Witt's End

 Dear God, What are we going to do? I fret. I worry. I toss and turn. I can't lose the sleep that I'm not having. It's a forgone conclusion.  So I'm just talking. Without thinking. Letting these thoughts race.  There are too many suffering. Too many worrying. So much more than me. I have been given much alongside my trials, my tribulations, my sorrows. I can't ever lose sight of that. But tonight. These days. I struggle to go to work without shaking. I struggle to concentrate. And I don't think I'm alone.  I may be considered a snowflake for this. A bleeding heart. That's just who I am. I care.  I know these prayers are usually private. That's the way I was raised. And in my streams of consciousness that's usually how it goes. But right not my heart is breaking. And words on a page makes the most sense to me. Is cathartic. Necessary for me. What can I do? Other than shouting in the void. Other than the limited work I keep doing day after day.  It...

The last couple days it’s been sad music. It’s just one of those things that comes with the territory. I’m finally hitting that phase of the grief. My grandfather died last week. And it’s hitting me harder than I thought it would. And not that there is a memorial in two weeks it’s really sinking in. Hence my melancholy response and the seeking of appropriately emotionally fulfilling music. For many people that would seem an appropriate response when losing a grandfather. For me I’m struggling to know how exactly I feel. See I never met my grandfather until about four years ago. Just prior to that, I was unaware that he even existed. I’ll just say that DNA tests for family history can reveal new things. Since that time I’ve been able to visit him and properly meet him once, and I’ve had a throughly typical modern experience of intermittent phone calls and text messages. At times I was much more connected and responsive than others. And I needed it. He was there. A listening ear when I s...

 There are two methods of grieving I'll never be able to wrap my mind around. Suffering in silence, and turning pain into a macabre competition.  I know the stages of grief. I’ve experienced and studied them. I know we don’t always do them linearly. We may fixate on phases or actions. Grief isn’t pretty. It’s dark. It’s consuming.  But it can lead to something amazing. That’s why I hate when it’s weaponized. Used against each other. Used to inflict pain instead of working through it. It’s my hope we can all learn from grief. Share it. Experience with others the range of emotions it is.

  Someone dies in combat there’s an often a memorial. A place for their name to be etched in stone. Found. Remembered. A place to be shared. A place to live on after those who remember them have passed away. If one of those soldiers takes their life, there usually isn’t the same remembrance. Hopefully there is a headstone. A place for those who remember them to come. At least while they’re still living. Hopefully they have someone to pass on the memory. But often there is not. For those in combat, there are rosters, reports. Records to tell the stories. Places to find the struggles. Something tangible along with the oral tradition of those who fought there.  Those who take their lives, maybe there’s a note. Hopefully a journal, a social media profile. Something that makes the stories known. Reminds who they were. Not as many will be around to tell the story. One of the biggest burdens on our veterans is telling the story only they remember. That memory is both a blessing and a...

She was never quite serene. She was too opinionated, too determined, too focused for that. Lovely, always. Strong. But not serene. Given all that, she moved with a dancer's grace. In my memories that was always apparent because she was always in motion. Whether walking, cooking, typing with flying fingers on a keyboard, writing with the precision of a calligrapher, or eyes scanning a page. It was energetic, incessant, and graceful. That grace came from purpose, and it's something I've often tried and failed to emulate. In person she was quick with a smile. Engaging, easily shifting into conversation. Quick with an anecdote, a fact, knowledge, or a witticism. Small talk was never flippant, or surface for long. That purpose, that grace was there once again.  I was always at her feet as a child. Summers, breaks, so much time was spent at their farm. And I couldn't always be outside so I became her shadow. The island counter of their kitchen was my post. Or the kitchen itse...

Deaths come in waves. They never seem to be alone. It's hard to see vets your age go. Especially at 30. It's not time to die yet. It's not time to end a life. But it seems to happen their own hands all too often. I'm watching a wave occur. It hurts the same every damn time. I'm sick of death. I know I've said more than a few times that I am done watching people die. I mean that. There is more than a bit of irony to make that kind of declaration from the hall of hospice unit. But I think it's okay to make a clear distinction between those who lived life, and are just fading away now that a body has run it's race, and someone ending that race prematurely themselves. Please don't join the ranks of the latter. Call 1-800-273-8255 or text  741741  at the very least. Reach out to a friend or trusted loved one. Please. Drop me a line if you need to. People are here. People are present. Don't slip away on us.

