a part of me wants to make a good impression. I'm on the mission to be positive, uplifting, inspiring, motivating, fun, happy. The truth is that that is a great mission, but the truth is what matters in life. The truth is what is inspiring, motivating, life-changing, and what we really want deep down inside our human souls. At least that is how my belief system works. 

Yesterday, it was Father's Day. A friend of mine recently lost a friend to suicide and the service was yesterday. We've been losing lots of lives to suicide. We've been losing famous people, people we know, people we love. I was searching for a photo of my dad and I together to make a post on social media to shout out for Father's Day. I am very lucky my dad is still around to answer my texts or my calls; I plan to see him next week. 

While searching, I came across the photo below. The photo struck me, as the stories of recent suicides are fresh in my mind. That girl looks happy, right; she's wearing a big smile and holding a cute, happy, fat baby. She is at a company picnic with an unbelievable company that took her and her spouse to a vacation of a lifetime to Atlanta 2 times! 

The photo is me 13 years ago, holding my infant son. I desperately wanted to be and appear happy. I was working so hard at being happy. But the truth is, this is about 8 months before I relapsed into darkness because I felt so guilty about being so depressed while having so much for which to be grateful. Just a few pages and the summer before, you could feel the joy pouring out of me! In this photo, I see the struggle of forcing myself to BE HAPPY. I mean, it is a choice right? Maybe I just had a weak and sub-par attitude. Where was my ability to muster an attitude of gratitude? Why couldn't I just start my day over with prayer? I was trying so hard, and I just felt worse. Thank God for tears and a car with windows where I could scream without anyone hearing me. Thank God for that baby, that I could collect after work and nurse for hours to soothe the ache.

Finally, I found a job at a bar, and drank again, because I was afraid of the visions of suicide that would fly past my eyes when I was driving on that long drive to the job where I couldn't sell anymore and couldn't bring home a paycheck. I felt horrid and selfish for failing at being joyful, because my kids were young, innocent, and well behaved; my home was safe and warm. I had a husband who picked up the kids each night, got the baby's bottle ready, fixed dinner, and gave the kids baths before I got home. I had friends who truly loved me, and for some reason I did not want to let them know what was going on in my head, because on the outside it all looked good, so maybe the inside was not real. 

When I look at this picture, I realize how important it is to be honest with myself, with others, with life. I'm not afraid of suicide, or drinking, or being depressed today. I don't own a usable gun. I don't have alcohol in my house. There are people I keep at a distance, and I know what work is not for me. I journal and meditate and ask myself what is really going on. I have a boundary list of my limits. But I don't know how to help anyone else. I wish I knew what to look for, what to say. I only can tell the truth of my simple story. Today I am grateful that my kids still have a mother. No one wants to leave their people behind. This picture gives me gratitude, but also makes my heart ache. No one gets the past back, but Today is here. Today I am alive. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255.

Pieces of Mine-Chapter 2

Mom told me Grandma died

I was 8 

I went downstairs

Danced around the pole

In the unfinished basement 

The pole was always cold

It always felt different than me

Leaning my cheek against it

Many times, for solace

During hours in my make-believe world 

I ran around that pole

Many times, until I cried 

I don't know if I was sad

Or just crying because

I thought it the best thing to do 

I went to my room

Laid on my back

When Jennifer died. 

Mom was sitting on the floor

Reading about it in the paper. 

When my other grandma died,

I don't remember crying. 

I was older, numb to her,

Since her stroke

The natural course of things. 

Stage in my life

Only vaguely aware

What my feelings were,

What their names were

That they were mine. 

Guilt not seeing her

More than one time

Over 10 years ago.   

Unfulfilled imposed obligation

Or sadness. 

Once in a bookstore

In a mall

She bought me Snoopy the Flying Ace

I told her

Mom called her senile. 

I didn't know

What that word meant,

Doomed, I shouldn't have mentioned it. 

My own young children

With mouths and minds.

Pieces of Mine-Chapter 1

The wind is a troupe of spiders

Hang gliding on dazzling strands of hair

Like they do

Single web strands tree to tree

Reminding fall year after year 

Standing stiff, shy, awkward

Young legs bare

Folded anklet socks. 

Hands like mine

Under white gloves

Picking at nail beds

For comfort and alive 

The smile revealed

Glee had won!

They leaned against

A new car

Prop a top a hill

The Perfect day

Fall crisp aired North Dakota. 

An engagement captured 

Not a hint of the usual

Smart aleck sarcasm

In his happy Mickey Rooney eyes

Much before my time

No story of mine

Where did the coldness start

walls clang to a locked steel garage 

A word, an opinion, judgement, a look

The fridge door, or the creak of a stair 

Would they like my hair

They hate my hair

Whispering about the butchered man

Above me in the kitchen

as though I stand deaf on the stairwell

Fresh from a flight with pheasant hunters 

Grandma sat silent

Wet eyes and sad frown

Blue and shorn close

Aphasia blocking the tones 

This trip was very hard 

Sobriety was three fresh

I creeped to the basement corner

Clinging to the corded phone

Coming out of the wall

Absorbing the wisdom of a friend

Leaving the table to

Cry in the powder room

“Don’t cry over pinochle.”

