Wednesday, November 30, 2005

I MISS MY HUSBAND

I miss you baby. Our most recent family portrait sits on my recessed display case in the foyer. It's a shock to realize that it was taken almost a year ago. Twelve years flew by, it seems, and now this year is zooming too.
Minongo is gone. I heard the ache in your voice when you said you just looked up and someone you expected to be there is just not. Who knows to where? You said. I speak to you across thousands of miles and you are present, imperfectly, but there. I am allowed to imagine you and the daily things you do. And I ache for you as I wait and plan on the moment when I will turn the corner and there you will be. How will that time come for one of us when the other will be the memory to caress and smooth like a beach pebble or special shell. How much is left to us to snatch from now for then.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

CONVERSATIONS

I sent this email to my close friend P recently and it brought up a connection that I hadn't quite thought about in my thinking and my habits:
Thanks for the compliment. I am not that great a writer. I try to make it sound like talk. You should email me or start a blog. I would definitely read it! For me it clears my head. I converse with friends, but it is a burden to a conversation to say every little picture that's in your head. Conversations are about mutual social rewards. I find writing about purging and meditative contemplation. It doesn't have to be phemonenal or deep or secret (I try to avoid confessions that I don't want public). It's more about observation. Kind of like painting.
When I was painting there were public paintings and private paintings. The same was true when I was in the frame of mind to write poetry. I kind of went through those phases. I think I will blog about this subject later. It's also the closest we've come to the letter writing of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The funny thing is that the private-on-paper writing I have done sounds more like whining to me. I end up tossing it out!

Kind of like painting. Well color me dumb! I hadn't thought of my painting as a conversation. This may be an obvious conclusion to many, but to me, until that moment of writing that phrase to my friend, I hadn't quite thought of it that way. What's the significance? I think it can tell me why I don't paint anymore.
For me, the itch to hold a sharp pencil, watercolor paint brush or India ink pen in my hand over a clean, textured, pristine white piece of paper was an uncontrollable urge from about the age of 2 to 16! It was a hunger, a taste in my mouth, a pleasure, an orgasm. It was something I couldn't do without. And then I stopped. I often say that Music and Art High School cured me of it. But really I miss it like a lost lover, a relationship you can't reconstruct. Any attempt to do so without full understanding and growth would be a parody. Who wants to revisit pain? I haven't wanted it enough to do that.
I watch my niece in love with her love and remember. I wonder if she thinks of it this way.
So, a conversation that ended? I really like that image. It's been in the periphery of my vision for a while. Thank you P
.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

TWO YOUNG WOMEN

We talk about death the enemy, the sting. But if you don't know someone who is dying, you don't know the face of the enemy.

I met two women in their personal last days. both of them young and neither of them going easily into that long good night. That was just last weekend.

At the meeting for field service that morning, my friend asked me to accompany her to the hospital to visit a family friend that she had told me about weeks earlier. She had mentioned the young woman's plight. How this young woman had discovered that cancer that is taking her life. How she is in her prime and successful in life, a woman full of life, an active, vital person. She is a woman gamely fighting her cancer although the doctors have said she is terminal. My friend mentioned that she had occasion to tell this woman about the Kingdom of God and of mankind's future and also bits about the resurrection. But she hadn't had opportunity to give her a full witness to these things. This young woman is really a friend of my friend's sister and my friend doesn't have regular access to her.


This morning she'd been called by her sister and invited to accompany her to the hospital. And so my friend was asking me to support her in this visit. Upon arriving there, I found that I had had no idea of the magnitude of the situation. My friend was really counting on me to be the leader in the bible discussion.

At first, I felt a panic realizing how much responsibility had been thrust on me and that I was unprepared. But Jehovah reminded me to speak from the heart, to tell her my feelings, to tell her the importance of the message that we were bringing her and that it wasn't our message but Jehovah's message. Jehovah guided our tongues and gave us the tongues of the taught ones even in our unpreparedness. I learned quickly that the simplest and most used of scriptures is often the best way to begin. I used Revelation 21:4,5 that we are looking forward to that time when "death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away." And Jehovah would be making all things new. "These words are faithful and true." I told her that these words would prove to be a comfort to her if she focused on them. I told her that these words were a comfort to me because ultimately death is a fact of all our lives and this scripture and others have helped me not fear or regret creeping old age, not fear or regret the things I might have done and didn't do or didn't accomplish because the time for doing it has gone. I pointed out to her that an unlimited future with satisfaction is what we are promised. We read Psalm 37:9-11 that "the meek ones themselves will possess the earth." I should have also read verse 29 saying that "they will reside forever upon it" but I think that the message was clear.
We spoke and read other scriptures but I hope that the messages of those ones are the ones that stand out in her mind. I am hoping we will visit again.

The visit to the second young woman was also a surprise. I think my friend's sister surprised her with that one while we were at the first. She said there was yet another woman in hospital dying that we were to visit. This young woman was some sort of relation either through marriage or by some sort of godmother connection of my friend's sister. I still don't know the exact connection. Even my friend was not sure who the young woman was until we got to the second hospital. Caribbean family connections can be lybrinthine. Nevertheless, when we arrived we found a very young woman in the ICU hooked up to monitors and tubes with severely swollen legs, unable to move out of bed. The bed moved every few seconds to change the pressure points on her body and to aid her breathing. She also was on a trachial respirator so she could not speak. Despite this she had a face of great beauty and youth with brilliant large hazel colored eyes that followed us everywhere. Her lips were daubed with a salve no doubt to prevent dryness but it gave the appearance of lip gloss and of moisture and health. Even my friend's sister asked her if someone had applied make-up for her.

