baby jesus

In the upstairs linen closet of my uncle's house, a skeleton reclines behind the blankets, a reminder of happy days at chiropractic school. Just one door away, in the attic room, stand the papier mache black-eyed figures of my uncle's Christmas creche. They're scary, those life-size, solemn beings, silent behind the closed door, painted eyes unblinking in the darkness.

On other Thanksgivings, Uncle Jimmy wiggles his eyebrows and his dimples wink as he laughingly urges us to get sheets and blankets from the linen closet. My sister and I, we run shrieking, racing each other up the stairs to get to the skeleton closet first. Dragging the pillows from the cupboard in the attic room under the flat eyed gaze of Mary and Joseph, of the Wise Men, that is scarier by far than exposing the skeleton as we pull sheets from the closet shelf.

On this holiday, though, my aunt's pain has stolen the play from my uncle. Cancer is eating her alive and no matter how sharp the surgeon's knife, how deep the cuts, no matter how much flesh is carved from her body, the cancer survives. It survives and thrives and the sounds of her pain send us running for the stairs.

We're running from my uncle, from the dead look of his eyes, from his quiet direction to make up our beds. We are running from her, our anguished Aunt Leona, once so beautiful and lively, with sparkling eyes and long, curling hair.

My uncle sits staring just outside her door. He's waiting, waiting for death to bring silence to this house, waiting for death to release him from the torment of watching his beloved wife die.

Faced with his suffering, with my aunt's agony, we wish for the black eyes and emotionless silence of the Baby Jesus. We want the comfort of the inanimate, of Mary who cannot feel, of Joseph, his body unchanged from one year to the next. We run to the attic room and we hide, seeking refuge in darkness, in empty figures of paper and paste and wire.

the parking lot ladies don't know me anymore

In August of 1999, Mike and I spent a weekend in Joplin, Missouri, attending an AA conference with a group of friends from our home group. That conference was for years a way to mark the end of summer, summer being a thing to be survived in our hot corner of the upper south.

That year we spent most of the conference in our room, Mike lying in bed with a terrible burning pain in his gut, fearful he was having another bout of the acute pancreatitis that led him to sobriety in 1991.

The pain was bad enough that we left Saturday night to get to a doctor at home. Elevated lipase and amylase, indicators of pancreatic inflammation, plus some shadowy things near the liver that were probably gallstones. We left the hospital with a stern admonition to see our regular doctor Monday morning.

Sometimes I wonder if I had known then what the next few years would bring, if I'd have been able to stand it. I have never had an interest in psychics, in any alleged means of foretelling the future: I just don't want to know. I stay away from Tarot readers, from people waving horoscopes, anything that might give some indication of what's to come. If I have the legendary grey veil over my face which means I'm not long for this world and you can see it? Do not tell me. I want my departure from this life to be a complete surprise.

I don't think I could have managed had I known in advance how awful it was going to get, how thoroughly our lives would be taken over by illness and suffering and the constant fear of death. In the midst of all that came after, countless people told me "God never gives us more than we can handle," a platitude which irks me to this day, and one which invariably makes me think that God doesn't know who the hell he's dealing with. He may have his eye on that sparrow, but he's confused me with stouthearted, longsuffering Sally down the street.

In truth, I am a weak soul, a hopeless drunk and drug addict, eating disordered, a depressive, an angst-ridden pessimist, or at least I was all of those things until I finally got the point of those meetings I started in the early '80s. But I still have those tendencies now, and in times of crisis, I revert. My weakness is evident in the fact that it took me 10 years of not drinking to get the concept of spirituality, of God as I understand God. Slow learner, obstinate, hostile. I'm a runaway in times of crisis, so would I have stayed? Could I have stood knowing in advance? I doubt it.

