Francis would have been 49 years old tomorrow...He died in 1989 but I wrote this poem at a workshop in Boston in 1998.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
The world is afloat in mourning light...?
There is a light in mourning.
That "aha" experience comes to all
But at different times.
You led me through the valley of the shadow,
that I no longer fear.
The mourning light dawned for me in my last years.
The gates of freedom opened wide.
That, my birthday boy, was your gift to me.
Your life and your death are valued.
Through the dew and gossamer of grief
I was able to see clearly.
I would not have found life
Without your death.
Happy Birthday and thank you for this life.
mom
Friday, April 23, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
steroid stella
Well,yesterday I got a shot of steroids right in the artery, guess that makes me a mainliner? Anyway, cleaned the bathroom, went to the radiation, dusted all the upstairs walls, no wall washing or painting this spring thought, swiftered anything needing dusting, windexed all glass surfaces, 409 all white surfaces, lemon pledged all wood and cabinets, 409 leather couch, 409 two cloth couches, febreezed the rooms, washed all the throw rugs, took a nap!
The secret is to strike while the steroids are active....
I think the guys are going to do the windows tomorrow if it doesn't rain...big black clouds out there.
blood pressure 102/69...used to be about that when I was a runner. Only thing that runs now are my eyes, nose and bladder......
The secret is to strike while the steroids are active....
I think the guys are going to do the windows tomorrow if it doesn't rain...big black clouds out there.
blood pressure 102/69...used to be about that when I was a runner. Only thing that runs now are my eyes, nose and bladder......
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Another Day
boy, just when you think? Don't!
I have been getting weaker and weaker and blaming it all on the radiation. Also some nausea...
So this morning I could hardly stand upright....had to lay down in between getting dressed.
When I went for my radiation treatment I asked the girls if the doc was around. Not feeling too good. They remarked that I was cold and clammy....turns out my blood pressure was 90/50 so I got to go to the chemo room and had a couple of hours of normal saline dumped into me and some decadron for the nausea. Much better afternoon. Now I remember that my blood pressure was quite low a couple of times while I was in the hospital...so tomorrow I am not taking my TWO blood pressure pills and ask the doc about reducing the amounts.
Thanks to all of you who have emailed your thoughts, wishes, prayers, invitations and other encouragements.
I have been getting weaker and weaker and blaming it all on the radiation. Also some nausea...
So this morning I could hardly stand upright....had to lay down in between getting dressed.
When I went for my radiation treatment I asked the girls if the doc was around. Not feeling too good. They remarked that I was cold and clammy....turns out my blood pressure was 90/50 so I got to go to the chemo room and had a couple of hours of normal saline dumped into me and some decadron for the nausea. Much better afternoon. Now I remember that my blood pressure was quite low a couple of times while I was in the hospital...so tomorrow I am not taking my TWO blood pressure pills and ask the doc about reducing the amounts.
Thanks to all of you who have emailed your thoughts, wishes, prayers, invitations and other encouragements.
Monday, April 19, 2010
UPDATE - better!
OK, my pro-time is in a therapeutic range.....leg doesn't hurt. Tomorrow is last day for brain radiation. Radiologist says the tumors are dead. Now in a couple of weeks, after the dead stuff has been absorbed, another scan to make sure all is gone, if not the cyberknife.
Oncologist says two more weeks of lung xrays, then scan and if cancer anywhere else no point treating someone who doesn't have cancer. Then check every 6 - 8 weeks to make sure I'm still clean. Sounds to me like a summer vacation coming up.
Son from Oregon does windows and shampoos carpets. 75 degrees today. Sydney in the yard, me on couch for a couple of more weeks. Sure am strapped for energy.
Yesterday lunch with the church ladies and I voiced some of my deepest doubts and my friend started crying because she doesn't want me to go to hell. So I need to stop telling her those kind of things. Today, my four year old grand daughter said, out of the blue, that "God has a special son, his name is Jesus." Out of the mouth of babes, lest you believe like a child.
Oncologist says two more weeks of lung xrays, then scan and if cancer anywhere else no point treating someone who doesn't have cancer. Then check every 6 - 8 weeks to make sure I'm still clean. Sounds to me like a summer vacation coming up.
Son from Oregon does windows and shampoos carpets. 75 degrees today. Sydney in the yard, me on couch for a couple of more weeks. Sure am strapped for energy.
Yesterday lunch with the church ladies and I voiced some of my deepest doubts and my friend started crying because she doesn't want me to go to hell. So I need to stop telling her those kind of things. Today, my four year old grand daughter said, out of the blue, that "God has a special son, his name is Jesus." Out of the mouth of babes, lest you believe like a child.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Some days are coal
Boy, yesterday was not a good one (till the end). I was nauseated and could hardly stand up...Spent day on the couch dozing, but too sick to really sleep. I thought it might beside effects, but today I think I must have picked up a virus because I have had diarrhea and yesterday I had three blankets piled on me while everyone else was running around in shorts.
Anyway,today is much better again.
