Jesters, Fools, and the Big Wheel

(Another meditation – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Once while out engaging in wood oven pizza consumption, and beerage at our local micro brew with the spouse and his nihilistic, libertarian friend, from his days as a fly boy, we got chatting about relationships and I asked Mr.Undercovercalico why he married me. He said: because you are a smart ass. My epitaph. Actually, the truth does not hurt.

The truth is that I am not a very profound person. When the big questions come up, I have a tendency to flail around like a  dancing, drunken, middle aged guy at a wedding who thinks he has the moves. My brain congeals, I look for an exit.

I often hear from pundits and ordinary people that we ought to bring back some form of national service to instill a sense of community and citizenship. I would like to add something to chew on, everybody should, before they are too far into adulthood have to personally witness both birth and death.

I am not certain of the moment I decided I was not a Christian. I did not have a moment, I had a slow process of feeling completely disconnected while in church, and while listening to others discuss their beliefs. There was obviously some secret being withheld, a hidden button that needed to be pushed that I was not privy to. I still cannot decide if the universe is being controlled by an inebriated jester, a watchman calmly ensuring the wheel keeps on turning, or nobody in particular. I am clear that I do not think anybody is going to come and save my sorry ass. I have no particular contempt for those with those who do believe that.

Being an RN, I have a certain advantageous access to both birth and death. I started out working with adults and even though I don’t have kids and don’t want them, I now work with children. Nothing I have witnessed has brought me any closer to conclusions about the big questions. I know quite a bit about what I don’t know. I have seen gentle deaths in which the child was whisked away like a soft breeze. I have been there for the expected but fearful and painful deaths despite all of our efforts to alleviate it. I have seen blood come out of every orifice, and I recall one time when we had to kick the parent out and apply pressure everywhere and all of us saying,” Stop the fucking blood, dammit.”, yelling at one another because we wanted to make the child look like the child that once was for the mother to come back in and grieve privately. I can remember every child who died when I was at work.

One night my fellow supervisor and I were hunting for a fresh pot of coffee when we heard the ominous announcement,” Harvey Team, to room 4007.” We don’t say “code blue” in my joint. I ran up the stairs ahead of my colleague who never runs anywhere and is a superb nurse. I burst in the room with the other responders. Just seconds before the father came out of the room and told the nurses something was wrong with his child. The child wasn’t breathing and we found no pulse so we drove into our routine. Suddenly, inexplicably, the child regained consciousness and pushed away the ambu-bag. ” What happened”, he asked,” Am I alright ?” We all sighed and chuckled a bit, some of us said,” Everything is alright.” His mother was in the room. She smiled and gave him some reassurance. Then, snap, he stopped breathing, his heart stopped beating and for just a moment we all looked at one another and said WTF. His mother collapsed and screamed,” God bring me back my baby.” We pounded on him, gave the meds, somebody took the mother outside and we heard her scream the entire time. Finally one of the RNs, it might have been me said to the doctor. Enough. Everybody in the room was thinking the same thing: we lied to that kid, we told him everything was going to be okay. We didn’t do it on purpose. I saw a hardened, bitter, mean, but brilliant RN fall into tears. She was pushing the meds and when that second collapse happened we were all convinced we were going to bring him back. When we took the child to the morgue, we had to peel the mother off the gurney. Whenever we have training sessions and refresher courses that moment when we were wrong comes into the conversation. Everybody who was there is haunted by it. Of course, the Christians at work believe that God brought him back for one moment to see his mother. Just as many other people see the incident as a cruel joke, we told him everything was fine.

Death is the great equalizer. Yes, I have felt that moment of infinite aloneness when I shut the door to the fridge where we place our children after they have gone from us and are awaiting the arrival of the funeral home. I always say good-bye either out loud or in my head.

Living a good and healthy life does not guarantee you a good ( peaceful and painless) death. Being a consummate tyrant with the blood of innocents on your hands does not mean you will have a karma tinged unpleasant death because ultimately we never know karma, I believe until it finally greets us. Death will met us all but it won’t necessarily be a just one or a fair one or a comprehensible one.

I am not brave. I fear death, not for what will happen to me, where I will go, or what I will hear or rest my eyes on in the moment between one place and the next. The universe does not require my existence specifically, it will move on without me as effortlessly as the rhythmic flapping of a bird’s wings. I fear what I will miss in the world right now: the sounds of birds, the soft fur on my dog’s ears, the voices of those I love, the weird ass things kids do and say in unguarded moments, good R and B music and a whole list of unconnected non-material things and beings.

So, plant a tree, hug your child, throw a ball for your dog, and shout your passions to the world. There is no Judgment Day. There is now.