I paced around the house yesterday trapped in a conundrum of my own design and complicated by the crises going on in the world. I wandered from the newspaper, to reading, to the computer, back to reading, to staring out the window, asking myself how the world devolved to a place filled with vitriol, disdain for life, and measuring greatness by wealth, not of heart, but of commerce.

Yesterday forced me to become proactive today.

First, I thirty-day-snoozed someone on FB who posted nothing but rants about her one-sided view of injustices in this world. When I mentioned the devaluing of women in our society, she responded that we had to focus on black skin. Why? If all are not afforded the same equality, where is justice? Why did I have to accept when, as a young woman, I was told my opinions were valid, but I didn’t put them politely enough? Why did I have to be warned not to jog alone because I would be asking for “it”? We all know what “it” is. Why is age discrimination less valid than any other? Every person of age, regardless of color, will face it. I’m sure if I had explained my frustration when Kaepernick took the knee for police brutality but not for the female victims of his fellow athletes’ abuse, I would have been told I didn’t understand. When is brutality not brutality? When it’s black man on black woman?

A few days previously, this same person cursed and slandered health care professionals for trying to treat her holistically, with a thorough knowledge of all possible health issues, which caused a delay in her surgery. Having worked in a law office interviewing possible clients, I am sure she would have sued if anything went wrong because those same professionals didn’t investigate, didn’t delay, just forged ahead with an incomplete history.

Yesterday, charges were upgraded for one and brought against three police officers involved in the killing of George Floyd. Today, on FB, this same person continued to spew anger, document atrocities, and stir non-productive emotions.

I don’t feel the need to snooze people very often, but when the negativity outweighs the sharing of information, when it stops me, rather than helps me see things from the other side, when I suspect the tone will never change and will damage rather than advance a cause, I must.

There is an upshot. I plan to conscientiously limit my screen time except for writing.

I am forcing myself to leave the house, with caution, of course. A combination of the emotional beating from too much information and the weight of the heat and humidity imposed on this sixty-eight-year old body is sending me to the gym. Oh, I’ll maintain my anonymity. A mask is as good a cover as a FB avatar. I’ll workout, watch L&O:SVU reruns, and give myself a break from the confines of the living room, the kitchen, the mess that is my work space, the neighborhood where I am the woman with the purple cane and the clumsy gait who figure eights around the blocks to cover ten thousand steps. I will give myself a break from death tolls, brutality, judgements, accusations, venting with no plan or purpose, pundits celebrating the Dow amid the dual threat to America, a carnival barker posing as a leader, and my own shame at not knowing what to do to facilitate change.

 

I dreamed about heaven last night. Not Heaven, but my heaven. Some might call me a heathen. Questions and doubt gnaw at my beliefs. I know there comes a day in everyone’s life when they ask “Why?” or “Why me?” The days I ask myself those questions I surrender to faith in the inevitable, which may or may not involve a supreme being. I liken death to sleep. Except for nights when dreams unearth what’s really in my head, I slip from wakefulness, with my mind working at warp speed, jettisoning me into scenes or characters or action for the next story I want to tell, into nothingness. Black non-existence.

 

A young friend of mine, Amy, died this week. I think the loss of her made me dream of a heaven defined by more than a vacuous empty place. A hospital building housed my heaven. After forty-plus years of nursing that makes sense. I stood peering down a long hall of rooms where light spilled from the doorways and beckoned me to take a peek.

 

From one room I heard disco music and saw Rudy, a nurse who died from AIDs before it became a chronic illness. Rudy defined bling, not because he wore a lot of jewelry, but because he sparkled in life. He lived with an intensity from which a person who didn’t know him might have had to back away. His confidence, sense of humor, and frenetic energy rubbed off in a good way. I watched him dance in his pink uniform and thick soled white nursing shoes. He tossed his head back and a disco ball peppered his face with flickering freckles of light. I remembered the day Rudy confided in me about a patient who had commented on his sexual preference. “I told him at the end of his stay if I wasn’t the best damned nurse he had, he could say what he wanted.” When he was discharged, the patient praised the care he had received. I envied Rudy’s courage.

 

Amy had her own brand of endless energy. She engaged in everything she did with a full court press. She lived with joy, selflessness, compassion. She organized and commanded and executed any task at hand. She was both a jester and a fixer. When I moved into my new house, Amy suggested we have a pajama party. She appeared on my doorstep in flannel pajama bottoms, over-sized squishy slippers, and with rollers in her hair. She also brought the biggest margarita glasses I had ever seen and a pair of flannel pajama bottoms for my husband that said “I love chicks.” Hatching eggs with chicks peeping from the cracks dotted the fabric. I appreciated the time she took to share with us that day.

 

I’ll remember Amy for the night she saved my husband, Dalt. Hospitalized with tonsillitis, he received a huge dose of steroids for tonsils enlarged enough to compromise his airway. I settled him in bed and went home after a long day of waiting, tests, and more waiting. I had just arrived home and dried off from a shower when the phone rang. “There’s something wrong. Something’s happening.” I recognized the panic in my husband’s voice. I knew Amy was working in CVICU that night. I called her and told her the situation. “Can you check on him? I’ve got to get dressed and then I’ll be there.” I never expected her to say “no.” That just wasn’t how Amy treated people.

 

I anticipated a floor nurse in crisis mode when I arrived. But I walked in to find my husband smiling. What he said epitomized Amy. “Amy fixed everything.” During my twenty minute drive she had come to the room and discovered that a new graduate was taking care of my Dalt. “She made him check my blood sugar, my blood pressure, and made him give me some Xanax. She showed that new nurse a few things.”

 

Amy showed us all a few things. And we are better for it. Now Heaven will be, too.