Paint It Black

Today would have been my sister's 50th birthday.



Instead, I put flowers on her grave, ten years after she died. She was 36 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was six weeks away from her 40th birthday when she died from it. I stayed with my mother by her bedside the night before she died and did as my mother asked. I told her that it was okay for her to die; that we would take care of her children for her, that she should rest now. The next day she was transferred to the Hospice of the Western Reserve in Euclid and the doctors thought she would last a week or more longer. Because of that my mother and brother-in-law had gone home to Jane's house to shower and rest and so missed Jane's death.


I had gone home that morning when the doctor had come in and agreed to the hospice transfer. It was obvious that she had had another small stroke over night; her hand hung limp over the side of the bed and she was unresponsive to any one's touch. Bob had come back to the hospital and had brought some fruit from a basket someone had brought to his house. That night I was trying to cut up an overripe mango when my dad got the phone call from my mom that she was gone. My uncle, one of my dad's brothers, had come up from North Carolina and he drove us over to the east side of Cleveland once my brother and sister-in-law arrived from Sandusky. My sister Karen drove herself up from Kent.


It was a beautiful early September night. September 6th by the time we arrived. September 4th is my father's birthday and when Karen visited Jane on the 4th she told Jane who was unconscious at the time that she was NOT allowed to die on Dad's birthday. If she was going to die, she had to wait until the next day--and so she did.


The hospice is right on the shore of Lake Erie and her room was right on the beach. The window was open and you could hear the waves and the breeze. I thought it the most peaceful place I could imagine and I am glad that she could hear that as she went on to whatever there is after this place. I like to imagine that my grandmother with whom she had a special relationship came to get her and that they are together now somewhere without pain and sorrow and worry.


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When Jane fell into her final illness, she first went blind. The doctors thought that the cancer had spread to her brain and so they had immediately begun radiation treatments before doing all the other tests in an attempt to preempt any further damage by the spread of the cancer in the brain. However, that was not what was going on. Instead, the cancer was in her liver and was causing small blood clots which were traveling to her brain, one of which was in the optic nerve area and those the blindness. So not only did she lose her hair again from the radiation but they immediately put her on heparin (a blood thinner). Every time they then drew blood or took any type of tissue sample she bled all over. This all began in mid July and lasted until September 5th. In all the time, my mother and brother-in-law spent nearly everyday and night with her in the hospital, taking care of her because there were never enough nurses to do the job.


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When we got to the hospice, Bob and his parents and my mom were already there. We all stood around and talked. Some of us touched her. She was cool to the touch and very still. The room looked like a bedroom and the lights like bedside lamps so the light was the dim yellow 60-watt sort so she looked a lot like a wax figure to me. I remember her head wasn't on a pillow but her neck wasn't bent so her chin was down to her voice box, it was as if she was posed to look straight up but her eyes were closed.


I don't really know how long we stayed. I'm sure there were some nervous jokes and laughing. What the hell do you say in a situation like that? It's as though you're in an alternate universe where nothing makes any sense and time flows in odd swirls and eddies, jerks and stops that don't fit together later.


My uncle drove us home and I think it must have been sometime around 3 am when I finally got to bed. The next day was a Sunday and I remember it was a very bright and sunny day.


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When we were young, my parents and my sisters and I were very close to one of my father's uncles and aunts and their two daughters. One of the daughters lived with us for a year or so while her parents were building a house so she could go to our school and I just idolized her. Aunt Joyce used to babysit us and loved to have us brush her hair. Her younger daughter Sue is seven or eight years older than I am and she went from being someone who babysat us and who I just adored to someone I babysat for when she married and had her two children.


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That morning Aunt Joyce came over when she heard as did Sue. As is traditional when there is a death in the family, the first impulse is to bring or go get food. So Sue grabs me and piles me in her truck and drives me over to the Vermilion Farm Market. The Farm Market is a really good grocery store with a full meat counter and good vegetables. She gets me a cart and goes up and down the aisles pulling out loaves of rye bread and wheat, ordering sliced bologna and chopped ham, and checking out the tomatoes and lettuce.


Meanwhile, I am standing in the middle of the store in a daze, listening to the Rolling Stones sing "Paint It Black."



Have you ever listened to the lyrics:


"I see a red door and I want it painted black
no colors anymore I want them to turn black..."




