About Yesterday

December 14, 2012

This morning my dear friend Muriel posted that she was going to join her grandchildren for lunch at their elementary school.  My friend Rob posted a picture of himself dressed as an elf, sitting on a shelf in the elementary school where he teaches. 

I thought about Muriel’s joy in the two young lives she has taken responsibility for parenting since their mother died.  And their joy in having a safe place to land in their grandmother’s home.

I thought about the wonder & joy Rob brings to his students, to the young people he coaches in gymnastics & cheerleading.  And how this man enriches every life he encounters.

This morning I left my mother Jean’s room for a few minutes to find out how we were going to transport her to her doctor’s appointment.

When I returned to the room, it was not to the trials & tribulations of the young & the restless in a fictional town but to the travesty & horror at an elementary school in a close-knit community in Connecticut.

Not again, not again.

As bits & pieces of the tragedy came across the media mediums, conjecture & fact disseminated across the airwaves & cyberspace. 

Children dead.  Children dead at an elementary school in Connecticut.

Children who could not possibly have done anything to warp the shooter’s mind.   Innocents.

 Not again, not again.

Social media exploded – an outpouring of sorrow, grief, prayers. 

And posts absolving guns of any responsibility. 

 Guns don’t kill people.

The argument is ridiculous.

Guns don’t do fucking shit on their own.

Nor do poisons, bombs, knives, drones, fists, cars, grenades, chemicals, alcohol, swords, spears, bricks, feet, weapons of mass destruction or nuclear warheads.

All require some participation by a human being.

And not all human beings need to have access to inanimate objects with the potential to destroy life.

Not all inanimate objects with the potential to destroy life need to be available by filling out a form at a retail establishment & handing over cash, debit or credit.

But all children need to be able to go to school & look forward to their grandmothers joining them for lunch.  Without fear of bullets & death.

And all children need to be able to go to school & rejoice as their teacher, dressed as an elf, sits on a shelf & teaches them to read & to seize joy.  Without fear of bullets & death.

Just as this is not the world I envisioned leaving my sons, it is not the world envisioned by those who saw the necessity of a well regulated militia to secure a free state.

The owner of the guns used in the massacre at an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut was not a member of a militia.  Nor was her possession of those guns necessary to secure a free state.

This is not about the second amendment to our nation's Constitution. 

It is about the need to secure a State in which our children attend school & listen to an elf on a shelf read to them without fear of guns entering the classroom. 

It is about the senseless, irretrievable loss of twenty children & their principal, four of their teachers, their school's psychologist & the gunman's mother.

And it is about the loss of innocence for our nation's children.

In Memoriam

  Charlotte Bacon, 6  

Daniel Barden, 7 

Olivia Engel, 6 

Josephine Gay, 7

Ana Marquez-Greene, 6 

Dylan Hockley, 6

Madeleine Hsu, 6

Catherine Hubbard, 6

Chase Kowalski, 7

Jesse Lewis, 6

James Mattioli, 6

Grace McDonnell, 7

Emilie Parker, 6

Jack Pinto, 6

Noah Pozner, 6

Caroline Previdi, 6

Jessica Rekos, 6

Avielle Richman, 6

Benjamin Wheeler, 6

Allison Wyatt, 6

Rachel Davino, 29  Teacher

Dawn Hochsprung, 47  School Principal

Nancy Lanza, 52  Mother of gunman

Anne Marie Murphy, 52  Teacher

Lauren Rousseau, 30  Teacher

Mary Sherlach, 56  School Psychologist

Victoria Soto, 27  Teacher

Pennies from Heaven, Jean & Jaki Jean

November 4, 2012

Day 26 of life in the hospital with Jean.

Today’s Palabra del diá  is Siesta.   In honor of the fall time change.  Yesterday’s Word of the Day was Splendiferous.

Splendiferous – a magnificent word.  Its syllables roll off the tongue, filled with the expression of something glorious.  With the promise that the joyous syllables will result in a magnificent experience.  A good day. 

