Thursday in March

I’ve woken to a new day and am thankful. I’ve said prayers. I’ve said hello to Gilbert and given him pets. Last night he crawled up on the bed when the heat went out and joined me. Somewhere around 5 am despite the electric heating blanket and him beside me I realized it was colder than normal. Turning on the gas stove I saw that the flame was very low. Throwing on a low coat over the black silk pyjamas I went out side and changed the propane tanks. The moon was beautiful.  

The heat came on and by the time I awoke the place was cozy and warm for meditation and morning exercise.  I made coffee then, the Ethiopian, best in the world, I roasted myself this weekend.  It was delicious with a dab of cream and a dab of honey. I love morning coffee.   

Last night I ate the last of the Wild Game Pepperoni I was gifted by Kayla thanks to her husbands prowess as a hunter.  It tasted so good I thought it was moose but I believe it’s venison. Best Pepperoni I’ve had in years. I must find out who their butcher is and pay more attention to hunting this year. I tend to play with my motorcycles and quads, shooting targets and sleeping in the sun out in the woods rather than seriously hunting. I used to get moose, deer or bear every year and last year I just got grouse and the year before rabbits. I had a great time in the camper though.  I read a lot and told people I was hunting. Walked gilbert and barbecued and lounged and told people I was hunting. We did hike about with a rifle some but really I was just glad to be out in the woods alone with Gilbert.

This morning I’ve enjoyed the yogurt and granola.  Other’s take pictures of their meals. I write about mine. It’s a devolution to the gustatory realms. No wonder I always think about breasts.  There’s a low testosterone epidemic in Canada. I think of a sex change in old age.  Men are hated and loathed today in Canada so it seems a good time to try the other team.  I don’t know what to do when I grow up. What to do when I retire. More of this providing and protecting and being condemned and humiliated for doing a good job doesn’t look like much fun. My father went fishing. I’m considering that. Most of my friends get into garages.  I like skirts and think I’d like to have breasts I took with me. It’s a bit late to be a homosexual porn star so the whole sexual world has less appeal or interest.  It all seems like work.  I feel tired and weary and don’t really have the zest of youth anymore.  I laugh a lot though. I do appreciate the absurd.  I do my work and pay attention. I’m present. There’s a spiritual presence I’m closer too but I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do for more than a day or weeks or months at a time. 

The world doesn’t seem much different. There’s been this constant shreik and demands from the Sharia Communist lobby to give them more money for the UN manufacturered we’re all going to die because the ice caps will boil and melt away. Industry has moved forward and many of the ills of the modern age have been and continue to be addressed without the self important chorus of doom saying or need for loss of freedom and central control.  All this is constant background noise since the lies and doom prophecy of ‘Silent Spring’.  Then there was rich old Al Gore. And now we have teen doom star Greta and a fifth of children having nightmares.  As a teen I feared the Vietnam War would propel the Cold War to a Nuclear Holocaust. We survived that.  

Today the Corona Virus is front and centre.  I’ve been in the Aids epidemic seeing the daily death and living in terror I’d be the next health care provider to contract the deadly disease.  Then there was Ebola and SARS and they were real.  I’m a doctor so health care is my bailiwick.  I see the death by Fentanyl and the mismanagement of that but I chose not to have unprotected anal sex during the Aids epidemic or to use needles and I’m not having fentanyl by needle or smoke so I’ve been able to come through these crisis. Yet Coronavirus is just the flu and it’s contagious. Anyone can catch it. I’m germphobic as it. Ptsd trauma , seeing all the people die of infection. I know Pneumonia is an old man’s friend. Death is next door. I’m already at the twilight of my life. I’m over 60. This is the last quarter of my life.

I dont feel prepared to die. I’ve not prayed enough. I’ve not loved enough. I’ve not had enough fun. I’ve been too worried. I’ve feared too much. I’ve worked too hard. I’ve devoted myself to saving lives and done endless hours of study and countless hours and days of overtime and sheer focus. I’ve given my patients what a mother gives her children. I’ve done my very best and been criticized not for errors of morbidity and mortality or stopping suicide or homicide or convincing people to carry on, but for saying ‘fuck’ and offending uncultured ignorant people from culture where women are killed and their are slaves and yet I’m the terrible one because I say ‘fuck this...it’s bullshit’.  The fact is I’ve interfered with criminals making money by psychopathic malingering and lying to get drugs. The boss is in league with criminals.  I’ve devoted my life to health care and helping good people to do well and now the government is an extension of a crime family devoted to abortion and euthanasia and the destruction of the health care industry of Canada.

Meanwhile I’m probably going to have to use the health care system and watching my father and mother’s final years and visitting hospitals I’m not concerned about doctors and nurses but I can see the massive mismanagement and corruption. Focus on whether or not a doctor says fuck or which bathrooms can be used by who means we don’t have MRI”s and and we don’t have bed side nursing.  We have all this political correctness. I saw the management up close. They spoke to me and they didn’t care that I saved lives They didn’t care that I had showed up every day and worked in the toughest most dangerous assignments and done my duty and was there always on the front line where they in the wisdom or cowardice had long agor retreated into posh offices on the Mars station removed from reality talking with the insaniety of my schizophrenic patients drunk on their own arrogance and pride. 

