The Spinning Wheel of Pills & Doom

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Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s time to play The Spinning Wheel of Pills and Doom! The only game show that starts with pills and ends with DOOM! Step on up and spin the wheel and see what hand the universe deals ya.

We literally played roulette with his life.

Round and round it goes, where it stops… Nobody Knows!

Oh hey! First game up for Contestant #1 is everyone’s favorite, The Spinning Wheel of Clinical Trial Madness. Oh, that’s some bad luck right there, son, it landed on black 13, the most experimental of all the clinical trial drugs.

We were less than happy with our spin on the wheel, it was like winning a lifetime supply of Uncle Ben’s on The Price is Right. No super deluxe washer and dryer for us. No magic pills either.

Come on son, you gotta be in it to win it! Look! It’s March 17th, the luckiest day of the year. We like your odds. Oh, but wait, your hand is a bust, your scratch-off rubby reveals your tumors have grown two to three times in size, but that’s okay, we’ve spun the wheel for you and oh, oops, we landed you in the insurance escape room, but just for playing we have these super non-effective pills you’ll have to take until you can escape the insurance escape room of horrors and the insurance company lets you spin the Spinning Wheel of Pills and Doom again.

Oh, and these pills? They are going to make you uber sick while doing nothing to stop the cancer from growing.

We waited and we hoped the wheel would turn our way.

Hey! Welcome back to the show! We’re so glad you made it out of the insurance escape room portion of the game.

Yup! We called it, those last pills didn’t do a damn thing.

Oh, hey! Wait! Don’t quit now, all your phone-a-friend friends are still out there and now we have this magic potion for you to try. Oh, but, wait, what was that in the fine print? No, the magic potion doesn’t grow magic beanstalks, but it will help you feel better and get a few deceptively good months in. Oh, but you didn’t read the teeny, tiny, print at the very bottom of your contract. You’ll feel better and the tumors will grow at a slower pace, but so will all the new tumors that have now joined the game.

I was sure the magic potion was our miracle drug, the ugly bitch Hope moved into my head during the wonderful days.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Round 4!

Yeah, that magic potion wasn’t so magic after all. But, hey! Here are some more pills for you.

Buzzer sound!

We’re very sorry, time is up and there are no more pills. You’ve lost the Spinning Wheel of Pills and Doom.

Thanks for playing, we have this nice light blue coffin as your consolation prize.

Tune in tomorrow at the same ghoulish time, on the same ghoulish channel.

#WriteALife

Would I have loved you anyway?

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Would I have loved you anyway if I knew it would end this way?

Would I have run so hard to you?

Would I have loved you so fearlessly?

If I had known it would end like this would I have kissed you with my eyes closed so tight?

Would I have believed it even if a gypsy told me it would end this way?

Would I have loved you so fearlessly without reservation?

Would I have given myself to you so freely?

Would I have?  What would I have done?

Would I have risked this ache? This loss?

Would it have been easier to quit before the game began?

          I always believed my soul would know your soul no matter how dark it was or how far away. I don’t know if I believe that now.

where are you?

Would the loss have been less profound if I knew the endgame upfront?

                Would I have put my pieces on the board?

                                Would I have suited up and gotten in the game?

I wonder, would I have longed for your presence? Your warm light?

Would I have ached for your blessing?

                Would I have missed your smile?

                                What if we never met?

                                                What if I hadn’t dove in with such total abandon?

WHAT IF I HADN’T BELIEVED I COULD WILL YOU TO LIVE?

I don’t know. I want to believe I’d be all ride or die with you by my side, but I don’t know…

                                                Would I have chosen the path of 20 good years together or would I have taken an unknowable path? Rolling the dice, hoping all paths don’t lead to loss and sorrow?

Is loving fearlessly a direct path to sorrow?

I don’t know. I don’t have any answers. The one true thing I can tell you is this,

I didn’t fear love when I said, I do and signed on the dotted line to be there until the end…

AND, I WAS.

On Faith…

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Author’s Note

I’ve been thinking about faith a lot in the past few years. I spent hours last night working on a piece. This is not that piece. This is an anaphora poem from tonight’s first Unspoken Ink prompt.  Poetry is not my genre either, so I’m all sorts of out of my comfort zone in tonight’s writings.

