In the Fik of it

I pushed her wheelchair down the hallway, trying to push on the handles with my elbows and hold her hands in mine at the same time.   I struggled to keep up with the wispy blue gown ahead of me – blue hair, blue shoe covers, yet thankfully a warm attitude.   As an operating room nurse she’d likely heard and seen everything before but even as she lead us down the hallway, I was certain she’d never seen this before.   I’m sure that when she turned around to check on my progress it was a view that would be hard to match.   I was wearing the same wispy blue gown, the same blue hair, identical blue shoe covers – the difference was the patient.   Bright yellow deflated ball on her head, a denim vest, a ripped "pokey ball" gripped in the left hand and a knitted dishtowel firmly attached to her index finger, trailing on the floor behind and decidedly underneath the bright purple roller-chair.   As we headed to surgery, the utterances of “Tawm ” could be h...

I’ve been asked to mentor someone at work.   In fact, over the last four years I’ve been asked numerous times to mentor someone at work.   This year it was formally added to my performance objectives to mentor someone at work – that’s the beauty of work, it defies logic. The troubling part for me is that basic elements are completely missing from the equation – “who” and “what” are never really explained and I can only guess that my corporate host wants some part of me to be infused into the lives and experiences of others and honestly, I don’t know where to begin. It was easier being a mentor to fifth grade boys, they learn by watching.   Take them camping, take them out for a hamburger, build a black powder rifle or a checkerboard with them...basically live with them and let them visually soak in every aspect of your life.   I’m not sure how to do that in an environment where you’re legally not even supposed to notice if you’re meeting with a man or a wom...

It’s at times like this in the middle of the night, that I wake up and quickly become torn between a peaceful beauty and a horrible reality.   Her seizures have become more frequent, her disposition less predictable, Sherry’s despondency – greater, and the biggest of all fears more looming; the realization that a full eighty percent of the things I once thought important are in reality, silly and worthless. To watch her roll into one of those incomprehensible “little seizures” is a lesson in powerlessness.   Her eyes roll back into her head, her body stiffens, her hands start to tremble like an old drunk in need of stiff drink.   Her voice becomes small and distant and her cries for help, more pathetic.   She wants to be both held and left alone and I never know if this typical behavior of a seizure or typical of behavior of a woman.   Perhaps its both, all I know is in either case its something I have no control over. I watch the snow falling in the d...