potential...

This last few weeks, I have experienced and witnessed deep personal pain, I have sat with a woman whose daughter is terminally ill and who’s asking all those questions we’re all prone to ask in the face of such agony. Go on, you know the kind, ‘she has never drank or smoked or slept with lots of men, why would she have cancer?’ oi, before you think I’m judging you, I am quoting her verbatim. You see in her era (mate, she’s about a century old, go figure), you had to deserve big illnesses like those. Remember that’s the generation of little and not so little old men who smoked like chimneys and are now in every ward I visit, with emphysema, COAD, lung cancer or some other disease that is directly related to smoking. And while these were sad cases, you could see how they got there, or the Alco’s now dying of cirrhosis or alcohol related dementia who lived on the bottle, and while everyone feels sorry for them, there is the underlying, ‘they worked for it’ mentality, which is quite sad I reckon, but you know, that’s just me.

Then look at the cases of the fires both in nakuru and nakumatt, my heart broke into a million little pieces just hearing about those in the news here and on radio online, and I just thought of all the shortcuts we take that are really so expensive, like skimping on fire exits and that while it costs so much human life. It really is sad, about the trailer, I wont even go there cos I think I’m still in shock..


Anyway, I have also had the torture of witnessing on my telly screen the last one week the utter devastation of the people in Victoria who have pretty much lost entire livelihoods and/or families as a result of fires that it now seems were, in some cases the handiwork of some sad sods somewhere who decided it just might be a good idea to light up on a complete fire ban day, to build some excitement (a large part of me hopes they perished in the fire after cooking slowly for five days, but I am not bitter, no, not me. Not even the sight of a man mourning his wife and kids on public telly moved me, I’m hardcore like that, lol. And just in case you missed or thought you misread the intense sarcasm, it was very very intended).

Today, in true vein of the last coupla weeks, was a double whammy. One of the residents I like best (if he was at least 40 years younger I would pursue him like a woman possessed, but you know me I’d probably admire him from a distance, lolest , but I better get to the main point before y’all nod off to death or collapse at the thought that I may be confessing to be in love with a 92 year old man!) who is one of the most sensitive and caring men I know (by sensitive I don’t mean he cries at the movies or some such crap, I’m talking about the ability to pick up on people’s feelings even when the said people are trying valiantly to hide the said feelings, he picked up on my depression, and the cause of it in a heartbeat) just lost a very good friend, and when I in true me fashion, was walking past, I decided to stop and ask how he was doing, and he told me he was feeling really low cos it was a really sudden death and all the rest, and we talked about his wife and some new treatment that is giving him some hope for her, a woman he is deeply in love with btw, lol. (duh! He’s only been married to her since he was twenty six!).

Second whammy was of course one of my other favouritest residents( oh, I have like seven, but who says you can’t have more than one favouritest….. ) who had found a lump in her breast and been told by the doctor that it wasn’t a lump was today told that alas, it was one cause the doctor just accidentally forgot to check the actual breast, and just checked under her arm and so today he checked the real breast, and oops, he decided to give her a week to think about whether she wanted to know if it was malignant or not, and of course she just had to make me cry by telling me ‘ the first thing I thought when he told me was, ‘where is Colleta? She has to be working here somewhere…’’ It was so hard for me but I just sat there and held her hand and reassured her as best as I could, and swallowed my tears until I left the room, but when I got back to my ward , good old cin was there with a hug, God bless her heart.

Whats the point of this here blog? Your guess is as good as mine, but I have seen remarkable people in the midst of all these tears, people who reach deep into their hearts and show nobility beyond the call of humanity. And I think I just want to say that really, when it all comes down to it, humans are capabhle of really anything. I mean, think about it, a human hand caused all that suffering, and the loss of 180+ lives, and human hands are responsible for the more than 70 million dollars raised to aid those affected by the said pain. Today I stand aware that I bear the potential for both terrible acts and terrific ones. I stand capable of hurting, and of healing those that are hurt. I stand capable of the most shocking back stabbing, and capable of being the wind beneath the wings of those I meet, and I make a conscious decision to use that potential for good. To put a smile where I can, and where I cant, to hold the smile for the hurt, until they are capable of holding it themselves….
I choose to see the good in the horrible, to be that annoying little miss sunshine that we all secretly wish we could strangle, lol, but within reason, cause life really is too short!