I figure if I keep thinking and writing I will eventually get my head, my heart, and my soul right.

On Faith

Faith is belief in things unseen.

Faith is believing you don’t have to go through this alone.

Faith is knowing he will raise you up on the last day.

Faith is wondering where he is during the fall.

Faith is hoping like hell that’s a ball pit down there while you’re falling.

Faith is swimming against the current when your arms gave out ten miles ago.

Faith is knowing with every fiber of your being that going to find the shore.

Faith is making it to shore and having no idea where to go next or how to get there.

Faith is lighting smoke signals every day in the hopes you will be found.

Faith is continuing on barefoot and alone.

Faith is continuing to walk even though you don’t know the way.

Faith is wondering who crashed the plane and if the pilot survived.

Faith is wondering where he is.

Faith is lighting another Goddamn smoke signal fire.

Faith is knowing a rescue (answers) may never come but walking on and lighting fires anyway, because you have faith there will come a road that will lead you home.

Faith is belief in things unseen.

The Space Between Memories (Where grief lives)

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Author’s Note

The thing they don’t tell you about death and grieving is, you don’t just say goodbye once. You say goodbye at the hospital or hospice or wherever you are, you say goodbye when you leave the first viewing of the body at the funeral home, the night of the wake, the afternoon of the burial, the day you get up the courage and emotional wherewithal to donate his clothes, and a million other moments that you never understood were goodbyes until you’ve lost the one you love.

The Space Between Memories

What kind of life goes on in the space between memories? It’s the life where you do the work of living. It’s where you do the heavy lifting and the keepin’ on with the keepin’ on.

    Yesterday, I heard you say, “Made me laugh so hard” in that laughing tone your voice went to when you told me about something that amused you. It was so real it took my breath away. I turned to look for you, but you weren’t there.

I can’t get the memories of that last day out of my head and yet I make new memories, choose joy, question the will of God, and I live on, in the space between memories.

Today, I had all the papers you left behind shredded. I couldn’t complete the mission on my own so I called a mobile shredding truck to come finish the job. Twenty years of old bills, cancelled checks, pay stubs, and tax returns reduced to thousands of pieces of ephemera in a pile of trash bags that were gone in an instant. The house somehow feels emptier today. I didn’t expect that.

Through all these months of trying to shred it all myself, I cursed you, and yelled at you, I told you, “If you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you my damn self for leaving me with all this work.” I never expected to find myself standing on the driveway crying as the truck carrying the space between our memories drove away.

Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Suspicious Platitudes 

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If you’re looking for a way to make me angry all you have to do is utter these five words, EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON. I’m talking, STARK, RAVING, FUCKING MAD, kind of angry.

You do not get to collect $200, you do not get to pass GO, and you definitely don’t get to buy any properties on Boardwalk or Park Place if you look at me with those sad, sad eyes and tilted head while you say to me, EVERYTHING H APPENS FOR A REASON.

I want to yell, and scream, and ask, what fucking reason could there be for us both to get cancer, and what possible reason could there be for me to get it twice? What possible reason could there be for Chuck to die? What was he? Some kind of sacrificial fucking lamb? Are you out of your fucking mind? What the hell is wrong with you?

                           But…

In quiet moments, the thought does creep into my battered brain, that cancer and grief actually did make me a better person. My friend Angel says, the universe tosses pebbles; then, if you don’t notice the pebbles it throws rocks then finally boulders if it hasn’t gotten your attention yet.

A whole freaking avalanche had to fall on me for me to finally notice and see myself. A myself, I really love. It took digging out from under the pebbles, and rocks, and boulders, and icy, cold snow, and rubble of the disastrous turn my life took, for me to acknowledge and accept my own self-worth. So, I guess EVERYTHING DOES HAPPEN FOR A REASON.

                                       But…

You, yes, you, there in the back, with the sad, sad, eyes, goofy smile and tilted head; if you tell me, EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON, I will still shout obscenities and throw plates at you. You’ve been warned.