Mary, In Case I Never Get To Tell You In Person

Mary, in case I never get to tell you in person,
I love you.

Yes.  I know those are strong words.

Yes.  I mean them.

I didn't know, that first day sitting across from you
with my registration card scribbled and crossed out
and scribbled over again in front of me
having our "meet and greet your first year advisor" moment,
the sound of the quad being mowed,
and the smell of Maine sun on autumn leaves
floating in through the open window
over the voices of students walking in front of Gibson
through it's halls, up its stairs, punctuated by
the sound of the double doors sucking open
and clapping shut,
the muted strains of tubas and clarinets
playing scales in practice rooms
and pianos being played in the offices next door
as hopefuls auditioned for the scholarship
for private music lessons,
the implications of our meeting.

I had no way of knowing how lucky I was,
of how over the next four and a half years
we would go from being student and teacher
to daughter and mother--
that I would go from wearing my Sunday best
and sitting stiffly upright, and talking about how
I was really more serious about biology,
to sprawled in your office sipping tea,
and bemoaning how I really wish I could pursue music,
or hunched over the keyboard hidden behind the door
with frazzled hair, clothed in shapeless sweat pants,
biting a pencil trying to "listen to where your ears
are telling you to go, the secondary dominance
wants to resolve to--Lydia,
you have quite a good pair of ears on you,
it's rather a matter of you trusting them,"
or meekly bowing my head as you
pushed over my final paper and saying,
"I think you know that--quite frankly--
this is shit, so, take until noon Thursday to rewrite it,"
(Oh, the patience you exercised!)
or laughing when you critiqued my piano performance as,
"at times a bit like starting a chainsaw,"
to designing costumes and sets for
Mozart's 'The Magic Flute' set in the jungle
while eating cookies in your kitchen.
I grew, from the cocky and ignorant
to the insecure and embarrassed,
to the humbled, yet hungry to always pursue
knowledge and beauty,
and found my voice to say,
"I don't know, but I want to know,
and I am not ashamed to say it,
or pursue it."

I never would have
found my way
into the arms of our counselors,
and learned that therapy was not only something
to not be ashamed of
but to seek out--and that mental health was possible
even for someone has tragically a mess as me,
had you not listened to me sob through
half-baked sentences about how overwhelmed
my 18 year-old-self was
and passed me tissue after tissue like some
comedically pathetic Warner Brother's cartoon set
till we were both swimming in Kleenex,
and it was they who would keep me from
attempting self-harm again,
and help me climb my way out of depression
again, and again, and again
a thousand miles from home,

or gotten clothes in time for
winter in Maine, the fall of my last semester
when my father had been hospitalized
and I had spent my summer earnings
driving 15 miles each way every day
to hospice when gas was $6 a gallon,
watching him slowly waste away
and come to Bowdoin with only enough money
for either books or pants but not both,
and you acquired money not just for pants
but for a plane ticket home for the funeral,
and convinced me to go, saying,
"Sometimes, it's more important to say good-bye
when the relationship with the deceased
was filled with conflict,
than if the relationship was loving,"
which were words that helped me
more than any words of condolence.

I remember the first time you answered my
rambling e-mails about a concept I didn't understand
at 1:30 in the morning,
and then, when I responded with another question
again, a fully formed, logical response at 2:00,
and then, to my chagrin
to find you at the pool in the lane next to me
doing laps before breakfast,
at which point I grumbled to my roommate
as we hastily shoved yogurt and granola into our mouths
on the way to class:
"I think she's actually a machine--
I mean, really, when does she sleep?"
(the mystery of which, I have not yet solved)
and you would still find time to have a lunch date with me.
This after you pulled me aside, saying,
"Sometimes you're on point, and sometimes
you're just off in outer space.
I think you need more sleep than 3 hours a night."
What is your secret!
It was not a rare occurrence--
there are threads upon threads of
conversations we've carried at all hours of the day.
(It can't just be coffee.
Perhaps you have cloned yourself
and the woman I know as Mary Hunter
is actually a hive mind of Mary Hunters.
I have no other explanation,
except perhaps you are immortal.)