As directed, we appeared in the doctor's office Monday morning, where the diagnosis was confirmed ~ acute pancreatitis, gallstones ~ and we were rushed to see a surgeon out of fear the pancreatic duct was blocked. Mike was in surgery that Thursday, and I, his long time love, assumed the mantle of real wife when the surgeon called to speak to next of kin about his liver. It was damaged, severely, in such bad shape it was evident in lumpy, bumpy nodules all over the exterior. A biopsy was in order to see how bad the damage was, would I agree?

I would not. It was the first of many terror-related near out-of-body moments I would have, standing in the hospital, phone in hand, listening to the surgeon tell me he could bleed to death with this biopsy. Bad outcome, not likely, he said, but still.

No. Others in the room report that I sounded calm and reasonable, but the answer was no, while the answer in my head was a screeeching, wailing, resounding no, no, just close him up and get him back here so I can keep him safe. I want him back, alive, just like he was before you people started fucking with him. No no no.

The diagnosis was cirrhosis, not uncommon in alcoholics of Mike's severity, but unusual in that he had been sober nearly nine years. Tests for all of the usual liver destroying viruses were negative.

The deterioration that followed was marked by a parade of diagnoses, one after the other: atypical diabetes, pneumonia, chronic silent pancreatitis, ascites, acute pancreatitis, portal hypertension, and then the wasting began. My sturdy, muscular, fit man, a solid 190 when the ordeal commenced, started to disappear. Ten pounds, twenty, thirty pounds gone, and at the very worst of it, he was a skeletal 119, a cadaver miraculously breathing, looking like the Holocaust come to life, a horror.

It would take hours and more energy than I possess to recount the myriad illnesses and afflictions that marked the years. It went on, this ordeal, for four straight years, four years of illness and downturns, and brief days of improvement, always followed by more agony, more misery, more hopelessness.

We lived at hospitals and clinics, grateful for health insurance that let us go wherever we needed to go. He collected doctors and everywhere I went, I kept their numbers at hand, the endocrinologist, the internist, his gastroenterologist, the cardiothoracic surgeon, a rheumatologist, the dermatologist, and the cardiologist. I had lists of his meds with me at all times, as if those lists somehow contained the directions, the secret, to finding our way back to health and the perfect life we had.

Much of my life I wondered how people became so familiar with their physicians that they were known on sight, at the grocery, in a restaurant, wherever. The only doctor I ever had who actually knew me lived next door. In adulthood, I've been the anonymous, healthy woman appearing in the doctor's office for a mandatory yearly visit, the occasional pelvic or mammogram, and the once-in-a-decade bout of flu. I've always felt mildly affronted that I was essentially unknown to my personal physician, as if I were somehow not worthy.

I didn't understand how that connection occurs until I lived it, until I found out first hand how it comes to pass that the doctors know me on sight, from down the hall, across the cafeteria at the hospital. After four years of constant medical attention from Brad and Harvey, Carl and Diana, we became a family of sorts, all of us attendant and bearing witness to the destruction of my husband.

The parking lot ladies at the clinic saw us most often, and at our most defeated. Mike so wasted he could barely walk, his bones clearly on display through his yellowing skin. At the worst, he barely interacted with anyone, but I couldn't help but respond to their kindness, these women who helped us find a space to park, who took the keys from my shaking hand on the most wretched days, who wished us well with soft voices, sad and knowing eyes.

I became Mrs. C. to them, and it helped, somehow, to be recognized, to be remembered. They bore witness to the ravages of illness. They were there, expressing their sorrow, when we made the first trek to the cardiac clinic, when Mike, so breathless and swollen from heart failure, first had to be wheeled across the parking lot. They never asked me a thing, never wanted to know what was wrong, almost as if they knew I couldn't possibly pinpoint a single ailment from the constant onslaught of disease. The times I returned alone, because he had been taken directly to the hospital, their understanding was implicit in the whisper: "We're praying for you."

