Facelift

I have been meaning to update the look of the blog for quite some time.  I wanted the appearance to be airy and fun yet fit with the theme of the blog.  So, here it is!  Colorful circles in a soft green background.  Hopefully it won’t detract from the gravity of some of the posts that either have been added in the past or will be added in the future.  I’ve had relatively the same blog set-up and background since most likely before the beginning of medical school.  With all of the deaths and loss and brokenness of the past week, I needed something to brighten up the atmosphere.  It’s been an unbelievable week.  I’m praying that this is rock bottom and we can only go up now.

Loss

It's amazing how reality can take and overpower you, even if that reality involves people you never knew and  a world of people you've only touched briefly.  So much pain and suffering has touched the very protected world of my medical school.  We started the week reeling from the loss of a beloved member of our school family.  A girl I had never known, yet from all I could see was a beautiful, intelligent, artistic and athletic individual.  She was overcome by a pain so great, she could no longer live with it.  I hurt so deeply knowing that one of my family was carrying this pain, this hurt, and did not know where to turn.  I can only hope that she now knows how loved she is, how she can do no wrong, and how is she never alone.  If only those messages had reached her earlier or that she had had the ability to hear these messages and known them to be true.  I cannot fathom what deep, deep sadness and loneliness she had felt last Friday.  I can only see how deeply she had touched all the people she had met in her lifetime, how deeply loved she truly was, and how confused and lost we all are trying to comprehend and cope with such a loss in our tight knit family at our medical school.  Even those of us who did not know her are moved by this shocking event and are left wondering how we can reach out and help.

Our pain, loss, and sadness were deepened further by disturbing images from the Boston Marathon on Monday which have only worsened as the week has continued.  The Boston Marathon is a crowning event of athleticism and sportsmanship.  The individual runners are amazing people with such talents I can only imagine.  The on-lookers, the greatest show of support I know.  The crowds cheer on and motivate each runner that passes them.  All sports events are unrivaled showings of connection.  Here we have the epitome of human beauty, human nature, and it is muddied, destroyed, torn apart by two men who had long ago been part of such camaraderie   Each man had once been an athlete, had been a vital part of the community, cheered on, just like the runners on Monday.  Then, without warning, the finish line was left in shambles, destroyed by homemade bombs created by two men who made a choice to cause widespread pain and misery.  Had they too suffered an unfathomable pain, one they could no longer hold in their chests, carrying alone, feeling like they had no one to turn to?  Were these men so indoctrinated at some point in the very near past to feel that the only release of this pain was through mass casualties of strangers?  It is incomprehensible.

To make matters worse, this initial shock of the bombings was compounded by the full-on manhunt through Boston that began early Wednesday evening.  The suspects flaunting the choices they had made.  The shutdown of a great city, overtaken by marshal law while the remaining suspect is on the loose.  It is horrifying to watch the images of house by house searches.  I can't feel the same fear and pain those in Boston are going through, the psychological damage that has been caused.  I can empathize.  I can suffer with humanity because I am part of it.  We are all connected.  I am paralyzed by what is replayed on the television.  I want to react, to help, to reach out, to protect.  But I am powerless.

I don't know where to start.  I feel so raw and exposed, but at the same time know that my feelings are only a fraction of what those in the crossfire are feeling.  I can only sit and watch.  I want to take action.  Maybe this is how I'm meant to do that.  We are all connected, and the pain we cause others causes our soul pain, too.  We are given the freedom to make choices for ourselves.  Whatever choices those may be, we will be held accountable be it in life or after death.  Regardless of any individual's beliefs, we all are connected through the understanding of a divine being that loves us unconditionally, who created us but left us free to make decisions for ourselves, and who will allow us redemption through self-reflection.  We must band together, care for each other, and love each other deeply and unconditionally in the image of our Creators in order to maintain the greatest calling of humanity.  We are one and always will be.

