So True

I just read on the news site that there is a fire in a crematorium.

The O.T. or How would you answer the question. Update 7-10-2020

   Granted, I don't think I've ever encountered an Occupational Therapist before, and definitely not in a professional capacity.  Plenty of Physical Therapists though, and I'm aware there is a distinction between  the services they provide.  Even so, I was not expecting the question the therapist posed, nor was I prepared for the answer it evoked.
    Addressing the patient, he asked, "What would you consider a good day?"  Almost without hesitation, the response was, "Yesterday my daughter and her 2 boys picked me up and we drove over to a fish fry place for lunch, and then we stopped at my brother's house.  She and the kids helped me up the steps and I sat and enjoyed a talk with him for a while."
   I don't know why this seemed so significant at the time, or why it still does, or for that matter why I'm writing this through tears, maybe effects of  the CMA.  I asked an old friend this question tonight and she replied, "To be in Paris without fear of terrorists."
   I contemplate how I would answer this question.  The odds of my ever being asked are infinitesimal, not being likely to ever receive  this type of therapy and even less likely that any other therapist  would ask that question.  Still my mind attempts an answer:  Is the good day one that's already passed, or one that's yet to come, is the day to be one that may be possible, or is it a day of fantasy and dreams.  My mind is essentially empty now, blocked by the unwanted answer to an impossible question, and struggles to leap over that chasm to an answer, any answer.  For now, the two choices are the same:  the reality scenario is just as much a fantasy as the other.  I decide my idea of a good day would to be able to decide how to answer, and to pretend there was the possibility that one could happen.

When to Call It Quits

    I don't have enough Kleenex in the house to watch much more of the Country Music Awards,  So I thought I'd turn to my faithful old blog, but I'm afraid the mood has been set.
     During the course of my lifetime, I've heard many people speculate about at what point they would no longer wish to live. A child I once worked with said he could not imagine a life without Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and I recall Barbara Walters responding to that very question by answering that it would be when her friends were all gone.
     Offerings of a  variety of other reasons why life would not be worth living could fill a lot of pages: I've heard many, and if I were to comment on their validity, could say that over the years, people do change their minds.  The majority of people in their twenties probably look upon a life without sexual fulfillment as a  life unlived, but as time exacts its inevitable toll, that deprivation becomes---meh.   Suicides excepted, of the too many deathbeds I've been next to, the person struggles for every last breath of life, regardless of what they might have once thought they couldn't have lived without.
     The thought occurred to me today as I sat in an office, waiting.  I can do a crossword puzzle while I wait, or a Word Jumble, but I think if I ever reach the point where I carry a little book of Word Search puzzles, the time has come.

Fear and Loathing

    Sometimes, what you think is the right thing to do, or else the only thing you are capable of doing, makes you hate yourself.

The Dying Room

  She was in her 95th year and, against her wishes, found herself in the hospital, its saving grace, in her eyes, was that it was a Catholic hospital. The cardiologist on call said, based on their testing, that she would be a candidate for a pacemaker, for her irregular heartbeat.  But what about her kidney function was the other concern.  He quickly responded that would indeed be a consideration, but not in his area.  So the pacemaker was not installed.
    I think it was a Tuesday she was convinced to go to the hospital, which she reluctantly agreed to, with the condition she'd be checked out and could be home by Friday.
  Her condition did not improve after her diagnoses, such as they were.  She'd been on an IV, one which included a morphine drip, though she had not complained of pain, only extreme weakness.  I remember a nurse asking her what level of pain, and though she answered in the negative, the nurse administered more morphine.  This was over 20 years ago, and we were relatively naive about the workings of hospitals, had no reason to question their treatment.
    That became all too clear when, on the third day, they told us they would be moving  her from the room in the ward she'd been in to another, this one in a rather secluded area, by the door.  So she wouldn't be disturbed, they said.
    There were 3 of us family members with her at the time of the move, and the room was small, so we had to make way for their bringing her into the new room.  Two people stepped out into the hallway, but I was near the bathroom so I went in there to make way, apparently unnoticed.  There were 2 staff members arranging her transfer from the transport bed to her new bed, which was near the wall and in front of the bathroom where I was waiting.  The others were in the hall.  The nurses, or I suppose aides, wheeled her over to the bed and just dumped her into the new bed, like a sack of vegetables, or trash.  She, who was never one to complain, moaned at the shock and pain.  I stepped out of the bathroom, horrified,  and told them so.  Their response was that the room was so small they had no choice.
    So now she's in this small room, near the doorway, and the morphine drip has been increased.  She is lucid, but weak. She still has some appetite, says she wants to eat but can't think of any food that would be agreeable, and  requests a peanut butter sandwich from home.  Her niece brushes out her long thick hair and pins it up for her.  She hopes  her nephew will  give her dog a promised bath.    I stay with her that night, on a sleeping bag brought from home.  She has a tube in her nose, to help her breathe, she's told.  The nurse tells me to call them if anything happens, and not to touch anything.  I suddenly recall that when we first arrived, I had seen a stretcher with a covered figure being carried out of this very room.  Clarification sets in:  there is a reason for the location of this room, away from the others and near the doorway.  The dying room.
    Her breathing comes to an end that very night.  I dutifully notify the nurses' station, after I removed the tube from her nose. It was Friday, and she was leaving the hospital.
 

"Out, Out"

..."and they, who were not the one dead, turned to their affairs."

Tea and Sympathy

There are plenty of tea bags in the house.