Tag Archives: home

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Dissolution

I am sorting, Beloved.

I dream that my sister has drowned
in the ocean. A sailboat went down.
There were others on board.
Two friends ready me to dive and find her.
I don’t want to scuba dive, I am not trained.
I don’t know how to use the equipment.
I am afraid I will drown too.
I see her daughter, who is four.
Her daughter knows from my face that her mother is lost.
My friends say, “You will be able to find her.
You can find your sister.”
“But she is dead,” I say.
“I don’t want to find her.”
I know that they are right, I could find her.
But I might be separated and lost, in the depths.
I don’t want to die too.

I wake up.
The dream sticks.
My friends wanting me to wear a borrowed wetsuit
and scuba gear and go down untrained.
My sister floating in the depths, dead eyes open.
But she has been dead for years, I think.
And this is the sea of dreams
my unconscious
the greater unconscious
everything.
So why isn’t my sister’s body dissolving?
Changing to a skeleton.
A skeleton coming apart over the years.

I don’t need a wetsuit
or scuba gear
to dive in the sea of dreams
I can breathe in the unconscious
I have been to the bottom of the sea
many times before.

My niece is four in the dream.
She was thirteen when her mother died.
I think she was lost to me long before that.
The dream knows.
Her mother was lost to me
when my niece was four.
Drowned.

When the dream returns
I will say yes to the dive
I love the sea and the ocean and going deep
I don’t need a wetsuit
I don’t need scuba gear
I don’t need to find my sister’s body
She is gone
Dissolved
I let my past go.

I have not dreamed of the ocean

since.

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I really don’t know where my sister is, because of the family schism after she died. Are her ashes somewhere?

This poem wanted to be born. For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Who knew?

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Arrive and engage

Home again! I came home from Grand Junction, Colorado via Denver. Wrong direction and an additional 440 miles, more or less. I spent two nights at my daughter’s home and she and her boyfriend took me to the Botanic Gardens and to a birthday high tea at the fabulous Brown Palace Hotel. I guessed it was built in 1880. Close: 1892. We had tea in the atrium with ten or more stories above us, balconies all around and stained glass at the top. Quite gorgeous.

From Denver, I drove north and then northwest, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The pass in Wyoming had sleet and slush, terrible visibility and ice on the road. The speed limit was 35 and everyone ignored it. That was my second day and over 400 miles and both the cat and I were very glad to arrive at the hotel. Sol Duc complained quite a lot the first day and then settled down.

Driving into Oregon over another pass, suddenly it is green. Shades of brown before that but once over the pass, bright startling green. In Washington, Snoqualmie Pass brings the smell of the Salish Sea and we are close to home! We left Denver on Monday and arrive in Port Townsend on Thursday afternoon, delighted to get out of the car.

And hooray for being home! It was a little disorienting after being gone for most of eleven months. I miss Elwha cat and I think Sol Duc wondered if he was in the house too. A friend came over and brought some staples and another friend dropped off my first CSA farm box, from Wednesday! How wonderful!

On Friday I went to walk with another friend downtown, while her husband and daughter went scuba diving. The alpacas were downtown, being socialized and wading in the sound. They have very expressive ears and clearly the sound tasted peculiar. They were all well behaved and so were we.

Home, arrived and engaged already, alpacas, friends and demonstrations against P47’s insanity.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: arrive and engage.

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Purity’s post

The root word for Katherine is pure, so Purity will write today’s post. Purity read about illeism in this BBC article: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230411-illeism-the-ancient-trick-to-help-you-think-more-wisely. Purity admits that it feels a bit embarrassing to write in the third person here on the blog, very egotistical, but that is not what the article is about. It is about writing that way in one’s journal. Purity has been trying it and it is interesting. It sets events at a distance and quiets and muffles the emotions related to events. How very curious.

