Tag: death

Dreaming with my father.

On By scenebyginaIn family, reflection1 Comment
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Dad looked like this in my dream!

I have always been the type to remember dreams, but I’ve never dreamt with a dead person before. I dreamt of my father last night.

It was pretty weird. There he was, gone in his bed at the nursing home (a sight I’ll never forget), and then he was in one of those drawers they have at the morgue, but awake. They called us three weeks after, saying it was a mistake, so there I was to pick him up. He was awake. And so I drove him back to the nursing home.

I hung out in his room and talked to him, catching him up on all the madness, namely the election and the raging dumpster fire that is our President-to-be, and the ‘bad dream’ (pun intended, I guess) that was the relationship I recently got out of (both stories complete with protagonists who are fond of to gas lighting! Yay!)

So what does this dream mean? Well, I’m not expert in how to interpret dreams except I’ve heard when you dream of the dead they’re thinking of you. But here’s the best I could get from Dreammoods.com (I’ve bolded and italicized the parts that may be relevant to me):

Dead
To see or talk to the dead in your dream forewarns that you are being influenced by negative people and are hanging around the wrong crowd. This dream may also be a way for you to resolve your feelings with those who have passed on. Alternatively, the dream symbolizes material loss. If you dream of a person who has died a long time ago, then it suggests that a current situation or relationship in your life resembles the quality of that deceased person. The dream may depict how you need to let this situation or relationship die and end it. If you dream of someone who has recently passed away, then it means that their death is still freshly in your mind. You are still trying to grasp the notion that he or she is really gone. If the dead is trying to get you to go somewhere with her or him, then it signifies that you are trying to understand their death. You also don’t want to be alone.

To see and talk with your dead parents in your dream is a way of keeping them alive. It is also a way of coping with the loss. You are using your dream as a last opportunity to say your final good-byes to them.

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You didn’t think I only had one dream, did you? I had a very frustrating dream in which my older brother, Richard, was arrested for shooting at his cell phone. That’s all I remember. I don’t remember where he was, but I arrived at a police precinct to bail him out and I was very frustrated, yelling at him for hanging out with the wrong people. LOL. I wish I knew what that was about! I can tell you my brother is not fond of guns and he’d never destroy his cell phone!

Dreammoods.com isn’t really helpful on this one, since all the gun interpretation seems to involve the dreamer, and I wasn’t holding a gun in the dream. The same goes for their interpretation of bail:

Gun
To see a gun in your dream represents aggression, anger, and potential danger. You could be on the defensive about something. Or you may be dealing with issues of passiveness/aggressiveness and authority/dependence. Alternatively, a gun is a symbol of power and pride. Perhaps you are looking for shelter or protection in your dream. From a Freudian perspective, a gun represents the penis and male sexual drive. Thus, the gun may mean power or impotence, depending on whether the gun went off or misfired.

To dream that you are loading a gun forewarns that you should be careful in not letting your temper get out of control. It may also signify your ability to defend yourself in a situation.

To dream that a gun jams or fails to fire indicates that you are feeling powerless in some waking situation. Perhaps you need to attack your problems from a different approach. Alternatively, a malfunctioning gun represents sexual impotence or fear of impotence.

To dream that you are hiding a gun implies that you are repressing your angry feelings.

To dream that you shoot someone with a gun denotes your aggressive feeling and hidden anger toward that particular person. You may be trying to blame them for something.

To dream that someone is shooting you with a gun suggests that you are experiencing some confrontation in your waking life. You feel victimized in a situation or that you are being targeted.

Bail
To dream that you are making bail symbolizes your need to accept help in your business dealings. This dream is trying to make you acknowledge that it is perfectly all right to accept a helping hand.

 

 

 

 

On Frontline: Why Is It So Hard for Doctors to Talk to Patients About Death?

On By scenebyginaIn family, People, senior citizensLeave a comment

Screen shot 2015-02-10 at 11.13.30 PMVia PBS’ Frontline / Tim Molloy:

Dr. Atul Gawande just wanted to give a patient some hope. But he ended up saying something he would regret.

In FRONTLINE’s new film Being Mortal, Gawande remembers treating Sara Monopoli, a woman who was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer at 34, in the ninth month of her pregnancy. After giving birth to a healthy baby girl, Monopoli was diagnosed with a second disease: thyroid cancer.

