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Baxter died last night.
One Year
My daughter has been gone one year yesterday. I have gone an entire year without talking to her, touching her, or hearing her voice. I don’t want to start crying again or trigger myself, so let’s just end today on a note that I think I passed the interview, but they won’t call me back for several days to tell me I got the job. So I guess this means I’ll be going to the Seth MacFarlane shows after all.
Heading Home
The funeral is over, the people are gone. There’s nothing left for me to do but get my butt home because I have class in the morning. It’s amazing that in 12 hours, I’ll be packing for class and looking for my supplies, instead of being over 100 miles away. Maybe I’m thinking too much.
On the plus side, I finished my Glipizide, and I don’t intend on refilling it. Yay for me?
Beautiful spring weather we’re having today:
We’ve been getting March snowstorms now for the past four years. According to the weather reporter on my iPhone, it’s supposed to snow through tomorrow.
Robbie’s funeral is tomorrow. I’m still going to try to make it to New Orleans for it. Snow or no snow.
Four years ago today, on a Friday the Thirteenth, I met one of the best friends I’ll ever have. We met at a job interview. He interviewed me as a pre-screening, and for some reason felt the need that I was whatever they were looking for, and sent me in to the Big Boss. Over the next four months, we became good friends. Chris used to bring me my lunch every day. I took on other tasks to put in overtime, which escalated our project’s outcome. We were promoted twice, and fired at the same time for the same thing. Over the next few months, we went to class together with the same major. Chris went to my wedding. He was there when I had my boys.
Suddenly, in January of 2008, he became ill. He slept a lot. He had nose bleeds. He vomited for no reason. He just didn’t feel right. It wasn’t until March of 2008, after our trip to Texas, where we had a slight falling out, that he went to a doctor. His blood tests revealed that he wouldn’t be returning to class in August: He had Aplastic Anemia, probably induced from our work with tritium while making gel DNA runs for electrophoresis. We never wore masks or gloves. Tritium isn’t supposed to be able to penetrate the skin, but I think there were more isotopes used in the ingredients.
By June of 2008, Chris was gone.
Chris refused treatment, claiming that he’d seen the effects of immuno-suppressed people and he didn’t want to be in that boat. I wonder if there were some other reason he chose to not accept treatment. I wonder why he chose that he chose.
Chris was who I thought I saw last month in the ‘haunted lab’. It certainly looked like him. Though by now, I’m probably sounding crazy. I’m no longer sorrowful that Chris is gone, but happy that he was my friend for as long as he was. Through Chris I met Matt, got my iPhone, and learned that I’m not completely hopeless.
Speaking of my phone, I had a little talk with USC. My information, including the stuff on my memory card, was sent to someone else’s phone. While USC admitted they made a mistake, they won’t just wipe the info from that person’s phone. The best they can do is get in touch with that person and ask if they deleted it. Pretty much, I am at the mercy of some stranger whose Blackberry is just one digit off of my phone’s serial number. I never should have gone back to USC. AT&T was bad about coverage and customer service, but they never lost my information like that. The icing on the cake is when I asked why they couldn’t just wipe that person’s phone, I was told “That would be an invasion of privacy to that customer.” As if sending said customer my information in the first place wasn’t! USC knows they’ve screwed up, much so that they offered me six months of unlimited talk time, to waive my current bill, and not even contact me for any payments until July–if I signed a waiver that they are not responsible for accidentally giving my information to another customer. This person has my full name, photos of me, text messages, emails, email addresses, email accounts, some MP3s I love, my nursing software, pharmacology e-books and reference books, chemical calculations, my themes, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, the numbers of people I have called. All because a USC customer tech didn’t read the serial number right when transferring the information. I declined signing that paper. If my identity is stolen, I think USC is financially responsible.
