Today I held the hand of a woman as she took her last breath.  Death came into the room, and when he left he took her with him. There was no fanfare, no drum rolls or flashes of lightning.  She simply stopped breathing. I was holding her hand when she left.  I think - no, I'm SURE - she knew I was there. About 20 minutes after she had left, Brahms lullaby came over the loud speakers, indicating that a baby had been born. As one leaves, so another comes, and the circle...

During my husband's long ongoing military career I have come to realize how important scent can be during a separation. When he was gone for a year, he packaged up one of his T-shirts that he slept in for 4 days and sent it to me.  Opening that baggie and smelling him was like a punch in the gut for me.  It was so...potent.  It didn't smell bad, it just smelt like him, and it made me cry.  I ended up putting that shirt on a spare pillow and sleeping with it alongside me in...

I had an appointment with the pain management doc yesterday.  We reviewed my pain level (yesterday was about a 3; it was a really good day, painwise) and after he did some poking and prodding and a little tweaking of my medications he said I didn't have to come back for three months. I'm happy.  I'm happy with my meds, I'm happy with the amount of pain I'm experiencing (apart from today; I'm always sore after he pokes around and prods me), I'm happy that I don't have to go back f...

The Big Bad Baby Blanket project is underway. I've revised it slightly. Originally I wanted to produce and exact replica of this one: I was having a hard time finding yarn in the exact colors, so I was going to substitute some, but the yarns I was going to substitute had a different texture than the original ones and I didn't like that.  So, I tried to find some yarn in a similar color and texture and couldn't find it so I decided to go ahead with what I had.....but balked at it...

I've gained some weight since the surgery.  I haven't been able to be as active as I was prior to getting my spine fused, and it's resulted in an extra 15lbs.  It's been difficult for me to deal with.  I've had to pack away all my size 7's and 8's and get used to wearing 11's and 12's, and I've even had to get buy new "over the shoulder boulder holders" (as my husband likes to call them) - I outgrew my 34D and had to upsize to a 36DD.  I've spent a fait bit of time whinin...

The more I think about it, the more I think and feel that this experience with hospice care will leave me forever changed. I think that I am going to be left humbled by this experience.  Caring for and getting attached to someone you know isn't going to be around very long isn't something that most people want to do.  It's un-natural; there's no benefit in it for your average human.  Not for me, though.  I think that there's a hell of a lot to be learned from someone who i...

I went to see the hospice coordinator this afternoon. I've been assigned a patient.  I've been given her admission paperwork and the psycho-social reports to go over, and I can start visiting her as soon as I want.  I'm going on Monday, and I'm taking with me some things that I think she'll like. This is really happening.  All the things that I learned, all the theories, all the ideas...they're all going to be put into practice.  I have a patient.  The concepts tha...

I'm falling in love again. With men who aren't my husband, with men who I've never even met and will never ever meet. They have a way with words, these men.  They know how to weave emotions into their words, emotions so strong that they can make me laugh out loud or move me to tears....these words have angered me with the injustice that they've told, they've repulsed me and sickened me.... ....they have trapped and caught me, and now that they've got me I never want to leave. ...

My husband's grandfather, Morris, is in the hopsital for the second time in a month.  He's having difficulty breathing this time; the last time he had pneumonia.  Morris is 84, and before he retired he was a firefighter.  Back then they didn't have respirators, so Morris ended up inhaling a LOT of smoke over the years - and now he's got emphysema and chronic respiratory problems.  He has oxygen to use at home and a little tank to carry around with him when he's out for hi...

In the first part of this serialization, Henry talked about having to get a full time job at the age of 12 after his father had passed away.  In this next part, he talks further about his duties and also about the man he worked for...   Was this a dairy farm, or was it a mixed farm? Yes, mixed farm - thirty-five hundred acres. What else did you have to do between milking? Everything.  Hedge cutting, and everything else in the wintertime, all along. Did you d...

I'm tired of having red hair. I'm getting a lot of grey, and when I color my hair red, the grey comes out neon orange.  Consequently I have to make it a 2-step process - I have to dye my hair a medium brown all over to darken the grey, then I wait another day and use the red color.  Sometimes it doesn't work and I end up with the neon orange roots at the front of my head.  I'm also tired of having short hair.  As I'm getting older I'm finding that short hair is too har...

We all have people we don't like.  We're human, we all have different personalites; we're not all going to get along with each other.  On a scale of dislike people we know can rate from a 'can tolerate in small doese' all the way through to 'detest'.  I'm relatively lucky; there aren't many people on the higher end of my scale...I 'detest' very few people. How can that be?  How can it be that out of all the people I know, I detest a few of them?  I wish I could sa...

*Dictated in January 1977*   How old were you when you started work? I was twelve.  I had to start.  I lost my father before I was twelve years old, and I had to start work, and in them days there was no help from nobody.  The only thing as my mother could get was Parish Relief, and that was for one. How many were you? There was four of us, four boys, and the oldest boy went in the Army - then there was three of us.  I had to start work when I were twe...

When I was a girl, my paternal grandfather agreed to do a series of radio interviews for Radio Oxford and for the local universitys agriculture students.  He was a farm hand, you see, and he'd worked full time since he was 12 years old...and they felt like he had some valuable insight into the way things used to be. My dad sent me a transcript of the interviews a few weeks ago.  Reading them reduced me to tears a few times - I could literally hear my grampy's voice, his broad north ...