In the film, Gawande tells Sara’s husband, Rich, that he knew she would almost certainly die of lung cancer, but he still gave the family hope that an experimental treatment might help treat both cancers. Rich surmises his family’s hope must have been infectious.

“You had joined us,” he tells Gawande. “We had our sunny disposition, hoping for the best.”

“The reason I regret it is because I knew it was a complete lie,” Gawande replies. “I just was wanting something positive to say.”

The conversation captures the dilemma suffered by doctors, families and patients with a terminal illness. The patient faces a painful decision: Whether to keep fighting a disease through every last treatment, trying to live as long as possible, no matter how painfully, or to live out the final days as well as possible.

Read more & watch video here:

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (When our parents age)

On By scenebyginaIn family, New York Times, People, senior citizens3 Comments
Screen shot 2014-05-05 at 10.05.36 PM
Excerpt from “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” by Roz Chast of the New Yorker.

“I was just talking to somebody yesterday who said the worst thing for a parent is to have a child who’s a writer.” — New Yorker cartoonist, Roz Chast.

I would like to write about my parents.

I wrote a couple of columns about my father’s Parkinson’s when I was a newspaper reporter for the Home News Tribune, and I’ve blogged about his illness on this blog once or twice. But I would like to someday write stories about them, their childhoods, and especially, how my dad was pre-Parkinson’s.

And as for my mother, that’s more complicated.

I’ve never been the super close daughter (the type to talk about every single detail with her mom) that she was with her mother. (My grandmother is still alive, but she has Alzheimer’s, which means my mother has lost, in essence, her best friend.) Add in the fact that she is stressed because she’s my father’s full-time caregiver, and it’s even more complicated.

Thankfully, our relationship is a bit better (much less bickering) since I’ve lived on my own (after a separation and subsequent divorce that she didn’t agree with at first) but, like all things, it could be better.

I have some things to work out, or talk about (?), in order to make that happen. And then I hope to write about them more, especially my mother, since she’s not very open about her feelings (hey, maybe we are alike, after all!) because as the most hardworking immigrants I know, my parents have some interesting stories that deserve some pixels on the Internet.

Now back to cartoonist Roz Chast. I learned about her latest work via a wonderful interview on “All Things Considered” on WNYC:

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Roz Chast

“The longtime New Yorker cartoonist is an only child and became the sole caretaker for her parents, George and Elizabeth Chast, when they reached old age. In her new, illustrated memoir — Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury USA, 2014) — Chast mixes the humor with the heartache. It’s about the last years of her parents’ lives and her relationship with them as their child and conflicted caretaker.

“They never had what’s known these days as ‘The Talk’ — an acknowledgement that their deaths were inevitable. As a result, Chast says, everyone was in denial and actively avoided the subject, even as it was staring them squarely in the face.”

“Chast’s parents — who were both born in 1912 — lived independently in Brooklyn up until their early 90s. Things started to go downhill in 2005 when her mother fell off a step stool at age 93. ‘She was in bed for a few days, and it was clear that what was going on was more than the fall off the ladder,’ Chast recalls. ‘That was the beginning of their sort of slide into the next part of old age — you know, the last chapters.'”

My parents are in their late 60s, early 70s. I can’t imagine it getting to this point Chast describes, but I guess my brothers and I should prepare ourselves sooner rather than later. And today, after reading this story in The New York Times, about a man who is 111 years old, I agree wholeheartedly with Chast:

“When people talk about extending the human lifespan to 120 it bothers Roz Chast. ‘That upsets me for a lot of reasons,’ she tells NPR’s Melissa Block. ‘I feel like these are people who don’t really know anybody over 95.’ The reality of old age, she says, is that ‘people are not in good shape, and everything is falling apart.'”

Though my parents aren’t in their 90s, my father has a chronic disease that renders him pretty immobile, and so, I too, can’t imagine wanting to live to 111. (God bless this man who has, though!)

Listen to the entire interview with Roz Chast here, and read an excerpt from her illustrated memoir via The New Yorker.

