As of this moment the official count-down to Maine is: 3 days, 18 hours, 17 minutes and 2 seconds. I am so excited for the upcoming trip that I can hardly focus on getting the things done that I need to do! Of course, in typical Amanda fashion it’s easy for me to find things to be anxious about but I’m just going to take a deep breath and think positive! I need this time away, hell, we both do! I know it will do both of our souls some good. The trip will take about 13.5 hours to get to Bristol, ME and I’m going to eat up every single minute of it, I love a good road trip! So excited!
Feels like forever since I took a moment to sit and write out the goings on in my life. There’s lots to be said but I’m awfully tired and have to be up early for work tomorrow. A narrow list (so that I can remember the next time I decide to take a moment and write) of the current happenings goes like this:
- my place of business was recently acquired by a different company
- we finished (mostly) pulling the carpet up (and staining the floor!)
- visited two museums in DC
- Saw Super 8 and LOVED it.
- had my sister over for dinner (twice and once with my mum, too)
- celebrated America’s birthday with great friends
- went to the dentist… twice
- after 10 years I started therapy again
- we are on vacation count-down (10 days, 4 hours, 4 minutes and 15 seconds)
- another good friend was recently diagnosed with invasive breast cancer
- I finished two books: “The Art of Happiness” by His Holiness the Dali Lama and “The Art of Mending” by Elizabeth Berg
- I started a new book, “Expressive Photography” by the Shutter Sisters. Good stuff.
You know, just the usual stuff they call life. It feels like it’s been a very long year. Why, just today a friend updated their Facebook to note that there are just 4 months and 30 day until Christmas… can you believe it?! Craziness.
Today is day two of an insane work-out push before we leave to Maine in August. My body is in terrible pain, but I’m going to be up in five hours and do it all over again.
I used to post my daily gratitude’s every night, lately I haven’t even been good at just saying them in my head. I’m interested in getting back into the practice of it. Today I’m grateful for busy days at work, old pictures that I can look at and remember, quiet time to explore my creativity, good dogs, cheese & tomato sandwiches, a blooming sunflower and in about 2 minutes – my hard, uncomfortable bed. I mean hey… at least I’ve got one right?
It was so hot and sticky when I left work this evening. I settled in for my ride home and was almost instantly moved to tears. You see, I’ve cried for Carrie a lot lately. Mostly in the shower in the mornings and on my ride home. Tonight I don’t even know what it was that came over me; the sky opened up and began to pour and my tears followed suit. Then… scccrreeeeeeeeecchhhhh – BAM, a three car pile-up happens in the opposite direction. I wiped the snot and tears off my face, pulled over and jogged to the accident. Because my mascara was not waterproof the good folks at the scene were asking me if I was okay and had been harmed – I told them I was fine (okay a little embarrassed about that), checked on them, got the okay that the authorities had been called, turned off a still running car in the middle of the street and then bounced out.
It was a really weird moment. Of course I’m sitting here wondering if it was a sign or something… but I really don’t think it was.
I am sad. Our house is in shambles because we’ve decided to pull up the carpet. The floor underneath looks like poop and I fear this is going to be a much longer project than I had originally hoped. On the one hand it’s really most excellent to have a project to dive into when times are tough. Although it feels a bit overwhelming when everything else i.e., emotions are all over the place. Either way I know my beloved will make sure it will be lovely and for that I am and will always be grateful.
So I’m in tears again. Really missing my friend. Worried she never knew how much she meant to me; how much I loved her. Angry that she had such a tough time in life and desperately wishing for a different ending.
**Tonight’s title is from the 1996 movie Foxfire with Angelina Jolie. It was one of Carrie and I’s favourite movies. We definitely ran with some foxes. . .
Yesterday I was stressed. Like really, really really stressed. Lover asked me where it was coming from and I answered very honestly that I have no idea. Here’s what I did learn about myself yesterday though. When I’m stressed I feel vulnerable and when I’m vulnerable I’m immediately defensive and when I’m defensive I strike. Not the prettiest epiphany about oneself for sure but highly informative for me to realize.
