Summer isn't soon enough

I'm a month into school and I can't bring myself to do my homework. I can't bring myself to do anything other than pray that when I fall asleep I'll wake up and it will be summer. I'll wake up in a strange bed in a strange city and you'll be across from me, asleep with your glasses on like you always were.

Part of me is begging for summer to come because I'm clinging to a hope that doesn't exist. I'm going to appear in front of you and I'm going to need you to love me. I'm going to need you in a way that is frightening and desperate and part of me worries that you're going to run the other way and part of me knows I'll never say a word.

I wish I had the balls to chase you down and kiss you. I want to hold you and fall asleep next to you and know that I have a home again and it is wherever you are because part of me is going to stay with you for a long time. I don't know that I'll ever let go of who you were to me because it saved my life.

And now I have to save myself and I wish you were at least here to stroke my cheek and run your fingers through my hair and sigh softly against my neck because I'm terrified to find out that I can trust myself and rely on myself without someone's fingers intertwined with mine. If I succeed in this then I have surpassed them. I am suddenly in a world they never reached. I have to start writing my own script. I'm suddenly going to have to start making this up and I'm afraid someone will catch me in a lie. I'm afraid someone is going to realize I don't know what I'm doing.

Do you ever stop feeling like you're just faking it?
Because that's what I'm beginning to believe.
I just wish I could take your hand.
I wish you'd make it up with me.

I still miss her...

Today I was going through my photos and found my collection of pictures from the campaign.

In looking back not only are the final three weeks of the campaign a complete blur but in retrospect I know we worked so hard that we shot past all expectations. It was mind blowing.

I couldn't tell you what happened on any given day but I still smile when I remember the way she looked when she was exhausted and the way she insisted on sleeping with her glasses on. I laugh when I remember her enthusiasm and joy at every little thing. She was like a small child in her wonder. She is still amazing. It still hurts a little to remember saying goodbye.

I can't bring myself to tell the people who want to keep pushing and working to make for political change that I was never in this for them. I was never in this because it was my cause. I was never in the fight because I believed Obama mattered that much. I was always in it because I was hopelessly, painfully in love with her.

I gave up so much of myself because I loved her and believed in her. I still love her and believe in her but she's gone. She exists somewhere only in my memory and some far away place. She's off saving the world. A world of which I am not a part.

I know that everything I felt was unrequited and I'm childish for holding onto these memories and emotions but every once in a while I just miss her. I miss the way she believed in me with such unwavering conviction that she stood up for me against my superior and her subordinate.

I miss what she was to me not what she was in reality. I haven't seen or heard from her in months. I wish her all the happiness in the world. She deserves all that and so much more for making me believe in so many things.

if i lose my lottery because i fucked up my WS class...

then i give myself full license to have a crisis.

This will be the first semester i haven't wanted or tried to kill myself since i left high school.

I would like to hang on to that shred of pride.
I'm okay for now.





Miss Allison, I still miss you like crazy...

Did i get drunk and watch "Rocky and Bullwinkle" cartoons until the sun came up?

Yes, yes I did.

and you know what? It was fucking awesome.

some days...

some days i'll forget to take my meds. sometimes i run out and forget to refill them and i go without for a few days.

things they don't tell you about SSRI's like cymbalta: if you miss even two days your body will spiral into withdrawal symptoms. You will shake and be dizzy and out of breath and it will feel like needles are pricking every inch of your skin. You will feel like you are being shocked electrically. it will start in your brain and traverse your entire body, down to your feet and all the way back up. You will want to convulse your body will be exhausted and if you relax your muscles will twitch like you are seizing. You aren't. You are fine but your body will twitch. Once you take your medications again it will take two weeks of consistent daily dosing before they are working fully.

This is all legal. All of it is FDA approved.

I never come off of my meds into a manic episode. I always plummet into depression. I don't have a reason to be sad or cry. It doesn't need a reason.

I feel like there is a weight on my chest pressing down and making it harder to breathe. Harder to care. I want to curl up in the corner and be left alone forever. I feel so alone already. I cry over nothing. I cry about death.