Purity does not plan to keep writing this way on the blog nor does she plan to start speaking with a royal we. However, the United States appears to be in a state of chaotic stupidity and it is affecting everyone. Not just in the United States, but the rest of the world as well. Purity thinks of the United States as a teenage country, struggling with hormones, while the old countries stand back, watch and sigh. “At some point he will mature,” they say to each other. “Or destroy himself.” And yes, a male teenage country, stupid and boastful with testosterone. Purity thinks it will take the United States another 200 years to live down President #47 and his minions, if we survive.

At any rate, Purity hopes that the prompt of illeism might be more light hearted and be a new word to some people and tickle their fancies. Apparently our fancies mostly lie in our cats. Cats certainly seem to be experts in illeism. May you each feel as wonderful today as a cat when they own the world.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: illiesm.

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What to check before bringing your elder home from the hospital

I get a call from the hospital (this is over a year ago). They say, “Your friend is ready for discharge. What time can you pick her up?”

I reply, “Can she walk?”

“What?”

“She has three steps up into her house. Can she walk, because otherwise I can’t get her into her home.”

“Oh, uh, we will check.”

They call me back. “She can’t walk. She’ll have to stay another day.”

I knew that she couldn’t walk before they called. She could barely walk before the surgery and after anesthesia, surgery and a night in the hospital, her walking was worse. She had been falling 1-5 times at home and the surgeon knew that. He did not take it into account. The staff would have delivered her to my car in a wheelchair and then it would have been my problem.

She was confused by that afternoon, which is not uncommon in older people after anesthesia. She stayed in the hospital for six days and then went to rehab, because she still couldn’t walk safely.

Recently I have a patient, an elder, that I send to the emergency room for possible admission. He is admitted and discharged after two and a half days. Unfortunately he can barely walk and his wife is sick as well. The medicare rules say that he needs 72 hours in the hospital before he qualifies for rehab. We scramble in clinic to get them Home Health services, with a nurse check and physical therapy and occupational therapy, and I ask for Meals on Wheels. It turns out that Meals on Wheels will be able to deliver in two months.

The wife refuses to go to the emergency room. I tell her that if she does get sicker, that they both need to check in. The husband can barely walk and is not safe home alone. If one gets hospitalized, they both need it.

If you have a frail elder, be careful when you are called about discharge. Go look at them yourself, make sure that you see that they can get out of bed, get to the bathroom, walk up and down the hall. Can they eat? Do you have steps into your house or theirs and can they go up the steps? I got away with saying please check that my friend could walk because I am a physician, because I knew she couldn’t and because there was no one else to pick her up. Do NOT ask your elder. They may want nothing more than to go home and they may well exaggerate what they can do or be firmly in denial. You want them to be safe at home, to not fall, to not break a hip and to not be bedridden.

For an already frail elder, even two and a half days in bed contributes to weakness. And being sick makes them weaker. If they are barely walking when they are admitted, it may be worse even after just 2-3 days. I used to write for physical therapy evaluation and exercise when elder patients were admitted, to help them for discharge. Once I got a polite query from physical therapy saying, “This patient is on a ventilator. Do you still want a consult?” I reply, “Yes, please do passive range of motion, thank you!”

Your elder does not have to be doing rumbustious dancing before they go home, but they need to be able to manage stairs, manage the bathroom, manage walking so that they can get stronger. Otherwise a stay in a nursing home or rehabilitation facility may be much safer for everyone.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: rumbustious.


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Why mean?

Why do people do that smiling mean thing? Where they are teasing too close to the bone, meanly, with a smile. If you object, then you are labeled as someone who can’t take a joke or who has no sense of humor. How do people handle them? I put them on avoid and do not want to be around them. But really, what motivates them? Power? Humiliate others to feel better about themselves? What a very sad and pathetic way to go through one’s life.

This is related to me thinking about what people think about. I think about what motivates people a lot and why they do what they do. This, apparently, is NOT what most people think about. My curiosity about people dates back to being a very small child and being passed from household to household because my mother had tuberculosis. I decided that adults did not understand children and that they loved me but didn’t understand that babies should be kept and loved. My sister was born when I was three and I told people that she was MY baby. I was determined to take care of her. Alcohol continued to make the adults in my household unpredictable and sometimes dangerous, at least emotionally.

