Julia part 4: 12 silent..... awkward..... seconds

It's ok to get pissed.  Im learning that now.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't wanna live that way (thats a whole other blog).  But putting on.... happy-shiny-people every time a bomb goes off... ain't healthy either.      

My home base at work these days is the bathroom. (sometimes I hide there to keep from going nuts). In fact, I spend a lot of time there... and gossip abounds as to what I actually do in there.

 But one thing that I began doing somewhere along the way was reading some of the old ancient Hebrew texts.... in the bible.... (among other books)...

Not in a pious.... churchy way...  But more from desperation...  It was either that... or start taking Prozac......  (I ended up doing both.).

What I found is that I learned a lot about some of the great blues artists of the mid to late bronze/early iron period... (2000-500 BCE).

Just like playing the blues, some of the great historical figures in the Jewish tradition have voiced doubts about their faith.

David (a central figure in Judaism) didn't mind saying exactly how he felt.... Anger... Rage... Fear...

David was one of the first (in writing) to question Gods where-abouts... in a messed up world.

(a very Jewish Jesus echoes those same fears... word for word during his own death).

Job... Begs for death.  Gets sarcastic with his friends... angry with both them and God.....Makes all kinds of demands!!!

A Jewish poet, after watching his country raped and pillaged...... (very young children and old people... displaced.... or brutally discarded....)
writes the seething words to a psalm of hatred and revenge... Not only to Isreals enemies... But also to their enemies children...

Infants...

"a reward to the ones who grab YOUR babies and smash THEIR heads on the rocks".... (Msg).  

Brutal. Ugly... Vengeful.... (Not the Jesus way)...  But honest none the less.

Imagine that this dude was a survivor of 9/11.  Imagine he made it from one of the towers only to watch people escaping the fire above... by free-falling  to the pavement below.  What if this dude witnessed an unspeakable brutality occurring to his own people... maybe his close friends... his own family.... His children...?

In the Jewish world.... this song makes sense... not because it's an answer to the problem... But because it's a true expression of the pain.  In fact..... In the Jewish world... Not only does this song make sense..... it actually makes the Jewish hymnal. (Psalm 137).

Anger!  Hate!  Jealousy!  Payback!!  All part of the Jewish tradition...  All a part of the confessions of their fear and pain and doubt...

ie...."I'm hurt... And I'm pissed.... And I want to know what the F... is going on..."

There's no inappropriate starting place in the Jewish world... It's all a part of the all too real... life (and consequent faith) that make up who they are as people in a jacked up world.

It's the human experience... in all of its ugliness.... and so it's all a part of their blues.

                          •

That said..... it's the opposite of everything I know from my past religious experience.

In my religious world..... it seems that I always had to pretend to know things I didn't know... feel things that I didn't always feel...

*Or not feel the things that I did.... (ie... puberty... adolescence)...   

I was supposed to have easy answers to difficult questions... be evangelical... conservative.... republican..

I was never to question my traditions and beliefs...  I wasn't to be a truth seeker but more of a "cheerleader" for the cause...

When it came to good and bad... I was supposed to (selectively) bootstrap morality....... (they would show you what was important... and what wasn't).. and then fake the rest of it.  No questions.  No doubts.  whatever fell outside of "appropriate"... was kept locked up inside...  Locked and loaded for the inevitable meltdown to come.

                         •

Back in the break room it was starting to get awkward.  12 seconds since Julia had asked me wether I believed in God.  12.....silent...... awkward seconds.

Watchers around us were getting up to leave.  Friends of mine...  "Religious" people who knew my issues and struggles.  Leaving me there alone...  afraid to hear the worst.

But Julia remained with me.  Julia was still waiting on my response....

                        •

A lot of crap goes down in the world.

* Some readers of this blog have reminded me that some of this stuff is depressing........  Then I remind them that it's a "Blues" blog).  

I've seen a lot of crap as a nurse (literally in some cases).  Some of it stays with me...... some of the things that come to mind...

-My first dying patient.

-The time a nurse flung poo onto my undershirt.  (we were cleaning a patient up.... and it was accidental..................I think..).

-the time I had to tell a woman that her sister (who had down syndrome) had unexpectedly died while she was downstairs getting coffee. 

But consistently when I think about nursing shockers... my mind returns to my lady in room 7616.

I was clocking in one day when I 1st heard about her and immediately I was shocked... Then I went numb.

Did you hear about what happened to your lady in 16?  a friend had asked.

I just looked at her.  It felt like I was listening to some celebrity "news" show on TV.

She had to go to the Unit last night. She said.

I was blank and asked her how she was doing.... and she answered... "she didn't make it".