"...No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue
I could not foresee this thing happening to you..."




"...Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts
It's not easy facin up when your whole world is black..."


I didn't cry then but I've cried every time since when I've heard that song. I don't think I cried then because I was still too shell shocked and it was just to surreal that it should be happening at that exact moment.


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So, for this moment at least, my world is painted black. I miss you horribly and wish you were here (another song that makes me cry every time dammit!) Love, Pinky






(This is one of the first pictures I have of myself as a baby as well as with my sister Jane. I think she is probably telling me a story or something of the sort although it looks as if she's going to ping me in the head!)

Picture profile

I have updated my profile and chosen a photo--reluctantly. I chose a side shot because I thought it less recognizable than a full frontal. And I like the books in it as well. If I could take one of myself showning the back of my head and my books, I'd post that!

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Part of the appeal of writing, I think, has always been anonymity. The ability to hide behind my words and to use them as a shield against potential rejection seemed a wondrous thing when facing the very personal taunts of the other children in grade school, junior high, and high school.

It seems a contradiction now though when you think that a writer is much more permanently rejected in writing when a manuscript is sent back or when a reviewer or critic rips them up one side and down the other in print. But it's not typically done in public in front of others.

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My name was easily corrupted from Peggy to Piggy and the bit at the end of my last name to butt. And there was a little fat boy in my class who was picked on for his size who struck out at me, the quiet awkward one, for 11 of my 13 years of schooling (he wasn't in the same kindergarten section as I was) by calling me names and telling me I was stupid and all the other sorts of obnoxious hurtful things kids do to one another.

Between our junior and senior year, he lost his extra weight when he took up jogging and got a personality transplant. He came back a changed person and was nice. He apologized to me and we were friends of sorts, wrote to each other for a while during college, and he's stopped into the bookstore occasionally to see me.

I doubt he ever realized how deeply he ever hurt me. That an apology could never make up for what he had done. I'm sure he would be surprised by it, being the rather shallow and arrogant person that he is.

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Anonymity can serve other purposes as well.

Pinky likes her privacy. And prefers her personal life stays personal...

Memoir Writing

Yesterday I was reading in an old issue of Writer's Digest (from this summer I think) a column about memoir writing. The columnist had written a memoir of his adolescent years as part of his master's thesis and looked at it recently and found it just awful.

Likewise, my beneficial friend (BF) had been blogging recently from his journals. which he is using to write his own memoirs. As noted earlier, his life has been eventful and certainly worthy of publication. And he is definitely a talented enough writer to do the job.

Both of these have led me to consider the genre of the memoir, my life history, and my memoir, in particular.

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I wrote one once, you see, or what I saw then as something that would become one in the future. Then it was a journal but, because I just knew I was going to become a rich and famous author some day, it would become the foundation of my memoirs.

At least that was how it started. In junior high, I started a journal in a five-subject notebook that was scavenged from my classes. I don't even know what I wrote exactly except that what may have started as a record of day-to-day events morphed into a fantasy of life where I hiked the Appalachian Trail and built myself a loft bedroom in my parents' house and at some point ended up in to hospital and had sex with my boyfriend in a hospital bed (!!!)

I filled up three partial wire-bound notebooks before eventually hiding them away. In my outward life, I do recall that I had a major falling-out with my first real friend, used to get blinding migraine headaches, had what amounted to a nervous breakdown, and seriously considered committing suicide. I used to hide in closets, tried to see how tight I could pull a scarf around my neck and how long I could keep it there, and used to get so mad that I would see how small of a ball I could twist a coat hanger into. I obsessively read an awful novel called The Other by Tom Tryon and was particularly enamored with the novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. She killed herself, you know.

Let's just say I was a really screwed up kid and leave it at that.

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But I don't have the journals any more. When I was a sophomore or junior in college, I was cleaning out my closet at home and came across the notebooks. I was so embarrassed by them, I hand shredded the pages and threw them out. Now I'm sorry for that. I wish I had them to read so I could get into the head of that screwed up kid again.

I had totally blocked out the scarf episodes and it wasn't until about 6 months before my older sister Jane passed away that she reminded me of that. I think there were probably other incidents that may have been scribbled there in those notebooks that I've found too painful to remember.