My mother could charm a room and all visitors, but sometimes she would talk about them after they left. My family tended to ignore me if I was reading, because I really did not listen if I was deep in a book. Books were an escape and a safe place. People would have to call me three times to get me out of one. But sometimes my brain would click me out and I would listen to the conversation. My mother would talk about people’s motivations and was often quite negative and not nice. Interesting, but not nice.

When I realized that most people don’t think about others’ motivations most of the time, I felt rather freed and enlightened. I promptly ran into not one, but two mean people, at different sites. I do not understand meanness. I worry that it will be in the White House soon, as well. And what, that meanness wants to annex part or all of two other countries? Is this fascist envy? That’s what I think. So there.

The photograph is Sol Duc in 2022.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: mean.

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Thinking about this and that

I am thinking about thinking. What do people think about most of the time?

This partly comes from my ex. He thinks out loud a lot, an external processor. My daughter and I wanted to know what he thinks about. My son asked. “Dad, what do you think about?”

“Golf.”

“Golf?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?” says my son.

“No.” says my ex.

I have no idea if this is true or not. Sounds hella boring to me, honestly, but he seems entirely happy with it. De gustibus non est desputandem.

I had lovely winter holidays, celebrating EVERYTHING. I went to my son and daughter-in-law’s out east. My daughter and her significant other came out and we did presents on December 27th. Then we went to see my two aunts and uncle for a couple days. They are in their 80s and delightful! Back to my son’s and we saw my kids’ remaining grandparent, my ex-husband’s father’s significant other. Got that? And one of my kids’ paternal cousins with her significant other. I stayed with old friends for the last three days, which was also delightful. We went to the Smithsonian American History Museum and read every single thing. But only in two exhibits because that place is huge.

Now I am back to my current home and hello, cat! Back at work as well. More about that next time. The sands are shifting and I may be in another clinic. Monday a patient asked if I am their new doctor or am I a floater? I said I prefer “Temp” to “Floater”. She laughed.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: think.

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All home

My daughter and her significant other arrive two nights ago and we open packages and stockings yesterday morning. Lots of laughter and chocolate and much contentment. Now I have a climbing harness in pale green! We did not climb yesterday, I was too tired. We did go for a park walk on an old golf course and had a delicious dinner. It is lovely to all be gathered here and trading stories and jokes and family silliness.

Today I am up early. We will drive down to see my two aunts and my uncle. The great aunts and uncle to the kids. A very delight!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: contentment.

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Today and tomorrow and the day after

Good morning! I hope you are having a happy day today! I am up and having tea and reading and listening to music, waiting for the rest of the household. They may be a while.

I arrived at my son and daughter in law’s on Sunday. The glitch was that my son and I couldn’t find each other in the pick up area and got frustrated. Turns out that I was at National Airport and he was at Dulles, which does make it more of a challenge. I took my bags and hopped the metro out into Maryland, and they picked me up at the station. Whew.

We are talking, eating, wrapping things and climbing. We went to their climbing gym yesterday and I did a respectable job on some 5.6 and 5.7 climbs. Today my arms want to fall off. Last year my climbing style was panicked sloth. This year I am much better since I have been going to my climbing gym once a week. Arm muscles! How amazing!

We are going to continue wrapping today. My daughter and her boyfriend arrive late tomorrow so we aren’t going to tear paper off stuff until Friday morning. My inner little kid suggests that we unwrap today, wrap it back up, and do it AGAIN on Friday. This waiting frustrates her! Oh, well. No, dear, we aren’t going to do that.

Have a lovely today and tomorrow and day after tomorrow!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: today!

The photograph is Elwha looking up at the Christmas stick last year. I miss him!

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Cliff collapse

This is taken on Marrowstone Island, going south from East Beach. The king tides take down sections of cliff and whole trees every years.

The island surfaces in the low tides and the seals rest and sun and ignore the ships.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: collapse.