My hands were instantly sweaty and I could feel a wave of heat growing up from behind me.... like standing on the 40th floor of a building on fire....  The no win choice.... burn??? or jump???  I bootstrapped my way through a response.  "I thought she was in remission".... I said.

It wasn't the cancer....  She answered.  Most likely a PE

(pulmonary embolus.... blood clot to the lungs).  

That's ironic isn't it?  she asked....  To find out one day you're gonna live.... and then the next.... that you're not.

I was making my way to the report room dazed... and it felt like the weight of what it feels like when you stand too close to a collapsing building.  But without noticing I shifted into protection mode and made a detour to the bathroom.  I took my book "Catcher in the Rye".  And as I sat there on the toilet I read about how Holden Caufield was leaving everyone....

And I read about how he was talking to his kid-sister Pheobe about a dream that he had once where he was standing in a Rye field.. watching some kids play near a cliff.... And in the
dream.... he told her.... it was his job to catch these kids before they fell over the edge of the cliff....  He was a "Catcher in the Rye".... And that was the part of the book I was reading while I was sitting on the toilet in the bathroom.  And I was trying to read it while my name was being called overhead.... because somebody needed their damn pillow adjusted.... or something stupid like that.   And even though I couldn't fully explain why.......   I felt like I wanted to scream.  And I could feel the wave of emotion welling up in my chest like a heart attack.  But just like the religious world I knew... everything was locked down tight.... nothing could get out..... maybe because I was broken inside... or maybe it was that evolving... thickened layer of skin that nurses have.... or maybe it was just the damn Prozac.


(Next.... Julia 5:  my answer).            

Julia (part 2): Deliverance..... (see below for Julia part 1).

How about you?  She said.  Do you believe in God?

I'm always amazed at how the mind can flash through a lifetimes worth of memories in just a few seconds.  My answer came out after several awkward seconds (felt like minutes).  And in the time it took between her question and my answer I thought of a bunch of (seemingly random) things... like...

my first kiss....

the time I pee'd my pants in right-field... (little league).

the day my father left....

But probably the most difficult thing was an unidentifiable thought splintered into a bunch of images...

a dark room... a bright distant light... running water.....

and then nothing.

blankness....

just an unnerving feeling of fear... and dread.

I have to admit that if God was all knowing (OMNIscient) all powerful (OMNIpotent)... and all the other OMNI's....  it didn't really make sense that everything was all so "fucked-up" like it was...  (That's how he had said it).        

My mind skipped again and conjured up an old conversation..

                         •

It was a few years ago and I was at work trying to get pain medicine for one of my patients.  And then out of no where I heard him say...  If there's a good God...  Then why is it all so fucked-up?

He was angry, and he said it with a Manford twang...  Okie-style.... like poke-salad and fried-potatoes with cornbread and beans.  His name was Scott and he was a redneck (..... and he was in a bad mood).  

When I first met Scott, he was scary... with a thick, scraggly beard.... like a mountain man in the movie "Deliverance".

It always seemed to me that he was a walking contradiction.  A nurse by trade but overly concerned with masculinity....

(as a man?...  you gotta know who you are before entering the nursing world....).  

*  He liked to randomly grab dudes from the hall and arm wrestle them like he were wrestling wild pigs... as if in some perverse way he had something to prove.    

The only time Scott had ever talked to me about God before was when he had told me that if there was a God that it was probably a big, giant, space-alien like the one on the TV show Stargate....  Just a creature like us... But more evolved... bigger and smarter than us....

In the med room, he had just got off the phone with his wife.  There was evidently some kind of crap he was dealing with but he didn't want to talk about it.  Instead he wanted to talk about God.      

                          •

I put my hand up... and gestured for him to wait a moment...  (told him... I'll be back), and went to give my patient her pain medicine.    When I walked into her room... I saw how sick she was.  Jaundiced pumpkin orange.  Her hair was still unshaved... in sparse strands from the Chemo.

As I gave her the drug she became more cheerful.

"I get my results back today", she had said. (She was talking about her bone marrow results.... She had Leukemia).

We'll certainly hope for the best, I had said to her...  (I said it from a thick, safe distance... I didn't like to get too close to patients).  She smiled at me through reddened... ulcerated lips.

                         •

When I returned to Scott, I gave him answers to his question.  They were good answers.  Smart answers.  I talked about free will and how God doesn't want a planet of robots, and I said things like "the crap in this world isn't God's fault.... It's our fault".

But as I was saying it, I was thinking that some crap that happened in the world was pretty bad crap.  And I thought about a young preteen girl who had recently made headline news when she was abducted on video by a man in broad daylight.