Other than that, I can never, ever get my information back. They claim they can’t tell what data on that other person’s phone is mine and what is their own data, so I just have to grin and bear it. So if you’ve called me in the past two years, and you get cranks from some stranger, it’s not my fault. Also, I need all my contacts back, so feel free to call me again or text me.
The Dream
I dreamed about him last night. I dreamed that we were back at the nursing lab, and he was asking me for help. I blame this on an email I got last night. Someone asked me why I didn’t post about him anymore. How was he doing? Did he get well and move out? Technically, I guess he did. I answered the email as best as I could. This goes round and round. People periodically ask me about him, and I can’t answer their questions. It tears me up, nearly two years after the fact. Some days I call Billy and ask about Connor. Some times I hear Connor giggling and playing in the background. I want to go and visit him. I delivered him, we have that bond. I still remember taking Connor to his daddy, who was partially sedated from kidney stones, and the first thing he said was, “I had a baby? How? I didn’t know I was pregnant! You told me those were kidney stones!” I had to laugh.
I knew the place in my dream last night. It wasn’t the nursing lab, but another school, another place, that many of my dreams take place in. Different subjects, identical building. For some reason, Connor was in nursing school, too. And he was driving the nurses there bonkers.
I woke to the wind chimes tingling in a breeze that I couldn’t feel when I went over to the window. There has never been drafts at that window. The chimes were hung there for the sunshine, not the breeze. Ziggy was watching the window when I woke to the chimes. She was wagging her tail. I still water the plants in that window. I haven’t packed away the chimes, the bottles, the vases, the painted bowls, the rubber duckies that light up when they touch water.
It’s not like he’s ever going to come back and want these things. It would be best if you’d just get rid of them. The plants too!
Today is supposed to be another day. A new day. Yet my mind is focused on things that happened years ago that still haunt me as much as they did the day they happened. I don’t just dream about these things, I think about them frequently. I wonder if there’s not something that I could have done differently, to alter the future. Would I be satisfied if I had acted more but got the same result? Would my dreams be different at night? Or would the ghosts still stalk my halls in the wee hours of the morning?
I didn’t sleep last night. Not last night. Just like three years ago. I’m wearing the same blue night shirt, laying on the same pillows, thinking about the same things. I wasn’t surprised when the bright sunlight came in through the curtains, telling me that the dawn had come. The snow clouds soon choked out the sun, casting a haze over the sky. The snow storm is more than ten hours away, but the clouds have completely covered the sky.
I think back on the night, three years ago, and the tears don’t even come. As hard as I try, I am jaded from the scene. I cannot cry about it anymore. I’ve exhausted all angles of what happened three years ago, and I can no longer find myself guilty of anything wrong. There is no reason for my sorrow. There is no reason for my tears. So why couldn’t I sleep last night? Were the ghosts of one of a thousand regrets walking the halls, scratching on the door to the bedroom? What did they want? The answers?
I am tired now. I think sleep will come. I have my morning meds to take, and then it’s off to bed, to sleep away the day. Sleep like I did three years ago. I have forgiven myself, so I can repeat my past. I can re-enact it every year and try to change what I do. Change the past so I’m not forced to remember how it really is. Take a few blue pills to erase the memories and numb my brain. Become a living corpse, walking the halls with those ghosts late into the night.
But I cannot lay down and sleep.
I don’t deserve to sleep.
No matter how many of those blue pills I take, I cannot erase the memories I want erased. They pick and choose what parts of my brain that are permanently gone, and I have no choice in the matter, except the choice to take the pills. Those memories I want gone haunt me. Perhaps they are the ghosts that keep me awake at night?
The most haunting is what she did and said before she died. What my little PoRo said to me before she died. When she became sick with cancer the first time, she was happy. She said cancer was nothing and when she got well we could be a family again. Momma wouldn’t cry anymore and daddy wouldn’t be ‘away’ as much anymore. She got well. Then she relapsed almost a year ago. This time it was different. She was sad before we even took her to the doctor. Before the diagnosis ever came. After the diagnosis, I asked her why she was sad. Surely a second battle with cancer wouldn’t scare her.
