Kleenex

If I were one of those Atlas Rockets and anxiety was missile fuel, I would be half way to the moon by now.  I seem to be in the middle of a flood of anxiety; it’s as if I have a black hole inside eating up my energy.

I have always been prone to the stuff.  It’s as if an alarm goes off and gets stuck.

Lately it may have been aggravated by my having terminated my 28 year relationship with my 85 year old therapist, and then calling later to see how she was doing to find out she had been in the hospital for two days because her heart was beating way, way too fast.

And last week a new quarter started and for some reason, even after 30 years of teaching, that still makes me a little anxious.

And add to that—tomorrow, April 10, is the one year anniversary of Joan’s death.

What a long year it has been.

A little while back Brother Dan was thinking about Joan.  He wrote:

Ok so into the Joan. Joan. Joan K. Tingle. JKT. She had a Kleenex in her hand, her right hand or her left hand, I can’t recall which. It doesn’t matter…. I can’t help thinking of her and her Kleenex.

Ah, yes…the Kleenex.  She always had some of it, mashed up in a little ball, somewhere on her person.  Sometimes, if she had a sleeve, a piece would be rolled up in that, like how sailors used to store their cigarettes in those t-shirts with no pockets.  Or if she was wearing a belt, a piece would be stuck behind that.  Or lacking any other place, it would be sort of behind the opening in her blouse at her neck, maybe tucked behind a bra strap, I guess.  And Brother Steve reported that later she kept the Kleenex in her hand and that trying to hold onto that while using her walker made the whole walker business precarious going.

And it is a sign perhaps of my distracted mood that while I can remember the Kleenex a-ok.  I mean I can see it behind her belt there, I can’t for the life of me remember her ever having blown her nose.  I can’t remember either the sight or the sound of it.  And I have tried to visualize it too.  I have looked at a picture of her to remember her nose better and we have Kleenex, so I looked at that, and I tried to visualize the two together.  But the life of me I can summon up no memory of an actual nose blowing. 

If you look out the window and there’s snow on the ground, you can pretty safely assume it snowed last night, and if there is Kleenex, well there should be a nose blowing.  I can assume it happened.  But lacking a memory that’s all I can do.

 But that’s my mood lately—bits and pieces of this and that—all fragmented.