A life worth living

When i was a young boy my mother taught me the sign language sign for "I love you". It was our special little thing neither of us were deaf but it was our special way of saying it to each other. I passed this on to my son but we have our own special thing I squeeze his hand 3 times and he squeezes mine back. Those are two things I will remember until the day I die.

Cancer is a car wreck. One day you are planning a camping trip with your friends and it comes smashing in to change your life. June 2011 I received the call from my sister saying momma is sick. My mother had symptoms of pneumonia but when the doctors scanned her lungs they diagnosed her with stage 4 lung cancer. My mother was given six months to live. Two weeks later she took her last breath. It was fast and aggressive and painful. I stayed by her side for the duration. The woman who was always so strong and my rock needed me and I'm so thankful I was able to be by her side. When faced with terminal cancer you really don't have many options other than to get ready and unfortunately for some people its a very painful indefinite amount of time. The last two weeks of my moms life were spent either in pain or so medicated she didn't know what was going on around her. I'm thankful that her passing was so fast because I cant imagine her having to go through that for months or even years like some people have to. She said it felt like she was being squeezed to death and every breath she took felt shorter than the last and she was scared because she didn't know how long and how tough it was going to be. Hospice was involved but they were there to "make her comfortable" which is basically saying they would medicate her to the point her pain was gone but that meant she would be so tired and incoherent it was basically for us just waiting for her to pass. She was so afraid of being helpless, she was always such a strong bullheaded woman. The thought of having some stranger bathe her and help her use the facilities angered her, but she would not have had the family do it because to her that would have been that much worse. She was afraid not of dying but of losing her dignity. I'm positive that if her fight had gone on longer she would have been miserable, but again we were lucky time was on our side. In the middle of struggling to breathe she looked at me and gave me the "I love you" sign. I have never cried out of true sadness and love at the same time as I did when I signed it back.

Oregon has a die with dignity law which allows a person who is in pain and terminal the ability to pass on their own terms without having to suffer through pain which cannot be healed. It also allows that person to opt not to be in a state for the rest of their life that doesnt allow them the quality of a life worth living. My mother did not want to be on life support, in pain for the rest of her life but that is exactly what would have happened if her cancer had not been so aggressive. She would have lost her dignity, and her life which nobody should have to do. I hope that if I am ever in that position I wont have to rely on 3 squeezes to tell my son I love him because im too weak or medicated.


There is a documentary called "How to die in Oregon" which explains this with much more information and grace than i do. but personal stories are how you can get the word out so thats why I wrote this. I fully support the right to die with dignity.
Love to all

https://www.facebook.com/howtodieinoregon?fref=ts
http://www.deathwithdignity.org/

Its time to wake up.

When you dream are you aware that you are dreaming? Have you ever experienced things in a dream that you cannot explain? how physics works how things work? Have you ever had the feeling that someone was watching your every move? have you ever considered that you are the one watching you? Belief in positive thinking or prayer has been thought to bring favorable outcomes,
 have you considered that this is your brain attempting to control your dream? Perhaps you are scared to wake up because this is the best dream you have ever had. Or maybe this is a nightmare and you cant wake up from it. Or perhaps you simply just don't know you're dreaming. Either way we cannot dream forever there is always a time one needs to WAKE UP. Deja vu, its not some mystical occurrence or trick your brain plays on you, it's your brain feeding actual information into your dream. Have you ever met someone who reminded you so much of someone you already know. That's because you know a finite number of people in your real life and your mind recycles the attributes of those people into the vast number of characters in your dream. Your real life is waiting for you. Don't be scared. Consider this, If in fact this whole vast life you think you have been living were a dream and you either wanted to or needed to wake up your self conscience would design a method of you to either wake yourself up or to inform you that it was in fact a dream. If that was the case I did not write this blog you did. This is a scary premise yes, but with this truth comes a bit of comfort, all the bad things are not real, they have simply manifested here by your own fears leaking into your dream. All the good things in this "life" come from within you and seeing how in this world you have made good defeat evil. You are inherently a good person allowing your goodness, your virtue and your own happiness from your heart overcome the only real evil there is, your own fear. Acknowledge that you have learned the lesson you needed to learn from this slumber and your eyes will open to the real world.... Did you sleep well?

The soundtrack to overthinking...

fyi this blog has a soundtrack, you can listen to what i was listening and curbing my direction of thought i added the songs to the blog. download them and listen to them while reading...

