April 15, 2025

Daughter and I filling out Medical Assistance in Dying Application for lethal medication.

So, I fill out a short form accompanied with the report from the oncologist affirming that I am of sound mind and requesting the medication that will end my life. It states that my illness is terminal, that there is nothing more that they can do, and that I do not expect to live longer than six months from now. The doctor accepts in, and then in five days I submit another, and receive the magic pills which I can then take whenever I am ready. I have to administer them myself. 

Had a nice long talk with Daughter today. Learned a lot that I was not aware of. Although I have been battling breast cancer and its therapies the most intense has been this past year, and in particular since October 2024. That was when I fell and broke my hip and was completely unaware of it and the procedure until I "woke up" one day to find an already healed scar down my leg with no idea how it got there. From then until March of 2025, I have little if no memory of anything. Many falls, seizures, neck fractures, other broken bones. Lots of pain. I cannot believe the pain I was in. Spent more time in the hospital than I did at home. I am glad to be home. There is nowhere else I would rather be (my home is extraordinarily beautiful and so full of love,) and is filled with no one else I'd rather be with. 

Daughter filled me in on what life was for her during this time. I had no idea. As it is her story, her thoughts and feelings, her experiences, and her perceptions to share at her will in her time, if she so chooses, I will not share it for her. I will say that the kinds of things I had been thinking that I would protect her from, she has already been through. I cannot imagine anything more traumatic and life changing. 

As I have mentioned, we have been a team. For the last 35 years it has been the two of us inventing and reinventing our lives on our own. I remember meeting her for the first time, I brought her into this world, and she has been determined to stay with me and see me out. She is here for the duration and has demonstrated more strength, love, grace, and selflessness than I have ever witnessed--even though much of this was told to me, and I didn't exactly witness it myself. From both she, and my partner, Pabling.

Sixty-four years of extreme violence, degradation, physical, emotional, and lasting abuse from scarring childhood rages that dig deep into one's flesh and soul, repetitious teachings of self-loathing and abandonment that only increase with age as pretty girls with no self-esteem seem to repeat the violence committed against themselves in an effort to make the original violations less powerful, only to compound the damage. Generations and generations of despairing loneliness. The words, the inescapable disgust, designed to carry on to the next generation and the next without relent. In the past few weeks, I have learned how wrong this all was. Through these two people, and the many people who have emerged and shown themselves to be the true, dedicated, supportive, generous, kind, loving family that we had with us all along, for the first time in my life I have experienced what love really is.  While she and I have experienced much joy at our successes and pride at our accomplishments, I had never experienced happiness before.  Just in time. For the first time in sixty-four years, I learned what love and happiness and goodness were before I died. 

 

April 17, 2025

It's kind of weird that this log begins with ruminations about the past and future. There really isn't any future left. I just used the standard stock that the web log contributed. What does it mean to not have a future? Melinda is here. Pabling is here. Dog, Kitsune and cat, Katsune, are here. More guests coming to say goodbye, assure Melinda that she has family, and that we are loved are enroute. Letting go of all the toxicity that my life presented to me and to us, and embracing the joys, accomplishments, and accolades that we earned on our own, despite some horrific and unbelievable circumstances. We followed our dreams, worked hard, and did it anyway. Learning along the way.

Happened to stumble across an Amazon Prime documentary called, "Take me out feet first," about Assisted Dying. Also, Dr. Phil had a special on it. I found that when I was in my moments of most extreme pain, being medevacked on Ketamine over the Pacific Ocean, for example, I was willing to grit my teeth and accept that this was the way I was just going to let go, accept what was to come, and disappear into . . .? In the hospital, during one of my more painful moments, I was screaming for Melinda, but she wouldn't pick up the phone. Pabling, either. Then, I remember with legs stretched out before me in the air realizing that it was not just my body that was dying, but my soul was dying as well--even though I profess not to believe in such things--that I was just going to be "no more." As by magic, my phone lit up with "Kathy calling," like an angel (like I said, I do not believe in such things,) rang through.