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I have always thought that memoirists (and sometimes bloggers--like this!) are narcissists par excellence. Me me me yada yada yada. Let me post more pictures of me me me. (Note there are no pictures of me--yet! I actually hate to have my picture taken but I'm going to as my BF if he will do the honors the next time he visits. He is very good at many things ;)

But I think that memoir for me is more about self discovery. (And that is the cool thing about blogging as well. I can write it here. If anyone else chooses to read it, they can. Otherwise, it's for me.)

I have read others say the same about writing poetry; they write poetry first and foremost for themselves. I write prose, creative nonfiction (essay), for myself.

Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way recommends morning pages. These are three handwritten pages of whatever comes to mind every morning.

I have been doing morning pages for at least 5 years now, possibly more. I have missed days and sometimes even weeks and there was a time where I did stop but I came back to it. There are some days when I do not get to finish all three pages but thankfully those are in the minority as well. Morning is not always the clearest time for me to think and there are days when I will write my morning pages in the afternoon and those will be much more philosophical or at least coherent. But often they will be about the stories I am working on so if I ever do become famous and some future biographer gets to comb through the pages, they will certainly have something to read...

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Is it possible that an average life with little excitement can become a good memoir?

I was not mistreated as a child. My parents were not rich and famous. I did not do anything infamous or spectacular during my lifetime (so far.) Short of doing the James Frey thing and making up half my life (did that in my adolescent journals!), I would have only my own voice and outlook and understanding.

But is that enough to work with?

Pinky wonders...

Whoa, Baby!

I have spent the last three weeks worrying about being pregnant.



Yep, pregnant... at 47.



There was a possibility, though it was slim based on two things: age and the pill. As noted in the previous post, I was on the pill but was taken off because of a bout of colitis but I was on the pill and had been on the pill faithfully for months, no, years.

The caveat about the pill is that it could have failed due to the colitis cleaning out the gut and the colonoscopy preparations doing the same. The sexual encounter was between the colitis and the test.

The other reason why I really thought I might be was because I thought it would just be my luck. That would be the kind of thing that would happen. It would be a karmic thing, payback for the previous pregnancy that was terminated.

For any of you who don't know how the pill works, you take the hormone-laced pills for three weeks and placebos for one week. In that one week, you have a (usually light) period. So when I went off the pill on October 4, I fully expected to get a period by October 9. Except there was nothing, nada, zippo, zero, zilch... not a drop...

Doesn't make any sense. What should I think but pregnancy. I'm too young for menopause (aren't I?) But would an over-the-counter pregnancy test tell me if I were nine days pregnant?

I knew I was going out of state for training the week of October 13 and I knew I didn't want to take the burden of the truth (if I were) with me, so I bought the test but didn't take it. Instead, I spent the entire week thinking about what I would do.

What would I do? What could I do?

Would I tell the father? Should I tell the father?

Yes, not telling him was a serious consideration, although I think he would have been seriously hurt and upset and angry about it. His life position is unique in some ways in that, due to circumstances, he is unable to work and so must rely on his wife's income and, for the same reasons, would have a difficult time divorcing her. (It's a long story and one that is not mine to tell.) I could not and would not ask him to leave her; he would need to decide that for himself but I also don't know that I could support a family on my salary alone either.

I love him but don't know that I know him well enough to live with him. (And so you say then you should not be having sex that could lead to a child... no shit, Sherlock!) If that would be what he would decide--to leave her and come to me (if that was the situation), I would take him in, of course.

So I had decided I would tell him. The problem then is that I have no real way to contact him directly. It's more of a case of he contacts me when he's free... (yes, sometimes I do feel like a doormat.) I have an email address but I don't think it would be fair to just email and say: Hi, hope you're having a good day. Please get in touch ASAP. You're going to be a daddy in 9 mo.

Then there was the decision to abort or not to abort.

I did it before and I never ever want to do it again. But there are several considerations here. 1) I am on some serious high-powered drugs that can cause birth defects. 2) And age and old eggs increase the risk of birth defects exponentially over the age of 40. 3) I have a chronic disease of which a major part is fatigue along with pain and sleep disruption; caring for an infant (possibly multiples since the chances of multiple births also increases with age) would no doubt exacerbate that. 4) And, in all likelihood, I would be doing most if not all of the child rearing by myself at some point in the child's life. 5) I would be 68 when the child was 20. I would be 88 when the child is 40. Is that fair?

