(no subject)
I was feeling rather odd and aware Saturday. Sort of how my own little job search and unknown future isn't as big of a deal as I may think it is. A few things made me come to one of those realizations everybody has every few months/years about slowing down and just enjoying life.
My one delivery was to the hospital/rehabilitation center for Alzheimer's patients on Lyn Mar (right off of Clara lane, the one Bethel turns into as it crosses that 4-way stop on its way to Wal-Mart). Usually when I deliver there it is at night, and to one annoying lady in particular. I generally drive up to the back, call her, wait 10 minutes for her to walk there and leave. This time was a little different.
For the first time, I was delivering to a patient. I had to wander around the halls to find his room and if you've ever been to a nursing home, you'll know that patients tend to crowd into the halls during the day. So I walked in, went down one hallway looking for a nurse. Dead end, nobody. I turned around to go down this main hallway and a man in a wheelchair speaking with his wife wheels past me. He was in the wheelchair because he only had one leg. Immediately I wondered what happened. I don't know why, but my immediate thought was Diabetes--I never asked.
So I walk past and venture down this long hallway. Now the entire time I have been in the hospital, I have heard a very repetitive noise. I ignored it and only recognized the notes of the tone, not the words. It eventually sounded like it was somebody with a very set pattern of talking. 4-5 tones, starting at one note, going higher and the rest going downward in pitch and trailing off, the second note was accented (spoken with more force than the others). As I walked down the hallway I realized what it was. It was a lady in a bed. She was in the hallway facing somebody in another bed, who was asleep. She kept repeating "and you take the right" or something similar, she was actually very difficult to understand when I tried. It was scary that the sound I heard was some lady, stuck...a repeating record, unable to vocalize what she thinks, unable to control her thoughts, unable to do anything. She repeated the same thing, occasionally adding or subtracted a word (at the start or end), for the duration of my time there--probably 5+ minutes.
I couldn't imagine that. That is absolutely horrible. I wonder how she felt. What was she thinking? Was she aware that she kept repeating it? Did she think she was saying different things? What? and then Why?
The second awe-inspiring moment was while I was delivering to Yorktown. That means 15-20 minutes roundtrip sometimes, so you try to get there and back as quickly as possible. I got onto 500 West and was headed south. The vehicle in front of me was a motorcycle. It was a hot day, so there were a few motorcycles out there, and generally I don't give them a second thought--you usually have your A. pompous young jerk and his girlfriend or B. a big, burly man with his "biker chick". This time, it was neither.
The man in the front had a shaven head. He looked to be in his early thirties, with a friendly face. His passenger? (as it is apparently impossible to ride a motorcycle alone) was his daughter. She was maybe 8? 10? Now, I won't get into any safety issues (I purposely drove farther back than usual--which is considerable because I always keep my 2-3 seconds) just in case something happened. She was holding on to her father and would occasionally take one hand off of him to smack her hand against the see-through/eye hole section of the helmet. Once, when she had both hands off of him, he reached his hand behind his back and held her close.
There was just something so sweet and simple about it. A father and daughter. I was even driving 5-10 miles below the speed limit and didn't even care. I thought it was sweet and didn't care how fast I was driving. It was poignant in some odd way.
Really, we do need to slow down. We need to think about what we've done, where we are and where we are headed. I drive through Yorktown very frequently, and yet I rarely slow down to appreciate the trees as they fly by.
Maybe part of it is the whole idea of death. It's been looming for a week now. I found out that this kid, who I marched with (he played trumpet and was 2 years below me, I was his section leader for 2 years and actually didn't care for him that much), was killed in Iraq. I guess when you are in school and somebody dies, it's different--that happened a few times. I guess when it's somebody older, or somebody you didn't know, it's different. But this was a guy I knew. I wouldn't call him a friend, but knowing that he isn't there anymore is shocking. He was younger than I. I wonder what his last moments alive were. Could he taste death? Were there regrets? What did he feel?
I feel bad for his family. His sister just graduated (I assume, she was in my grade). When the officers got to the house to notify the family, she was the only person there. They couldn't tell her, they had to wait until her mother got home--that's even worse then knowing.
Another death occured a couple days ago. My aunt Bev (my grandmother's sister) just left her husband a couple years ago and married this new guy. They haven't been together long. He came to my graduation party, he was a really nice guy, they seemed very happy.
He was a truck driver and hit a deer a few days ago. He wasn't hurt, but had to fly home and his semi was towed back to be fixed. They were working on getting all the paperwork for the insurance filled out and needed something, so Bev ran to Staples. Before she left, he said he was having a little heart burn and asked her to pick up some Rolaids. When she got home, he was dead. They don't know what happened yet. But I feel so bad for her. She seemed very happy, and now he's gone. How do you react to that? You divorce your husband of x many years to remarry, only to have your husband die soon after? That's horrible.
You know how you can occasionally feel yourself changing inside? I can feel myself changing. I hope it can lead to me finding a job--something I am really starting to branch out from. I was originally thinking a newspaper job, but now I don't even care. I want something interesting, something fun. I have a liberal arts degree, I can do a lot of different stuff with it. I want to go places, I want to see things, I want to change lives.