She has been my angel through this, and so many other much needed moments in my life. She will never leave my side. After Melinda and all the kids left, and I was living in a one room broiler room basement apartment under the snow, so alone. She would bring me to her house, make up the spare bedroom for me, make me English tea--warm milk and sugar, and she and her dear husband Fredo would parent me for the night. Make me feel loved and cared for. 

 

Part of a letter I just wrote to her:

 

apparently, and you may know this, melinda went through a lot more than i thought when  i was in the hospital and she was in brooklyn. all the stuff i had been trying to protect her from--the hospice videos that show the terminally ill patient dying, going through the motions, head, eyes, and jaw agape and lax, death rattle, swabbing the insides of their mouths with little sponge tips to keep in moist, not knowing if you will ever see them lucid again, dr's pressuring them to let the patient die and sign the dnr, all coming at her at one, she has already gone through. i cannot believe her strength. and pabling crying to her begging her to let him know he did the right thing leaving me in the hospital while i was delirious and begging to go home. the two of them have such amazing strength. 

 

Everybody sound now. All sitting in the dimly lit front room. On devices. Quiet. Comfortable, Satisfied. Together. 

 

The last two nights were pretty rough. Nothing like the pain in the hospital--had I had to continue that for four more days, I most surely would have made my exit by now. Twice I woke up and couldn't breathe. I went into panic. I couldn't talk, swallow, scream. I was out of control of the cancer and its ravages. Eyes wide open, I flipped on all the lights, and turned on my go to comfort show, "The Incredible Dr. Pol," and tried to focus on that until Melinda got my meds squared away, and I could breathe again. I've been staying up all night, when not reading doctors' reports, looking up funding, I still need $700 for the lethal meds, and $1500 cremation fees, as well as a small stipend that will cover the difference between my SSI payments and my rent for the next six months, I am doing guided meditation tapes on dying and letting go. Most of them are on the fear of dying. But I don't think that it is for me. But I keep changing my mind and feelings the more I grow and learn. Having been suicidal for most of my life, how could I possibly be afraid of death? I understand that it was the circumstances and pain that was inflicted upon me, and not necessarily the life and love that I was unaware was possible, that I was trying to rid myself of. 

But all that has quieted down now. The small and almost imperceptible delights that we brought into our lives eclipse the violence of the rages in the way Carl Sandborg wrote about the fog.  

Poor Melinda had to fill out two DNRs last month. One for me, and one for the big fat king of the cats who didn't make it. 

I have no disillusions that life is energy, carbon, nitrates, etc., and it is that energy that creates photosynthesis and reduces us down to settling next to someone's eggshells and Peet's coffee grinds in a compost pile they purchased from IKEA. One life is no more important than another, and the tapes that reassure the dying one that they were somehow "good" and did "their best," or profess to know what happens next or contemplate the existence of a "soul," are just invented subjectivities to make the idea of being "no more" more palliative for some whose egos insist that they be placed in a hierarchical Godly place above all others, is just arrogant and narcissistic carried into one's fictionalized idea of an afterlife, where they can continue to proclaim their eminence without any glimpse into consideration to truth or beyond any other self-imposed grandiose pomposity.   

You get a lot of that in academia.

The "Take my feet out first" documentary was a bit more substantive. Although it began with a reasonably intelligent discussion of a woman's choice to induce Medically Assistance in Dying, it quickly moved through the process her husband went through during his transition. I thought it was completely infantilizing. For some, I suppose, it might be comforting to be told several times who is in the room with the dying patient. To make sure that they have ice cream to obscure the bitter taste of the medication, to reassure them that it was ok to let go and die. But to me these are all decisions to be made by the transitioning, and if one's goal is to let the patient go on their terms, and not on "god's," then why are these people taking that decision away from them and acting as "god?" It's not your decision to tell me when it is "ok" for me to "let go." 

