Scary Places

I saw turkeys today.  Davis has been relocating the turkeys that were overrunning the town and so I personally have not seen any in awhile (though others have).  But on my way to the post office, I saw four of them in a church yard where they are fond of hanging out.  I didn't think they would still be there when I was on the way home...and they weren't, but I decided to drive through the cemetery to see if there were flocks there, as there often are.

No turkeys, but the cemetery was ablaze in artificial flowers, almost as if some person or group had decided to decorate all the graves with color for the holidays.

The Davis cemetery is right on the outskirts of town and I drove by it many, many times.  But until David died, some 25 years after we moved to Davis, I had never been in it.  A hedge hides it from the street and you only get little glimpses of the graves.

It wasn't that I was nervous about going to the cemetery.  Walt and I used to explore old graveyards a very long time ago, but somehow a cemetery where they are still burying people every day just made me uncomfortable.

It is ironic, then, that since 1996, I have spent so much time in the cemetery.  I used to go visit the kids' grave once a week when I was working at the homeless shelter...I just detoured by the cemetery on my way home to say hello.  I still stop by there regularly, though not as regularly as before.

Thinking about that made me think of some of the other ironies in my life.  I used to be very uncomfortable going into a hospital.  I avoided and can't really remember visiting anyone in the hospital as a kid or until I started birthin' babies and was in the hospital regularly every year and a half or so.  Then, of course, I went to work for a doctor's office and was in the doctor's office and/or the hospital every day.  You get real comfortable real quickly.

I only remember seeing my great grandmother once.  I was very young, maybe 5.  She was in an "old folks home" and in a wheelchair.  I was terrified of her.  For a very long time, I didn't look at that old folks home if we drove past it.  (Just like I couldn't look at the hospital where kids with polio were.)

And yet, here I am practically living in an "old folks home" these days.  Those butterflies that flitted around my stomach for so many years at the thought of visiting one died a very long time ago.

I was back at Atria today and found her in the community room, no splint on.  I got her back into her apartment and, with great pain, put her splint back on.  The swelling in her wrist is worse, and it's more painful to try to slip the splint over her arm.  I tried to impress upon her that it would not hurt if she would not keep taking the damn splint off!  She said she understood and then, as I sat down, she started to remove it again.  I know she can't remember and I just don't know what to do to help her.

I don't know if the orthopedist is going to put her in a plaster cast (and don't know if she can remove that or not) but nobody can do anything until the swelling goes down...and it is more swollen and bruised now than it was 2 days ago.

I came home and, as usual, took a long post-Atria nap.  I seem to need that to come down after the frustration of visiting her these days.

The third place that consistently gave me the creeps was the storage area in my friend's apartment building.  His father told us that a boogie man lived there and though we passed by the dark opening into the storage area to get to the garden where we sometimes played, we never, ever ventured into the storage area and I always walked quickly past the open door, my stomach churning

I probably won't get a chance to see if, at age 75, I am still uncomfortable near the storage area.  I'd probably be OK...besides, the boogie man is surely dead by now, if he ever existed.