But that's just part of the news. Pascha was cooking this big meal last night when Sydney got a call from a friend of ours to come and help him out cause his car broke down. So I am in the living room pulling the drapes down when someone touches my back and says, "Hi Mom." My oldest son, from Oregon! What a nice way to end crappy day! He will be here for awhile. Today we drove around and looked at places he had lived before we left Montana in 1963.
Anyway,today is much better again.
But that's just part of the news. Pascha was cooking this big meal last night when Sydney got a call from a friend of ours to come and help him out cause his car broke down. So I am in the living room pulling the drapes down when someone touches my back and says, "Hi Mom." My oldest son, from Oregon! What a nice way to end crappy day! He will be here for awhile. Today we drove around and looked at places he had lived before we left Montana in 1963.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
One More Old Poem
Written in 1994
Christmas Carol Chronicles
"Joy came to the world of the elderly pair.
The Cherub gave reason for the season that year.
Frosted windows with star flags for the men "over there"
In search of the good will and to all the earth peace.
Postwar winter wonderlands of frosted snowmen
brought skaters to ponds and sleds to the hills.
"Merry Christmas we wish" sand the toothless first grade
and war weary soldiers made plows of their swords.
Dreams of "White Christmas" just like the ones
were replaced by fake tress ...(On tables they sat),
With glass candles that bubbled, forever it seemed.
now interrupted by neons that flashed. Mother had died.
Hail Marys and Our Fathers kept the anger away
with uniformed siblings she knelt at the stable,
while Elks, Easgles and Knights, who had traveled so far,
brought tiding of joy to the inn with a room.
Away in the manager, no place for their heads
the littlest angels slept all in a row
and ..harking and hearlding...the heavenly hosts
from realms of glory kept the night silent
Turned corners, called Christmas in the pages of life.
Post lessons and memories to the day of all days
with choices of bubbles or neons that that lie or
stars above cradles in the holy night sky.
I promise, this is the last of the old poetry.
Christmas Carol Chronicles
"Joy came to the world of the elderly pair.
The Cherub gave reason for the season that year.
Frosted windows with star flags for the men "over there"
In search of the good will and to all the earth peace.
Postwar winter wonderlands of frosted snowmen
brought skaters to ponds and sleds to the hills.
"Merry Christmas we wish" sand the toothless first grade
and war weary soldiers made plows of their swords.
Dreams of "White Christmas" just like the ones
were replaced by fake tress ...(On tables they sat),
With glass candles that bubbled, forever it seemed.
now interrupted by neons that flashed. Mother had died.
Hail Marys and Our Fathers kept the anger away
with uniformed siblings she knelt at the stable,
while Elks, Easgles and Knights, who had traveled so far,
brought tiding of joy to the inn with a room.
Away in the manager, no place for their heads
the littlest angels slept all in a row
and ..harking and hearlding...the heavenly hosts
from realms of glory kept the night silent
Turned corners, called Christmas in the pages of life.
Post lessons and memories to the day of all days
with choices of bubbles or neons that that lie or
stars above cradles in the holy night sky.
I promise, this is the last of the old poetry.
Some Old Poems
1990
When I was commuting to Portland, working on my Master's degree I was struggling with guilt about not being home where a woman belongs, etc. I wrote this:
THE FAMILY PLAN
Ignorinig the eccelastical wisdom, she stiched about purposes and seasons.
She shuttled on Amtrak between the then and the now.
Out of Sync with her estrogen peers, she grasped at the brass ring of academia
and her children, in frames, lined up on her desk.
She justified letters in place of hugs, with Nikes and braces, but
late trains, the minds "down time" brought unbeckoned guilt and
she wished for the black and white truths of the fifties.
A one way ticket home to middle America via the retorical offerings of the campus library, brought her back to the needle with the threads waiting to spell:
"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord"
In 1944...the war was on and bubble gum was hard to come by...it was during the Christmas program when we heard the little store on the corner had received the shipment.
1944 Emerson, Trumn, Pearl Harbor and Double Bubble.
Mary and Joseph ran from the scene. Beached toweled shepards and crowned wisemen parachuted from playground swings.
Past "Christmas at Kranz" to que-gue up at the store.
Loafers with pennies were stripped of their trim and the comics from "fleers" littered the snow as the cast returned to their places.
"Hark Angles" and "O come yees" were peppered with pink pops.
War brought shortages of nylons, and gum and big brothers.
In 1947 my mother was dying. We lived in a one room hotel in the skidrow district. I spent time on the streets and discovered the Salvation Army...
1947
Hey Kid! Get in line You can't just walk right in You need a number.
The Salvation Soldier offered his and and she walked at his side to a table up front.
The house had been sold, the dog put away, They lived at the Brent.
No car to drive to see the Smelter Hill lights.
The Mother lay dying.
The party went on in the house of Minniapolis below.
Hot lunches at Largent were the meal of the day
And across the street the Army gave baskets away.
"I don't have a number mister soldier>"
"It ain't heavy..I can carry it."
"I've not far to go."