It's summer.
May 18, 1996: the day my Grandpa Hart died. His was the first funeral I ever cried at. I was 8.

May 2nd, 2003: the day my Grandpa Dan died. I was in San Antonio on a band trip. I got the news from my cousin. The last time I saw my Grandan I had forgotten to say "I love you" as he was leaving; I thought it was no big deal and I would see him again. It was the most excruciating pain I had ever known.

June 28, 2006: the day my Grandma Hart died. She actually passed away while I was literally sitting on my Grandma Wink's couch saying how she was a fighter and she might make it.

June 21, 2007: the day my Grandma Wink died, less than a year after my Grandma Hart died. I was holding her hand when she died. I was alone in the room. The nurse asked if I was okay. I stared at her and said "No, I just watched my grandmother die. Of course I'm not okay." I sometimes still don't feel okay.



Maybe these are all excuses but I'm in a bad way right now.

You're still here

Sometimes, when I'm really exhausted
when I haven't slept in what feels like days
and my nerves have been worn threadbare
I remember you.

I remember the way you laughed and scrunched your nose.
I remember how your favorite word was amazing
everything in the world was amazing
and I remember asking you what you were like
when you saw something truly amazing
and you told me you thought everything really was amazing.

that was amazing.

I miss you but I can't tell you that because you weren't You.
You were an idea. You are an idea.

What you are to me is something that doesn't really exist
but this fallacy is born of your reality.
I want to thank you but I can't thank you for being
the symbol I needed, the sign, the light, the thing you never saw.

I'm so proud of you.
You've changed the world.
At least my world.

And now look at you. Standing atop the hill so many struggle to climb.
so far ahead of where I would even aspire to be,
You rarely seem to look back.
I often wonder if you lie when you mention missing me.

I can't open my eyes because the sun is too bright but I try.
the tears stream down my face as I struggle to see you clearly.
eventually I'll stop.
eventually I'll give up.
eventually I'll admit you're gone. That you don't remember.
That it's over.

But now, when I close my eyes tight
when my breathing evens and I am finally still,
in those moments I lose track of the line between
those things that are real
and those things that exist only in my dream.

and then I let myself believe
You're still here.







It's always a bad sign when the name Maude Gonne comes to mind.

The Alegria Allegory

This just in: I want to watch Kooza. You should too.


I've watched the DVD of Cirque Du Soleil's show "Alegria" at least 6 or 7 times now. Partly because it has amazing music and acts, partly because Francesca Gagnon is freaking ADORABLE, and partly because there is a bare thread of a storyline or the appearance of related events running through the whole show. It's not a cabaret like Zumanity and it's not a difinitive story like Varekai but there's something there tying it all together. This story line has resulted in hours spent at IHOP tables at 3 AM trying to decipher the underlying meaning of the show.

Is it about power and a crumbling kingdom?
Is it about the homeless youth struggling to yell loud enough to have their cries heard at the top of the heirarchy?
Is it about conflict between religion?
Is it about generational conflict?
What is the purpose of the Singer in White? Who is she supposed to be?
What about Tamir and Little Tamir? Who are they supposed to be?
Should I know something more about life coming away from this show that I did when I first started watching it?

The thing I love most about all of these questions is that, in the tradition of Cirque, there are no real answers. You can watch it again and see something different. And again the next time, and the next.

This time I took away the idea that there are few things better in life than watching someone who is utterly batshit crazy run around and set a stage on fire using a Fire-Knife.

fuckitty fuck fuck

This is my personal blog so I can title my posts whatever I want.
If you're looking for my cyberfeminism blog try http://arachnetwopointoh.blogspot.com

The gist is I'm still confused about my cyberfem class and didn't know we were supposed to read ALL of the readings. Are we? I don't know.

I'm in that lovely state where I'm kind of terrified and panicky. My bipolar has been getting a little worse of late. Meds and all of that are still the same. It's just that with all this stuff about my gender and the PCOS and having gotten the final dose of Gardasil which has resulted in some rather excruciating pain in general life feels awfully teh suxorz.

