KENYA!!!

 I can't believe I'm actually going!!!  I leave Mon. a.m., bright and early for the adventure of a lifetime!!!  I am so excited, nervous, humbled and still in a bit of disbelief!

I will be meeting some incredible people and learning so much!!!  Look at these vibrant, beautiful women!

And these amazing Maasai tribal men!  Oh My Goodness!!



What started with a funny little Facebook post has turned into an adventure of a lifetime!!  

I will be meeting Maasai Tribal Midwives while in Kenya as well as distributing Day For Girls International menstrual kits to girls in need.  In fact, with the help of many of my friends and family members, I've been able to raise $2500 for these washable, reusable kits.  Each kit costs approx $10 US and will last a young woman 3-4 yrs!!!  Incredible!!!   I've recently been able to send some of the donations directly to Kenya and the kits are currently in production.  So, when I arrive on Tuesday, I can hit the ground running!! Over 200 girls will receive these kits.  My heart could burst with joy.  

This woman is sewing one of the pads.  Look at that beautiful, colorful fabric!  





I can hardly wait to meet her!!



 

And he died...

... 10 days later.  January 15, 2014.   He was 67 y.o.  Too young to die, in my opinion. 

My sisters and an uncle were there with him when he left us.  We did what we promised we'd do.  We did not let him suffer.  Thankfully Hospice helped us to keep our promise.  He was not afraid to die, but he was petrified that he'd lay there suffering, crapping himself, pissing the bed.  My dad lived his life by his terms and no one else's.  No one!  He even died on his terms.

And now, a month and a half later, I still can't believe that he's gone.  I have forgotten several times.  My grandson who's 4 y.o was here and said some really funny stuff that I wanted to share with my dad.  That was the first time I forgot that he had died. 

It sounds so weird.  How do you forget something like that?  But I honestly did.  Cooper said something hilarious about Dad's old cowdog, Babe.  I had that instant thought, "Oh Dear Me!  I've got to call Dad and tell him what this kid just said.  He'll crack up laughing!"  Then about a nanosecond later, I remembered that I can't call my dad...ever again.  And that about broke me.

I don't know how you get over grief.  Maybe you never do.  The waves that come crashing in on me aren't quite so frequent, but when they do arrive, they are no less crippling.  I'm just now beginning to be able to look at his photos without bawling.  Just barely.  I expect that I will miss him for the rest of my life.  

My granddaughter was with me yesterday.  She saw a photo of Dad and said, "Are you sad Grammy that Great Papa Cowboy died?"  I told her that I was sad, that I missed him very very much.  She placed her little hand on my shoulder and said, "Don't be sad, Grammy.  Now he lives in the stars with Jesus."  She wanted to go outside last night to look at the stars and say goodnight to Great Papa Cowboy. 

I love that child.  I'm thinking Dad would love her sweet and simple explanation.   He loved to look at the stars.  I think I may take up stargazing myself.

I called him Daddy

I don't remember ever calling him "Daddy".  Maybe I did when I was a toddler, but he's always been Dad or Pops.  I was so surprised when it came out of my mouth yesterday.  After I pushed aside the grief and the intense heartache, I was surprsed at the depth of my love for him and that I called him Daddy.  At my age...it just came out.  Amid the tears and the anguish I feel, I just wrapped my arms around him and said, "Oh Daddy..."

Sometimes the grief of what we're all going thru is so heavy I can't breath.  Sometimes it hits me that he's dying and I literally am lost in midstep....or I get hit with it at the most bizarre moments.  In the grocery store, pumping gas, sitting at a red light...When it comes, it comes on hard and it's like a physical punch or full body slam.  It takes my breath away and I'm crippled with the grief.   Then there are the moments when I'm cold and almost clinical with it all. I can talk about it with a precision that's surgical.  I'm sure people who hear me then must think I'm the coldest, most uncaring perosn on the planet.  How can you talk about your father's terminal illness with such lack of emotion.  But...it's because I'm empty of emotion, having exhausted it all at the last sneak attack of grief.  That stealthy moment where I barely got to my car from the grocery aisle so I could allow the meltdown to come on in relative privacy. 

As I was helping him walk across the parking lot yesterday, I was struck with how frail he is.  How utterly wasted his body has become.  Where is my strong and tough father?  Who is this little, gaunt, bent over sweatpants wearing old man?  My father would NEVER be seen in public wearing sweatpants!  This is the man who my whole life wore Wranglers, Stetons and the best cowboy boots money could buy!  Who is this little old man, shuffling in his slippers beside me?  I have to hold his arm because he's so unsteady on his feet.

He tells me that he's about done.  He doesn't know how much longer he can go on like this. The pain is getting worse.  He has to take more and more pain medicine to stay on top of it.  He chokes up when he's telling me.  We stop in mid-parking lot, and he looks me in the eye.  Tears are dripping from his rheumy eyes, his chin is quivering.  "I'm scared of suffering, Sis.  I don't want to suffer."   I lost my strength and resolve right then.  I broke down crying so hard and threw my arms around this bony, skeletal old man and said, "Oh Daddy..."   He hugged me as hard as his thin frame would allow him and we both just bawled and bawled in broad daylight, in the middle of a public parking lot, for the whole world to see.  Just an old Daddy and his grown little girl, mourning for what we are about to lose.

North American Registry of Midwives

NARM...it's what I've been working towards, studying for and sweating about for the last 5 yrs.  Thursday I have the privilege to sit for this exam.  Eight hours of testing.  I pray I pass!  Say a prayer for me, would you?

