This Weird Space

 

“I think I’m coming to the end.” I quipped as I stood outside waving to the healthcare practitioner I’d just visited for pain. She nodded in agreement. She and I are about a year apart in age. Her two children are about three to six years older than my two children. Although we have different licenses, we met at medical classes in January 2004 in Secaucus, New Jersey for recertifications. We seemed to hit it off on the first day of three.

That day last week after I’d said goodbye, I got into my car, raised a brow and thought, ‘See, she agreed with that comment.’ I thought this as she was often surprised when we didn’t agree on a medical protocol. She’d reminded me of what I should do with the pain I’d had for over three decades, yet this time her voice had rolled into my head the week before I’d seen her. It reminded me of what I could do before I saw her the next week. So, I re-added the painful exercises which reduced my pain, including nerve pains by fifty percent or more in everything I did.

I’d been doing all my other exercises religiously, not missing a day in over nine years. Too, I’d been disciplined enough over the past three decades with various rehab exercises, rarely missing three or four days per year of doing them. I do these to not fall over upon my first steps of the day. Some I’d changed up partially because of the advanced classes I’d taken in person and a few online webinars for my knowledge, practice and license.

When I entered her office that day she said, “You look the same. I seem to see you every two years.” I countered back, “Hey. I’m physically active, just finished a physical job again. Never mind household projects. Only this one was nearly a year. It’s so I don’t burn out on my research and writing I’m willing to focus writing and editing on some days as much as 16 hours in a day.” She shook her head and sighed. With her typical remark to me over the years, when I needed her more, “You.” Wagging her head like the good Jewish mother who wonders what she’s going to do with this odd, belligerent child.

I call her my “Other Jewish Mother I’ve Never Had”. She inquired about what brought me in. I replied, “Trigger Points, pain increased. You know. I got most of them either dormant or calmed down completely, but I’m checking in to see what you think.”

“Are you back practicing again?” She’d asked. I replied, “Well, I had been working for someone else; however, I didn’t like the lack of paperwork they’d filed on the pain patients. I saw a potential problem. So, I gave them two weeks’ notice. I stuck with the Market job for ten months; then it was time to get back to research and writing.” She nodded and spent extra time checking my joints, doing some work on me, giving me advice, as we chatted about treatment of cancer, new protocols and areas she’d suggested were of great value to uncover.

Here this morning, as I pondered thoughts of what or how my deceased husband of over five years would currently be responding to recent community and political events. I kept saying to myself over the past week, “…this would have been too much for him.” I repeated some of that line last night as I cleaned under and around our seven foot by seven foot and twenty-inch-wide living room hutch filled with books and such with my oil soap mixture for wood. I knew I’d be vacuuming in the morning again; I just had to wait for the filters for the vacuum cleaner to finish air-drying.

I then worked on fixing our two semi-new television sets, one six years old. The other three years old. I remained calm as I gotten the Jets vs. Patriots game on the older television. Then I’d investigated the smaller, newer television reception issues. I remained abnormally calm that night dealing with the television issues. Especially, as I was missing a favorite show aside from watching two teams, I despise the most in the NFL. By the way, I’ve not usually been good at being patient with television sets in the last decade. I think that’s because back in the day, when I was a kid, we had one television set, a black and white Zenith television set—all’s you had to do was open-handedly whack the set on its side and ‘bingo!’ It worked. Its picture would come in clearly and everything for quite some time was resolved. You just had to check the ‘Bunny Ears’ atop the television set.

Usually before I begin my research and writing, I read. I’ll read anything that I’ve never read before on any subject pretty much. This helps with my screenplay writing more so, than in my non-fiction book writing. Something in an article on any particular writing platform or magazine in hand will awaken a thought I might have had decades ago or months ago. I’ll read forty-five minutes to two hours after my stretches and morning chores. Yet, I’ll read before I research, write, run, lift weights and so forth. When I had work that wasn’t remote, I’d read for at least 20 minutes in the morning if I had an early morning shift. I’d get up at about quarter past three in the morning to get all chores done and get a quick short run in before half past five when I’d be in my car driving to work that morning in the dark. That whole scene for me then was mostly enjoyable.

So, back to “…the end of the line” for me. I’d been grappling with what I know to be next. Or rather what I should do next with whatever remaining years I may have on this earth. I contemplate that quite a bit. I pretty much have thought that way even as a child, because life can often be scary and short. My goal has always been to do some good and then leave quietly into the sunset, or the clouds, or my most desired departure in a gentle snowfall upon my exit. A peaceful whisking away, leaving no trace, only good things to remain when I’m no longer in this earthly vessel.

I’d wondered why a gentle snowfall. Yet I will venture to say that the snowfall will cover my tracks and make life for someone else new and hopeful. It’s probably because I’ve realized so much more is important than a name, a title and so forth. It’s the anonymous good that I could leave that warms my heart. It’s more noble to go off quietly with no significance of a name or a title. In speaking with one of my former superiors last week, she noted to my surprise that she truly was willing to give up her quiet five-acre lot with an old three-car garage, her big house, and her half acre garden sooner than later. She said, “Its becoming a lot. I want less work. I know Jim would desire a garage to do things. But I could just settle for a townhouse with an HOA. You know?”

She is six years my senior, always has had a bundle of energy. You know those Minnesotans, if you do. It’s like ‘…so we were ice fishing and pulling the boat off the ramp and the dog ran into old grandma…well not mine but you know…while I was pulling the pop out of my gnarly cooler….’ Although, she thinks I have crazy levels of energy, I think otherwise. HOA scares me. I like land, because I love trees, fields, forests and animals. I miss witnessing a dog of mine run lose in a backyard or it getting crazy in fresh snowfall.

I now reside in this weird space between mass production and the time continuum of living with less of everything but knowledge.---Jody-Lynn Reicher