Change

The past few days have been spent with my physical life in complete disarray.  The house was pulled apart, shuffled around, repainted, new fixtures, electrical work.  You name it, it was probably done in the last 72 hours.  And the final product is pretty stunning, I must say.  The guest bathroom is all but done.  I just need to earn some extra money to buy the faucet that matches the rest of the hardware we installed.  The dining room has chair molding with a gorgeous golden color underneath that all but makes the dining room furnishings glow with new life.  I'm itching to complete the rest of the upgrades which will probably take a year or so, slowly working through one project at the time.  But I digress from the real purpose of this post (sadly, no pictures included).

During the repaint job on my bedroom, I had to spend a night sleeping on my bed pulled out in the center of the room.  It's amazing how different it feels knowing that no side is safe.  When the bed is against the wall, we have this sense of security knowing that our head is protected, that behind is nothing to worry about.  A nice tall wall guarding us, leaving us only with sides and the foot to worry about.  In the center of the room, it is jarring.  Here you are with every side exposed.  It's unnerving.  I laid there,  looking at the fan, feeling somewhat uneasy.  How strange, right?  There I was, in my own bed, in my own room, in my own house.  The only difference was the positioning of my bed, and yet it completely threw me off.

The strangest part, is that even after my bed has been put back against the wall, my room back to its original  set-up, I still wake up with the sensation that my bed is in the center of the room.  I have to completely wake up to reassure myself that the room is back in its original set-up.  Maybe this sensation is my brain trying to come to terms with the other changes that are coming.  The uneasy sensation is the only way my mind can understand how to show that things will be changed around soon.

The interesting part is that even with the uneasiness, the off-kilter sensation, it's not painful or completely unwanted.  It is there, and I acknowledge it, and I it, but it's not so overwhelming that I overreact.  It's a strange sensation, but it certainly isn't killing me.  And I continue on to the next day, moving closer to the next stage of what will become the rest of my life.  And I think I can be okay with it...at least for right now.  Next week might be different as the reality becomes more tangible.

Alice and Dorothy

I have a very strange obsession with two classic fantasy novels.  As you can tell from the title, they are "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Wizard of Oz".  I have to admit, I have not yet read the original "Alice in Wonderland".  I own, two copies actually.  One in print with pictures, the other on my kindle.  I will read it.  I have to.  It's not really something I can avoid.  These two series intrigue me.  I am officially obsessed.  I have watched as many possible iterations of each that I can.  From the classic Disney version of Alice and the first color movie of Oz to the knock-offs.  The recreations.  I love them.  Over and over again, I will watch them.  I can't figure out what it is that so attracts me to these stories.

Perhaps I have a deep-set need for disappearing into a fantastical world.  A world that is like and unlike ours.  Where you can pick out similarities between the characters and people you know.  Or maybe it's the fact that the worlds can be written and rewritten however you want them to be.  They can be this day and age or 50 or 100 years ago.  They can have actual animals, or people dressed like those animals might seem as people (the lion as a general, albeit, one that's never been to war or even considered it; the white rabbit a nervous little man persistently certain he's late for something, anything).

I'm fascinated by each newly envisioned world for Alice and Dorothy.  Each different persons view on how it should be.  I want to fall into each world like Alice fell into the rabbit hole or Dorothy's house fell on the Wicked Witch of the East.  I want friends like the Mad Hatter or Scarecrow.  I want to have that chance to, just for a moment, disappear from the real world.  I want to enter a world that's topsy-turvy.  Something entirely different from the reality I'm used to.  I want that escape from reality.  But only for a short time.  Long enough to realize, just like Alice and Dorothy, that there's no place like home.

Blue Ridge Mountain Man

You twist the sheets in your hands,

Smiling at me;

Your voice is garbled.

Your daughter says

Dementia,

Congestive heart failure,

The diseases slowly taking you.

Then she tells me your life.

A strong man;

You helped create the Blue Ridge Parkway,

The serpentine road carved

Into the Appalachian Mountains.

The mountains,

Larger versions of the creases in your sheets

Where you are trying to rebuild that road.

And I wonder if the view you saw,

Many years ago,

On a crude road of gravel,

Is the same as I see today

When I drive the smooth paved road.

Was the sun more brilliant

Bouncing off the mountain faces?

Were the mountains more blue

In the fading light

At the end of a long day?

Can you show me

What you see now

From those many years ago

As you rebuild the path

Through the wilderness

In the sheets surrounding you?