Are those selfish reasons? Just excuses? Guilt screaming in my head and heart? I still can't say.

But there's also a part of me that regrets terribly never having had children. I have women friends who have teenagers who get into trouble or just exasperate them and they tell me I should be glad I don't have kids, but I can't be. Just like when they say the same about not having a husband when they get mad at theirs. What I wouldn't give for one? I would probably give all the books I own at this moment but it's not happened and it may never--child or husband.

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I came back on Friday, intending to take the test right away, but I didn't. I was too much of a coward.

I had convinced myself that I wasn't. I had finally found an infertility website that had some statistics about the drop-off in fertility rates after 40 and I felt reasonably sure I wasn't but I was still afraid.

I got the test out and read the directions. It sat there on the bathroom vanity all through Saturday and into Sunday. I decided I'd collect the urine and dip the stick; I found a clean container and sat it beside the test. Time after time I emptied my bladder into the toilet but just looked at the stick and the cup.

Finally, I did it. I set the timer for 3 minutes and walked away. Only one pink stripe appeared. NOT pregnant. Thank you, God~! Then I wished I'd done it days before!!

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But it all did serve a purpose, I think. After the scare of the colitis and the realization that the BC pills were no longer an option, it made me think about additional life shifts. First, that I could be pregnant and what would that mean for my relationship with my beneficial friend. Second, that I am aging, there really is no going back, and I must go forward and decide what I want out of what is left of my life--what is important here. Third, that I must consider my life's decisions carefully and in light of what I believe is moral and ethical.

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There is a card in the major arcana of the tarot deck called the Tower and on it is a picture of a castle tower being hit by lightning and people falling out of it. The interpretation of the card is one of change, usually sudden and unpleasant, but leading to something different and often better.

I feel as if I've drawn the Tower card. The lightning struck and I am still falling, not sure where the hell I'm going to land and how many pieces I'll be in. I will land though, eventually.

So Pinky says...

Copper Birth Control

Because of the ischemic colitis, I can no longer take birth control pills.

For years and years, I took the pill as a way to lessen painful cramps, control PMS, and keep bleeding to a minimum. There was no need for the real purpose for the pill because I was celibate for 16 (or was it 17?) years.

This was not necessarily by choice. I did not date during this time or, if I did, there was nothing beyond a kiss or two. I do remember my ex- from college contacting me in 1990 before I started graduate school--that was the last time I had sex until just recently.

There were probably several reasons why I never went hunting for a man and for sex. Work was one; I was store manager and very into that, very busy. School was another; I was working full-time and going to graduate school at Cleveland State at night to get a Masters of Arts in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Health was another; I worked and educated myself into being sick, too much teeth grinding which led to headaches which led to poor sleeping which led to aches and pains which led to fibromyalgia. (I'm sure it was not such a linear progression but the TMJ did lead to the final diagnosis of FMS.)

And, finally, it was drugs; I was on a variety of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics that made me not give two shits and a good goddamn about much of anything. I was unhappy about no relationships but only in a vague sort of way and hadn't any interest in changing the situation really. I lived with my parents and eked along at work (no longer as manager but in a lower position with less responsibility) with my MA waiting to be finished, nothing published and nothing written and nothing happening at all.

I did make a little effort toward some sort of dating. The Internet helped there. I met several guys and found one with whom I have developed a "friends with benefits" relationship with. This means that we see each other when we can (he's married) and we get to screw each other's brains out. We've known each other for nearly three years now. (This is not what I would prefer but that is a topic for another entry...)

So, since I'm not post menopausal yet, I've done the abortion thing once and don't ever want to go through that again, and can't see bearing a child at 47 and chronically ill, I need birth control.

The ob/gyn suggested an IUD. The IUD was banned for years because of the Dalkon Shield which caused lots of deaths and maimings and other awful things. The doc told me some rather gruesome things about septic abortions and fetuses with IUD's embedded in them. My friend Lillian received a large settlement in the class action suit against Dalkon because she had an ectopic pregnancy caused by the Shield and nearly died.