I recall the quiet victory smile on your face
when I finally decided to surrender myself
to the joy of my life,
to solely study music,
as if you knew I would always come back around,
and the enthusiasm with which you clapped
at my performance,
at my glee,
at my bliss.
And every time I sit with my students
and pencil in tonal analysis,
and chid them, and praise them in both attempts and successes
I am transported back into your office,
and your voice saying, "Yes!  That's right, you've got it."

I cannot explain to you how
hearing these words on my last day at Bowdoin:
"Lydia, I am so proud of you for graduating.
I have seen students
face less personal turmoil and challenges
than you and quit,"
has been the highest form of compliment,
from a person I most admire.
I cannot express how much it means
to hear from you
even all these years after,
and to make plans to see each other again.

And finding your supporting wings,
and unfailing faith,
reaching across the distance and
lifting me again this last year.
You have been, relentlessly,
my cheerleader,
rallying the troops--
if there was ever a way to quantify
how much I am loved--
a fact that had escaped me until this year--
it was how quickly #LydiaNation
came to my aid when you called.
I cried in the first few moments,
was astounded in the next few hours,
and lay, completely overwhelmed
in the days to come,
and understood for the first time in my life
that I am truly, deeply loved.

In these times, when I look back,
I marvel at my many blessings and am grateful
that I had the privilege
of being guided by you through college
and supported on the wobbly legs
of young adulthood--
that as a child from little means with no connections,
I would have a chance to have a teacher
who would so impact who I am today,
and inspire in me to do the same for those to come.
I owe you a great deal--
there are not enough
and will never be enough "thank you's"
to thank you, Mary Hunter.

Thank you.

December 17, 2015--Happy Birthday To Me

"Lydia!" Dr. Adab called from the double doors. "Wait.  Your PET scan results came in."

Immediately the scales began tipping back and forth in my mind.  Fast results, could be good or bad, he's not walking fast, so I guess that's good, but Dr. Adab always loped that way in his ever so composed stroll, like he didn't have a care in the world.  He had a summer lovin', ne'er a care in the world, boyish smile that you see on children when they wake up excited for a new day of adventure.  My mom was absolutely enamored with his smile.  It was surrounded by dark, coarse stubble, and topped with brown eyes that twinkled, just the way one might describe in a work of fiction.  I never understood what it meant to have twinkling eyes until I met Dr. Adab, and I never understood how he could smile as if he were having an ice cream with you on the beach when he spent every day delivering life shattering, soul crushing, drown yourself in an avalanche of uncontrollable terror kind of news to patient after patient.  Even when he was telling me I had a rare form of cancer that would kill me in the next few months without treatment, he had a closed lipped smile that kind of just barely turned up at the edges to show me that even though my life was about to forever change, he was in my corner.  I was familiar with that smile, as it had graced my face while standing next to a doctor delivering bad news.  It's the condolence "I'm sorry, but this isn't quite the end so hang in there" smile.  But just now, as he called for me, standing in slacks and leather shoes and a button down shirt, with a tie, half windsor and a little off center (it was always a little off center like he didn't quite have enough time in the morning to look in the mirror), and a stethoscope strung over his neck, he wasn't smiling.  He was gazing out the windows with a purposely distant look on his face as he stepped to the side, off an empty corridor.

'Oh my God, that's the bad news face.  No, if it was the bad news face he'd be making eye contact.  If it was good news, why doesn't he just say so?' my mind hissed.  'Because HIPAA, stupid.  He can't shout it in the halls even if it is good news.  Shut up, shut up, everybody shut up!'

"Oh my God," I wanted to yell.  "Don't do that doctor silence thing.  Just tell me!"

All of this in the 4 seconds it took me to reach him.

"That was fast," I said, tightly, as if controlling my voice could brace me for the impact that was surely coming in a emotional Mack Truck T-bone wrapped delivery.

"Yes, the doctor found the results and interpreted them..."

I could feel the spot between my eyebrows furrowing as he stepped closer and bent his head down, speaking quietly within a foot from my face.

"...  They were negative."  Then, a full grin, with raised shoulders as he reached for me, and then laughter.

