Eccentric

My mother-in-law, when I said this place was no home, told me she'd have thought Boston would be the perfect setting for me (not in those words). I answered, I'd concluded that I would fit in nowhere. I was too essentially eccentric, that I could never count on a place where I would feel a deep sense of belonging. No place, no large group of people could ever be that kind of home, for me. D raises his hand to say, ditto, me too.

Our odd center, which we circle elliptically, is our sense of place, of belonging. We can put it anyplace, and we oval around our near centers of gravity. We wobble, spinning happily.

D never got the opportunity to tell anyone on Wednesday, "You missed a spot." I got smeared at the hospital chapel, vaguely disappointed. Nice lady, chaplain, both of us stood, she also, softly, reminded me to remember god's love. NO, no, no nonononono. That's religion and dogma and belief, hooey. I only know the power of ritual. Kneeling before an old priest, with a thumbfull of black ash, and he's not afraid to use it. When he warns me, in an "I've seen it and I know," graveled timbre, to Remember Man That Thou Art Dust and Unto Dust Thou Shalt Return, I feel marked, REMINDED. Oh, yeah. I wore my OR hat low, I had no need to advertise, enough to feel the grit.


I choose to savor that moment when no air was moving into my lungs, when I thought, This is a stupid way to die. It's not that I am replaceable and disposable that bothers me, when I am distressed. I am much more bothered that, for some, I am not. And no matter my discomfort, I must soldier on, no end in sight. I stare at 45, having taken care of two ninety year old patients this week, knowing both my grandmothers lived past ninety, aware that I may have as far to go as I have come so far. Daunting.