Deep Breathes

Last night my sister called me with an update on my dad and his health.  The news was not good.  Dad's got lung cancer and the docs have sentenced him to 10 months.  That's all!  TEN MONTHS.  What do you do with that kind of information?  This is surreal.  I'm having a hard time grasping this, getting my head wrapped around what this means.

I just keep taking deep breathes and try to focus.

Six weeks

It seems like forever since I've posted anything on this blog.  I've just been so damn busy.  I added up all my births the other day.  In the last month I've attended 19!!  Nuts, right?  I love it, though.  Truly love it!!

In that mix of gooey babies, placentas, and rivers of amniotic fluid, I've finished up another class (I only have 2.5 left) tried to squeeze in a visit or two with my man, went to a family reunion, and found out my dad has been diagnosed with throat cancer.

My head is spinning and my heart is reeling.  EVERYTHING is surreal these days.  I'm so homesick I think I'm having physical manifestations of that, in the form of anxiety and depression.  Add Dad's shit to the mix and I can hardly breathe at times.  All I want is to be there with him, helping with his MD appts, his treatments, etc.  I feel awful that my sisters are bearing the load alone, without me.  I feel useless.

The insomnia is back. I'm waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, worrying that I'll flunk the NARM.  My brain won't shut off long enough for me to sleep.  I just gnaw away at it, worrying myself to death.  If I weren't on call all the time, I'd take a pill and get some sleep.

Plus, I'm having all kinds of foolish thoughts about my husband being home alone for 6 months and the kind of trouble that can bring (it doesn't help that his stupid brother - who has been married the same amount of years as we have - just got caught having a fuck-fest with someone other than his wife!!)  I have to remind myself on a daily basis that Speed isn't his brother (Thank you, Jesus!) and is a man tightly woven with moral fiber.   (Seems funny that I'd use the F-bomb and Jesus in the same paragraph.  Oh well, HE gets me!)

I can't even begin to go into the living arrangements I'm in.  I keep my mouth shut, my ass in my room and try, try, try to make as little a footprint in their lives as possible.  I am perfecting the art of being invisible.

If it weren't for my love of the women I'm working with, the midwives who are teaching me and investing in my future, I'd have bailed a long time ago.  They have become my surrogate family.  I love them!  They keep me sane.  I wouldn't dream of quitting them.  I owe them so much.

So...I only have 6 weeks left.  Six weeks to hone more midwifery skills & finish the didactic portion of my education.  Only six weeks of building lasting friendships/sisterhoods with these spectacular midwives, and only 6 more weeks of being shut up in a 8x10 room.  I can do this!!  I will do this.

MotherLove

Every birth I attend is special.  Every birth I witness makes me thankful for this calling.  And then there are the births that I attend that cause my heart to swell and fill and come close to exploding with MotherLove. (? - I can't think of any other word for it.)

This is where I wish I were a literary genius, so that I could put into words what happens in my soul at these births, these gifts.

It's only happened a handful of times.  Each time it has happened I am first in awe that it's happened to me.  Then I am humbled and grateful.  AND... astonished!

Three nights ago it happened.  I was helping a laboring mother who had just arrived, walk down the hallway to get to the birth suite we had prepared for her.  She had a grip on my arm like a vice!  She kept saying, "We need to hurry.  Hurry please, we need to hurry."  So, we're hustling down the hallway, walking with great purpose, trying to get her to the bed before the next contraction comes.

We didn't make it.

Her waters broke in the hallway.  As soon as she felt the gush of fluids and heard the audible POP, she lost her mind!  She started screaming.  I'm not talking about hollering or making loud birth sounds.  I'm talking, SCREAMING HER HEAD OFF!!!!!!  In between the screaming she would holler, "THE HEAD! THE HEAD IS OUT!!!!!" Then back to more screaming.

The midwife got this mama's pants down and sure enough there was a baby head.

I was so tuned in to this mama that I can't tell you much of what happened in terms of the birth after that.  She had such a tight grip on my arm that I'm still sporting the bruise. She was screaming in my ear and absolutely not hearing the midwife tell her to "Calm down, everything is o.k."

Through the screaming we somehow managed to get her to the floor, lying down on haphazardly placed chux pads.  I go down to the floor with her.  I have no choice as she's still got a death grip on my arms.  She's still screaming.

Somehow, I was able to place my hands on either side of her face and look her in the eye, my face only inches from hers.  I said, "Sweetheart, listen to me. You're alright.  We've got you.  You are safe. Your baby is safe."  I don't know why my words worked, but I think it had to do with eye contact.

She stopped screaming and looked back into my eyes and never, ever broke contact.  I feel she was staring into my soul.  Her gaze was so intent.  So intense.  It's like we had known each other for a millennium.  We were timeless.  She "knew" me and I her.  In fact, I had a brief, fearful thought that she could look so far into my soul that she would see my own fears, my sin, my regrets.

And that is when it happened...my heart nearly swooned and burst, full of MotherLove for this young mama.  It was a fleeting moment, but I knew it for what it was.  I'm not exactly sure what it is but I recognize it from past occurrences.  It's a moment of recognition when I know that I love this girl more than I love anyone in that moment.  I can't explain it properly and it's frustrating me.  How could I love someone more than I love my own children or my husband?  But, I think maybe it's God.  I think it's Him giving me a dose of His love for another.  I'm not sure what it is, but its real and it's ethereal and I think its important.