Graceful anticipation

I believe

That Grace is what I want to achieve

Is there such a thing?

Graceful grieving?

Graceful movements

Graceful comments

Graceful sorrow?

The doctor ordered pills

In hopes it would distill

The emptiness spilling out from within

Sadness, is it a sin?

Down a spiraling medicated vortex

Seeing the reality in this mortal nonsense

Creates emotional chasms

I took charge of my life

To end this strife

I removed this cloud of chemical protection

Introspection without consultation

For the colors to be bright

To feel the light

I must first conquer the dark

“Life is good,” I say aloud

My senses now aroused

There was no need for fear

Strength within me was always here

On my own, I stand and grow

As I feel my energy flow

Music and travel is the remedy.

My voice rises over others as I sing

Life is good echoes off walls with a ring

New friends, new conversations

My character no longer on probation

Sight is now clear

Sunlight comes through the tear

As I sit here with a smile and giggle

My calendar fills with anticipation

My emotions laying down a strong foundation

Fills with dreams

To-do lists begin to burst at the seams

My life has always been giggles and smiles

As now I begin to count the miles

Music, Adventures, Travels, Graceful Anticipation

Charley goes to Burning Man produced by Jeryl Marcus

Reminiscent Dream

Today was a trouble-shooting day. I ordered a cell phone holder for the car. It arrived missing a little part. I couldn't reach the company, so I started looking through all the little parts we've collected over the years and found a little clamp that did just the trick. I'll still get in touch with the company, but it is usable in the meantime.

I took Microsoft up on their free Windows 10 upgrade in early August, but missed the 30-day roll-back 'window' if something didn't work right. We'll, as you know, other things happened. So I chatted with a MS tech, explained my situation and that I had to restart my laptop about 8 – 10 times before I would get the Start menu and even then some inherent apps would not work. He said they normally charge $99 (what a number, right?) for fixing it but he would do it for free. He also said that this was a common problem people are having with the upgrade. So it was actually relaxing relinquishing control of the computer and just sit back and watch what he was doing. I have been perusing the Windows forums and knew of the approach he was using. He actually had to create a whole new profile and copy everything from my profile over then delete mine. It took him about an hour and a half. It would have taken me a lot longer. My desktop has been running fine on the other hand. But I lost the ability of what Windows now calls the 'homegroup,' in other words, networking my computers. Back I went to sift through questions and solutions online today. Bingo! Found it. Turn off the computers. Set up the homegroup from the laptop, it then generates a password, start up the desktop, enter the password, and Viola! Done!

I still haven't been able to get a complete 8 hours sleep at night. Since I was a teenager, that always seemed to be the magic number for my ability to function properly. So after I fixed the homegroup problem and put some more stuff away left from moving all the furniture around the other day and I felt beat. Odin, Cassie and I laid down for an hour-long nap.

I fell right to sleep. I had the strangest dream though. It's the first time I can remember dreaming about Charley since he's left. It felt real also. Like all dreams, there's that surreal quality, but lately that has been the major theme even in my waking hours. So, I'm telling Charley that even though he was growing older I am not going to mourn him until he was gone. If I did so, it would waste time we had together now. We hugged and cuddled. Then the surreality oozed back into the dream and I did some odd stuff around the property that actually never has happened and really didn't understand what was happening. Then I woke up.

Charley has always been quite capable, but the last few years, his physical strength had declined (even though he was really quite strong) and he complained about the losses of what he physically could have done in the past. We all do that. As we age, the vessel which holds our minds begins to show cracks and weaken. We had a conversation one time about my responses to his complaints. Since I am a troubleshooter, I would come up with steps we could take to help the situation. He said that didn't make him feel better that instead it made him feel like I was denying his ailments by explaining them away. Which he was right; I admitted it at the time. It was my defense to not acknowledging that he was slowing walking away and would eventually leave me.

I tried not to dwell on this aspect of him disappearing. I knew, like in my nap-time dream today, that worrying about the inevitable would just waste the precious time we had left. So we were traveling, walking, hiking as much as we could while we could still do it together. If there is one thing, I am grateful for it's that he went so quick. This has been a tremendous shock and weight of the sadness is immense for me, but I'm happy for him. We watched four other people in our lives whose illness lingered and they just dwindled to nothingness over years before leaving this world. That type of death is even scarier. Charley left while packing for our adventure to Burning Man. We'd made at least 7 trips this year in the Casita, including the grand road-trip on the Alaskan highway for two-and-a-half months this summer.