I blinked.  'What?  WHAT?  YAS!'  And I fist pumped, elbow to my hip, and then hugged my doctor. Over his shoulder I could see an entire waiting room full of pale, sickly patients looking through the entryway at us, longing and desperation and apathy etched onto their faces.

"Happy Holidays," he said into the fuzzy new hair on my head.

"Happy Holidays," I said breathlessly.

It wasn't until I was in my garage reaching into my car trunk to pick up the grocery bags five hours later, having gone grocery shopping and cooked soup for my cousin who had had 14 of his teeth pulled preemptively for his 10 rounds of chemo and radiation for nasopharyngeal carcinoma, that I suddenly began to shake, the little quiet laugh that comes as small puffs of air out of your nose, when something from hours ago strikes you as funny.  To my surprise tears began to fill my eyes.  It wasn't until then I was finally able to comprehend the feeling I had inside.  It was relief, of course, that there was "no evidence of disease" (the technical, legal way of saying "we don't see any cancer anymore, but it could still be there, but we're pretty sure it's not, please don't sue us if we're wrong"), but there was relief of a different flavor, too.

I was relieved I would not have to decide today whether or not I was going to go through with killing myself.

You see, while everyone in my family was looking forward to today to see if I would have to keep undergoing treatment, I knew that today I had to stop living in denial.  For the past three weeks, I've been training myself to walk, taking farther and farther agonizing trips under the guise of "exercise," because I had to make sure I could make it to Lehigh and Touhy on the tracks where the rush hour express blasted through at 60 miles an hour just under 3 miles from my house between the Shell, and the Starbucks where I had spent almost every weekend in the last two years studying to become a nurse.  I would stand there, looking at the lone headlight in the distance growing in size, feeling the low growling of the car engines around me, listening to the clanging of the crossing signal, feeling the vibrations of the train as it grew nearer, listen for the horn, listening to the pebbles begin to clatter in their beds, until the roar, too painful to listen to so that I would have to stick my fingers in my ears as the train thundered by, whipping wet leaves up in its wake, training myself to not be afraid, training myself to stay still, because one day, perhaps today, I would have to lay down and will myself not to give in to flight.

This is the truth I couldn't speak out loud for fear someone would tell someone and I would end up on suicide watch on a locked ward until the cancer killed me because people wouldn't understand that for me, for once in my life I didn't have a lack of norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, or GABA.  For once in my life, it wasn't about stopping the pain, rather it was about the decision to control the one thing I could control: the time, place, and method of my death--which, by the way, was designed so that no one but me would ever be blamed for killing me.

The truth of the matter is, I would never be able to say goodbye if that were the case, because someone would start crying, and my love for the people in my life would be greater than my love for myself, and I would break.  I would buckle under that guilt, and I would not be able to lay down, and I would keep fighting a battle I know my body could not win, and I would die slowly, in agony, wasting away, because I am too weak to stand my ground against love.  (And yes, I know that even though there's this reprieve today, there's also the nagging fact that today really marks the first day of an arbitrary 5 year mark where 80% of my kind of cancer survivor have a recurrence and I may have to revisit this scenario again.  I swear to God, do NOT call the boys with the straightjackets!)

So today, when I found out that I don't have cancer anymore, it wasn't joy that overwhelmed me at first--it was relief that I don't have to make that choice yet.  It was relief that I didn't have to see if I had the willpower to stick with my choice--that for at least right now I don't have to see whether or not I'm strong enough to lay down and stop fighting.

And that, for however many days I stay in remission, is the biggest relief of all.