So it’s Thursday, only two days until our first nice weather three day weekend. I just worked out…. it’s a new day and everything’s going to be all right, I know so because I am in charge of my destiny. Right?! Right.
I met my best friend Carrie in a psychiatric hospital in Leesburg, Virginia 1995. I was sixteen and she was just one year older than I. She arrived late in the evening, it was February and she was on suicide watch. I was hanging out with the nurses, not something I should have done but a psych tech I became very close with used to allow me to bend a few rules. She spent her first night in the hospital on a small mattress in the middle of that big room. She cried silently and did not speak.
My recollections are a little fuzzy about what happened next, and how we actually came to talk and eventually become inseparable. I do remember giving her a lot of shit. I trash talked to her a lot – I was a very angry person. I remember calling her a virgin (woo, scary and terrible, I know) telling her she was hoitey toitey and finally breaking her down to yell at me in gender group. All I remember after that she had permission to go to the dining hall and though my usual group of ‘friends’ wanted me to sit with them, I sat down with her at a table in the sun. That’s always how said our friendship started… I used to say she was my angel. I looked at her and asked her if she knew she had one green eye and one blue eye; she looked right back at me like I was dumb and said yes, she couldn’t believe how many people asked her that. That was really all she wrote, we were bound at that moment in the sun, we connected and I don’t even know how it happened.
We had amazing and emotional times at that hospital. I was a fighter and a ‘acter outer’ and so you often heard the cry over the loud-speaker of “CODE YELLOW TO THE ADOLESCENT UNIT” and that meant someone was ‘going off ‘ and if one person was, it was likely the entire unit would go off. I spent a lot of time in all the quiet rooms, sometimes in four point restraints, sometimes not. After a very big fight in gender group and once such evening in the quiet room, Rose came to get me and she brought me to my new room, which happened to be with Carrie. She had decorated it all for me, it was so beautiful and I was so happy we were together. We used to steal cigarette butts out of the ashtray on our way to the dining hall, then smoke them in our bathroom. Can you picture the two of us on top of the toilet, holding our smokes up to the vent? We would get such a buzz that we would fall onto our beds laughing… and then rush around rubbing lotion on the walls so no one would know we had smoked. While we were at Springwood we met lots of folks and saw lots and lots of things that I’m sure most folks don’t see growing up. We met Logan, who’s mama had sold her to many men, Candy who was so fucked up she would steal glass, cut herself and then rub it all over the walls, Doug – a real bad boy who I later briefly dated, Rebekkah who wrote me a song, Erica who turned sixteen in the hospital and the oh so memorable Kenyatta. Who I remember most though was Rose, the psych tech who taught me how to watch the grass grow and desperately helped me to get rid of my anger. I really wish I could find her now…
Carrie left the hospital before I did. She did come to visit me and then when I was put into the group home, she came and visited me there, too.
To the best of my recollections that is how Carrie and I met and became such fast friends. It’s very hard to be here without her. It is extremely sad for me that I am the only one who holds our story, that we can never again share it together. I am having just such a difficult time with this, dealing with this, I mean…. I am unable to weep but my heart is so heavy and sad.
Carrie Handwerk meant the world to me. She was a bright, beautiful, talented, smart young woman who suffered with a terrible mental illness for much of her short and tragic life. She was a very significant part of my life and I miss her terribly and have so many thing I wish I would have said. My only comfort is writing about and sharing the story of our friendship.
This is a photograph I took 
of my ‘goodbye’ book from the hospital. This is the entry that my beloved Rose wrote to me. . . I read and re-read it often, just touching the book makes me feel close to the beginning…instead of the end.
“But I’d long ago learned not to be picky in farewells. They weren’t guaranteed or promised.
You were lucky, more than blessed, if you got a good-bye at all.”
— Sarah Dessen
How ironic is it that the hardest decision we’ve had to make for our beloved Petunia is the kindest and most caring one can make for their suffering pet? We said goodbye to her early on Monday morning. She was struggling and in pain; the cancer having robbed all the spirit left in her fragile little body.