It's all such a blur that I'm not even sure anymore when he started to get better. The hepatitis was finally discovered and miraculously cured. The empyema left scars and a tendency to develop pneumonia. The diabetes is reasonably well controlled and the pancreatitis has hushed up again, back to its potentially deadly silence, quiet for the time being. The liver improved, the heart failure vanished, the chronic anemia was fixed with the last surgery stopping the slow leak of blood into his belly. What else, what else? They all run together, these ailments, just as the years of fighting for his life run together.

And yesterday, just yesterday, we went to Brad's office, for a checkup, for nothing, really. And the parking lot people don't know me anymore. I am a nameless, faceless client of the clinic, not a woman living with the agony of a broken heart and a dying husband. We smile at one another, and their faces are closed in a way. Friendly, smiling, but there is no opening to the heart in those eyes, no implicit prayer in the momentary touch of a hand.

I experienced a profound sense of gratitude in that impersonal transaction with the current crop of parking lot women: Mike is well, or as well as can be, and my broken heart's patched together and holding. I was reminded of how important it is to really see the people I encounter on a daily basis, to pay attention to others and the burdens they carry.

I am mostly free of burdens these days, and the parking lot ladies can dispense their compassion to others in need of a kindness, of some warmth, of a whispered prayer. The generous gift they gave to me will be passed on as best I can. We can make a difference in this world, in the smallest connection with a stranger. I will pass that on.

jim is dead

Jim is dead and the brief mention of it in our local paper drew 35 comments, 31 of which were expressions of shock and dismay that the iconic Tulsa hamburger joint where Jim's body was found had closed its doors.

There was much angst and discussion of what it means for the local economy that the famous Ron's Hamburger Heaven was no more. The wailing and rending of garments over the loss of the hamburger restaurant was sincere, I'm sure, and on another day, if it were not my friend found dead in that building, I might have joined in, at least in spirit.

Happily for Tulsa burger eaters, it was discovered in the ensuing discussion that Ron took his big grill elsewhere, leaving the tiny little storefront on 15th Street because it was too small and too old. Ron's thrives and Tulsans breathe easier.

My friend, though, he's still dead. He was a lawyer for the Indian tribes in Arizona 25 years ago. He fought hard on environmental issues. He was a big hearted man, smart and quirky and funny. I met him only later, after he arrived in Tulsa and was living at the YMCA, a comedown fueled by the stress of his work and the alcohol that helped take the edge off of life. He was proud, though, of the work he did and of the nickname he was given by the Indians: Little Prairie Dog. He was never certain about the origin of the nickname, whether it was because of his wild eyebrows and thick golden hair, or if it was just a term of endearment, for he was dear to them, I don't doubt him on that.

He was dear to many of us, even with all of his eccentricities, the breaking waves of a profound mental illness that he tried to strongarm into remission. We were gardening on the day his disease first stood up and looked me in the eye. Sitting in the back drive, transplanting seedlings and moving them to the hoophouse, we were lazily planning the dinners we'd have midsummer when the eggplant and squash, onions, tomatoes, and basil were in their full and fragrant glory. Jim was, as I am, a fan of ratatouille put together from vegetables minutes from the garden. We worked and laughed and talked of gardening and AA and wilderness lands, politics and God, food and how it feels to find a love that's true.

In the midst of it all, Jim stopped, looked up and said "Yes, I understand and I will." What? A mourning dove sitting on the roof of the house had directly spoken to Jim. I missed the avian communique and dismissed it as a new agey spiritual kind of thing. We were all spiritual seekers in the mid-'90s, and anything was possible, maybe even a verbal dove.

A few months later, Jim got a message that he was to clean up downtown Tulsa. He would arrive at meetings 10 minutes before closing hauling the bags of trash he'd picked up on the way, railing at the slovenly habits of Tulsans. Eventually, dark forces began to oppose the cleanup and Jim felt and looked hunted, and yet he persisted, perhaps finding in that action some semblance of the environmental work he did before his brain betrayed him.