Yesterday was not splendiferous. 

 

Kinder, gentler Jaki Jean made few appearances yesterday.  Complacency meandered throughout the second floor & Jean waited an hour for a response to a request for a change. 

As my true nature emerged, the self that convinces people I am a natural red head with the fire attributed to the admoni, my perception of complacency intensified.  I escalated our request, I called our case manager, I asked for a supervisor, for the supervisor’s cell phone.  I asked for the nurse, only to be told she was on her lunch break.

Another half hour passed.

My friend the elderly gentleman in socks wandered the halls of our wing in only one robe instead of his usual garb of one robe open to the back & one robe open to the front.  Not a palatable sight.  

I, too, wandered the halls, gazed out the windows at the roof.  My anger, frustration, disbelief & dismay palatable to all who watched my movement.

Are you having fun yet?  A patient from our wing whispered from his wheelchair as he rolled past me to his room.

Something is not going your way.  The security guard making his rounds commented.

Indeed.

When our Nurse Erica emerged from her lunch break, she listened patiently as I recited my writ of frustration.  Told that she was needed to change Jean’s dressing on her wound, she went to the room & took over the aborted process of cleaning Jean.

I continued to pace, my failed attempts to resurrect the all too often elusive kinder & gentler Jaki Jean indicative of my failure to write a splendiferous text for the day.

There was evening & there was morning & then there was Sunday, the 26^th day.

Sundays are one of my favorite days here in our wing on the second floor.  Breakfast includes oatmeal & French toast with our eggs.  Lunch every other week is turkey & cornbread dressing with a side of seasoned green beans & for dessert, pumpkin pie.  Patients have a steady stream of visitors & family in attendance.  

But not Jackson D. Joglekar, my friend the gentlemen in socks who sometimes has wings.

No wings for Jackson today.  No exhibition costumes open in the back.

On this Sunday, the 26^th day of our soiree, Jackson wove a blanket into a robe, draped around his shoulders, carefully covering his gaping hospital gown.  His efforts to wander his kingdom, to position himself, were constantly curtailed by the second floor staff.

The text he wrote for himself, neither read nor understood by those reading him.

It was a good day for Jean.  

She asked me to change the station from Fox News to Meet the Press.  When I explained that Meet the Press was not on for another twenty minutes, she replied I don’t want to listen to Fox News for another twenty minutes.

A good day, indeed.

Jean & I watched the Texans beat the Buffalo Bills & I found myself entirely too engrossed in the game.  I do not need another passion, another obsession. 

At least not until I learn to knit.

Early other morning, I found eleven pennies loosely piled at the base of the tier holding the sugar, Sweet-n-Low, lemon & powdered coffee creamer in the cafeteria downstairs.

Abandoned or forgotten, lying in wait to be retrieved or rescued & stuffed in a pocket or coin purse.

I thought to myself Self, someone might come back for them.  Someone might need them. Someone might need exactly eleven pennies.

“Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven.”

So I lined them up, six pennies on one row, five pennies in a row above the six.  In clear view in front of the condiment tier.

Subsequent trips to the cafeteria find the pennies still lined up.  I find another penny underneath the tier and add it to the row of five.

Twelve pennies from heaven, waiting to be claimed & put to use.

I decide to add a penny to the rows each time I return to the cafeteria for ice.  To see how many pennies were needed for someone to confiscate them.

Thirteen.

I think about a friend who saved every “found” penny she picked up in a jar.  Sometimes she wore a found penny in her shoe for good luck.

And I think about a morning long ago, watching a woman in my neighborhood grocery store parking lot pick up a penny & exclaim with delight Heads !

I smiled & remarked Find a penny pick it up / All day long you’ll have good luck.

She thought for a moment, walked over, handed it to me & said --

For good luck.

In my benefactor’s honor, I decide to leave a penny on the cafeteria condiment table.  Not to see how long it takes for someone to pick it up, or how many pennies it takes to tempt my fellow life pilgrims.

But to spread good karma.

“Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven.”