my brain hurts…

blue head

Originally uploaded by jayfherron

When I started work on this painting it was as they all are in the beginning-which is a few lines ans squibbles to see what pops out at me and then the thing grows from there.
I began goofing around with it last winter.
I might have mentioned this at some point when writing that I had a stroke in 1998 and it messed up the right side of my brain-so my left side is in a bit of a mix because I look normal but in reality my left side is as if I’m trying to drag a water bed around-it feels very heavy and numb all of the time. I have to type with my right hand-my left hand would never find the right key-more less touch it,or have the strength to push it…I actually am uncomfortable when Im touched on my left side because it is a sensation that goes all the way up and down my left arm and leg and face all at the same touch.
The day I had the stroke a headache began-its always been there ever since and in some ways Ive gotten used to it-but it seriously bothers my left eye and at one point I was taking ‘percocet’ to ease the pain-but after five years it began to bug me that I was trusting a drug.
So,the ‘percocet’ was stopped last year…but the pain is sometimes out of this world.
A few weeks ago-I guess about five or six-I woke up and my left hand felt funny. It already feels odd-but this day my left hand lost the feeling of three of the fingers and the left side of the palm feels like its a welded piece of plate (????) hoe I can say it feels like that I dont know-its just what my mind is saying.
So I told my physician at the VA and they set up an MRI of my brain-thinking I had another stroke.
Well,the good old VA and thier bedside manner….yesterday a letter comes from the VA telling me theres a ‘brain aneurysm’ and theres an appointment set up next month with a ‘nuerosurgeon’ and it could be possible I will require more medicines…ding dong?? What?
I know enough about a brain aneurysm to know it aint a right good thing-as a matter of fact,its kind of like a little firecracker in your head that has’nt gone off yet…and might,or…might not,at least-right away,or…it could! So gentle the VA is with thier stiffer news…guess what- ‘Dear Sir…guess what??’
It goes along the lines that one needs to be careful about what they ask for.
Last week another friend mine died-Wayne Smith. Some of us called him ‘Bayne-oh’ from way back when we were teenagers. We had found this bottle of Rum and Wayne guzzled it faster than the rest of us and got sick and threw up…and thats what it sounded like,him there on his hands and knees puking….baynoo…baynoo,so the name stuck. Then-when my brother was killed I sucked down a bottle of whiskey and lost it all all over Waynes mothers new shag carpet (I was to spend the night at thier house the day Carl was killed)-so you could say Wayne and I had a pretty sick relationship.
Ahhh…but the asking for things in a careful manner??
Well – I pray alot! And the other day I was saying in my prayer how decent it was for Wayne to die the way he did. He was told on Saturday he had liver cancer to beat all liver cancer and they sent him home and he walked in his bedroom and lay down on the bed with his favorite dog at his side and went into eternal slumber-that nice and swift.
And so I was out on my morning routine-a bike ride…peddling along and thinking how gracious it was for him to go that quick-and so I asked it in my prayer that I could be treated so softly…
Back in 1993 during the days when I was hauling cattle from Florida to the west coast….I’ve told these things in earlier writings,cattle hauling is done with incentive derived from a white powder-often refered to as ‘california turn-around’…which is nothing more than a poison called ‘crystle-meth’ which falsely keeps the body awake for hours and hours and even days. I know-I stayed awake for 7 days straight once…I did two turn arounds,meaning from east coast to west coast and back twice-with no sleep. And while getting loaded for the third go my body was hit from inside and my heart went blank and I keeled down but for some reason I did not completely die…but I saw it! I saw what death was like!
I have never forgotten that image-that feeling of peace and feeling of comfort and I knew it was special and I knew it was Spiritual…Real Spiritual,not church spiritual.
I so many times kick myself because I just would not allow it to continue and opened my eyes and lay there in that stupid cow wagon and regretted from that day on that I turned around.
Ive also written about my three and a half years working in a mortuary-and there my friends one sees things that are so amazing and ‘living’ proof that death is no respecter of persons and dying comes in so many ways and at so many ages.
It is so interesting-just two weeks ago my friend Wayne and I walked around the halls of the hospital where he learned he was sick-and he asked me what I thought he should do about trying chemo and all that as the doctors had told him there werent much hope it would help-and I had only one thing I could say and I told him that I felt as if I was going to die that day in the truck and that it was so peaceful and that I wanted so much because it was so beautiful….and like a fool I came back to this?? I told him it was beautiful and not to fear it-that it was good and the only reason we are afraid is because it is something we are so uncertain about-but that we should trust it is okay.
Thats what I told him-and it is what I believe right now.
I asked him-why is it kids and grandfolks-all in a mix,not assorted pattern….they die. So why is it we are so afraid of something we dont know about-maybe perhaps it aint so bad and it aint so sad as everyone left behind goes to thinking…you know what I mean? Perhaps this is’nt life after all….and we are going to life whenever we die,and we just dont know it!!
So….once in the mortuary we got a call (dont be eating breakfast during this sentence…) to a residence where the man had a brain aneuryism and sucker busted open and the mans nose started to bleed and he got up to go into the kitchen when the entire contents of his blood spewed out of his nose-the artery that had the aneuryism pumped every pint of blood he had through his nose and he literally drowned in his own blood…his daughter was there and she said it took as long as it took to walk from his chair into the kitchen-and this was a small apartment….so that would mean it only took seconds.
So even with the knowledge I should be careful for what I ask for-I asked for a quick swift kick in the pants like old Wayne got and perhaps this source of my headaches is my answer.
Ive said before-I dont dig this life…its not been much of a great ride (although Ive had some times…lots of good times) I always have felt there was something more and always felt myself reaching for it…reaching towards heaven and God-waiting for God to send me a raven,the bird Noah sent first…or perhaps God will send an eagle.
I do know God will send some way to gently lift me off this place-and maybe this is it.