He came out of it enough to recognize that he needed to get out of the YMCA, get some kind of steady work beyond mall food court duties. I helped him get a job where I worked. He was eminently qualified ~ overqualified ~ to do child support enforcement, but he loved it. He felt useful and he was profoundly moved by the plight of the children in need. He worked for them, ever the advocate of the underdog, always with an open heart and the wish to help.

Some days at noon, he'd head out to converse with the trees ringing the parking area. Occasionally, he'd prune them, speaking in reassuring tones. His coworkers withdrew. He appeared one day with hands dyed blue to the wrists. No explanation, none asked for, but blue hands when meeting with the public as a representative of the State? Not acceptable. Write-ups ensued and his deterioration continued. The little house he'd purchased on the west side became his haven. I'd see him on his bicycle riding to and from work, shaking his head in response to the conversations he was having with himself.

When he lost the job, he lost his insurance, of course, and he lost his house and the last time I heard from him, he was laid up in one of the 11th Street motels, a flophouse the last line of defense between wounded human being and living on the street. He called to ask if I could spare any "fresh organic vegetables from your beautiful garden." It was February, and I had barely put in onion sets. I had nothing. The calls came in for a couple of days, "if no vegetables, perhaps some plant starts in case I can get established somewhere in time for a garden."

I guess he did get established in that abandoned building half a mile from my "beautiful garden." It hurts my heart to think of him alone there, so close to our home, where he spent many happy times. I don't know yet what killed him. I am not sure a lot of official attention will be paid to a homeless man found dead in an abandoned building. I called the police department's chaplain to help them find Jim's next of kin. I left one message about Jim's family. And then I called back, just to say that Jim mattered, he did.

I wanted someone official to know that Jim mattered to a lot of people. That he was loved. That he had a community. I am too familiar with the indifference of some police officers and I wanted them to know that Jim contributed to this world, that he was everything I'm telling you, and that the loss of Jim really is a loss. It is.

People die every day and homeless people, the invisible souls who exist in abandoned buildings and alleyways, who pass out on sidewalks and roll their carts into neighborhoods where messy lives are not met with approval, they die all the time. In this country, it seems we have to be attached to something before we're of any value. We need to be planted in a home, connected to a job, a school, something that assures others that we are of some account, that we are not dangerously untethered to normal society.

It's easy to get annoyed with them, those men and women with their signs on the corners, the ones we just know are only looking for enough cash to drink, the ones we imagine go home to their tidy houses in the suburbs, having put one over on us by playing on our sympathies and raking in more money than we do. It is easy to dismiss them, to look at them with hard eyes and the certainty that they created whatever led to their downfall.

Maybe. Sometimes. And many, many times not. I am of the belief that it could happen to me, that I could be sitting in the garden only to find myself being addressed by a lily or a robin. I know too many people, perhaps because of my AA affiliation, who were living normal lives until they weren't. In an instant, the line is crossed and then it vanishes and life is forever altered. I can see myself in ragged clothes, pushing a cart filled with all that I own, collaring anyone who will listen to tell them what the lily said, of the robin's warning.

My friend is dead and he mattered. There are Jims everywhere in Tulsa and I expect each one of them matters to someone, somewhere. Maybe to you. I hope to you.

death on pittsburg

Please note: this post includes a graphic description of child abuse in paragraphs 2-4.

Several years ago when I was still doing child abuse investigations and Mike was trying to die on me, I arrived home late after a particularly difficult day spent watching a tortured baby succumb to her injuries.

She was a tiny, ethereal thing only four months old, an amalgam of palest cream and red and deep purple, the combination of her fair and perfect skin and her hideous injuries. She lay in the pediatric ICU absolutely still, incapable of movement as the result of a fractured skull and a massive intracranial bleed. The unrelenting pressure in her head would have been enough to kill her, but she had a ruptured liver and fractures, a battered doll-sized human being.

She died at 4:30 that Friday afternoon. Her wounds were uncountable and included tiny pearl-like toes nearly bitten in two, contusions and bruises covering almost every inch of her tiny body and, of course, the catastrophic internal injuries. Her mother had been "unable to revive her this time" ~ a direct quote I will never forget, implying as it does that there had been many other times.

