Tag Archives: loss

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Love sorrow

Love sorrow

There are a lot of people that I love

that don’t love me. The family that

believed my sister’s stories, about me,

my father, and her daughter’s father.

My sister died ten years ago.

I wait a decade, trying to repair it,

and now I give up. I do not want to

see them again, any of them, though

I still send them love. They may not

have my presence, after a decade of

cruelty or indifference.

Work, too. I am labeled malingerer

twenty years ago, after influenza.

“I don’t understand how you could be

out for two months from flu. I could understand

a heart attack or cancer, but not flu.”

Do you understand it now? I had

Long Covid before Long Covid existed,

after pneumonias: influenza, strep A

strep A and then Covid. Each time it

takes longer to recover. After the third round

and a year, I know that I have chronic fatigue.

I don’t bother my doctor as I am a doctor

and I know we have no cure. I can work

half time, see half the number that we are

supposed to see daily. I work anyhow.

The money ends almost meet. After a decade,

Covid closes me down. I go to work for The Man,

suspecting I’ll get pneumonia. I walk in rooms

to patients with their masks off. I react

with PTSD each time but take care of them

anyway. It only takes five weeks to get

Covid. I am on oxygen for a year and a half,

chronic fatigue magnified. How did I not get

it in my clinic? I masked everyone with a cough

or cold from 2014 on. My patients were USED

to masks and I masked too.

I am on oxygen and suddenly the doctors

who thought I lied, are pleasant and stop to

talk to me, while I think cynically, you’ve

disbelieved me and spread rumors about me

for 20 years. Do you think I forgive you now?

And one who said he’d be my friend forever

no matter what. And also said that when people

go over his invisible line, he never speaks

to them again. I think, oh, that will be me,

this is a set up. It is. But Beloved, Universe,

Earth, Sun, and Moon

why do I love them all anyway?

______________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt stable, because maybe love is the only stable thing in an unstable world.

The bones of the great blue heron are so light, that I think it is standing on the floating kelp beds. I’d wish my bones were that light, but that would be osteoporosis. Maybe I could come back as a heron.

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Hunted

I am having an internal argument.

It’s about shacks on a lake in Ontario. My grandparents and family built the shacks and I’ve been going there since I was under a year old.

However, my sister died of cancer in 2012 and there was a horrific family battle over my niece. My mother had already died. My father died 13 months after my sister and left the same will as my mother. Unfortunately it was written when I was a minor. I cried when I read it because I was the only person named in it who was still alive. I knew what my father wanted, or remembered what he told me. A will is a will though. I took it to an attorney and followed her interpretation.

Then I was sued by family regarding the niece.

I knew what my father wanted but he had not done it. So I decided not to fight it and handed over half the estate. Because even though my father wanted me to watch over his granddaughter, he had not left me the tools. And she did not want me.

So back to the shacks. It’s the side of the family that brought in all the lawsuits. I have not felt welcomed there nor loved since my sister died.

Part of me is furious that I am being hunted out, unwelcomed, wants our grandparents to curse them.

The other part points out that I have already been hunted out, effectively. I stopped trying to take my children there because I couldn’t tell who in the family was “neutral” (basically not talking to me) or “gossiping” — the rumors re me trying to harm my niece were incredibly painful. I had to let her go.

After my father died I dream that I am issued a huge SUV, black. I am to go pick up three children. When I arrive, two are teens: my two. The third is a toddler. My niece is really the same age as my daughter, but not in the dream. In the dream, they tell me, “You can’t take the toddler. You don’t have a car seat.”

I say, “Can I go get one and come back?”

“No.” they say.

I say, “Please, can I borrow one? I didn’t know I needed it! I was issued the SUV!”

“No.” they say. “You can only take the two teens.

So I took the two teens and left, crying.

I woke up and thought: my father’s will is not my fault. I did the best I could. I followed an attorney’s advice and I tried to do what my father wished. I did not have the tools I needed.

Now my children and I may get an offer to buy our share of the land. My children are ready to be bought out.

I do not know if I am. I feel like this is the last connection with that side of my family, not only the living, but the dead. I love the land far more than the silent living and the cruel living. Why are families so cruel and why do they need enemies so badly? Gossip is a sin, truly, and hurts. Selling my share is saying goodbye to my sister, my mother, my father, my grandmother, my grandfather, my two uncles, my aunt. I don’t mind saying goodbye to the cruel living nearly as much as to my dead.

And that too makes me sad.

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Qia and the monsters

Qia is three. She is scared.

“Don’t be scared or go to your room.”

Qia wants help. She is scared of the monster, FEAR, the giant monster, but her father won’t listen. She sniffles and tries, but she can’t stop crying. She goes to her room, because her father has turned his back. Her mother is drawing. They are busy. They don’t like it when she is scared.

FEAR is enormous and pushes into the room with her. She cries harder in her room with the door closed. No one can hear her now except FEAR. FEAR is large and has horrible drippy teeth and too many arms and keeps swatting at her. Qia gives up and lets FEAR swat her. She sits on the bed with her knees up and puts her head on her arms.

FEAR rages around her room.

After a while Qia is tired of crying. She lifts her head off her arms.