On the passing of Colombian vallenato legend, Diomedes Diaz

On By scenebyginaIn family, Loneliness, People, places, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Diomedes Diaz
Diomedes Diaz

I have an interesting relationship with Colombian vallenato music in that my Colombian-music loving self didn’t always love it. I recall my cousin Maria asking me why I didn’t love it at and me saying “it’s old people music.” Ha! (We joke now that she was — and still is– a romantic, and I was [and still am] a cynical cold hearted kid. Go figure.)

I often heard vallenato at parties growing up because it is somewhat of a somber music, in which the ‘grownups’ sat around, reminisced about their homeland, and had shots of aguardiente. At home, my dad preferred to play salsa and cumbia as he was always more of an upbeat music fan (like me!).

Like my father, I preferred to listen to salsa and cumbia, and later champeta, but I gained an appreciation for vallenato as a young adult when I really started paying attention to the lyrics. So sentimental!

The music has its roots in Colombia’s pastures of Valledupar.

This form of music originated from farmers who, keeping a tradition of Spanish minstrels (Juglares in Spanish), mixed also with the West African-inherited tradition of griots (African version of juglar), who used to travel through the region with their cattle in search of pastures or to sell them in cattle fairs. Because they traveled from town to town and the region lacked rapid communications, these farmers served as bearers of news for families living in other towns or villages. Their only form of entertainment during these trips was singing and playing guitars or indigenous gaita flutes, known as kuisis in the Kogi language, and their form of transmitting their news was by singing their messages. (Source.)

Known as “el cacique (native chief),” Diaz was regarded as one of the best singer-songwriters of vallenato. But he didn’t come without controversy:

Diaz led a tempestuous life, serving time in jail over the death of a fan at a party in his home. He often showed up late to concerts or not at all, something his fans put down to his addiction to drugs and alcohol.

…

In 1997, at the height of his career and shortly before the launch of his album Mi Biografia (My Biography), a fan and friend of Diaz, Doris Adriana Nino, was found dead by the side of a highway in Tunja province. Forensic experts at first said that she had died of a heart attack following a drug overdose at a party hosted by Diaz, but a later forensic report suggested she had been suffocated.

After a lengthy trial, Diaz was sentenced to 12 years in jail for homicide, a sentence which was later reduced to six years.

Diaz, who had been put under house arrest, went on the run when he was due to be transferred to jail, allegedly hiding away in an area controlled by the infamous paramilitary leader known as Jorge 40. He handed himself in to the authorities in 2002 and, after having his sentence further reduced, was released in 2004. (Source.)

Much like when tropical music king Joe Arroyo died in 2011, Colombians have taken to the streets to pay homage to Diaz. And Valledupar’s mayor has declared four days of mourning.

Radio stations are playing songs from his vast discography nonstop.

There are several favorites of Diaz I love, but I’ll leave you with “Mensaje de Navidad” since it’s appropriate for the Christmas season:

Again, the lyrics are somber, but true, as the holidays aren’t always “joyous” if one is away from loved ones.

Unos dicen: Que buena las navidades
Es la época más linda de los años
Pero hay otros que no quieren acordarse
De la fiesta de Año Nuevo y aguinaldo
Pero hay otros que no quieren acordarse
De la fiesta de Año Nuevo y aguinaldo

(Source: see rest of lyrics here.)

Say No to Distractions: ‘It Can Wait’

On By scenebyginaIn family, PeopleLeave a comment
via Getty Images
via Getty Images

It is described as a freak accident, because as far as automobile wrecks go, for a bus to hit a lamppost that falls on a baby in a stroller, well, it’s just not supposed to happen that way. But that’s how it went, and 8-month-old Angelie Paredes is gone.

But this July 30 ‘freak accident‘ in New Jersey, which took place when a bus jumped a curb because its driver was allegedly on his cell phone, could have been prevented. The driver, who is now charged with ‘death by auto,’ did not have to use his phone while operating a vehicle. The passengers did not have to accept his behavior as a matter-of-fact habit of these discount jitney bus drivers.

Dear baby Angelie did not need to die.

Consider the statistics:

According to the United States Department of Transportation, distracted driving (which is caused by any activity that could divert a person’s attention away from the primary task of driving) claimed the lives of 3,331 lives in 2011. A whopping 387,000 people were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving a distracted driver.

Read more of my piece in the Huffington Post.