Cost of a Glimpse

Thinking of the stuff in my lungs they're pumping me full of major antibiotics. That will continue for several days more.

The addition is what they call a pick line and a body port. The pick line was inserted into a vein in my chest, then pushed through to follow that vein and stop just inside my heart. Then a body port was inserted just under the skin beneath my collar bone. Then attached to the pick line. The port is a rubbery-like material that will self seal when you pull a needle out of it.

Now they can push a very short, somewhat larger needle into the port and pump in TPN. A wonderful appetizing mixture called total protein nourishment. It looks like a slightly murky, oily, milk that will feed my body everything it needs to grow big and strong. Oh right, I wasn't that before. But this stuff will bypass my stomach and my subconscious and stay with me long enough to do some good. I guess that I'll be on it for a while, maybe a long while.

I told them that I could still hear the village women too, while I was in the drug induced coma.

My cry is solitary but strong. I feel it vibrating in my throat, louder, softer. Wailing, keening, undulating...lonely.

The bedpan is still what I reach for. Still in the hospital, I can still see the analog clock on the wall, the dry erase board at the end of my bed. 2:11am, fourteen months and 29 days since Jeremy left me. 80lbs yesterday, the dry erase board says.

My mind is on Marge as it comes aware and remembering. It's was just a little over three weeks since Jeremy started the divorce proceedings. He started them only seven days after the parking lot. He had both Eric and I served papers at work. Then dropped the one against Eric only days later. I guess that was his way of making sure that everyone knew what had happened. That Eric couldn't hide from what we'd done.

I don't think that either Eric or I will advance much in the company's regard or pay scale again. That they didn't fire us is somewhat of a surprise. Marge damn her, thinks, well I don't know what she thinks or is thinking.

That maybe because both of us have screwed Eric that we have some kind of camaraderie or girls club going. Because she tries to 'talk about everything' with me. Become some sort of confidant for me, in my troubled times.

She started in on Jeremy being some kind of coward for just running away. I tried to get it across to her, in as few words as I could. That Jeremy didn't run away. He just moved out of my life, completely.

So completely that I wasn't going to see him ever again, and I knew that was what he had meant to do. Then he was going to go about his business as it was scheduled. In my memory his next client was to be in Capetown, South Africa. Then it was to be Ottawa Canada. The next was either Seattle, or Everett, Washington. After that I don't know.

He was just going to leave me with my life and everything in it, and take his and everything in it away from me.

Then she made the stupid, stupid comment, 'well you must not have had a very caring or loving relationship. Because your obviously not very broken up about it." I didn't say anything. Allowed my eye lids to float shut, for a brief two count. Then slowly opened them to show her the dead of my soul. Her squeak of 'Oh' and the hand to her mouth as she fled from me. I knew that, now she understood. Then there wasn't a girl's club anymore.

The voice was older than the woman. I knew this because this was the only one of the women that I had ever seen, everything else had just been heard. Her arms were stick thin, her fingers were bent and twisted twigs. Her breasts hung in flat dusty dugs clear down onto her belly. But the cry was the same...that wailing, keening, undulating song, with a small hiss to it from her toothless mouth. That cry, older than the woman, older then time...eternal...primal.

It was still the bedpan that I reached for, still the hospital bed I lay in. Still the round face of the clock I looked at, 2:13am. Fifteen months and five days since Jeremy left me. 81lbs the dry erase board said to me of yesterday.

My mind floated in that first month after Jeremy left. Of the time my quest for sleep started with the Doctors. For help with that flight in my mind to free myself from that piercing nighttime wail.

Medical Doctor's first words...sleeping pills. I told him that I'd tried every kind of over-the-counter sleeping pill that there was, and they didn't do anything. Even when I'd doubled the dosage, they just left me groggy at work the next day.

He had stronger ones, that didn't help either. A higher dosage, that didn't keep me asleep and made work almost impossible. Ones with a different kind of base drug had the same story, small dose didn't work. Higher dosages left me so much in a stupor I couldn't function.