You Told Me A Preacher Went to San Bernardino

You told me a preacher went to San Bernardino after the shootings
and spoke to the stunned crowd already bewildered and heartbroken
about how Jesus Christ is the Savior--
just believe in the Lord and you will be saved--
just as preachers do all around the world filled with terrified, traumatized souls
who had the veil of blissful obliviousness rent from their eyelids
by barrel bombs and bullets and sarin and chlorine gas,
dizzy from spinning into the black void of the unpredictable future,
and they cried "Yes" and were baptized into faith
"...and it was a glorious testament to God's power..."
you said with your eyes enlarged in religious fervor,
"...that so many were saved..."
And listening I wanted to scream:
Don't you know that you have sown the seeds of dogma
into the field of ignorance and oversimplicity,
that will bloom into the flowers of ego and self-righteousness and fanaticism,
which will bear the fruit of hatred and discrimination
that permeates the present time with vitriol
by capitalizing on fear?
Don't you know that you have given your children
the tools to refuse reasoning, to refute science,
to excuse purposeful self-sedation,
to cling to mythology, under the warm blanket of false security?
"...and they were saved in time, too, because
if you look from January of just this year, the birthing pangs are coming
closer and closer together--every day there is violence..."
"There has always been violence every day,"
I retort, "we were simply deaf and blind to it."
"No, but God is coming back in this age," you insisted.
And I knew not whether to cry or to laugh,
or to do both, for in my mind
I could imagine the Jews awaiting their Messiah
while suffering in slavery in Egypt
and then in Babylon
in constant fear of dying
and certain that they were experiencing birthing pangs
and the early disciples awaiting the return of their King
under the upheaval of Tiberius' murder
and Claudius' wars
and Nero's reign of terror
on and on and on
through all the conflicts of the centuries
to WWII's slaughtering of 80 million people
and Vietnam's senselessness
and the idiocy of Bush in Iraq.
There have been wars and "birthing pangs"
since there have been man walking the face of the earth
and He has not returned
because He will never return
because He is not real.
What you admire is the nature of uneducated, unenlightened man,
following the beliefs of a faith that was established
when the majority of humans believed that shooting stars
were messages from the gods foretelling destruction,
reenacting the history of man since the dawn of mankind
(that when there are two groups of humans
one will subjugate the other and adopt the false idea of superiority
and believe that God, or the gods, are surely for them,
love them,
care for them,
will save them,
and created a New Jerusalem, Olam Ha-Ba, or Jannah for those who suffer.
How else can a person who cannot accept that
bad things just happen because science and probabilities
justify the shit that is this world being doused upon his head
with the rising of the sun?
No, it is easier to believe that there is a God who has a purpose
for the terrifying chaos, and that the end is not really the end
for the saved and the chosen,
because as surely as Christians teach that they are the Chosen Ones,
so do the Muslims, and the Jews.
Each faith believes they are the true believers--
the only commonality is that there is a powerful God
and an eternal future for the saved ones,
because it is less terrifying than admitting there is no one there to save you
and you must do the best you can
with the time you have, and live with the choices you make
in your own multiverse powerlessness.
Responsibility for your actions is terrifying,
and arbitrary time limits are even more petrifying,
so we shove the blame onto an imaginary omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient deity--
ask yourself how many queens and kings, emperors, presidents
have justified sending subjects to their death,
embroiling yet another generation in terror and bitterness, and said,
"We will win this war for surely God is with us."
Or how many mothers have said, when their child has lost life or limb,
"God must have a reason.")
What you praise when terrified people surrender themselves
to the idea of a higher being rescuing them
is not the return of God.
What you praise is the abandonment of logic
and the destruction of the hope for the next generation
to live an ethical, self-aware, and meaningful life
with the clarity of science
and reason
and empathy
and compassion.

The Thing About Life

The thing about life is
we're all walking around with timers
ticking down inside of us.
Usually, they're silent and faceless--
it's easy to forget
they're counting down.
You always imagine you have
enough seconds to last you
80, 90 years,
and then the timer will dial to zero
when you're warm in your bed
surrounded by family,
maybe at night after Thanksgiving dinner,
when your belly is full of
red wine and honey glazed ham.
Even if once in a while you'll have the macabre thought
"I might get hit by a bus tomorrow,"
but by dinnertime
you'll have forgotten your resolution
to live life well,
and gone back to watching reruns of
The Walking Dead.
But when you know
that the cancer inside of you has an 80% chance
of coming back
and killing you in the next 5 years--
maybe it'll be 2 years
or 2 months
or 5 years and 1 day--
the ticking becomes audible.
You still don't have the timer face.
You just walk around,
listening to the life
tick tick ticking out of you,
trying to not
let the uncertainty paralyze you,
trying to not
flinch with every jarring advance of the second hand,
trying to not
lose your mind,
as you fight the instinct
to walk around with your eyes squeezed shut,
bracing for the impact with death,
because any second could be your last.