{matchbox 20 "3am"}When i first started working at the plant i worked straight nights as a patrol officer. Since then i have been promoted through the ranks and have my own shift, i work weekends but at least its a day shift. I have forgotten why i hated night shift so much until tonight. Another supervisor departed from the {trapt "headstrong} company and i was forced to take on his night shift tonight. sure nothing goes on, its cooler, and there are no upper management around to hassle you. but the most distracting thing is stronger than ever in these conditions. your own mind. when left alone and forced to stay awake your mind makes up scenarios and situations, {dire straights "fade to black"} analysis and comparisons, what ifs and how comes. these can be devastating to someone who thinks as much as myself. which is why i listen to music. i have an mp3 player with about 900 songs loaded on it, switched on random and playing. the problem with this is , after you put on a private concert for yourself you start listening to the songs and applying them to your life. {johnny cash "ring of fire"} you start to wonder what these songwriters were thinking about while they came across their inspirado. were they sitting around in their own loathing listening to music or were they actually living life.... Maybe that's my problem, i really need a life. i mean i have a life but its an old persons life. dont get me wrong i love my son and there is nothing that would separate me from him. but in all actuality Im the equivalent to an old maid. i work all day and take care of my son when Im at home. and i also go to school so the old maid has shit on me. i have no time for a personal life and that sucks because i really feel that {guns and roses "patience"} void in my life..... 'sidebar what a strange song to come on at this point in my rant. perhaps the music gods are telling me something. maybe i just need a little patience. ' i need a connection with another person. that sappy, so sweet it makes my stomach hurt something. the same feeling Im sure some of you out there have felt before, or are feeling right now, to those of you that are,,,, u suck,,, that's from all of us that are longing to feel that way. U know what and Im tired of people telling me to stop looking for someone. to just learn to love myself.... i love myself just fine i like me Im pretty awesome. {Jerry lee Lewis "great balls of fire"} ---hey shut up he paved the way for alot of modern rock. ... where was i... oh yeah Im awesome, and if you stop looking and someone else isn't looking how the hell would anyone ever hookup. Im being proactive, besides how are you going to appreciate finding something "in this case someone" {brooks and dunn"lost and found in a border town"} if you were never looking for it , that's like saying hey stop looking for your remote control and learn to love getting off the couch and changing the channel manually, well channel surfing sucks when you have to bend over for half an hour...... I dont really know where i was going with that analogy but Im sure some of you can make some sense of it and Im sure the ladies loved being compared to a remote control, but in this way let me ease that over, in many ways your like a remote control to us, if your not there we definitely notice and we will wonder where you are unless sportscenter is on, you make our lives easier, and we are most comfortable with you in our laps. ... "jk ladies" "hi 5 guys".

Love in the time of technology.

Today with the modern inventions of cell phones, palm pilots, email on the go, and twittering the dating world has started changing and evolving into a much different beast than we have all been accustomed to. There was a time when the courting part of a relationship lasted longer than it takes for your third text message to send through the sms system. There was a time when we met, we adored from afar, we made contact, then we had dinner. Then it was time to let the other person know what we thought of them, we mailed them a letter, perhaps this is where the whole 3 day rule came from with standard postage it would take about 3 days for your message of adoration to make it to your beloved. Now all that can sometimes and more often than not happens in about thirty seconds. Perhaps we feel the need to rush into things faster these days. Wendy’s resturaunt cooks and delivers your food to you in under 2 minutes, this is just another sign of our lack of patience and short attention span. We have tivo record our favorite shows and we fast forward through the commercials because we want our show faster. We have the world cater to our every desire. This has overflowed into our dating lives. We want to know everything about the person as soon as possible so we can get our agenda accomplished sooner than ever. Some of us want the wham bam thank you ma’am. The sooner we text you a few times, call you for a date, woo your pants off and leave before the sun comes up the better. And some of us want to fall in love so fast we desire to know every little thing about the other person and this can be devastating to a relationship for two reasons. 1 we find everything out too soon, we get married and find out 2 years down the road there is nothing else we care to find out about this person so we move on to the next. 2 too much information too soon can be bad too, say you don’t like something about someone on Monday but Wednesday you find it completely endearing. You don’t like how your guy peels his labels off his soda but you later find out it was how his grandfather peeled them when he would visit him in the summer. You don’t like how your gal wont talk to you late at night but then you find out its because she is self conscious about talking with her retainer in because it makes her sound funny which you really end up loving. We have such a short attention span now that we don’t let these things develop into quirks that we love anymore. I myself am guilty of moving on past someone and later realizing how great that person was. Im sure you have too. Back to the letter writing, when we are allowed to write a letter there is a certain personal touch when written, it shows your flaws or accents your good points if you spell words correctly in a written letter its because you know how to spell or are conscious enough to look them up in a dictionary there is no spell check or red squiggles under your mistakes. Also we are free to really express ourselves uninterrupted and completely bleed ourselves onto the paper. So perhaps the next time you are smitten by someone you should hold back on finding everything out on your lunch break, sit down, write them a letter, and let yourself fall in an old fashioned way.