He got a psychiatrist to recommend 'something different'. That put me to sleep, and I stayed asleep, I heard the cry, but slept right on through. Was almost awake when I shut off my alarm clock. Slept through what breakfast I was able to eat. Slept through however I got to work and didn't really wake up until after 2:00pm.

When I really woke up and thought about how I'd gotten to work, that scared the crap out of me. I don't take those pills anymore, but I saved that bottle of pills to use if I really have too. Then only on a weekend or when I wouldn't have to go anywhere the next day.

The next trial of sleeping pills was the worst possible. They seemed to work, but in the week that I'd taken them; crying fits, trying to break my teeth clenched in anger, thoughts of going home and ending it all. I threw that bottle away. Doctor Robertson and I decided that I'm not a sleeping pill kind of girl.

He recommended going to a counselor. Who listen to me for part of a session and sent me to a psychiatrist, Dr. Janet Everson.

I really like her and we get along great. But we've tried everything that she can think of except Electro-Shock Therapy, nothing has really worked. Especially on that wailing cry, nothing has really touched that. I heard it even through the deepest sleep I could get on those sleeping pills, or that drug induced coma.

Janet's even tried helping me with hypnosis. First we tried to block the cry and the waking away. That didn't work, and we found that I'm somewhat resistant to hypnosis, trying to get anything to last past a day didn't work. But if I can find a hypnotist who'll come by my house at 2:30am every morning and put me back to sleep, it would work.

Now I just listen to the women's wailing cry, each and every morning. Get my two plus hours sleep that I can. Then when I can get any small break, I do deep meditation's to get back as much energy as I can.

After the vomiting started it really knocked me for another loop, and medications won't even touch that.

So I live on...

The solitary cry is strong as it pierces the darkening sky shot through with gold, oranges, and pinks. My mind opens in amazement, it's always been the heat of the day and the rising of dust. This is evening at the setting of the sun, and her powerful voice. She's a woman full grown but young and strong. The falling sun and colors silhouette the flat tops of the Acacia trees. The keening warbling cry is more structured, more paced. Someone old has died...someone loved but expected to has died.

My mind is buried in a much younger Jeremy. So much so that I forget and almost don't make it to the wastebasket. Almost crying I fall back trying to get back to that younger Jeremy in my mind. 2:17am, nineteen months and sixteen days since Jeremy left me. TPN is rebuilding my body some, 85lbs my yesterday mind tells me.

I smile as my mind watches the much younger Jeremy run around the corner of his parents house on Collier street. My body tightens to chase him, bunches to jump into the run. It fades...but I remember.

I've known Jeremy for a long time. That's part of what makes what I did so unbelievable and so very sad. I met Jeremy in grade school, in the sixth grade. We were never great buddies or best friends. But we were always around each other, somewhere around.

Later in high school we didn't run in the same circles. He was an artist and I was a cheerleader and a jock. We were never romantically anything. But we were always around.

That's how I looked at the before part of our life, before we were married. We were always around each other, in a way we always watched each other. I thought of us as two planets that revolved around each other. Always opposite, always turning in tightening circles. Each of us knowing that when it was time, we would meet in the middle and touch, join. That's how it was meant to be, and that's what happened.

It can't be said that Jeremy courted me, in turn it can't be said that I seduced Jeremy. It was just time...and we met in the middle. Married and stayed joined.

Until the day that I had an implosion in my brain and flew off in some unknown direction. That was not suppose to be, was never meant to be. Never should have been.

I will wish for that back with every thought in my mind, every breath that I take. Every beat of my heart, for the rest of all time...and I know that Jeremy will never come back to me.

I know this...

I feel my voice joining one I can almost...recognize in the wailing cry. The strong, young, full grown woman. Our voices rise as one, cry out into the sun baked dust and wind. The dancing wind that carries waves out into the tall grasses. That also carries our crying keen out passed the trees. Wailing, keening, undulating, sharp and powerful the keening cry, rising and falling. My body jolts as another voice joins our cry. It's young, so very very young. Her voice is sharp but unformed, tinny but crying. Heart breaking in its song. She's too young to have a place here among the women's' circle, but no one comes to stop her. Our joint cry rises and falls, a wailing, warbling, keen.