Here's where we had to learn how to lip-read. The poor young woman kept saying "I want to go home. A casa. A mi casa." In reality, she was on tranquillizers and other medications. She wasn't really lucid although her eyes were brilliant and focused intently on us when we spoke. You could see her lack of comprehension of her situation when her emotions flipped back and forth from smiling and beaming to crying and pleading. She appearently didn't understand that she couldn't be heard since she motioned my friend to come closer so that she could whisper to her. This was a heart breaker. We tried to comfort her and explain that only in the hospital could she be taken care of in her condition. We read to her and reasoned with her that Jehovah wasn't far off from her but very near to give her the strength she needed to endure. She only had to ask and count on him to support her; to look forward to regaining some strength to be with her family again. We held her hands and stroked her. What else could we do?

Later I learned that she was in the hospital because she'd suffered a heart attack due to the stress the cancer was placing on all her organs. She'd refused treatment for a while earlier because she also suffers from schizophrenia. She has two children but was forced to give one up to a family member due to her mental condition. She's only about 29. She made me think of my sister who also suffers from the same mental disease.

The stress of these encounters has followed me through out the week. All the same I want to see at least the first woman again. Her positivity in the face of death was amazing. I don't know how to help the second woman but if I have the opportunity I will visit them both again.


Thursday, July 28, 2005

Young Death, Short Lives

Last night I supported my friend while she and her family mourned the shooting death of her 24 year old nephew at the local funeral home. I really have no reference in my life for what I experienced and witnessed there last night. All the funerals in my family have been the elderly, dead after a long life, mourned by equally long-lived and elderly family members. I don't know of any young deaths, by any cause, in my family.
Yet....Anyone can imagine that the worst pain is the death of a child. And the worst of that type of pain must be the theft of that child's life by a senseless, unsolved murder. Add to it that this child was charming, charismatic, albeit a rascal, worrisome to his mother for his lifestyle but loving and jovial, helpful and funny to all.
This was the type of child my friend's nephew apparently was. I gathered this impression of his life and personality by the dominantly young crowd of sobbing mourners there. The moans of the inconsolable, weeping, sobbing mother. The flailing and screams of his overwhelmed over-wrought sisters. The silent weeping of his 5 months pregnant girlfriend; prostrate over his corpse; her fingers tenderly tracing his face, hairline, neck, eyes. The many, many young men dressed in new black T-shirts emblazoned with his smiling face; ear pressed to cell phone; sparkling eyes engaging the picture taker; complexion flush and alive; a severe contrast to the dull brownish gray of his corpse.
The usual parade of mourners passing a casket, giving their last respects did not happen here. Everyone who viewed the boy stood in a stunned semi-circle around the casket, staring, taking cell phone snapshots; grim-faced men and boys, red-eyed weeping women and girls. The young stood stock still. The old wove in an out of the crowd of the young; unable to take more than a few minutes in the presence of a corpse so young, so tragically gone.
Then there was a burst of incongruous laughter from the vicinity of the casket.
I overheard this,
"Over there, she's saying all the shit 'Foca' used to say."
Then,
"Sabina needs to getup from there too. She's pregnant."
And,
"Se va a Santo Domingo, right?"
So many tattoos in elegant tribal tracery on shoulders, arms, and small of backs. So many sunglasses, gold jewelry. Everyone in white or black. On everyone's face the expressions of stunned confusion. No answers, no eulogy, no one able to give strength or make releasing or relieving connections. But also, no angry outbursts. The rosary was started and most made the droning responses.
Some time later came the end of the funeral home hours. A simple thank you to the crowd from two male family members and a last look by the mother, the girlfriend, the sisters and others, all freshly wailing. Finally, the young grim-faced men burst into tears and gathered in clumps outside to listen to rap music blasted from SUV's parked in front.
Such short lives they are choosing...
In room A, next to the funeral of this young man, another funeral. Apparently for a poet, a man middle aged, a cultural icon. I didn't write down his name but his nickname I think was Yamasa. I'm not sure. There were banners and articles posted on the outer wall. I didn't have time and presence of mind to read or copy names. He was much mourned too. We heard the pain, the screams, the moans. What might this poet have thought about the ironic juxtaposition of his funeral with this tragic youth's own? Could he have made any relieving connections or given anyone strength? What could he have said?

Friday, July 08, 2005

My, My.....

Only one blog entry in 2005 and this is the second. The topic of the day is the attack on London but I will not belabor it too long. The first reaction is the certainty that it will happen here in New York, and soon. Next is knowing that Ari travels through the heart of this city at the precise optimal time for terrorist attack every day on his way to college. The mind and heart goes out to the victims of this latest attack and at the same moment cycles through and wieghs numerous strategies to avoid the same inevitable future here. Should I have my son transfer to a college in the Bronx so that we both have no reason to travel through that future ground zero? This is now the sad paranoid reality of living in any big city with a large public transportation system. How to live in the city and yet avoid it? Well that's it for now.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

At long last......

That is the message on the wall of the train station here in Inwood at the last stop of the A train.
Now I can also say it with feeling.
My dear Alfredo and I had our reunion after 13 years of a forced separation in our marriage. Back in October, he was released from jail and deported to his home nation of DR . I waited a little more to get my son's passporte and my own in order (but also to give Alfredo an adjustment period to his release and to let us think rationally) then we left for the week vacation.
I can say it was a reward. I have always approved of getting older. We were improved like fine wine. And as a bonus, what a thrill to experience a husband charging out to protect the interests of his family; to watch him being tender and fatherly with his son; and tender with me! I am grateful. I have hopes of a permanent reunion. Hopes and dreams. But if time and unforseen circumstance interpose I am grateful that we had this reunion.