Instead, in the real version of events, I shook my head, indicated that No, of course I did not have anything else to say, and I took my seat. As the next terrified presenter walked to the podium, I began to weep.
"And you tie the bows with one hand?”
I nodded.
She continued, “I’d like to see.”
“I can show you now,” I offered. “I just need a shoelace.”
At that moment, seven different shoes were shoved in my face. Some of them still had feet inside. I laughed, and took the closest one.
Last year, I was in Paris during the terrorist attacks, and I don’t know how to tell that story. Similarly, I don’t know how to tell the story about Trump’s recent election. But there seems to be a strange and shivering thread between the two events. Both violent, painful, chaotic.
At the hospice in-patient-unit death is a way of life that I have come to accept. As a doctor, nurse or volunteer, the focus is on how patients want to live out their final days, making them as comfortable - or on a good day, as happy - as possible. But in the short, intense time we spend with patients we come to know and care about them, which sometimes makes the inevitable loss difficult to bear.
I am blindsided by the reality of my body. I have never experienced her so inwardly and outwardly at the same time. I go pale. I fight the edges of my skin to hide how much I am shaking.
You know the fairy-tale about the princess who marries the prince and has babies, and opens a yoga studio with him and gets divorced and has to figure out how to keep it all going? Yeah, me neither, although I’m living that story now.
As I got older, into my teens, I realized that if I stayed at home I could be killed. So at 14 years old, I ran away with my life-long best friend who didn’t have the best home situation either. We ended up in NW Portland with a group of marginalized youth and we created a chosen dysfunctional family where I was wildly unsafe for different reasons but relished my freedom.
I have come to understand that this is what love asks of us. To give everything we’ve got. To be willing to lose it all. To cry so hard for our enemies that we can no longer discern whose pack is whose.
It was not a bad first imaginary meeting if I do say so myself. Left brain still isn’t happy I could draw no conclusive evidence as to the exact percentage of polyester in the pants but right brain is quite enthralled about our encounter and is excited to have something to anticipate and fantasize over.
