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Showing posts from July, 2014

John W

It's just something that has been on my mind for way too long and I've decided to just tell the story and be done with it. Back when Bellevue Hospital opened its first virology clinic I got hired as the receptionist. My job was to register patients and call them once their name came up on the AZT eligibility list. Once AZT became FDA approved, real nurses and employees got hired and replaced the volunteers who worked on the placebo trials. I had been a volunteer and I was hired. They eventually hired a Dutch nurse LV who on the surface seemed gregarious and nice. She was tall, pretty had a weird accent and seemed perfect for the job. In short time, I began to notice that patients left her office in one of two ways: eyes rolling or an actual demand to change nurses. I have no clue to this day what annoyed so many patients but annoy them she did. And they all complained to me. They complained to me because I was the first person they saw upon arrival and the first voice they

The Death Of A Purr: Learning Love

Cats are very different than dogs. They accept you and stay, or they leave. Bijoux stayed for as long as he could and then he left last week. It was not until death that I could pick him up and hold him close; he detested leaving the ground. But that short moment when I was able to hold his huge body close to mine I felt sad that I hadn't been able to hold him close sooner. He was as soft as a rabbit. A rabbit that weighed a light tonne. Holding him limp he contoured to my body and he still generated warmth. I was eager to catch his spirit, bid him goodbye, thank him for his time before he left the room for a higher place. There really is a 'light in our eyes' and when death comes that light goes out. Nothing can revive it. When you look into it, it says: I am gone. I am gone as you knew me. I am finished. It is a look that the living can do nothing to stop. We are forced, with each death, to accept it and continue living, just like the dead did before death. Only minutes