I'd have to argue the worst part of it all is that I'm so crazy close to sucessfully finishing the semester and I feel like I'm falling apart. I would like to not feel like this plzthx. Right about now I would love a cigarette but my lungs are shit to begin with so it strikes me as a somewhat bad idea to take up smoking again.

I will be working graveyard shift tonight and am not really looking forward to it mostly because I feel very sick and confused. At least I'll be making an extra $0.40 an hour tonight. That should help considering comcast jacked up my bill out of no where.

Fun fact: I was the first girl to ever request to work the graveyard shift at ICT.

Next week: Online dating and why it sucks

This just in:

I don't understand WebCT courses AT ALL.

So I'm sad to say I ended up dropping my cyberfeminism course because I didn't understand how it was supposed to work and I don't know how to ask questions. It's disappointing but I tend to roll that way. I'll keep up my blog as a personal one.

Not gonna lie, I was totally intimidated by the fact that I don't know what "feminism" is or "feminist theory" for that matter. I hope some department somewhere picks up the cyber-activism concept and start teaching courses about it. There needs to be a major. Seriously.

If you are hardcore into the ideas of cyber-activism I highly recommend "Taking On the System" by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga who is the founder of the Daily Kos, one of the most popular blogs on the net. It gives basic outlines how to make arguments and win them and generally wage activist web-wars in general. It's much better than I make it sound.


This just in Part II:
I don't understand paragraph breaks or grammar rules in general anymore. Stay in school, kids.

Techtosterone?

*awesome techno-woman link of the day*
GenderIT

My Rant about My Lappy: The Lappia Beta Coupe

I hate Vista, just like everyone else in the world. Absolutely hate it with a fiery passion but I usually enjoy that it gives me just a little bit more information and control than either Mac or XP does. There is, however, a problem with giving me this control. I don't know enough about Vista or computers in general to be able to really successfully fix anything. I just know enough to royally fuck them up. It's kind of amazing. In the first two months I had this computer I had to wipe it and completely re-install Vista at least TWICE.

Today I was given the ultimate insult. I was shown the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. I didn't even have time to read the text on the screen so I have no idea what happened to trigger the dreaded BSoD. Based on my wholly uninformed opinion I'd say registry errors of a rather Hardcore kind. We're talking XXX registry errors. Not that I know what a registry error really is, but still.

The point of all this is: I need to get my computer fixed but there's a small problem. I don't agree with the way technical support is done. I've worked in Technical Support and customer service with Apple computers before and consistently encounter two problems.

1. Most people prefer to work with technical support agents who are men because they feel that men are more adept at mechanical things and logic and will therefore fix your computer faster.
   
   My main argument against this is that, as a woman, I achieved the highest customer service satisfaction rating of anyone, man or woman, in my department and it wasn't just about talking people down and keeping them happy either. I managed to resolve technical problems 94% of the time so I knew what I was doing. Why then, was I often treated like I didn't know what I was doing?
   
   
2. This question brings me to my second point which is that a majority of technical support agents are males and inherently treat female customers as slightly inferior and assume they don't know what they're doing. I expect some people to argue that I'm biased and have no basis for this opinion. On the contrary, I worked full time on the floor of my call center and as my customer satisfaction was so high I was asked to help train other employees in how to improve their customer service satisfaction. The single biggest problem I identified was a lack of respect for the customer especially in the cases of male support agents and female customers.
   
   Is it wrong to have to explain to a customer service agent that they work for the customer regardless of age, sex, location, religion, or supposed intelligence?
   Because it should be.
   

I want my computer to work but I don't want to have to fight with the people who fix it. Maybe I'll just buy a new one. Again.

Welcome to the Jungle

I would like to send a shout-out to all the 3rd graders at Gladys Wood Elementary
make that a shout-out to all the folks from W S 450: Cyberfeminism!
Welcome to the world of Leftisting!

In case you hadn't guessed, I like exclamation points and dislike grammar and fight with spelling- and often lose.

