I am feeling violated as I was just informed that the Chaplain associated with hospice is coming to see me, 'bring me a gift', when I already canceled a meeting with her earlier today as I was not up for visitors, my right and no explanation needed. I am bothered the Chaplain has decided to violate my wants and needs after having visited with my father and knowing how much energy I am expending on myself and all things around me, which is not how I stay balanced, centered...

...And I was given a Celtic Cross worn by a priest from Dublin who received it from his father, as she read a passage out of Jeremiah and my mother and I listened as she read the passage and spoke about my father and the visit she had with him, he expressing his desire to come back to the Catholic Church and re-acquaint himself with faith...leaving me with one thousand and two more questions and I asked my mother to look at it and she informed me 'another (pause), she was going to bed.' as I placed the cross and the box on my stand of cherished possessions, not far from my Menorah and a book on Buddhism and the angels all carved in Willow bark as my oils smell with the scents I chose to represent me...

an uneasy feeling

I have not gone to see my father yet, who has now been transferred to a Rehabilitative Facility although I do not allow the title to get my hopes up as when I get the daily report from my mother or my brother, It is obvious it is going to take more than Rehab to bring my father home in the allotted time insurance allows and then after that as well.

I could give all the excuses that I run through my brain, sometimes screaming at me and me screaming back for them to shut the fuck up, I made my decision and my decision is what it is and there is no need to explain it period. And there is a part of me that knows that it is the right thing and what a person in a family does when another is ill...and I should rest my case there as I am ill and the thought of seeing no will or little will and I saw it happening many months ago as he slowly did less and less, I am frustrated, angered as I have fought so hard and I expect him to fight as hard if not harder to show me that the fight is worth it and that by fighting and using the strength that we do not even realize we have, we can overcome and outlive and out expect what the experts predicted based upon black and white evidence as I have...

And I become tired and know that I need to resolve myself from the issue altogether as I know I am not in control, I continue to follow my path and in following ,I know how drained I am and how grueling everyday chores have become and my doing is less and less and the pain greater and greater and that way down deep tell me something more feeling is slipping away and I have to rest, preferably slumber but rest, altogether.

the call of the coyote

I had just settled in for the evening and felt uneasy, my CHI out of balance for a reason I could not place so I rose and dressed to go outside and listen to nature, hoping she would and could provide me that boost I so yearned for.

I craved bing cherries that were purchased earlier today, washed them and took them with me and sat and ate as the stain resembling blood flooded my hands, temporarily and listened. I thought of the irony of stories told of how the armadillos used to appear out of the front shrubbery when my parents bought their home, the irony that nature had been displaced and as building continues in this small county outside of Dallas, the animals that once were present have had to find new homes and new places to find their prey and merely exist as they once did were we now do.

Out of my right ear I heard the howling of a coyote and looked at my hands, thinking the stains on my hands might resemble the prey the coyote had just captured as it was a powerful howl, one that commanded attention instantly as it persisted for half a cigarette or so.

The ducks flew over head, a low fly making me believe they had nested close by, possibly in the brush by the pond where I walk the dogs on a daily basis as I have seen them there, two mallards and a duckling swimming often against the current toward the corner of the pond furthest from humanity and realized that the ecosystem may have shifted but the animals' natural habitat had adjusted and close by, as if they were telling me and any other who was listening that they still existed.

And upon returning indoors, I washed the deep red stains off my hands and thought of the coyote licking it's paws and thought of the prey it might have captured and hoped I would here it again, possibly with stained hands like it's stained paws but satisfied as I was and complete, my CHI once again balanced.