I do know that I do not want to suffer. I do not want to wrestle with a ventilator. I do not want to be panic stricken in a body that will frighten and hurt me. The two people who have loved me best and most, Pabling and Melinda, and the loyal pets who stayed by my side, Kitsune and Katsune, will join us all in my bed. Am still in limbo as to what movie, (or possibly guided meditation tape,) that I want on. Not entirely unlike tonight. The quiet. The peace. The unspoken togetherness. The feeling that everything will be alright. But with the solicitude and finality that tonight doesn't carry. I won't awake into a new day, with the sun on my face to be shown all the new joys I was deprived of in my youth--but was lucky enough to watch my daughter awaken in them. 

Through her, through the love she then radiates, and then through her friends and true family, I live on. 

 

 

April 19, 2025

Although any discussion of good or bad, evil or righteousness, is by nature touched with religiosity and sanctimoniousness, there is, in fact, pure evil in this world--no matter how small or insignificant it may seem in the grand scheme of things. I knew from a very young age, for example, that there could be no god for a photograph of the small, naked, young girl running down the dirt road from the Viet Cong into the arms of the approaching US Army could not exist with one. While this on in by no way in comparison to that atrocity and affront to the dignity of all mankind, I open my computer today to find it, all my files, virtual or not, eviscerated all over its screen. Tax documents made up emails in my name, what should have been confidential governmental correspondences that use made up logins, passwords, screenshots, anything you can think of, and many of them closed to overuse and trying the wrong passwords too many times, just scattered all over like slaughtered sheep. The Stalker has been at it again. I know who it is. And will give out his name in due time. It has already been placed in the FBI, FCC, and other law enforcement files. 

He is watching me while I type this and flashing little murals he has made of me up on the screen while I type. I suppose it is too much to give this sad, little troll of a person the attention of his daily violations that he so craves in his empty, sad, little life. But this is the end of my life, and I wish to end it in peace with my own thoughts and not the daily interruptions of such pathetic delusions of a deeply disturbed and obsessed excuse for a human being. I'll be gone soon and he will exist no more. Until then, I will be alone with my thoughts, and with you, dear reader.

 

 

April 19, 2025

This week has been a bit more challenging than late. Nothing like it was over the past year or my latest hospital visits. I don't think I could hang on much longer if that perused. But I had a couple of panic attacks. I have been hoarse for the last four days or so. I have bouts when I cannot swallow or take a breath. The hot breath of the cancer stabs its way down my throat, in the depths of the shoulder pits where it has metastasized into my bones, my legs are now worthless, the left foot completely turned inward like an MS patient's. The two jaw breaker sized and shaped knobs that appeared after I broke my back a couple of weeks ago have not subsided, and since I have forgone all treatment except for pain medication, cannot be mended. I've had too many spinal surgeries already, anyway. No more wheeling down sterile halls in floaty bags to be shoved into MRI machines. I remember when I was at Brown I used to volunteer as a medical guinea pig at the Medical School to do clinical experiments on the effects of MRIs and the brain. After 40 minutes of mind-numbing noise and perfect stillness, I received a $40 payment which supplied food for my family for a week.   

Control.

Is it the fear of death and dying what people feel most on their deathbed? Or is it the feeling of losing control? This question comes to mind as I browse through the Guided Meditation tapes on Letting Go that I browse through in the wee hours of the night by myself. Having had little to no control over myself or what was happening to me growing up, I did what many young girls do at that age. I simply stopped eating. It was the only thing I could control. I kept myself under 110lbs until I was in my 40s. On the other hand, in retrospect, I had a great deal of control. I was able to escape with my daughter from the most wretched conditions I could imagine and together we created an entirely different world for ourselves. Now, instead of waiting for the cancer to take me, I am taking control of the inevitable and taking the reins of control of deciding when, where, who with, and how I will die. 