I'm a government major who still hasn't gotten over how awesome the 2008 election season was. I am very, very progressive in my politics but have a strange place in my heart for the 2nd amendment and think people in the army should be respected and recognized for their humanity. I thought they were ruthless, heartless pigs until I read "My War: Killing Time in Iraq" about an army grunt deployed to Mosul, Iraq who starts blogging about serving in Iraq.

My first real exposure to blogs and blogging was the blog feature on Myspace at least 5 years ago. I used it to post random wibblings and angst-filled poetry. I kept this up until I switched to Facebook during my senior year of high school and essentially stopped blogging as Facebook doesn't really have that feature.

My blogging was sporadic until I took English 211 and our special topic was 'Zines and Blogging. We dedicated the second half of the semester to building up and using blogs as a way to express ourselves and our opinions in a valid and somewhat public way. I loved it.


*Notes on my actual blog*
I apologize in advance for poor grammar or spelling. I have dysgraphia which makes it difficult for me to sucessfully express my thoughts while still obeying the rules of grammar and punctuation.

As I have had this blog for several years and used it as a personal blog some of the back-posts may have coarse language in them. I apologize if you are offended.

I am aware that because I have interests including gender and sexuality some of my material may not be "appropriate" to some people. I would ask that people try to keep a sex positive attitude and an open mind.

I am also keenly aware that not everyone will agree with my politics, I welcome a lively debate including all viewpoints but ask that you not flame me or anyone else. If you do flame your comments will be deleted.

Other than these things I hope you enjoy!

Let's Rock!!

Butch Hair Uber Alles

Listening to "California Uber Alles" by the Dead Kennedys after getting an awesome haircut.

After having fought with my gender of late I was having a really tough time understanding where I fall in the gender/sexuality spectrum and it was really depressing me. I felt really happy identifying as just a "lesbian." Well, I suppose not happy so much as comfortable. But after reading some of the articles in my Contemporary Sexualities text book I began questioning what I am.

Am I bisexual? Am I a gay man trapped in a woman's body? Am I a straight male in a woman's body? Am I butch? Am I femme?

Why does gender have to fall into this strict dichotomy?

Unfortunately for me my copy of "My Gender Workbook" has been eaten by the vortex of life and I won't get paid 'til the 15th. Even then, I still have to pay my cable and electric bills but I digress.

So I'm having a horrible gender/sexuality crisis and my hair is in my face so I get my hair cut by my favorite gay stylist in the world. The only hair stylist in my entire city who understands what I want when I say the word "butch." Previously I've been scared to go very short but this time I said fuck it and hacked a bunch off and by the time it was over I had this super butch faux-hawk and strangely felt relieved and happy.

It's amazing how profoundly a haircut can affect how one feels about one's self.
I'm so much happier with who and what I am and love my new hair. It's a strange sense of calm and excitement. You should try it.



Yeah, I took Myspace style pictures but whatever. I was all excited and there wasn't anyone else around to take the pictures for me.

Note to self

Methylphenidate is a stimulant and will keep you awake if you are dumb enough to take it at night.
Hello walls! I will be staring at you now.

Also, if you haven't heard it, you really should listen to the Manic Street Preachers cover of Umbrella. It's lovely.

An Argument on the Ethics of Fan Fiction and Characterization

(It's a long one; go pee now.)
So, I've rejoined the world of literary analysis through that scuffed, broken, and much ignored window in that literary bathroom known as "fan fiction."

Having caught up on my "Grey's Anatomy" it was slightly inevitable that I would return to my old 'shipping haunts to see what the still bitter fans had churned out. I come from the short lived shipper-dom of Callie Torres/Erica Hahn of "Grey's Anatomy" generally referred to as "callica" which is, altogether, not a bad name.

Not much has been produced that is of any notable quality save a few people who tend to always do solid work. Mostly the stuff out there seems to be from people who decide to force their own style and characterizations on characters that have already been created and solidified over the five seasons this show has existed.