We'll see...
My one delivery was to the hospital/rehabilitation center for Alzheimer's patients on Lyn Mar (right off of Clara lane, the one Bethel turns into as it crosses that 4-way stop on its way to Wal-Mart). Usually when I deliver there it is at night, and to one annoying lady in particular. I generally drive up to the back, call her, wait 10 minutes for her to walk there and leave. This time was a little different.
For the first time, I was delivering to a patient. I had to wander around the halls to find his room and if you've ever been to a nursing home, you'll know that patients tend to crowd into the halls during the day. So I walked in, went down one hallway looking for a nurse. Dead end, nobody. I turned around to go down this main hallway and a man in a wheelchair speaking with his wife wheels past me. He was in the wheelchair because he only had one leg. Immediately I wondered what happened. I don't know why, but my immediate thought was Diabetes--I never asked.
So I walk past and venture down this long hallway. Now the entire time I have been in the hospital, I have heard a very repetitive noise. I ignored it and only recognized the notes of the tone, not the words. It eventually sounded like it was somebody with a very set pattern of talking. 4-5 tones, starting at one note, going higher and the rest going downward in pitch and trailing off, the second note was accented (spoken with more force than the others). As I walked down the hallway I realized what it was. It was a lady in a bed. She was in the hallway facing somebody in another bed, who was asleep. She kept repeating "and you take the right" or something similar, she was actually very difficult to understand when I tried. It was scary that the sound I heard was some lady, stuck...a repeating record, unable to vocalize what she thinks, unable to control her thoughts, unable to do anything. She repeated the same thing, occasionally adding or subtracted a word (at the start or end), for the duration of my time there--probably 5+ minutes.
I couldn't imagine that. That is absolutely horrible. I wonder how she felt. What was she thinking? Was she aware that she kept repeating it? Did she think she was saying different things? What? and then Why?
The second awe-inspiring moment was while I was delivering to Yorktown. That means 15-20 minutes roundtrip sometimes, so you try to get there and back as quickly as possible. I got onto 500 West and was headed south. The vehicle in front of me was a motorcycle. It was a hot day, so there were a few motorcycles out there, and generally I don't give them a second thought--you usually have your A. pompous young jerk and his girlfriend or B. a big, burly man with his "biker chick". This time, it was neither.
The man in the front had a shaven head. He looked to be in his early thirties, with a friendly face. His passenger? (as it is apparently impossible to ride a motorcycle alone) was his daughter. She was maybe 8? 10? Now, I won't get into any safety issues (I purposely drove farther back than usual--which is considerable because I always keep my 2-3 seconds) just in case something happened. She was holding on to her father and would occasionally take one hand off of him to smack her hand against the see-through/eye hole section of the helmet. Once, when she had both hands off of him, he reached his hand behind his back and held her close.
There was just something so sweet and simple about it. A father and daughter. I was even driving 5-10 miles below the speed limit and didn't even care. I thought it was sweet and didn't care how fast I was driving. It was poignant in some odd way.
Really, we do need to slow down. We need to think about what we've done, where we are and where we are headed. I drive through Yorktown very frequently, and yet I rarely slow down to appreciate the trees as they fly by.
Maybe part of it is the whole idea of death. It's been looming for a week now. I found out that this kid, who I marched with (he played trumpet and was 2 years below me, I was his section leader for 2 years and actually didn't care for him that much), was killed in Iraq. I guess when you are in school and somebody dies, it's different--that happened a few times. I guess when it's somebody older, or somebody you didn't know, it's different. But this was a guy I knew. I wouldn't call him a friend, but knowing that he isn't there anymore is shocking. He was younger than I. I wonder what his last moments alive were. Could he taste death? Were there regrets? What did he feel?
I feel bad for his family. His sister just graduated (I assume, she was in my grade). When the officers got to the house to notify the family, she was the only person there. They couldn't tell her, they had to wait until her mother got home--that's even worse then knowing.
Another death occured a couple days ago. My aunt Bev (my grandmother's sister) just left her husband a couple years ago and married this new guy. They haven't been together long. He came to my graduation party, he was a really nice guy, they seemed very happy.
He was a truck driver and hit a deer a few days ago. He wasn't hurt, but had to fly home and his semi was towed back to be fixed. They were working on getting all the paperwork for the insurance filled out and needed something, so Bev ran to Staples. Before she left, he said he was having a little heart burn and asked her to pick up some Rolaids. When she got home, he was dead. They don't know what happened yet. But I feel so bad for her. She seemed very happy, and now he's gone. How do you react to that? You divorce your husband of x many years to remarry, only to have your husband die soon after? That's horrible.
You know how you can occasionally feel yourself changing inside? I can feel myself changing. I hope it can lead to me finding a job--something I am really starting to branch out from. I was originally thinking a newspaper job, but now I don't even care. I want something interesting, something fun. I have a liberal arts degree, I can do a lot of different stuff with it. I want to go places, I want to see things, I want to change lives.
We'll see...