 

April 26, 2025

Ahhhhhh. It's been a while since I've written. I hope those of you who are interested have had a chance to flip pages, comments, responses, posts, and other little secret places on the Linkedin website to find all the little tidbits of how we pieced our lives together. Keep looking, although many are repeats, there are lots of tidbits of how we created and lived in worlds that were completely foreign to us, and how we made family and love in spite of it all.

The last few days (?) weeks (?) have been pretty hard. I think I have mentioned that the last time I broke my back I developed two jaw breaker looking and feeling spurs on the base of my spine. Very painful. You can see them protruding out, and I put pillows on either side of them so they will flatten out with the back instead of feeling them poking into the mattress. But since I have refused all further treatment, there is not much I can do with them. The panic is also very bad. I cannot breathe or talk, and bits of food regurgitate if I try to cough. Thus, it is easier to stay naked under the sheets with a small pad under me to catch any leakage. (TMI???) sleep is difficult under these conditions. My left leg turns in, and beginning today, the right one is turning in, too. Both legs are pretty useless, though. Sharp tingling nerve pain and no trying in putting any weight on them. Pabling and Melinda take turns hoisting me up and over to the bedside commode and back. I don't know what I would do without them. Then, because of it all, Pabling received a hernia. He has had to drive down to Kona (about 1.5 hours,) for doctor's appointments, and it looks like he will have to have surgery with a 6-8 week recovery time. I feel like closing our door and putting an "Infirmary" sign on it. Melinda has not even had a chance to recover and decompress after all the trauma she has seen and work she has done for the last few months, and now he is out of the picture of helping me with all the things he does.

But, YAY! More family is coming to help!!! Her wonderful, strong, dedicated, loving partner and one of her best friends/family members are coming today to help! The hospice medical team came out the other day to reassess my meds, and I think they are on the right track. I am breathing, not feeling the panic, getting some sleep, and the pain is manageable. So I am in good spirits, and I am sure they will offer me and Melinda comfort, help, and love. We are so lucky that we have such dedicated family that keeps us knowing that they love us and are here for us.

Here is an example of what one of them had commissioned of us:

 

Sorry I couldn't crop it right, but you'll get the idea. It was from a surprise  Alpaca Christmas trip that Melinda surprised me with on a Christmas many years ago. We used to do surprise beach house trips, road trips to old working farm house hostels in the middle of Massachusetts where we'd get to know the owners and show up every Fall to watch the leaves and carve out pumpkins, tacky cheap motels in Truro on Cape Cod, Toronto, Montreal... (Or the time we went to Harajuku Japan for her surprise 16th birthday present!) The Montreal hostel was a great trip. 

When we moved to Providence we realized that Montreal was only a five hour drive away. We packed up the car, (with ferret and all,) and got to go through border crossing, change money, read in French, and have an incredible adventure. For like $15 per person a night, (remember, I am still living on my $14,000 per year graduate student stipend,) we stayed in this hipster hotel where the kids would get dressed and frequent the clubs at night, only to be splayed all over the common areas in the morning trying to recoup from the night before. 

Jean Luc, the owner of the hostel, had his 9-year daughter visiting from France and Melinda was also 9. As an academic, I always had a purse filled with multicolored highlighters and post-it-notes. While I curled up in a window seat studying, I had the girls running around the hostel, each equipped with a differently colored pack of post-its. They giggled with glee as they ran around the hostel writing down the word that each object represented either in French or English! The bananas and other fruit were soon decorated in pink and yellow postits with the appropriate name on them. Someone left panties hanging on a clothes line in the bathroom, and they were soon identified, too. The entire house became a multicolored multilingual display matching the wild colors worn by the previous night's partiers. 

For their reward we got to go see Mulan which had just come out in the theaters. As Melinda (as well as all other 9 year old girls in the world at this time,) had memorized all the spoken and musical lyrics, and the film was in French, we continued our bilingual singing adventure into the movie theaters.

Montreal Part Two

Sorry to go on for so long, but this story has another part to it.