It's not God's fault... I had said to Scott, it's ours; and I remembered how I had prayed for the safety of that girl... almost like a test.  "If you're real God... then save this girl", I had said.  And I remembered how I had awakened the next day to more headline news and the discovery of the girls body.  And I thought of her family and the desperate pleas and prayers made on her behalf, and the hopes of an intervening God who might swoop down and rescue her as sometimes it appeared that he did with others.

I continued to talk to Scott... "Sometimes in God's providence.... he allows evil for the greater purpose of the forthcoming good", I said...  But as I said it I was thinking that maybe we were all alone in the world... And I thought that if God existed, I wondered where he was...  And I wondered what he was thinking and what he was doing.  And sometimes.. I wondered if he was even listening to us at all.

                         •

Julia was waiting across the table for my response... but to be honest... in that moment I didn't know what I believed.  It was like the next thing from my mouth would be my own ritual... a confession of faith (or doubt)... and as I tried to answer her, I felt myself slipping from my seat, out into the hall, and out the door.... Holden Caufield-style.... but then my mind flashed again with that same unidentifiable image...

a dark room.... a bright.. distant light... the sound of running water...

and then the awful feeling of pain... doubt... and fear....

and then nothing else.  (Part 3 to come)...

Julia (part I)

I started reading the book "Catcher in the Rye" a few years ago.  It's about a young dude (Holden Caufield) who eventually goes crazy.  But before he ends up in the looney bin, he decides to leave his life......  Check out...

Basically he just gets up and walks out.

Its a Great read...  A classic...  Also a little creepy.  Not the story itself but the fact that at least 3 different people (Rebecca Schaeffer...Ronald Reagan... John Lennon) have either been shot or killed by men (crazies) who say that they were reading the book while they were stalking their chosen celebrity.

The book, itself, has nothing to do with killing or murder.

("rational"..... Is not how crazy does things).

But that's the problem with crazy.  It's chaos (in the brain) causing chaos in (real life).  It's like a conversation I was having with a friend from work (her name is Julia).  

I remember we were sitting in the break room.  The television was on, and the crazies were yelling at me from down the hall.  There was a window across the room with a view of the park (and the psych hospital..... Parkside), and Julia was sitting quietly eating a whole-wheat muffin. 

The Today Show was running a story on Anne Rice who had evidently just developed a faith in God (or reignited an old faith.. -formerly catholic...).  And I was waiting for my lunch to be interrupted by some kind of chaos... or by one of my crazies walking down the hall naked (happens all the time).... when suddenly Julia looked at me and said..  I don't believe in God....  And she added.... And what's the deal with Santa Clause?

I have to admit that for a second I thought I was hearing the random thoughts in her head...... like maybe I was a mind reader..

But then she asked me if I had heard what she said, and with a mouth full of food, as I looked at her, I just nodded for her to continue talking (which I totally knew she wanted to do.... proof Im a mind reader) and she continued to talk.

I don't understand why any one would let their children believe in Santa Clause and God both, she said.  It's a lie.  If Santa's not real.... maybe God's not real.

Julia was a science girl...  She was a nurse... A good nurse..  But between the two themes most common in nursing (pastor/scientist)... Julia leaned heavily towards science.  In fact she liked all the sciences... Chemistry... Physics... Biology...

I wanted to respond to Julia but everything I thought of sounded like Forrest Gump...

I believe in Jesus.. Lieutenant Dan...

so I just asked her the first question that popped into my mind.  

Why don't you believe in God? I asked....

God's not really all that accessible is he?  She asked.  If there were a God.... Don't you think he would be a little easier to spot??? There's too much chaos in the universe, anyway...  randomness.  She said.  She was talking about physics. quantum particles... and stuff.  There were sounds coming from the hallway.  Shrieks.

How could there be a God with so much chaos?

I was about to speak when a call came from over head.

Jamie...  One of your patients needs you in the hall.

When I stepped out of the break room, I saw my patient.  A small grey wrinkled woman, saggy and deranged... heading quantum like down the hall towards us......... all wild eyed and naked.

As I walked towards her... I started trying to "sugar-talk" her back to her room....
(prepared to pick her up and carry her if necessary).

After securing her in bed...... (Posey vest)..... I returned to the break room.. But Julia was already gone....
No where to be found.

So I just sat down with my sandwhich, and began looking out the window with a view of the park (and Parkside)..... I was thinking about what it would be like to check out of my life like Holden Caufield from Catcher in the Rye.  But then Julia walked back in the room, sat down...... and then she asked me a question......

How bout you? She said.  Do you believe in God?

I thought about it for a long time before I spoke.  The answer to that question wasn't as easy as it once was.  And after a few seconds (that felt more like minutes), I looked at Julia and then I began to speak......