Friday, June 11, 2010

You and Me and Madame Bovary


03/09/10

My Darling Clint,
Tomorrow I start re-entry classes so I can get my nursing license renewed and be a hospice nurse.  What do you think?  I think it would make you happy and proud, but I am uncharacteristically nervous.  Where is that Power Goddess I was going on about just the other day?
 I know she’s here somewhere, so I’m going to drag her out from wherever she is hiding and put her to work on my attitude.  I’m confused about just how courageous I am.  
Would you like that in paper or plastic?  Neither.  I’ll have mine in steel, not like a steel magnolia but like a steel locomotive.  Not like a terrified and furious widow-woman but like a steady and powerful engine of strength.  
I can do this.  I can be the best damned hospice nurse in the city of Macon, and I plan to do just that.  I want to have time with families who are losing their precious loved ones.  I want to teach them not to be afraid of the death that will soon visit their house.  I want to tell them it’s okay for their loved ones to know they are sad to be losing them.  
Hell, when I’m dying, I want at least a couple of people to let me know they’re going to miss me.  Why should others be any different?  
I can feel the Power Goddess stirring in my core.  She’s there.  Would you talk to her, whip her into shape and tell her to get up off her ass and come to my rescue?
I miss you more today than on some others.  The sun is out and the air is fresh and cool instead of cold.  How you hated to be cold.  Today, you could come out on the deck with me, bringing your book.  Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples was what you were reading when you died.  (I think it was your third time).  I could bring your tall glass of orange juice spiked with vodka so you wouldn’t slosh it on yourself while coming down the ramp and then start cussing about being an invalid.  You were never an invalid, not in your spirit, not in your soul.  
I’m reading Madame Bovary.  Oh, shut up.  If you were here I would be complaining of how tedious it is, and you would have to listen.  But you would be proud, too, while thinking me a little more crazy than usual.  I’m reading it for the words, the language - not for the tedious dialogue or for the insufferable Emma who is congenitally incapable of happiness, but for the narration, the way Flaubert puts words together.  I want to write good things, so I’m reading good words. I suppose you’ll faint when I start on Proust.
Now there are clouds gathering andI think I’m getting a cold.  You know what a baby I am when I don’t feel well.  I just took a break to pull The Red Sweater over my head and change to velour pants and warm socks.  The dogs are with me now in our bed.  Where did you hide the Zicam?

I will love your forever,
Your Fat Girl












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