Melinda was in her last Spring Break from High School. After a few days of a full house, the kids cleared out of my house except for H--another strong, dedicated and forever member of our family. Watching these two beautiful 17 year old girls mindlessly vacillating between Shark Week (did you know that "Those Are People Who Died" closes the screen credits in one of the sequels?) and long since retired video games, I could stand no more. "Here!" I said. And gave them a credit card, ATM card, AAA card, car keys, either a map or GPS (I don't remember what we had then,) and said, "Get out of the house and go to Montreal!!!" They looked at me like I was crazy, until I convinced them I was serious. Remember. We were always a team. If these girls were not the kind of girls I raised and knew them to be, I could never have done this. But these were smart, responsible, exceptional young women who knew what it meant to be trusted, knew risks and stupid behavior, and the joys of new adventures, and how to get themselves out of bad situations, but more importantly, how to not get themselves into them in the first place.  

So, off they went! I didn't get the call until around midnight. "MOM!" they cried. "We forgot to change money and we just ate dinner and have no way to pay!" Recalling my own attributes and the powers they begat when I was a young beauty, I advised, "You are two beautiful, well-mannered, smart young women with beautiful, well-mannered, smart 17-year old tits. Certainly, and discretely, you can use your attributes to help you get through a $50 tab until the morning. No, go!" And I hung up. 

The girls sweetly and uncompromisingly made it through the night and paid their bill, I suspect with the help of their old friend Jean Luc, who generously and happily took them in. 

 

There is another Montreal Jean Luc story. I seem to remember the girls took the wrong turn, brought the wrong IDs and ended up in Canada by mistake. But that is Melinda's story, I don't remember it all, but she knew how to get her way out of it.

I wanted to continue about the next family reinforcements that are coming in tonight, but am tired. And it is time for Haupia Chocolate Pie and more morphine.

 

And I still got that research done, lecture written, and papers graded.

 

Laurie

 

 

Musings on good and evil, souls and nitrates, gods and making rules on morality, who gets to decide, and the rainbow bridge

More April 26

“Without evil there could be no good so it must be good to be evil sometimes” 

Sung by Satan to Sadaam Hussein in South Park: Bigger Better and Uncut

 

So, I think I have mentioned that I have been pondering the next step and what it all means. Given that I have forsaken all curative medical treatment, have been told that this is a terminal illness expected to last no more than six months, it kind of leads one to wonder, "What next?" I have, as I have mentioned, listened to Guided Meditations at night, to ease my mind, to put me to sleep, to explore what others think about the next "transition." Many are about "Letting go," others about death directly. First, I do not believe or have any interest in the idea of a "god," (notice, I never put that term in capital letters, it is an idea not a noun.) I do not have any interest in what Buddhists say happens when you die, (nobody actually knows, right?) Nor am I interested in the moral aspect of "suicide" (which Medical Assistance in Dying is not,) and doing god's job. I am not afraid of dying, which many of the meditations seem to be focused on, nor am I interested in how really exploring death in meditation will make me a better person in my living life (I won't be here.) What compels me is why people seem to have a driving pursuit in affirming that they were a "good" person, they lived a "good" life and can go forth--either in the death transition or in resuming their life, albeit as an even "better" person--in having this affirmed. 

Who gets to be a "good" person and who gets to decide? 

Everyone thinks they are the "good" person. Hannibal Lecture thinks he is the "good" person. Everyone listening to the taped meditations gets assurance that they were a "good" person in their lives before they transition and move on to be an even better person in whatever happens next. 

Sadly, I had to put a very important familial friendship on hold (for how much time?) as these sometimes theological, sometimes philosophical, sometimes biological questions are complicated and as a dying person bring up more questions than they do definitive answers. Using ignorance in order to prove the existence of god (or rather fairy tales,) is simply, as I have said before, anti-intellectual, insulting, non-productive, and brain deadening. The idea that we have two parts--a body and a soul which lives on, is more hurtful than superstition, deifies ignorance, and justifies oppression, inequality, and deadens the inquisition for truth. The "golden rainbow" for example, is an unquestioned path upon which the "souls" of once beloved pets take to enter the "heaven" reserved for the mourning owners to seek solace in missing their once animated living, but not human or vegetation companions, where they can remain as remembered forever. I cannot deal with that. Concrete, unquestioned "universal" "truth."