Don't wait to get to fully suicidal to call a hotline, to reach out to a friend, to attempt to get help. Please. I know this is something I dwell on a lot. It's something I've written about a few times and will continue to write about. Continue to talk about. For a few reasons. One, male suicide, veteran suicide are going to continue to rise. That isn't changing. The second reason is a two parter, one I know so many people dealing with these same issues, and one person told me to keep working on it. I see people struggling. I hear their stories. I see them. I don't know if that resonates with everyone. I want to make a difference. I have limited time and resources. So maybe this is something I can do to make a difference. I see people I know struggling. Daily. Truly. Whether it was PTSD, an adjustment disorder, depression, or good old fashioned anxiety. There are struggles. Most I had no idea were happening. There are guys who've attempted suicide recent...

I wrote recently about death and it's a bit of a load of bunk if I'm honest 24 hrs later. But I'm going to leave it up and just write an addendum. The hardest part of working in emergency medicine and hospice care is maintaining your composure. It's the same for healthcare in general for me. The variety of roles I've found myself in. The difficulty comes from different sources that change constantly but if we broke down to the root of it all, that's what we would be facing. The simplest form of it is not breaking at a smell. It's a simple thing but something we deal with all the time. Whether it's as an aid cleaning up a patient or resident after a bowel movement or bladder void gone wrong, or helping clean up a patient who missed their basin or emesis bag while vomiting. Those are the simple ones. Harder is not letting the shock show on your face at a wound that's more severe than anticipated, or vitals or a lab that tells a hard story. Mainta...

I don't know if anyone else has tried writing something and the words on the page don't line up with the words on the brain. I've had a lot of thoughts rolling that I'm trying to make sense of. Usually a pen or a keyboard helps breed clarity. Today it seems to be mostly doubt and confusion. Most of what's to follow was written in pieces and bursts. Almost fitfully. Not from a stress standpoint, not from a frantic place. But from a place of uncertainty and wondering. Once I get everything worked out perhaps it will make more sense. Now given titles are fairly apparent and readily available I think the subject of death is not a mystery topic today. Now I'm not writing this because it's Halloween time and my thoughts have turned to the Gothic and macabre. Nor am I writing this because I'm feeling my own impending doom. And I'm not writing this for attention. No I'm writing this because this is part of my life once again. Death. It's been a...

It often happens that I find myself melancholy about those who are gone. It strikes at different times and with different intensities. October always seems to be one of those times. It's Halloween, the month I left and returned from a mission, the month I met my wife, and the month I found out a childhood friend was gone.  The one that strikes at time the most poignantly is the last one. It was someone who I had lost contact with. Not entirely but partially. We had reconnected online. A couple weeks later a message told me he was gone. That one stuck with me. It was the first suicide close to me. Sadly they've kept coming. And with the subtle, comfortable melancholy of autumn, I remember. Quite easily compared to some others.  Every year it makes me wonder who else remembers? I'm still in touch with quite a few of my childhood friends that would remember him. But not that often. Not often enough. So I don't know if they go through the same emotions the same...

Something hit me harder than I would have anticipated today. Someone on my social media lost a relative to suicide. Just reading their emotion had my heart sink. It was a lot stronger of a reaction than I would have anticipated. I hope it's always that way. I hope suicides continue to hit me hard. At a time where we're having almost record suicides, widely publicized mass shootings, and overall noise it's easy to become desensitized to what's going on around us. To the how people really are doing. To who we know who is or might be struggling. I'm so far from perfect at this. I get so easily desensitized lately. I've been working hospice and rehab as a nurse aide. I see grief, I see struggles, I see even death almost daily. It becomes routine. At time it has to. When you lose a patient you care about it hurts, but you have to turn around and prep their body, console their family, and get the next call light. Time doesn't stop for you. So for me I just find a ...