Going deep with Court

  I have been to three funerals when the widow spoke. One has haunted me for nineteen years. She was the wife of a college ministry pastor who died, painfully and slowly, of some kind of disease. She wailed. And spoke about how it was like all that was left of her was steel girders and she was a shell. I shuddered. Later she spoke again before she started that week’s bible study and talked about how important it was to try and stay ‘normal’ for her kids. The next widow was a writer friend. She spoke like a poet, of course, and I sniffled and cried and thought: imma not make a bit of sense if anything happens to my husband. I’m going to full on ugly cry and maybe heehaw into the microphone until people squirm uncomfortably. And the third was a chef. I swear before us she cooked up the love of her life’s beautiful life and we gobbled it up. I have also heard widows speak as I sit across from them drinking coffee or sharing a meal. I would love to tell you I cooked them one but I’m af...

  The last time I was on-call I had to say the word ‘fiduciary,’ with alarming regularity for reasons I still don’t fully understand. I explain that for I’m trying to look on the bright side with my current on-call situation and the lack of sleep it is causing. We have a call-back or on-call rotation in which various events trigger a call in the dead of night to notify us that such and such thing has happened.   It’s not easy doing this now, being a full decade and a half older than I was before. The roles I had in the last ten years involved a lot of work in the moment but thankfully no on-call status. They also involved much harder work hours, another thing I am thankful for. Now I find myself days before my next rotation up in the middle of the night dreading the call. Or worse, that I’ll somehow sleep through it. Part of what may be keeping me up is new medication and treatment plan for my latest asthma flare up, which I am trying desperately to get under control before th...

 They ran to the mess Right into the thick smoke  They ran up the airplane aisle Towards men with guns They ran to the pile And they dug until their fingers bled They ran to the collapsing tower As others frantically staggered away They ran to do anything possible to help As the smoke billowed out onto the city streets  Now they are getting their pensions taken They are sick and dying from the smoke As others stand by and just watch They ruined their lives being Heroes  And they would do it all again tomorrow for you 

I’m fixated on the long-sufferers in the Bible, the bleeding woman, the crippled man who had to be carried to the pool, and the one who had to be let down through a roof by friends. Now I don’t want to seem ungrateful or unfaithful, but there is something about not being able to breathe which shakes me to my core. When it’s a struggle, when each breathe feels like I am dipping down into an endless well and drawing up a single cup’s worth of barely drinkable water, I get panicky.  Over the years I have learned how to control my asthma and not have full-on attacks, but all it takes is one misstep and off I go down into the oblivion of struggling to breathe. The last time I kicked off my asthma it was because I stupidly was Lysoling everything to death. They had announced that people with asthma were high risk for Covid, but not given any more information really. So I cleaned away my anxiety and inadvertently kicked off an asthmatic fit that lasted like three weeks. Now I’m not trying...