I suppose I'm nitpicking but I feel if a character is not yours but you choose to utilize this character in your writings you have an obligation to the creator of the character to do some form of justice to the original characterization and style. If you are going to build using a base of Legos do not take selected Legos and then use them in conjunction with Polly Pockets. A Lego is a Lego. (I'm almost positive that analogy made far more sense in my mind than it did on the screen.)

That behavior annoys me. It annoys me but it does not annoy me nearly as much as people who do not do their homework. (Is it wrong to be angry at fanfic writers for not researching the characters and situations they are writing about?)

There was recently an introduction of a character with Asperger's Syndrome and someone included a segment from this character's point of view in a fic. I would not normally oppose this sort of thing but the writer in question showed a painful lack of understanding about this character and the particulars of her Asperger's and instead chose to write it as though the woman had a small tick like a stutter rather than a fundamental limitation of the understandings of social-emotional folkways and simple human pragmatics.

The character does not understand human emotion and has trouble recognizing and identifying emotions and has no concept of sensitivity to them but instead operates through complete logic and understands the world through strict inductive and deductive reasoning. It's the only real way she communicates but the fanfic author chose to approach her as someone who has actions driven by emotional connections and human understanding and empathy when that's just not accurate.

My point is that people should have more respect for the authors and creators from whom they so often borrow. It is not enough to credit the creator in a disclaimer. There needs to be a recognition that if these characters are not yours then they are not yours to alter at will and if they are altered then they aren't really the character that originally belonged to the creator you first credited but neither are they fully yours. Instead you end up with a literary chimera which is never good for anyone. It's almost as bad as alternate universe, original character, or slash.


I'm sure my arguments have huge holes in them and are very preachy and have no solid basis but after reading so many crap fanfics I feel a need to express how I really feel about these things.

Don't even get me started on fanfics about real people...

State of the Funyuns Address*

*Rachel Maddow's quote, not mine.

So watching the so called NOT the State of the Union or nSOTU was amazing and moving and I rather feel that the whole world needs to go watch it.




Jindal's response makes no sense and I won't bother finding it because it's hideous. I'm sure it's out there on YouTube.
Sadly I am unable to find a clip of Rachel's "ba blblaba gah" response to Jindal. It's slightly legendary.
Will update if I find that clip or the "State of the Funyuns" clip.

Have a happy Mardi Gras.

UPDATE!! found the "ba blblaba gah" response to Jindal clip!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

From the front lines of stupidity.

Ben Bernanke is fucking INSANE!

Will probably fail my govt test today but doubt I'll be the first person to fail something like this.

Going back on methylphenidate (read Ritalin) despite how much I hate it as a substance. Let's hope it doesn't kill me this time.

This just in:

I suck at college and still want to move to Siberia. I have a Political Research Skills test in less than 12 hours and am grossly unprepared and procrastinating like a fiend!
...More details at ten.

Also, did you see the Oscar acceptance speeches by Dustin Lance Black and Sean Penn?
If you haven't you fail at life.

Final note: Rachel didn't host her show tonight which is slightly devastating but one less distraction from not studying.

moral victory for the queers

As a huge homo I grew up really feeling the pressure to fit within the norm of heterosexuality and the nuclear family model. I was raised by a relatively stay-at-home mom and a bread-winner dad in a semi-suburban neighborhood with good schools and a park. I participated in ballet for God's sake.

When I was 4 or 5 I talked about wanting to grow up to be a man so I could marry a beautiful woman and be a prince charming type character. Keep in mind during this time I was in a Methodist Preschool progam and my misguided gender dysphoric leanings were not welcomed with open arms. I was promptly shut down and thus spent the next 12 years of my life struggling to be heterosexual without knowing why I was having such a hard time. During those 12 years I battled depression and anxiety along with general social awkwardity.

After nearly going to the mat with a substitute teacher over John Kerry's mention of Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter during a debate it dawned on me that maybe I was *gasp* gay!

From that point on my life has been an awkward attempt to catch up with my heterosexual peers. After all, they started exploring their sexualities and relationship dynamics when they were perhaps 13 or 14 and here I was making a u-turn at 17. I immediately threw myself into researching the history of the gay community and ways to connect with other queers as my whole identity was in tumult and I was desperate to find a model to base myself on while I rebuilt my formerly norm-conforming life plans and ideals.