The some of new and improved IUD's come with copper on them. (The one he is suggesting for me isn't copper and is coated with progesterone.)

The thing is copper is a spermicide. Who would have guessed?

As I was leaving, the doctor tells me that in China, women use copper pennies inserted into their vaginas as birth control.

I retorted, "And they used to use coat hangers to do abortions."

No doubt they still do in China and elsewhere.

I never expected this to be a political commentary but in the end it is. Do you want to go back to coat hangers? Do you want to make health care so expensive that women are forced to use pennies as birth control?

What's wrong with the world that this is true? That this happens?

Pinky says... get out and vote!

Imp of Perverse

I am working on an article for my work's staff newsletter about Edgar Allan Poe. The article is about Poe not because of his horror stories which would be appropriate for the the month of October and Halloween but because someone somewhere decided that October is Mystery Series Month. And Poe was the first to write a series of stories using the same detective--M. C. Auguste Dupin.

Yep, Poe really was quite an extraordinary and talented fellow if not also very troubled and unlucky and just plain unfortunate. I understand the latest theory about his death is that he was used by a group of men who went recruiting voters, taking them from polling places to polling places to vote again and again, for their candidates and getting them drunker and drunker along the way. Poe was already sick and was left abandoned in the street, passed out and with possible alcohol poisoning, and simply died in the gutter.

I first learned of Poe's detective stories, or tales of ratiocination, in a detective fiction class at the community college where I work. We read the three stories: "The Murders on the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter," and "The Mystery of Marie Roget" and it was quite plain to see that a famous English author based his own rather eccentric detective named Holmes off of Dupin. No doubt many people thing of Sherlock Holmes as the first literary detective simply because there were many more stories and books written about him but Poe was the first.

But I found the tales of ratiocination in a volume I recently purchased called The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. I bought it because a poet friend who has been compiling an online library of poetry and fiction recently included some of Poe's work and I wanted more. I wanted to reread some of the horror stories and look at some of the poems.

While reading the introduction by Wilbur Scott, I came across a story called "The Imp of Perverse." I read his discussion of it before I read the story which at first I thought was an essay and I thought it a very interesting observation of human nature.

What is it about human nature that compels us to do things that we know are patently wrong?

Why are we always attracted to the bad boy/girl?

Why do we always take stupid risks?

Why do we follow impulses that we warn others against?

Scott suggests that the "Imp" stands for impulse or impulsiveness and that's certainly possible. But the idea of the imp, a demon that prods us into doing things we wouldn't normally do, would fit just as well into Poe's weird worlds. Because, in the end, the imp/demon is really just another part of us--the shadow, the dark side, whatever you'd like to call it.

So, Pinky says, think about what the imp of perverse has led you to do in your life. I can think of any number of things the little bastard has led me on to do.

My return to Blogland

I haven't posted in forever.

Not much of a surprise there really. The last two months have been Hell really and I have discovered the last week (the most hellish of all) that if I don't take the time for myself to do what I want for me, then I may never get to do it at all.

Do you want to know what happened? I spent the week going from doctor to doctor to determine why I suddenly started shitting blood. Yes, bright red in the toilet bowl Tuesday morning.

After a colonoscopy yesterday, I was diagnosed with ischemic colitis. The specialist who did the colonoscopy said that it was already healing but something caused the blood flow to the colon to become blocked which caused bleeding into the colon and out the other end.

Now, the blood could have been anything from a hemorrhoid to colon cancer and that scared the shit (literally) out of me.

And it made me think--

I don't want to die.

I don't want to die without writing and publishing the stories I have in my head,

I don't want to die because all I've ever done is work myself into the ground,

I don't want to die without living a life.

If that means I need to change what I do and how I live, well, then I guess I'll have to work at changing.

I've always been shy. I've always been in awe of other writers, too in awe of them to ever think of approaching them for advice or even to praise their work. (Maybe that should be reversed--start with the praise and then move to the advice!) I've always held back from putting myself forward out of fear and always been jealous of others' successes but why?

Time is short. I know that now.

It didn't sink in when my sister died 10 years ago but it did four days ago.

Maybe because it was my lifeblood being flushed down the drain. It's one thing when it's menstrual blood, quite another when it's not.

So, I shall not be neglecting my dear blog, dear reader.

Pinky says so...
....and she means it.