How to love 1,000 people? How to live palliatively.

I am supposed to say “I hope you had a nice long weekend” because it is polite. The truth is I REALLY hope and hoped that you had the best weekend you can remember.

I am not sure who reads this blog but this weekend Linda, Cheryl and I, did postcards and for all of Monday, I sat and wrote postcards, and I had matched postcards, for hours. Since I don’t have a memory longer than 40 hours or so, all I need to do is look at about 500 postcards then try to find the right postcard for the person. We did 80 post cards. I wish it was more. I have about 36 pages of 30 postal stickers, all with a name and an address: Yes, that is over 1,000 names.

1,000.

I wrote those postcards the way someone living in solitary writes: dreaming of you, your life, imagining what is, what could be, and hoping that your life has a small edge left for me, if even to observe. They are sent now. No picture of the postcards lest it spoil the surprise.

I live in a beige room. I sit in the same wheelchair spot.

Today I saw photos of me having a drink: last Thursday or Friday. But I hadn’t remembered going out. I don’t remember. I have no memory of it at all. I just remember sitting in this room. Do you understand what that means? No matter how often I go out, I’m always here. The same wheelchair spot.

I hold back writing in the blog so much: because it isn’t all my story or is just something I don’t want to burden you with. So, a lot of what happens I don’t write, sometimes because I am simply too sick. I am sick a lot now, I have degenerated conditions that have no solution, no medicine, no machine, just sick and if I get sicker, go to hospital for morphine or get better until tomorrow. I don’t write and publicly thank the individuals who sends me things off the gift list. I want to. I don’t do that because I don’t want to hurt the people who are having hard times, or no income or who just made a different choice. But please don’t think it didn’t and doesn’t make a difference.

I was up until late last night, but I couldn’t sleep but a few hours. My brain tumbled on the fast spin cycle through real and horrific knowledge, things I am helpless in regards to, and some things I don’t want to know but know anyway. And in the midst of that, midday, I read the manga Dengkei Daisy 1, and Crown of Love 3. And even though I was having a hard time of it physically, I got that warm feeling from a good read, a REALLY good read: that post orgasm type of mental peace. Those minutes I felt those flickers was the best feeling I have in my memory. If you want to know what difference your gift made, it made the one good warm feeling I had, and the one I will have to hold onto for the night and day to come.
I think that is what they refer to in palliative stage as ‘taking the good moments when they come’.

So if you have a relative or friend who is sick, or recovering, or homebound, or has had an accident and a voice inside whispers to call, visit, or tells you to send them something, or buy them something off their wish list… listen to that voice inside. No one else is going to do it. And find me the person that doesn’t regret NOT reaching out, because they were afraid; worried; trained to be polite and not bother a person; other reason here, and I will show you a sociopath, or someone who I hope will learn what children know. When you care about someone else, that feeling flows over and MUST be expressed, and so you draw a picture or write, or get a gift.

Desmond Morris, who wrote The Human Animal, says we are hard-wired so that we can’t care about more than the size of a small village, about 200 people. I say Desmond Morris has a theory, and it is flawed.

I know over 1,000 people. I know what you like, what you don’t, if you are funny, if you are shy, if you are gregarious and I care, and I’m working on loving the lot of you, if you will allow me by letting me in.

If you want to know what difference an Amazon Gift certificate makes to me, or to so many others, it is this: choice. I don’t have a choice how much oxygen is in my blood, and I am usually a little purple/blue this time of night, my feet are black. I don’t have a choice if my heart has lots of erratics or even stops beating for seconds at a time (that one is like a Bear sitting on you to fart! Even when it finishes, it still HURTS). I don’t have a choice how much hurts, or how bad, or if one leg is gigantic, or if I have progressed on Congestive Heart Failure, or taking a breath is like swimming toward the light, every six to 10 seconds. I can’t control when my blood pressure spikes or drops or my heart barely pushes blood, or the seizures, the malfunctions of the kidney, liver, lungs, the bleeds into the brain, the breakdown of skin though I sure try. But I can go through the great catalogue that is Amazon, and see if there is a romance for Linda, or a volume of a missing shojo manga we all like, or some PJ’s, or a nightlight, or something to make Linda smile, which makes me smile, or vice versa.

That’s what I think about when I write postcards, and cards and when I order stuff and send stuff out and every time I receive a gift certificate, or a wish list item, or a card, or letter, or gift.

Are you lonely?
I am. Aren’t you?