I do believe in science. In carbon, nitrates, photosynthesis. . .  My daughter has strict orders to retrieve my ashes after cremation, (no ceremony,) and deliver them to a place where they apply enough force to transform them into a diamond which she can wear when she wants to think about me. But I have no delusions that the gem will have any other meaning or powers to it, unless she decides to give it such.

But giving it a shot, and largely due to the inability to sleep, I listened--with an open mind--to many guided meditations, even following your animal spiritual advisor, (hey, it was an 8-hour meditation and I really needed the rest!) But what kept coming up for me was

Who is a "good" person?

And

Who decides?

 

I think everyone thinks they are the "good" person.

 

These questions, leaching into my consciousness, were brought to a dear confidant, wise intellectual, and someone who has been studying many perspectives of these thoughts for a lifetime. In conversation the Harold Kushner book came up.

I have real problem with the "Why do Bad Things.." book. Even in all my meditation tapes that I play at night. They all say something to the effect of, "You are a good person. You did the best that you could.. . . " EVERYBODY thinks they  are a good person. Everyone thinks they did their best. Whose making up the judgements here and who is imposing them and from whose/what side?

Example. I met Dr. X at the AAAS (Association for Asian American Studies) conference in Oakland in 1993. His book was the bible of Mixed Race literature at the time, it was my first conference, I was into uncharted territory and blown away. He asked me out for a drink, and i went. LLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOng story short. He was in a bad (aren't they all?) 20-something year old marriage, two hapa kids, boy and girl. They were born again Evangelists. He was white, she Chinese, both PhDs from Hahvahd. He flew instantly into the white hot heat of massive love/infatuation/passion with me, and bought me a $10K ring and left his family. As he had never slept with anyone other than his wife in his entire life, he knew that sleeping with me would break the deal. I was living in a basement with my daughter, working, and going to UCB. Desperate. But I was the whore that would seal the deal. His congregation would send him letters begging him to come back to the foal and reminded him that he was still one of "god's children."  As he was teaching at BUYH his wife turned him in for sexual misconduct, (he had already been fired from his last university for sexual misconduct,) and got him fired. And he had the audacity to read that book. What part of "good people" did he think he occupied??? I remember once being at his house and sat down on the bed--the only piece of furniture in that room, and he jumped up startled. The dirty whore wasn't supposed to come into contact with the young virginal daughter's furniture.

And HE was the "Good People," to whom mysteriously "bad things" were happening. 

When I moved to Hawai`` to marry him and attend UHManoa, as he had asked, I took out $10K of student loan money for emergencies. As it wasn't my money, I just had it put away in case my daughter got sick, needed first and last, car broke down, etc. I asked him to hold it for me, as I said, it wasn't my money, and I needed to apply for loans and grants. Long story cut short. Eventually I found myself in Providence, knew no one, knew nothing about being in the Ivy Leagues, with a daughter to care for, in my first week of classes at Brown and pregnant. He told me to go have an abortion. Hung up the phone. And wouldn't return my calls after that. A bit later I called him again and told him that I needed my student loan money back. He said, "I don't owe you a damned thing." And slammed down the receiver again, never to be heard from ever again. 

Tell me again who was supposed to be the "Good People" that all these "Bad Things" were happening to?