FEAR is smaller. Still bigger than her father, bigger than her mother, but just standing and looking at her. FEAR looks tired too.

Qia pats the bed beside her. FEAR hesitates and looks scared. Qia waits. FEAR shuffles over and sits beside her on the bed.

The room is very quiet. Qia finds a scrap of tissue and blows her nose. She looks sideways at FEAR.

FEAR’s head is down and FEAR seems to be crying. Qia reaches out and takes FEAR’s paw. One of the paws. There are a lot.

FEAR holds her hand tightly and then leans against her. Qia wiggles over a bit more to give FEAR room. FEAR sighs and then snuggles down onto the bed, massive drippy toothy head in Qia’s lap.

Qia strokes FEAR’s fur. It is very soft and dark purple.

FEAR is the first monster that Qia makes friends with. There are many more.

_________________

I was thinking about this story even before the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bugbear.

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Soup of tears

It’s time to write an ending to a story.
Let go of those calling me word twister.
The ending is dark, sad, devoid of glory.
The one who named me twister was my sister.
She has been dead a decade. I still miss her
except for the calls of money gone awry.
The cousins whitewash her and call me twister;
past time for me to gently say goodbye.
The small bird of hope has sung for ten long years.
She lives even on crumbs of cruel spite.
She sings in spite of no respite from tears.
Quietly in day or night, in dark or light.
The hope bird flutters: she’s waited years.
I release her now and I drink a soup of tears.

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The forum gathers

The forum gathers.

Red Paw puts her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. “Told you so. Been telling you for 11 years.”

The small child/angel is sitting in a chair that morphs from regular boardroom chair to youth chair as she morphs back and forth.

“Nice job with the chair.” says Red Paw.

The two split and now there is a Small Child and an angel, sitting in two chairs.

Red Paw morphs too, into a bright red angel with a black halo and black bat wings.

The White angel nods and a feather drops. The feathers are bright white. Her halo is made of gold glittery pipe cleaners and attached at the shoulders.

Red Paw’s halo floats and seems to pull at the room.

The Quiet Woman sits in the fourth chair, with a cup of tea. “Anyone else?” she asks.

The others shake their heads.

“We are discussing the diaspora. Is it time to let them go?”

“Has been for 11 years.” says Red Paw nastily.

The small child nods.

The White angel says, “They want to believe what they want to believe. Let them go.”

“T, B, S, C, S, D, A, F, N, C, T, L, K, R and then next generation as well?”

All three nod.

The small child says, “They can contact us at any time.”

“They won’t.” says Red Paw.

“People can change,” says the White angel.

“And do they always?” says Red Paw.

“No.” says the White angel.

“I agree,” says the Quiet Woman. “We are done.” She brings a gavel down on the table, which rings like a singing bowl. The other three blur and melt in to her.

“We are done.”

_____________________

The photograph was taken 2016 or earlier when Halloween was on a Sunday. I dressed up and so did the minister.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: forum.

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Unfiltered

An old friend died this morning. She was a college friend of my parents and has known me since birth. I will miss her quite terribly.

She and I took a road trip in September. She had lost thirty pounds, not on purpose. I thought I had better do the road trip while we could. We went from Michigan to visit five households of old friends in Wisconsin. I lived with her and her family for a year during college in Madison, Wisconsin in the early 1980s. She is a beloved mentor.

She also introduced me to all sorts of groups. She has an amazing record collection.

I went with her to see Warren Zevon in Madison.

The painting is my photograph of one of her oil paintings. It is about 3 by 5 feet and gorgeous.

Dona nobis pacem and much love.

For the Ragtag Daily Post: filter.

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Prayers for people in Turkey and Syria

I took this photograph with my phone yesterday before I heard the news.

The ambulance has been out for a week or so, along with the doll tent. Two doll babies, the doll doctor, various pieces of equipment. I took the photograph because the cats keep “helping” and it keeps looking a bit like a disaster. Sigh. I wish they were just doll disasters with giant cats wandering through, not real earthquakes.

I wrote Flooded after the tsunami in Japan, about PTSD and about feeling helpless watching. I think we all have a little post-Pandemic PTSD and are more hair trigger and more ready for fight or flight.

Send prayers and money and huge blessings on on the first responders that are heading there or are already there.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: strange.

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Negotiating peace

I spend a long day wrestling with love
arguing with myself back and forth
I am no angel descended from above
Those undeserving of my love make me wroth
yet my core argues that it still loves them
and agrees their cruelty’s beyond the pale
I snarl and cough and choke on bitter phlegm
Defend my self staying far away and hale
My core agrees I shall not tolerate abuse
Forgive yet we despair we’ll ever reconcile
They show no guilt nor shame for their misuse
My core says let them be: she is so mild
Negotiation done: Agreed. I may love those who I love
But I leave contact with them to the angels and Beloved.

_____________________

Sonnet 10

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Wooden heart

Heart of wood, by the sea
What do the spirits say to me?
His heart is stone not wood you see
And he’ll never come back, never come back, never come back to me
Tree torn from land by flooding water
bark and branches torn asunder
thrown back to the beach stripped and bare
bleached and dried lying there
grass and sand and stones on strand
I wonder how much a heart can stand

This doesn’t really fit today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt. I was looking for another photograph which fits and found this one.