float

I took this with the zoom all the way out. We’d argued about whether it was a log. I said it was not a log. I was correct.

This creature is definitely bouyant but is not floating in the picture. He or she is lying on a high sandbar or piece of rock. There wasn’t room with the others, or perhaps he or she eschews the crowd.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bouyant.

Friends and illness

The good thing about getting deathly ill is that you find out who your friends are. They stay by you. Even if you are misdiagnosed, labelled, ignored.

It is harder to ignore me now that I am on oxygen. It is difficult to chalk oxygen up to a rumored behavioral health diagnosis. When you have pneumonia and are confused, that is called delirium, not mania.

The bad thing about being deathly ill is that you find out who is NOT a friend. They disappear like rats leaving a sinking ship. Actually I like rats better.

I have one person who says, “I like you well, not sick.” Um, I would rather stay well too. But having seen fully 20 specialists, including four pulmonologists since 2012, a cure seems unlikely, doesn’t it? Meanwhile I seem to be getting stronger in pulmonary rehabilitation. Treadmill, classes about the lungs, stretching and weights.

Another person states, “if you get sick again, I am gone for four months.” Not a friend, right? Not a true friend and never ever will be. They do not understand friendship.

A true friend shows up at my house in 2012. I am lying on my bed using my father’s oxygen. She glares at me. “YOU are coming to MY house.” My reply: “OK.” I survive, even when the hospital sends me home with strep A pneumonia and delirium. Helps to be a physician, though I had to just trust myself, even delirious. The true friends help save me. I can’t even say how grateful I am.

I have a new friend. She is ill. It is progressive. Her husband seems so surprised that I come to see her. But I know how terribly lonely it is to be abandoned when you are ill. I have been there four times.

Blessings on the true friends.

Here is my sister’s blog. I remembered this post as “caged”, but her word is “trapped”.

https://e2grundoon.blogspot.com/2010/12/

My sister died of breast cancer in 2012.

Over The Rhine – The Laugh of Recognition

bleed

even when your heart is broken, monday still comes, every week
you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, make a list of your work
no one in the bank, the post office, the store sees your life bleed

_____________________________

For Ronovan Write’s Sijo Wednesday # 18: use regret.

half light

We had sun yesterday! But mostly, we have had rain rain rain and clouds on the Olympic Peninsula this spring.

With record breaking temperatures across the US, I can’t complain much about rain. I took today’s photograph a few days ago, in the early morning. We walk hoping the sun will peek through. It is peeking through but not on us. It is peeking far over the water in the distance.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: half light.

wrong word

you are angry you say
I don’t think those are the right words, I say
not angry? you say
bored, I say

BORED you say

Yeah, I say
Well, you say you don’t love me
You say you won’t change
You say you changed once, in the past
You say you won’t go in a church
You say you did that
You say you won’t go in a casino
You did that

I’m BORED

My first thought about the church
My first thought about the casino
Is that is clearly where I can go
If I want to avoid you

My second thought about the church
My second thought about the casino
is ICK. Why am I hanging around
someone who doesn’t love me
someone who doesn’t plan to change?

My sister and I talk
about the people who don’t change
about the people who remain the same
about the stubborn who bury their heads

We notice them shrinking
as the world changes around them
the things they are willing to do
the people they are willing to talk to
the places they are willing to go
get smaller and smaller and smaller

You dream of a small cabin in the wilderness
your brother shows up and an attacking bear
in another dream I am well and busy and happy

May all your dreams come true
my love
if you really want them to

I am well and busy and happy

are you?

__________

April 18, 2022