What she said made my heart ice over… “Momma…I’m not going to make it this time. I’m going to die, and there’s no Rainbow Bridge, there’s no misty field surrounded by mountains where we play while we wait for you and daddy to come. When I die, I’m going to be gone forever, and I’ll never see you or daddy or anyone ever again and they’ll never see me again.”
Those words hit hard when I woke to the silent house, when PoRo was gone forever. “…I’m gone forever and I’ll never see you again…and you’ll never see me again…”
Those words don’t bring tears to my eyes. Am I immune? Has my soul dissolved in a beaker of acid? Or will they just scratch at my door late at night on the eve of December 28th, 2010?
Over Christmas, I visited PoRo’s grave. I brought her blue flowers. She loved blue flowers, though blue wasn’t her favourite colour. Her grave was decorated. Kids from her class had been by to leave stuffed animals, letters, someone had left her a can of Pepsi, propped against the cold, icy marble stone which bears her name, the dates, and her favourite Lord Byron lines. I knelt down in the snow, the coldness immediately radiated up my knees and through my shins and legs. I brushed some snow aside and laid the flowers on the slushy ground at the foot of the stone. “Merry Christmas, PoRo…Where ever you may be. Momma still loves you,” I whispered. Her daddy approached me from behind and told me it was time to go. I wasn’t wearing a coat, I wasn’t wearing gloves, I had walked most of the way there, in crocs, no socks, the snow had soaked the legs of my jeans through. How long had I been kneeling there? I don’t remember the walk back to his car. I don’t remember what he replied to me when I asked why he didn’t bring his little girl something. A blanket, a stuffed animal, didn’t he know she was probably cold and scared down in that dark grave covered with snow?
I recovered, eventually. I slept for a few hours. When I woke up, I played with my Christmas gifts. I ate candy. I frolicked in the snow with what’s left of my family. But the ghosts returned. PoRo hasn’t even been dead a year, but she has joined the ghosts that haunt me on this eve, and forever will.
All I Want For Christmas
Any time in the next couple of days little James can be coming home. I’m super excited about it. Our family will be complete again. 
James had his surgery and he pulled through ok. He’s responsive now.
With all that has come into light, my husband and I have decided to do our Christmas shopping either online or through mail order. That kind of disappoints me because this time of year is all about the lights for me. I love going out to see the Christmas lights and the stores decorated for the season. A small pang came back when I got an email from American Girl reminding me to order the Girl of the Year doll for Pogo. I teared up as I deleted the email. Unless they can send dolls to Heaven, I won’t be ordering it this year.
My husband thinks that by ordering through the mail, I will save some pain of having to walk around the stores. My pain isn’t really that bad right now. I still take pain management pills at night so that I can heal. Constantly tossing and turning prevents your body from properly healing, so you might still be in pain the next day. I really do like walking around and looking at the decorations and all the joy that is out there this time of the year. I’m going to miss that. I’m going to miss just driving around at night and looking at all the lights. We’re still going to the Winter Lights Festival this year, and we’re still going to drive around on the Tour of Lights, so it will all be ok.
All I want this year is for my family to be safe and sound and for us to have many more Christmases together. For the emotional and physical pain to stop. For things to be a little brighter. I love this time of year, it’s the time when miracles happen. It’s time for a miracle to happen.
Jamie aka: The being known as Wonder Girl, 30, mother of four, wife to one, she is a senior biomedicine student who is learning to fit in in the world around her. After nearly three decades on this planet, she still doesn't know where she belongs. Best friend of Matt, sarcastic, spoiled, apathetic, kutie brat, babe. Just your average woman, living in a not-so-average world, surviving by her incredible super power of being able to see right through you while
accomplishing more tasks than you ever thought imaginable. She is the being known as Wonder Girl and she is speaking, I believe. More? Aren't you brave!