When her tiny hand slides into mine my heart swells with love...and sorrow for the dead.

As I roll back from the wastebasket, the thought is in my mind, 'the African dream is getting stronger, more vivid, more real.' 2:19am, twenty two months and seventeen days since Jeremy left me. 89lbs was what is left of me yesterday. But the numbers don't count, ha, ha, numbers don't count. I guess it's that they don't matter.

What matters is energy, and mine doesn't count up to be enough. I don't have; a love life, a social life, a family life, a pet. I don't have enough energy too. I haven't had a period in almost a year and a half. My body doesn't have enough left to give.

I don't do much besides work and try to survive. I have to eat several small meals at different times during the day. Trying to keep enough down, long enough, to do some good. I get a home health nurse once a day to pump me full of TPN. She comes right after I get home from work. They still don't understand why I can't gain weight.

I'm thankful that I have an attached garage. Less distance to walk, I also have an assigned parking space at work, to have less distance to walk there too. I also have a housekeeper that comes in and does the heavy cleaning.

I guess works' been the highlight of my life, AJ, after Jeremy. They've been better than I expected them to be. First off, they didn't fire us. Throughout all my medical problems they've kept me working. I don't need the money, but I 'do' need to keep doing something. Just for my mind if for no other reason. Some other things have changed at work though.

Now I have a small office away from passing casual traffic. I understand, they don't want people to see me. To be honest I don't either, some people are just rude enough to stare. People who need me and know me, know where I'm at. With the phone I can reach any where I need to, and anyone can reach me.

E-mail covers most of my correspondence, what hard copy I need to do is either picked up or delivered by interoffice carriers.

My body is in trouble and if I must be honest, my mind is too.

But I can still do my job. My mind is still clear and concise enough for that. I get my projects done on time or some even early. Even still get the occasional bit of praise for a 'job well done'. Co-workers that need my help can still come to me, and get the help they needed.

I'm polite and courteous, friendly to almost everyone. Talkative, even occasionally laughing. In short, if you didn't know my story. You'd think that I was a normal woman suffering with severe anorexia or bulimia. Not a scarlet woman whose mind and body are tearing her apart. I don't feel like that scarlet woman either.

I'm remorseful and I know that what I've done is wrong. Probably no more than any other woman would be. I'm not burying myself in tears on my pillow.

But my body keeps tearing me apart and I can't stop it. I'm so very very tired, so very tired.

The wailing cry breaks through the dawn. As both my mind and my body stumble to rise to the sorrow of the new day. I feel the urgency and duty to be out and join in the lament. The inside of the hut is still in the deep of night. But outside the blue of dawn is pushing the night back.

I feel the small form stirring behind me as I move through the huts' opening. Smell the smoke of newly started fires, hear the rustling of bodies, the quiet murmurs in the huts I pass. I come to the opening in the village where the voice is rising, keening, undulating. Only to fall as I join in the wail for the dead. Push power and volume into my cry as the other joins in again.

Wailing, crying, keening the lament rises, warbling rising to wash the new day in sorrow. I feel the others as they gather around us wanting to know who's passed. Feel little girl as she stands behind me, watching me as my voice rises with the dawn.

As my body spasms, ejecting its contents and bile into that wastebasket. I feel a commonality with the African woman who started her day in death and sorrow. While mine starts in disgust and embarrassment, complete loss of dignity. Interrogators and torturers should realize the massive indignity, and dehumanizing power of vomit. Their subjects would soon be begging to tell all their secrets, just make it stop...please. PLEASE make it stop. But me and life goes on.

2:19am, 28 months and nine days since Jeremy left me. 94lbs and the thought of that brings me a little cheer, I might get back to 100lbs yet.

I never understood that, why Jeremy served papers on both Eric and I. Then dropped the ones on Eric a couple of days later. He did it just to prove a point. I might have finally realized what that point was, in one of my night time soliloquy's.

He wanted everyone to know that Eric had been involved, and he did that by filing the papers. But in dropping them before any legal action was taken. He told Eric that he just wasn't worth it. That in the bigger picture Eric, himself, was inconsequential. Just. Not. Worth. Anything.