It was during this time that I learned about eHarmony.com, the dating website juggernaut. I was fascinated by the idea of a dating website working so well at connecting people. When I discovered that they did not accept gay members I was sort of baffled by the exclusion.

I have been following the multiple lawsuits filed against eHarmony in California and New Jersey on the grounds of discrimination seeking to force eHarmony to provide the same services to the gay community. As part of the settlement in the New Jersey lawsuit eHarmony has agreed to set up a matching website for gays called "Compatible Partners" to launch sometime in 2009.

It's not much but I view it as one of those chances to say "Ha ha! We win at life!" in the most juvenile way possible.


Go Team, Go!

Precious in the sight of the Lord are the death of his servants.

Billie Maxine Paul McKinney
1927 - 2007

     Billie Maxine Paul McKinney, 80, beloved Mother, Grandmother, Great-Grandmother, Sister and friend passed peacefully on June 21, 2007, after a valiant fight against a debilitating auto-immune disorder. Billie, nicknamed Winkie by her sister Betty for her skill playing the game of Tiddlywinks, was born in Memphis, Tennessee January 19, 1927 to Erman F. and Edna M. Paul. She moved to Las Cruces with her family in 1945, where she graduated from Las Cruces Union High School and later married Dan McKinney.
     After raising a family of three sons and one daughter, Billie and Dan divorced and Billie moved on to work as a licensed practical nurse. As a nurse, Billie served the Las Cruces community for 21 years, touching the lives of many. Upon retiring from her work at Memorial General Hospital, Billie enjoyed working at several national parks, traveling through the United States, Canada and Europe, gardening, and spending time with friends and family.
     Billie was preceded in death by her parents, sister Martha Joy Paul and former husband Dan McKinney. Billie is survived by sisters Kathryn Phaup, Betty Maluf Tver, and Nancy Aderhold and her husband Jon, son Jim McKinney and wife Elaine, son Daniel Dale "Bear" McKinney and wife Lucille, son Bill McKinney and wife Helen, daughter Barbara Streander and husband Kim, granddaughter Melissa Roetker and husband Sean, granddaughter Melanie Gonzales and husband David, grandson Dan McKinney, granddaughters Megan and Kate McKinney, granddaughters Lauren and Kristen Streander, great-granddaughters Layne Roetker and Amber Gonzales and great-grandsons Nick and Mathew Gonzales.
     Aunt Winkie leaves behind many nephews and neices. She is also survived by extended family Della McKinney, James and Sheila Richardson, Nita and Larry Cohorn, and Wade and Jodi Richardson and their children. In addition to her family, Billie leaves behind many friends in the US, Canada and Germany.
     Billie will be remembered for her strong spirit and courage that she shared, even in her final days.
     The family thanks the staff at Mesilla Valley Hospice for the caring service they provided. In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorial contributions be made to the Mesilla Valley Hospice, 299 E Montana, Las Cruces, NM 88005, Church Triumphant or a charity of your choice. A memorial service will take place Wednesday, June 27, beginning 10:30 A.M. at Church Triumphant, 2020 North Valley Drive, Las Cruces, NM 88007

I feel nothing
I feel broken and numb
Even the pain is disconnected from my reality
Nothing touches my mind

Sever the tether
I feel like my strings have been cut
Now I’m floating free
Erratic and uncontrollably

____________________________________


When she died
I was there
I was the only one there
I held her hand
And read to her
Psalms 116
As I read she opened her eyes
Eyes that had been closed
In near comatose sleep for days

She couldn't breathe
She died holding my hand
Hearing my voice

____________________________________


I have flashbacks
The clicking sound in her throat
The far off
But terrified
Look in her eyes
As she struggled to breathe
Struggled to live

Holding her hand I told her it was okay
It was okay
She could let go
Go home
Go rest
It’s over