The mirror answered

All You Are is Work

Job job get a job

Make the money

Pay the bills

Job job get the job

Be somebody

Win some thrills

Forget your dreams

They are in the dirt

No one wants your skills

Take your pills

Today you are 

All your money is worth

Do you hear the lies

Play your drums louder

Keep from losing your face

Take a kayak off the shelf 

You can float instead

Into inner space

Mechanics Are Angels

Don’t look for it in the rain

As you are driving

Your mind is making a movie

Don’t imagine you see someone 

Hanging from the bridge

Or a car off the road down the hill

Find the taste of a ripe strawberry

Bursting red in your mouth

Erase Prussian Blue

The car people

My best saviors

When I was an orphan

The water pump broke

When the drums were so bad

You fixed me for free

At the red light 

I lost the exhaust

Under the truck on the road

You welded a new one

I nursed in the dark

In your office

So Kitsch

A person with depression

On occasion

Might not want a gun

They are all the rage today

Women buy pink ones

Covered in camouflage

I know myself

It is much better 

To keep walking

Those trees never disappoint

Crunch crunch the leaves

Remind me to breathe

I know I have no reason

To simply disappear

Open the door and come home

Forcing Myself to Work

After the sun goes down

There will be toast to eat

Spicy jelly tastes the best

Habanero is orange

Soon it will be time to sleep

My favorite place to be

I hope that I will get good rest

Be treated with my dreams

Tonight, I would like to go fishing

I am lonely for friends

No one is here from my past

To sit with me and the moon

Kids are asleep

Animals are fed

Newsreels move way too fast

Tomorrow, I will write another one

2/7/17

Robot Life

The phone alarmed you were apneic 

When I arrived you sat up

You laughed, promising you were fine

Perhaps you were, but you still died

Based upon the first experience of one of my patients dying as a nurse.

Losing All My Blood

On the beach with two suns

I lay sorely tired

Basking in the great freedom

Of a life expired

Immersed in the wave’s silence

I was not alone

With the glow of ancient friends

Remembering home

The hazy heat was thirsty

My heart felt no alarm

Woebegone I did not stay long

So very far from harm

Trash bug

A tear on the trash bug on the paper tree

Straight up to peer through to the sky

A beautiful disaster

An ancient roadmap of a city

Or electricity

Silhouetted gumballs 

Against the Grey

11/18/15

When You Vote

When you Vote

If you have time

Go out in the world

Meet someone who needs help

Talk to a person

Living with a brain disease

Spend time with someone

Physically or intellectually disabled

Volunteer to be a court advocate

Then you will meet

Kids waiting in foster care

Feed a dying person you do not know

Go on a walk outside

Without electricity

Without earbuds

Perhaps there are trees

Sounds of leaves

Is there gratitude

Each person is you

Choose to redefine freedom

You were afraid

Time flowed each day

Castle walls are thick

If you cannot find these people

Eat some clay

Romeo

Shake a spear

The howling moon

Who misses the Wind

So far away

Yet, I hear it

The tide is pulled

Today my mind

Stifles the words

Of a distant epoch

No effort needed

To remain in my quadrant

Stumbling steps unknown to me

No disturbance along the path

Natural, constant and buried

The howling moon is just the wind

Creaking Along

Coming out of this cocoon 

Could I change this pen to paint

Maybe to walk awhile

Look awhile absorbing what I see

The sky and grass 

Easy colors

Crisp, but not too blind

Life bursts through the dirt

Winter was real tough

I feel in holding

My hip and knee

I won’t accept an age

Cliché Money and Changes

I used to cheat playing Marco Polo

Squinting my eyes

Underneath water

I was not a very good swimmer

I cannot think of her face

I cannot recall the look of

The Kitchen

In the bedrooms

Carpet and curtains are dark

She made me toy owl kitties

Grandma took us for

Ice cream sundaes

 With caramel colored plastic monkeys

Whose tails curled

He was nearly my age

With a present always

Under the tree

I remember her son

He was blond like me

He’d play pretend dogs

I would eat sweet clover

I smell the pine trees

My Grandpa dove into her pool

The first time I saw blue

Sparrows Navy 1943

She died alone

In the shower

A shotgun wound

Money really does

What they all say

This poem was inspired by my last visit to North Dakota to stay with my grandparents and inquiring about my grandma's friend and neighbor. They had a son, Cameron, with whom I played when visiting. The family had moved to another state and my grandma was informed that her friend had committed suicide.