I cannot give a proper eulogy for Petunia, I did not know her for her entire life. I was however, Petunia’s other mum for five years and can attest to the fact that she was indeed a very cool and special cat. I have this partial affinity for tabby cats and when I met Jenn’s little brood I was immediately smitten with Petunia. Pretty brown tabby with the brightest, greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. She was quiet, patient and the only cat in our home that could scare the beejeezus out of our large bully cat, Hunter. She was a New England Lady through and through. She enjoyed hugs and hanging out on shoulders, a good game of tag and tip-toeing through the house so stealthily that the only thing that let you know she was around was the big bell around her neck. When she got ill she lost so much weight we had to take her collar and bell off of her. She was frightened of black leather gloves, and when I drove Jenn’s cats down to Virginia from Massachusetts she was the loudest protestor…for all eight hours of the drive! She was truly so very special and I know that we did the very best by her and I will forever be grateful and lucky to have known such a soul as Petunia’s. My friend Tom said the other day that often folks will say that our pets are the lucky ones, but truly, it is us who are blessed to have them in our life. Our house and hearts are so very sad these days and will be for some time, I’m sure.
Our girl had a less then perfect weekend. Yesterday was the worst; hiding, inappetent, sneezing and nausea. Petunia’s original doctor (and my friend) was working this weekend so we called her and got her on an antibiotic and an anti-nausea injection. This makes for 3-4 shots a day! We knew she was feeling bad when she didn’t even attempt to fight the shot. She perked up a little last evening and was a little more bright-eyed this morning; this evening, however finds her back to feeling puny. We think she is very weak because she is so severely anemic, her breathing is a little heavier and she has become quite vocal. It’s a pitiful cry that doesn’t get out until the third try and then it’s so loud and sad.
Overall the day was good we went to the Farmer’s Market and planted all of our babies into our new raised garden bed.
Our Petunia’s cancer has relapsed. It seems that four weeks after she went into remission, Petunia is sick again. There were not very many noticeable signs, actually hardly any…except maybe she was not eating as much as she was the week before.
Cancer is so ugly. Just recently my beloved’s father was diagnosed with colon cancer; he underwent surgery to remove part of his colon and gall bladder and though he did get pneumonia in the hospital; we’re holding on to the Doctor’s hope that he’ll be just fine. Did I mention it’s ugly regardless if it’s in humans or animals? Somehow seeing it ravage our little girl is a bit more than I can take.
It’s only the beginning of May and this has already been one of the saddest years of my life. Early on Jennifer lost one of her former employees, Ruth, whom I had known as well. My paternal grandfather passed away in January. On Valentine’s Day Petunia was diagnosed with an un-diagnosable cancer. Three weeks ago my beautiful best friend Carrie died so tragically and out of the blue and two weeks ago Jenn’s dad was told he had the big C and underwent a major surgery. I almost feel like just holding out my plate and saying, “go ahead, fill ‘er up, I can take it.” I mean what the hell, we have seven more months to go, what else could we add to this? I don’t however want to tempt fate and invite anything else to happen, so I’ll set my heavy plate down and just start swallowing.
Tonight as I left work my Jennifer followed behind. She took Petunia in her car so they could have a ‘little talk.” From my rear view mirror I watched my beautiful lover cry and talk with her kitty. It hurt so much to watch. I wish that my love alone could heal Petunia and the pain inside of Jenn’s heart…but unfortunately that’s just not a reality.
So tonight, since I can’t sleep… I’m just going to let it go. Right now I’m done thinking about all these sad, sad circumstances. I’m done crying and I’m done being scared of what might come next. I don’t know how I will feel in the morning, but tonight, I’m going to give these feelings away.
Carrie would have been so thrilled to see me in church yesterday. We left very early to make sure that even with traffic we would make it on time. (I should preface that to say that Jennifer and I are never on time for anything, except maybe supper.) I haven’t been up that early in a long time and the sunrise was really just breathtaking over the DMV. I thank her for that and wonder if she could see it wherever she is now.