Dreams, my mind working in the dark to make sense of my experiences.

Reflections of essence

So, I'm sitting in the house thinking how I am the only human occupying this household while I'm petting my silky black cat, Night-night. In essence, no one to talk to who will comprehend what I'm saying except myself. The animals know I'm not right. They know the house is not right. Odin, my big dog is very attentive. Cassie, my little whippet, is nervous. My cats seem more attentive than usual.

One of my biggest fears, when we first got together was that our relationship wasn't real. You see, I didn't have a very good childhood. Most people grow up really screwed up if they even came close to what I went through. But I didn't. Charley thought that I must have taken mental notes how not to be. I think that is definitely possible, but also think that it is genetic. I was born into this world a smiler. I met him just a short time after I was independent, out on my own, living on my own. Back in the day when we didn't have cell phones to locate each other, Charley and I would be in a grocery store. We would go our separate ways; we were so in sync, that we would rarely duplicate grocery items and also get everything we needed. Then, every now and then, I couldn't find him. I would get this panicky feeling that my new, now wonderful life has all been a dream. Then I'd hear his familiar footsteps and there was his smile and beautiful eyes. My new, now wonderful life was still intact.

He's gone. Now it's real. The memories, even recent memories, are all like some grand illusion some magician has played an evil trick on me. Is this what they call 'going mad?'

I'm staying active. My calendar is full. But the other day, I fell. Really bruised my hand. It swelled so that I can barely make out my knuckles. Yet here I sit to type out my thoughts which are flooding me at this moment. I fell while crossing an intersection while walking my dogs. I think I tripped over my own feet. That doesn't matter because down I went. Hard. The dogs just wondered what I was doing down on the ground all of a sudden. Cars entering the intersection slowed to let me get up and get out of their way. Foolish, that's how I felt. Man! Did my hand hurt. But getting up was lonely. It was only me helping me up. He was not there to lend that strong hand I had come so accustomed to accepting in mine. The older I get, the more precious life is because it is actually too short. No matter how long you live, it's always too short.

You can't call this denial. I saw him. I did CPR. I tried. I mean I really TRIED! I can't get those images out of my head. Then, I held his limp, cooling hand in the hospital after they officially said that he, his essence, his intelligence, his wisdom, his playfulness, his wit, his loving and ever so gentle touch, his sarcasm, his smiles, his strength, his love, his passion, and occasionally (although very rare) his roar—was gone. Gone from this world. Gone from my world. It's like I'm standing in that grocery store, looking for him, only this time, this time I can't hear his footsteps or see his smile coming around the corner. Alone.

I look at sunrises and sunsets. I've started a mental mantra: I'm seeing this for both of us. I'm enjoying our favorite season of fall—for both of us. I go on each day for both of us. My memories keep him with me, his essence.

So you like your siituation?

I know that I'm not going to change people's minds. I'm usually one who has my political opinion and keeps it to myself (close friends usually know what I'm thinking). I don't write political opinions--until now. I am moved to write my feelings on this subject. I'm going to start by asking a series of questions.

1. Have you ever had an emergency and laid there worrying whether or not the doctor who has been assigned to you is listed as a provider under your current insurance plan?
2. Has your employer changed insurance plans and it became questionable whether or not they would cover pre-existing conditions?
3. Have you ever been denied health-care insurance because of pre-existing conditions?
4. Has your health-care provider stopped covering you because your health situation is costing too much?

• I have had to scurry about to check to see if a doctor was in my plan and at a time when I should have been more worried about the situation of life.
• EPISD has changed insurance plan administrators and one of the first questions asked at an orientation meeting was, "Will you cover pre-existing conditions?"
• I had a friend whose son had a rare disease. The insurance they had discontinued coverage because it had become too costly. Then they could not get another insurance to cover him because it was then pre-existing condition. He died. Five years after their son's death, the parents were still paying for medical expenses incurred.

Charley and I are now retired, but we had to wait until he was old enough so we would be able to afford the medical insurance. I know other people who would like to retire but say they cannot do so because medical insurance would eat up whatever retirement pay they would have.