Many, many years before all of this, I was maybe 5 or so. I remember my mother dropped us off at a church one morning. We were dirty, hungry, and didn't know anyone there, she just dropped us off and left us there. Upon return a few hours later, she was infuriated that we had been given little red donation envelopes. She called the church money hungry and asserted that all they wanted was not our "souls," or to teach us about "god," but her money. She had been, of course, using them for free babysitting service. But I guess it was better than the time she stormed out of the house in one of her many rages and I, at the age of three, had flung open the windows of my room frightened, panicked, and abandoned, cried and screamed, "Mommy come home!" as loudly and long as I could until the police showed up.
My entire life I had been demonized and incapable of being entered into the class of one of "god's children" by both "sides" of my "biological" families due to my racial mixture. I have been compared to an incurable, "untouchable," shameful, disease, while having my body parts touched and scrutinized for traces of different eugenic racial codes. Because I didn't have a father--although it was far beyond my control that he was killed in a drunk driving accident two months before I was born--it was somehow my demonic Damien-like mixed genes that compelled me to be an accomplice to his mangled and bloody death, rendering me an unwanted bastard for the rest of my life--and my mother into an endless victim to a lifeless misery of suffering, burden, and pain, causing her to lash out in rages and violence or abandonment and neglect without ever knowing or experiencing the joy that children, or even love, can bring into one's life. 
So, again I ask. Who are these people who think they are the "Good" ones that "Bad" things happen to?
Everyone thinks they are the "Good Ones."

 

But that was a long time ago. It wasn't my first sexual predator, nor my last. But especially living with the short time that I have left, I chose not to honor it. I do not believe that forgiveness is necessary, but in accepting that things happen, and to let them go. I have discovered such an abundance of real love recently, and I am so grateful that I was able to before my clock struck out. I believe that truly evil people do not deserve my time, thoughts, or anything but indifference in the remainder of my life, and I treat them as such. People that don't matter simply don't matter and are nothing in comparison to the outpour of letters, emails, posts, that I receive from those that do. Choosing instead to focus on the beauty and joy that has come into my life--or rather, has always been there, as I now recognize. I do not mean to sound angry. That is past me now. I suppose it is just a part of the story I am telling, of my life, my battles, my joys, my family, my work, my accomplishments and mostly what my daughter and I were able to accomplish, on our own, in spite of some rather tumultuous circumstances, and along with some pretty lucky breaks. 

 

My favorite book these days was written by one of my students and is 

You See A Floor I See A Horizon Paperback – December 22, 2020

by Raj Dutt Sharma (Author)

Amazon.com: You See A Floor I See A Horizon: 9798582074373: Sharma, Raj Dutt: Books

 

It speaks the closest to me and I strongly recommend it. 

 

Laurie

 

More April 26, 2025

Well reinforcements have landed!!! Two more members of our family have arrived supplied with love, aid, support and comfort!! Melinda has been working so hard, emotional, physical, traumatic (watching her mother die,) and has been hospice nurse, cook, everything you might possibly think of and more. These last few years have been so intense for Melinda and Pabling--I have no idea how they kept on, but they did. Her partner has been holding down the fort in Brooklyn so that she could be here full time for me, taking care of me, but also catching each last breath that we might have together. He has been her rock from 3,000 miles away. But he, (and one of the family sisters,) is finally here! I am doing my best to take care of myself so that they can get away to a beach together and just be able to stare into the eyes of a honu and be as one and cry and talk and hold and release some of the intense pain and feelings she has been carrying for the last several years. I believe that he really does see how special she is and accept him fully and unquestioningly as her partner and one of the family and believe that he will take care of her after I am gone and won't let her fall. He, like Pabling, is a good man. (And I mean that in every sense of the word--not just in the context of my anti-religious rants.) With the large family that we have and he by her side, I won't have to worry that she will be alone. They've all come to take care of me, take care of her, and to make sure that we know that. 

Tomorrow night is another lanai night. A new member is coming. A wonderful Hawaiian woman who Melinda befriended as she was walking her baby therapy goat down Mamane St. She found him after he had been hiding in a cave with his umbilical cord still attached and has been her baby ever since. My picture editor isn't working well tonight, but tomorrow I will attach some pretty special pictures both left over from my birthday/funeral night and the priceless shot of my face as Melinda unbundled a baby goat from my car yesterday! Life is good.