I still feel like I have blood on my hands

She wanted to die
Chose to end treatment
Chose to enter hospice
But how can I know if in that instant she relented
Reached out her hand to live
And I simply waved as she fell away from me

____________________________________


Hour after hour I dream
Every night
Every time I close my eyes

I dream about being there
Feeding her
Massaging the cramps from her legs
Reading the bible to her
Those moments we shared in her last days

I dream about being there when she passed
Holding her hand
About having to decide whether she lives or dies
In my dreams she wants to live
And in my dreams I let her die

I dream about being alone at the funeral
Screaming at the top of my lungs
No one can hear me

I dream about death
Chasing me for hours
For miles
I have to run away from the people I love
Or death will take them too

Listening to the breathing of my family
I wait on edge
A phantasmagoria of death tainting every thought
I hear the clicking sound
Louder and more frightening than some ominous heart beat

I wait
Unable to sleep
Until morning when it is safe


____________________________________


I wake
Starting from my bed
My eyes open wide
I prepare to bolt from the house
As fast as I am capable

I have to be there
Must be there
She is waiting for me to come
To feed her
To read to her
To be with her

She is…
           …Dead

In that moment I feel it all again
I will wake like this for months
Without her there
I have no reason to wake
It feels like my purpose has been taken from me

I feel hollow
And broken
I cannot escape my mind
Never for long
The world is bittersweet and grey

With time will come the better days

____________________________________

One week
Since she passed
Thursday June 28th
One week and one year
Two mothers
One to either parent
A year for my mother
A week for my father

Precise aligning dates
The cuts are that much deeper
New wounds tracing over old scars

Death is not difficult for the dead
It is for the living
Left behind
Who feel a hole being cut in their existence
Part of them being torn away

I am one of the hollow men
What you see is a shell

You won’t find me for looking
I am gone from you
When or if I’ll return remains unseen

Take pleasure
In not having known this pain

Goodbye is the hardest word to say.

I'm not ready for her to leave this world, not ready to say goodbye, not ready to not be someone's grandchild. She is the last of her generation of parents. She has fought long and hard and done her best. I know this is her decision, but it's too soon. It will always be too soon.

When white light passes through a prism it is broken into an array of colors. When grief is filtered through an individual's perception of death, grief is broken into an array of emotions too many to name.

You can't know what this is like for me, no one can. Death is filtered through personal experiences, we all grieve in our own ways. Hold me and let me sob, need to feel safe. If only for this moment, I need to feel this pain.



Dear Winkleberry,

Some grandparents are part of a child’s life only fleetingly, there to buy presents and spoil them, or there only on special occasions and then gone with little or no communication, some are not present at all. You have been an integral part of every stage of my life, helping to raise me, to care for me, to comfort me and to teach me. You took care of my sister and me.

When our parents would leave town, you would play games with me when I was lonely; you undertook projects to make headbands and play the organ, and bake cookies at Christmas. You were willing to get dirty, to help pick “pomatoes” in the garden, to sit on the floor and play with us. You made sure we knew you love us and are proud of us.

Once you played baseball in your back yard on Calle de Rosa with an Oar and a tennis ball, another time you invited me over to look at slides and you made me a Peanut butter and Jelly sandwich. I felt like the most special person in the world because you took the time to spend time with me. I treasure all the memories of you I have.

I’ve known you for 19 years, you’ve been there to shape who I am in every way. It was from you I learned to go after what you want and not to give up until you get it, it was from you I learned to be strong, and it was from you I learned that just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I’m any less capable. Thank you for everything you have taught me.

I love you very, very much. I want you to know that I will always love you. I understand that what you’re going through right now is exhausting, painful, and scary. I want you to know that even if I don’t agree with the decisions you make, I will respect them because I respect you. I understand that if you are tired you have every right to rest.

I don’t know what’s going to happen when you are gone, no one does. But I do know that I want you to know how much you will always mean to me, and that I love you very, very much. I’m proud of you for fighting as hard as you have in everything you’ve done, you’re amazing.

Thank you, for everything. Thank you Grandma Wink.

Love you.
Kate