It was the boyfriend who killed her "out of boredom" ~ another monstrous statement which I have tried and failed to extricate from my memory. His nightly antics with this fragile infant included throwing her across the room, swinging her around his head by one foot, one arm, biting her feet, toes, fingers, ears, suffocating her and reviving her, over and over and over. The inhuman being who gave birth to this infant had found the baby unconscious several times upon arriving home from work. A cold water bath had previously revived the little girl and for the sake of a twisted love ~ of the man, not the child ~ she remained silent.

This was running around in my head, one of the most revolting episodes of child murder I ever encountered, when I pulled up and parked in my driveway at the end of what was a hideous day. Exiting my car, I noticed a pair of downy woodpeckers at the feeder. They were clearly companions, feeding each other suet and seeds, and I immediately decided they were in love which took my thoughts to my love, Michael, sick in bed and not getting better.

He and I have a history of comparing ourselves to birds: the mourning doves nesting on the windowsill one year, beautiful birds who mate for life, caring for one another with such solicitude, reminding us of ourselves. The swans at the lake across town ~ another pair, mating for life, constant companions, obviously devoted to each other. So these small black and white birds hanging out together, feeding each other, fluttering about and notably enjoying life made me think of us in happier times, when our life seemed enchanted, when happiness was a constant and joy a permanent resident in our home.

The birds took off as I approached the front door and I turned to watch their swooping low flight across Pittsburg Avenue. What a stunning thing, to be able to fly, and these two were graceful and lovely, virtually dancing through the air. One swung especially low and POW was smashed by a passing car. The car sped on and the companion bird fluttered to the street, standing by the still body on the concrete making a soft chirring sound, nudging his felled companion with his head.

Having had a close up of this disaster, I found myself sobbing so hard I could barely breathe. I flew up the walk, the stairs and into the house to tell Mike about the bird, to ask him to go and see if there was any hope for the stricken creature in the street. I could not do it, could not look at that small feathered body, and he could not either, being too sick and weak on that day to even get out of bed.

I wept and prayed and raged at God and demanded to know how shit like this can happen. The birds, that innocent little girl, and foremost in my heart, of course, the two of us. How can two people be so completely happy, so joyously content, doing good work, living a charmed life and POW out nowhere comes the speeding car of devastating illness, laying one low and breaking the heart of the other.

This is the eternal question, I suppose, but the universality of it in no way diminished my own heartbreak nor my own fury over the unfairness of it all. All illness is unfair and I'm not one to whine about it as a rule, but watching the love of my life dying every day was intolerable. It was more than I could bear and I don't know yet how he survived or how I got through it. I don't know how people do these things and I will whack the next person who says "God doesn't give us more than we can handle," because I know that He's confused me with some strong bitch, some backbone-of-steel disciplined rigid unemotional wench who can handle this sort of thing because I can't. I can not.

And yet Mike did survive and he thrives and I survived too. That is a gift and I am entirely grateful for it. At the end of another day spent in a good life with my soul mate, I give only a passing thought to those years of illness which are almost beginning to seem like ancient history. There's laughter in this house again, much love and that extravagant joy that sweeps in out of nowhere and lifts up my heart.

I am standing on the restored floor of a life I once thought was completely solid and unbreakable. It's easy to think that when things are so perfect and there's so much love and passion and kindness and affection. The floor is good and strong again, but it has been broken through and will never be 100% and I will never quite relax into this life and this love as I once did.

I don't think of the future much and I have moments when I think "how many more years do we have?" It's sad and it's life and it's okay. We're not guaranteed anything, I know that. We had a spectacular 10 years of heaven and some folks never get any heaven on earth. But then spring comes and the world feels so fresh and new and I imagine for just a moment that we are back in those first innocent years of our life together and I can actually feel my heart expand, physically feel it. I love this man. I love this life. We have this day, just like everyone else and I am grateful for it.