One more hour until the morphine whisks me off to a painless, blissful slumber. 

Time to go watch Dr. Pol.

Laurie

 

 

May 1, 2025

 

I have been incapacitated by the cancer over the last several days. Will write more about My Adventures with Carcinoma later. I decided to repost an email I just sent as a response to a friend who asked me if she were ever angry about the divorce (she was 3,) and I decided to just copy it as another glimpse inside the lives of Laurie and Melinda Through the Ivies, instead. Sorry about the grammar and spelling. I am still pretty out of it. 

 

nah. the divorce never impacted her in any way. her dad was never around. at his gf's house or playing frisbee. i was a full-time stay-at home mom who took her to marine world, little farm, had kids over (parents would just  drop their hungry, dirty kids off the way at my house while they were already on their way to work without even asking if we had plans for the day or anything.) every single day was oriented towards children. I remember a guy i dated once or twice until he decided i was a better babysitter than a date (they all called me mary poppins.) everything was oriented surrounding her.  even waiting in the line at welfare. all the other mothers used to stand  in line with  their kids hanging wiggling and restless by their arms. We sat down and worked on lettering and numbering books and reading. by the time she was 4 she was teaching her fellow kindergarteners how to sound out words. One mother was surprised that her child could spell his name after an afternoon with me. I was always under the impression that  kids knew how to read before kindergarten. when i took her for her pre-class assessment I told the teacher she could read. The teacher started her off with ""buh," "buh," then, "cat," "cat," i just sat there looking bored as she recited, "elevator," and, "helicopter." but everything was a game. and fun. or so i thought. when we rented a studio of an apartment--the place had just burned down because of the oakland fires and literally one wall completely missing and dropped down immediately into the woods with deer, squirrels, brush, etc., (not the safest for a three year old,) we made fishing games and fished off the side with construction paper, magnets, string and paper clips for prizes. with my looks and connections I could trade anything. a free night for her and all her friends to spend the night inside the honolulu zoo, clowns and acrobats to entertain and giving out free stilts as door prizes at her birthday parties. But easy cheap activities were a blst, too. Like tying donuts to the clothes line in the back yard and have the children attempt to eat them with their hands tied behind their backs. Ninth grade in a prep school brought  so much pressure on her that i recognized the stress and loss of perspective on her face, so it was into the car for 5 hour road trip to orchard beach and three days just staring at the tides and seeing how majestic the surf and mountains were compared to geometry. on the way home, in the light of the twinkling stars peeking through the sunroof, listened to the audio tape of zora neal hurston recite tea cake's adventures in Their Eyes Were Watching God. 
No, her dad was never an issue. Oh, except on one occasion, when he dropped her off at my house once, she turned thoughtfully and asked, "dad hates you more than he loves me, doesn't he?" I had to shrug my shoulder and answer, "yes, I guess he does." and that was the end.

But I was amazed by her, and never thought i told her anything or said anything that implied differently. 

I never lied to her, and she new at a very  young age, that she'd better be sure of what question she asked me as she would get the  truth. (On middle school she had to learn the reproductive system, and out came an old piece of cardboard to construct a gameboard of the male reproductive system following the sperm down the vas deference passing each check point for points. 

We could make everything for nothing. Remember, I am still living off a $14K year grad stipend. 

And I certainly did not expose her to the kind of overt and covert physical, emotional, mental, and deep-cutting, forever scarring abuse that I had sustained for a lifetime. We made up our own rules and traditions. I'll write about our "Christmas traditions" sometime when I am not so tired. 

The other graduate students (and my professors) used to ask why I spent so much time dedicated towards the kids when I could have been writing. Years after they had received their tenure, gotten married, and had their own, they wisely bobbed their heads and nodded their deep understanding.  

They had figured it out. 

Kids are fucking amazing.