Once we headed up north the morning drive was gray and the land was painted with a thick, white fog. My stomach was so very upset and I have to be completely honest; I totally shit my brains out twice in ten minutes at some random Sheetz right outside of Harrisburg. I have never been so grateful for baby wipes.
We arrived at Camp Hill three hours early and decided to drive down to Enola where she lived. You see, I didn’t know her address because we’ve been out of ‘touch’ for some time, just the random Facebook messages and promises to get together. This is a very bitter pill to swallow for me, painful beyond belief, but that’s a totally different post. On our way to rte. 11 we got stuck at a train stop – we were there for 45 minutes as the longest train in the world (I swear) rolled through. All the other cars in line behind us balled out, it was just us, a truck that had a sticker that said ‘meat wagon’ on it and an ambulance that hung in there. During the time we amused ourselves with the good and bad graffiti on the side of the train, groaned when the boxcars became miles and miles of flat cars and contemplated peeing behind a ledge over the hill. Once the bar finally raised we thought we would find somewhere to go and relive ourselves.
The river looked gorgeous with the fog rolling over it. Such pretty little islands with cool, gnarly trees. The houses were cute and tiny, though the town looked a little rough to me. We stopped at a dairy queen, and oddly the ambulance did too. The most amazing thing, is that we didn’t know where she lived, but we later found we were less than a half a mile from her sweet little home.
Since we didn’t know where her house was and we had about an hour and a half left, we decided to find something to eat and ended up at a quaint little coffee-shop right next to her Father’s church. We ate, had some tea and root beer and then changed in their bathroom. Jennifer would probably like for me to point out that I left the dry cleaning tag in my dress, in complete Amanda style. I saw her mother first, she looked sad and lovely, I hugged her so tight and told her how much I loved her. I met Clark, her nursing school buddy that introduced your Carrie’s father and her. She noted that Clark could tell stories that ‘I didn’t need to hear about my mother.’ I squeezed on Bea and found out that DeDe had passed away three months ago… I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. Carrie’s father was a complete mess, rightly so, of course. Her brother was stoic and I finally met his girlfriend; I could see why Carrie liked her so much.
It was mostly a church service, not something I’m really into. The homily was delivered by a new pastor and I could tell that she only knew Carrie through one person’s memory of her. The only thing that I garnered from the homily was that I did know Carrie well. I didn’t take communion or sing any of the songs because I didn’t know them. There were mostly older folks, I think friends of her parent’s at the memorial. I also saw that Sara, an old HS friend was there too. I’d love to be able to tell her that I finally met Lenis and Tizzy and her new sister.
After the service we went to a cute little Sunday School room to do what everyone does after a service, eat. I wasn’t really interested. There were photographs of her has a young girl, a photo of her and I at Kings Dominion when we were so very young and her bible, which was found on her kitchen table, with lots of notes, it seemed to me, the same passage about ‘lepers’ written several times. There was also the last card that Lynn sent her, with a bible passage, the card was found where that passage was from. I’ll be honest, I wanted to take one of them, to have it, her hand-writing, a note, something tangible to hold and grieve.
I was not invited to her burial and where I get that very much, it hurts because I feel like I need to be close. We’re going to take a road trip up there this weekend, so that I can pay my own respects.
On our way out of town, after retrieving her address we stopped at her house. It was so incredibly painful. I looked in her back window, into her tiny sweet kitchen, at her kitchen table and everything looks like it just stopped. I broke down wicked when her kitty came to the window. Sweet Moses, I just wanted to pick him up and hold him, bury my head into his body and cry.
Carrie’s mom asked me to mourn her properly. She said no one does that anymore and I can understand where she’s coming from. I’m not sure what proper mourning is, but I already know that I will.
Writing is very cathartic for me now. I’d like to tell our story but I think I’m doing it a little ass backwards, which is how all of this seems. Right now I’m just taking it hour by hour, letting the tears flow when they come and asking, no, maybe begging for her to send me a sign.
everything lovely & good 