The Thing About Strength

"I wish I had your inner strength
to deal with everything you've had to
this last year."
My friend said this last night.
The thing about strength is
it doesn't exist.
Yes, we qualify strength--
muscles
mettle
mental endurance
yet no amount of strength
can overpower
the ocean
the fire
the plague
or cancer.
I have learned that
life decides when to kill us,
dragging us to the edge,
letting us scramble back.
Each time we think
in our egotistical, ignorant way
that we defeated it,
that we beat it into submission,
that we had a choice in the matter,
that we had any control whatsoever,
Life is laughing,
swirling a glass of cabernet.
Life has no respect for who you are
or what you have done
or what you hope to do
or could do in the future.
She does not cooperate.
It is the greatest fallacy
that we tell ourselves
we are strong enough
or fast enough
or smart enough
because you can't outrun
something that is .0004 microns
or something that spontaneously
grows inside of you, out of you, made from you.

To All the Nursing Students

To all the nursing students I wish to say

try to contain your glee

at the prospect of flushing

your first

or second

or third

or any IV

I know you are excited to hold

in your hands for the first time the IV tubing

because now you feel like a real nurse 

and your brain is ticking through

the list of bulletpoints

all of the steps for a flawless first run

because you will double check

and triple check in your head

and that IV will purr and drip perfectly

You are here to learn and execute procedures perfectly

So let me educate you that the stop-start 

technique for flushing a central line with 10cc's of saline

is hell on earth for me.  

It does not taste "salty" or "like saline"

it tastes like you zested the bitter white rind of a lemon 

and served it with four ounces of Windex

shaken not stirred.

And I am already so sick of life

the medical shows like House, and Critical, and The Knick that used to

amuse me so in the past are unbearable for me now.

In the end, when it is the worst I just

cannot think or fight or reason,

which is why when you are a nurse you are an advocate

and that doesn't mean just being loud--

which, let me tell you, 

you all need to shut the fuck up when you are charting or giving report, and 

yes, I am talking to you, night shift,

your sick, exhausted, nauseated, in agony patients are trying to will themselves to hang on 10 more seconds.

Nobody cares about your problems--

your patient already had 99 of them

and you do not need to be the 100th--

please! 

Advocacy does not mean being loud.

It does not mean ask, "What do you need?"

it means you best know what your patient needs

It means anticipate

that maybe right after chemo infusion 

your patient may be calling you because of nausea so run

do not walk.

I know you're tired, shit, I am more tired than you, but I'm still here, so

use your brain.

Solve the problem before it becomes a problem.

Try to put yourself into my shoes.

You see me here heaving do you not?

Perhaps instead of asking "Do you need another basin?"

run for whatever 

PRN antiemetic anxiolytics you got on hand

and if you don't have anything else 

call the doctor and tell them to order something

and for fuck sake

make it IV-push.

These are the worst days of my life,

knuckles white in agony,

thrashing in the bed

in so much pain you cannot form a thought

and you are part of this 

and I will remember your face forever,

so try, try to imagine what it's like to be me, and try to move heaven and earth for me

because you might be me, 

and I may be you one day,

and you'd want me to do that for you.

To All the People Who Have Said

To all the people who have said

You are so

brave

incredibly strong

inspiring

I wonder what you would think

if you could see me now

viciously sniffing back snot

wiping tears with displaced malevolence 

towel stuffed between teeth to muffle the cries

sitting on the edge of the tub 

shaking

shaking

just can't stop shaking

like a dog, cowering 

staring at the porcelain pit

fighting the ball of fear-or is it vomit-

and rocking to silence the voices in my head

like prayers on a rosary

I don't want to do this

You have to

I can't

You must

Get it together

Please, don't make me

I cannot do this

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