So you may be worried about universal health care, I've seen the vote go around Facebook. But what is being proposed is not universal health care or socialized medicine. If you like your insurance, you'll keep your insurance. Your insurance will have to accept pre-existing conditions, however. If you lose your job, your health will not suffer because you will still be able to get medical treatment at the same cost that your congressman pays, be he or she Republican or Democrat. If you change jobs, you will no longer have to worry whether your new insurance provider will accept pre-existing conditions.

We are already paying for people who are not insured. The way we are paying actually costs more than if we had a plan that would cover them. I taught high school in a poor section of the city. Students would come and announce that fainted the night before and their mother took them to the emergency room. They went to the emergency room because they did not have health insurance and emergency rooms cannot deny them. Did they pay the bill? No, because they were poor. Who paid the bill? We did, maybe not through taxes but through our insurance premiums. Someone had to pay.

One of the scare tactics out there is that socialized medicine is poor quality. I've been to Canada, the Canadians are afraid of getting sick in the United States and of the high medical costs. I've been to Europe where people are relaxed about their health. Doctors can diagnose and not worry about all the required insurance paperwork needed and hiring a staff that is dedicated, not to providing better health care service, but to managing insurance company claim forms. I had to get a prescription filled while in Germany, while the Germans would pay less than I did (if anything) the cost was cheaper than my co-pay at home. The pharmacist was diligent and took time to make sure my prescription was filled properly.

As for the death-panel stuff, here's was a Republican had to say about what the well-informed (ha-hem) Sarah Palin who stands by her 'death-panel' claim, her "posting came one day after Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said that Palin and other critics were not helping the GOP by tossing out false claims. Portions of the Democratic health care bills "are bad enough that we don't need to be making things up," Murkowski said, invoking a phrase that Palin used in her resignation speech, when she asked the news media to "quit making things up." Murkowski said she was offended at the "death panel" terminology. "There is no reason to gin up fear in the American public by saying things that are not included in the bill," she said." (Associated Press writer Erica Werner contributed to this report.)

Think about it, who has the most to lose? It's not you or me, it is the insurance companies and the health care administrators. It is those people who are goading all the myths and lies of the health-care bill.

Alright, enough is enough from me. If you want to check out what I'm touting, here are some links:

• Jim Jaffe is a former congressional staffer and current contributor to HuffingtonPost.com and Centeredpolitics.com wrote this article found at AARP "Secret’s Out—We Already Ration Medical Care: For decades, our crafty government has been imposing rules that determine who gets what care.
• AARP reports on Health Care Reform: The Assault on Truth
• And, last but not least: The Whitehouse Reality Check

Dream

I was going through my computer and found this. It was an intense dream I woke up from March 3, 2007. It had a good lesson and I'm glad I wrote it down:

I woke up with this dream this morning. I was chasing this doctor who had a terminal disease. But he wasn’t listening to me. He was worried about his things, his possessions. I kept telling him over and over again that he needed to stop and pay attention to what was happening to him now. Listen to the world. Enjoy the moment, the breeze through the leaves of the trees, the birds singing, and his own breath. But he kept telling me that it was me who didn’t understand. He stopped and told me to wait outside this Greek style building while he went inside to take care of something. While I waited, I watched a bull get spooked by passersby. He ran up to me, knocked me over and was about to stomp his hoof into my chest as I began to tell him that he had a choice. “Pretty boy, you’re such a pretty boy. Do you really want to do this? You have a choice. You could lie down beside me and let me pet your pretty face or you could go ahead and stomp my chest. You’re such a pretty boy, don’t you want me to pet your pretty face? Then the bull dropped to the side and lay down beside me and I stroked his face. He was a very pretty bull. I got up and walked toward the building. An older lady was coming from around the corner. I’ve dreamt of her before. She said that I was her sister counter circle; I was on one end going around and she was on the other end and our ends would meet. But her time was coming near to the end as she was growing old and her apprentice would meet me. Her apprentice was this young blonde who fretting over the fact that she was not yet ready. I told her not to worry and that when the time came, she would be ready. Her choice was to either fret about the moment or absorb what she needed to know. The doctor came out, still worrying about things; I again chased after him, because this was my choice, telling him to stop and look at his life and see what is really important.

Enjoy the moment and look at your choices.