I’m down on the street and I still can’t seem to stop saying this is ‘fucked’.  I don’t know a better word. I talked to a woman about her cause for drinking to oblivion and learned that the basis was her body dysmorphia and feeling that she was sexually unattractive. Doctors are taught in Canada to conform to sharia. I was supposed to refer her back to the women doctors who she’d not disclosed this fear too. I was supposed to do a whole group of things that are politically correct but she might not live to do. I referred her to a surgeon and I’ll get the solution she needs and her children will have a mother but it’s not the way the management would have done it.  Management is responsible for the massive deaths and street people and the sins of omission and the greed.  

I’m washing my hands. I’m taking zinc.  I feel old and vulnerable.

I’m unprepared for my own death.

I’m thinking about silly things like politics and stoner TRudeau. I’m renting spaces in my thoughts for free to old resentments. I’m not trusting God.  Jesus said Do not be afraid. I’m money in the bank and I could just leave today and sail my boat on the high seas again. The management says it’s ‘Just a job!!!!”.  They have shown they only care for pensions and money. I’ve lost my money repeatedly by going to the place of need. I’ve chosen love instead of money. I’ve lost so much money. I’ve been a fool not to be a lawyer or banker.  As a doctor I could have stayed in government and lived the fat cat life but I thought family men deserved those places because they had such challenges at home. I was single and free to move into the areas of greatest risk. Today I look back on going through the ice and walking freezing being followed by a polar bear to save that kid.  I remember looking into the scared eyes of the guy pointing a gun at me. I think of the blood and contagion and the crazy guy with the machete who’d just chopped up the neighbour. I laugh when i watch on the tv and they say ‘wait for back up’ and all these times the shit just hits the fan and I walk into a situation where a person is psychotic or bleeding or coughing up and having diarrhea. Guts on the floor.  The screaming. God I hated the keening. Trying to focus on work and bystanders not knowing that they’re supposed to stop trying to drama queen. The car accidents and motor cycle accidents. Limbs pointing in the wrong way. Brains coming out of ears.

Oh well it was a good life.

I believed that it was a ‘calling’ and a ‘profession’. I never thought of it as a ‘job’ and when she diminished me and the god and service and cursed her own profession and cursed me and my work and the work of all the people I so enjoyed but she was crazy and she was given the highest position in my world, a place where she was a token , a truly stupid person who never deserved her role. But now we have stoned skateboarders at the top.

I’m afraid of dying.

I’m not ready to die.

I’ve got to somehow be prepared to let go of breathing. I’d addicted to breath. I know that. I’ve stopped my heart in meditation. I’ve slowed my breathing so I could fast on breath. I’ve fasted without food for weeks on end.

But I’m still afraid.

I’ve seen spirits rising from the dead. I’ve seen the light. God’s face has appeared. I’ve been blessed by countless fey experiences of reassurance. I’ve lived in the flow, known the 4th dimension.

But I’m not ready for death. I’m clinging to breathing. I’m afraid of gasping for air. I couldn’t breathe on the plane coming back from India. I panicked in the confines without medical staff or equipment or a stream to escape too, without Gilbert at my side. I couldn’t get my breath. I had to to use all my powers of concentration to slow my heart and till  the cough had dislodged the plug and air entered.

I’ve incubated and bagged so many people. I’d addicted to that silly O2 CO2 and NO mix.  I like the breathing and I like my heart beating.

I loved my mother telling me she was tired and ready to go.

I watched dad in fear those years and then knowing that Jesus was there.

I know Jesus is here. I know Jesus means God Within and Christ, God will come again. We’ve played hide and seek my whole life. I’ve know the Hound of Heaven yet I worry like my loving aunt. I’m too afraid. Will God be there at the time. How long will I wait.

My God My God why hast thou forsaken me.

I know now why the Hail Mary prayer has that inscrutable line for a young person but one that makes such sense now, “Hail Mary full fo grace the lord is with be , blessed art thou, ............be with me now and in hour of my death. “ I want you with me in the nano seconds of my death. Fuck the hour.  I’m like Monty Python’s sketch of the men on the cross.  

I know the story of the two sets of prints in the sand.

I know this but I feel afraid. I’m always so afraid. I was so afraid in the nights with the Aids patients. I was so afraid in the nights with the babies with meningitis.  I was always so afraid.  I’m a coward.  I’m a sissy slut too if the truth be known.  I’ve had all the macho manly sex stuff in my day but now I just want to cuddle beside her in the fetal position with my dog beside me and I’m like the Billy Hay in the movie in Morocco. I was afraid in Morocco with those arabs swinging th short swords at my head chasing me through the Kazbah angry and screaming infidel.  Trying to kill me because I believe in Christ.  

That group of ten attacked me and punched me and stole my cross screaming ‘infidel’ in Athens.

Then the day I walked on Davie street in high heels and that lovely lose night dress those four men who were later caught for beating up transgendered followed me but I got away, going to the light.

Now I look back and I’ve a good life. I’ve cared. I’ve done my duty. I’ve sacrificed and served. I’ve no guilt. I’ve confessed.  I liked the pain even. I liked it all this life of sorrow tears and laughter.

Now I’m not ready to die.  I’m addicted to life. I’m holding on and life is to worn like a lose robe.  Pants are too tight. I miss the sarong in the south. Mostly I miss my khaki sailing shorts and the weeks alone at sea with trade winds and the dog and the cat.