That is just like Jeremy being his cerebral self. But in Eric, he might have missed his mark. A subtle thinker is not a part of Eric, but others might have understood.

I understood the rest of what he was doing.

In our divorce; papers, settlement, language, everything. Jeremy made one thing perfectly clear. He left everything here for me, except the money and a small part of our investments that he took as pocket change, on that first day. Then he took himself and his future away from me. He left everything that he didn't need or want behind, including me. But he left a lot for me, and even before I read the divorce papers, I knew he would.

Jeremy wasn't really mad or angry at me. Not in the violent or do damage kind of way. Sure he was hurt and angry, but mostly just sad, so very sad. A very soul deep kind of sad, the almost debilitating sorrow that come from extreme loss. That's what I saw in his eyes, in that parking lot, on that last day.

That's part of the key. When Jeremy saw me and Eric. 'I' stopped for Jeremy, and everything that he's done after that moment has been for Jeremy. Jeremy didn't leave me destitute because I didn't deserve it. He didn't, because the kind of man that he envisions himself as, never would. Plus he will always strives to 'be' that kind of man.

In Jeremy's logical mind what he left me was everything of the past and the 'home' that we had. What he took was himself and his future, and the outside money.

Yes, the outside money, what of that. When Jeremy first started to do painting internationally, we reasoned, why even bring that money into the states. So we didn't and we started an account in Switzerland. With the intention of it being a kind of emergency fund. But we found that we didn't need to use it at all. When Jeremy started doing some work in the far east. We opened an account in Japan, and that grew. Lastly we opened one of the more 'traditional off-shore accounts' in the islands.

Neither of the lawyers knew anything about these accounts, nor did the judge. I didn't tell about them either. Could I have gotten half of that money, probably. But I didn't really want to, that was Jeremy's part. I have never done any international work with Jeremy. I just got to go with him on vacations. The money in those accounts was his.

I know that most of the women and all the lawyers in the world are screaming at me right now. But I really do think of it as Jeremy's money, besides I'm the one who killed the golden goose. Why should I get half the harvest.

I guess part of that attitude comes from both Jeremy's and my feelings about money. You use money to buy things you want or need. That's what it's for. When you have more money than you need, you squirrel your nuts away for the hard winter or the possible drought. Once you got more nuts then you could ever possibly eat. What do you do, stack it up and count it. Build it up like brownie points and merit badges.

So what do you care when your half is more than you'll ever use. I got the too huge house that we had. I sold it and downsized, partly to get rid of the constant reminders of us.

I got the cabin at the lake, it's really quite a large house. But I kept it for the memories, the ones there are beautiful and I want to know that they're still there. I know that I'll never use it or go there again, but it's still mine in my mind. The vehicles we had I downsized too, into one small one. I ended up keeping about a quarter of my wardrobe. Mementos and pictures I kept, the rest I cleaned out and started over.

Or at least I tried too. But my body and my subconscious mind won't let me.

At the end of the divorce they told me I was worth about 5.5 million. I don't care, I'd give it all up for Jeremy. Or to get my mind and body back, but I can't. Jeremy still got the bigger half, and that's as it should be.

The tired cry starts again, wailing, keening, warbling, rising. It's many voices, but fewer than it should be. Most are tired of the cry, of the song for the dying, lament for the dead. A few voices are still strong as we cry out our duty to the dead.

My friend the young woman, her voice is still powerful and true. I match mine to hers and we become the leaders in the song of death. A song that we have sang far too much lately. Her and I raise the trill of the keen higher, and the others try to follow.

We moved as soon as the sickness started. But it was quick and we started the songs before we could move many away. We moved farther up into this river country. We sang the cry on the way up to this camp. We sang a few as we built the huts, and the people worried that we'd have to move again. Lately we've had to sing less, so the people aren't as worried. We still have the cattle close as they stir because of our cry, our wail. I can hear them in the dust and the grasses. She and I push the song up higher again, wailing, crying, trill the keen notes higher and higher, then let it start to fall...