From Croxford's....to Highland... to St. Thomas.
She joined the blue sea of jumpered carolers who sang to the void.
In 1955, after Gardner was born Carol learned she could get welfare...it was Christmas time and she spent the entire check on presents and decorations.
1955
A court house of stone and a cold female face.
At the end of the line, the child and her baby, a family of two.
Christmas would come now. The welfare check came through.
Blue Christmas with Elvis was traded for White with a Crosby
and the Public Drugstore stayed open that Sunday.
The "Dole" bought the lights and the wrappings for toys.
Her Blue Friends at the Army filled a basket for them,
her and her boy.
1956
The line at the court house for license was brief.
In a Chapel at Malmstrom , yellow bands were exchanged.
After time at the Yellowstone place, all alone,
they picked up the boy, and the girl and
a boy, and a girl and a boy.
Columbus and Deaconess filled the fireplace with
stockings and beds full of sugar plum dreams.
She hummed in the dark by the tree
A processional song..."O come all ye faithful"
She took her place in the line.
Halloween 1993
They shuffle right through the brittle leaf memories...
The remnents of summer can't stop them...
They come from the autumn.
TRICK OR TREAT
twisting and turning down lanes without dates
batmans and witches and princesses play
in her heart where it is summer.
TRICK OR TREAT
Other pumpkins grin lifeless on silver moon nights.
Summers...autumns...with no natural end
abruptly stopped futures...no harvest
TRICK OR TREAT
Posterity lays under modly leaves
in boxes coverd with hard clay
the frost is on the pumpkin
TRICK.
When I was commuting to Portland, working on my Master's degree I was struggling with guilt about not being home where a woman belongs, etc. I wrote this:
THE FAMILY PLAN
Ignorinig the eccelastical wisdom, she stiched about purposes and seasons.
She shuttled on Amtrak between the then and the now.
Out of Sync with her estrogen peers, she grasped at the brass ring of academia
and her children, in frames, lined up on her desk.
She justified letters in place of hugs, with Nikes and braces, but
late trains, the minds "down time" brought unbeckoned guilt and
she wished for the black and white truths of the fifties.
A one way ticket home to middle America via the retorical offerings of the campus library, brought her back to the needle with the threads waiting to spell:
"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord"
In 1944...the war was on and bubble gum was hard to come by...it was during the Christmas program when we heard the little store on the corner had received the shipment.
1944 Emerson, Trumn, Pearl Harbor and Double Bubble.
Mary and Joseph ran from the scene. Beached toweled shepards and crowned wisemen parachuted from playground swings.
Past "Christmas at Kranz" to que-gue up at the store.
Loafers with pennies were stripped of their trim and the comics from "fleers" littered the snow as the cast returned to their places.
"Hark Angles" and "O come yees" were peppered with pink pops.
War brought shortages of nylons, and gum and big brothers.
In 1947 my mother was dying. We lived in a one room hotel in the skidrow district. I spent time on the streets and discovered the Salvation Army...
1947
Hey Kid! Get in line You can't just walk right in You need a number.
The Salvation Soldier offered his and and she walked at his side to a table up front.
The house had been sold, the dog put away, They lived at the Brent.
No car to drive to see the Smelter Hill lights.
The Mother lay dying.
The party went on in the house of Minniapolis below.
Hot lunches at Largent were the meal of the day
And across the street the Army gave baskets away.
"I don't have a number mister soldier>"
"It ain't heavy..I can carry it."
"I've not far to go."
From Croxford's....to Highland... to St. Thomas.
She joined the blue sea of jumpered carolers who sang to the void.
In 1955, after Gardner was born Carol learned she could get welfare...it was Christmas time and she spent the entire check on presents and decorations.
1955
A court house of stone and a cold female face.
At the end of the line, the child and her baby, a family of two.
Christmas would come now. The welfare check came through.
Blue Christmas with Elvis was traded for White with a Crosby
and the Public Drugstore stayed open that Sunday.
The "Dole" bought the lights and the wrappings for toys.
Her Blue Friends at the Army filled a basket for them,
her and her boy.
1956
The line at the court house for license was brief.
In a Chapel at Malmstrom , yellow bands were exchanged.
After time at the Yellowstone place, all alone,
they picked up the boy, and the girl and
a boy, and a girl and a boy.
Columbus and Deaconess filled the fireplace with
stockings and beds full of sugar plum dreams.
She hummed in the dark by the tree
A processional song..."O come all ye faithful"
She took her place in the line.
Halloween 1993
They shuffle right through the brittle leaf memories...
The remnents of summer can't stop them...
They come from the autumn.
TRICK OR TREAT
twisting and turning down lanes without dates
batmans and witches and princesses play
in her heart where it is summer.
TRICK OR TREAT
Other pumpkins grin lifeless on silver moon nights.
Summers...autumns...with no natural end
abruptly stopped futures...no harvest
TRICK OR TREAT
Posterity lays under modly leaves
in boxes coverd with hard clay
the frost is on the pumpkin
TRICK.
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