Author: Irene Page 29 of 47
Even though I was there for an article for the Star-Herald newspaper, Barb Schlothauer and her fellow Soroptimists convinced me to help them make May baskets in 2018. It was still chilly enough at the end of April for me to be wearing my green sweater.
Anyone who has seen me during winter for the last three decades has likely seen me wearing my green sweater. Shortly after moving out of the dorms at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and into my first apartment, I had a conversation with my grandmother about being cold. I was on a budget and heat wasn’t high on my list of priorities. Gram wondered if I couldn’t afford to turn the heat up, why didn’t I wear a sweater. I didn’t have one. I didn’t have the money to buy one.
By the time I left her house in Middletown, New York, I had a pocket full of cash to buy a sweater of my choosing. It took months to find a sweater I liked.
There was still a little bit of light outside. I suspect in a week or two, it will be dark outside at 6 p.m. Fall is in full swing and winter is nipping at the edges of the day, anxious to arrive and take over. The temperature was in the mid-forties. I parked my car in the empty K-Mart parking lot, got out and dialed her number.
I sat on the cold, concrete parking bumper. The chill instantly went through my blue jeans. I was shaking, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of the cold or everything else.
She answered on the fourth ring.
For the past year, I have been listening to music with no lyrics because I couldn’t take the unintended triggers music I like was causing me. I made a new playlist today. If it doesn’t work, I will go back to the nice playlist a pirate friend of mine made.
Here is the top of my desk, nice and neat. Maybe I can get some work done now.
Over the past year, Paul and I have made many changes, which we put off for far too long. We have begun purging our home of stuff that we no longer need or never needed in the first place. We’ve eliminated clutter – physical and mental – that have bogged us down for so long.
Every 40 seconds, someone dies by suicide. That’s a staggering number. I’m not writing today to fill up space with facts and figures. We all know about suicide and its devastating effects. We know we need to be kinder to one another. I’m not writing today to the people who already do this and who raise awareness to try to reduce the numbers of suicides. I’m writing to the person reading this that has felt low enough to consider completing suicide. I know how it feels.
Two hours after starting our hike, the fog has mostly cleared and Chimney Rock can now be seen.
I have written about how the day after Labor Day is the worst day of the year for me, so my friend, Sandra, offered to take me on a hike the day before to try to create some happy memories around this time of year.
When you hear the name Crazy Horse, many people conjure up images of the Oglala Lakota war leader fighting at such places as the Battle of the Rosebud, Battle of the Hundred-in-the-Hands (Fetterman Fight), and the Battle of the Greasy Grass (Battle of the Little Bighorn) to retain the Lakota way of life.
I’m sitting at work watching a marathon of Star Wars movies. It’s quiet at the youth shelter on the overnight shift and I can get a lot of things done. My only real distraction is the ticking clock on the living room wall. Clocks should be made to be silent, but it’s not my home and it’s not my clock, so I try to shut the noise out as best I can as I continue to think about the direction my life is now headed toward and how I’d like to get there.