Monday, December 18, 2006
Leavin' on a Jet Plane
The words of the old Peter,Paul and Mary song have been going through my head all week:
Vicki and I had a conversation about this change. "Doesn't it feel like planning your own funeral?" she said. "Yes, exactly, only its more like we have had to organize our own funeral and all the other details," I responded. And it IS like that: we've had to get rid of a lot of household items, sell the house, sell the car, cancel insurances, make arrangments at the bank, forward our mail, stop our magazine subscriptions, and disconnect our phone. The only thing we haven't had to do is arrange for cremation and pick out an urn (although I did thow away the papers I have had in my desk forever, for donating my body to the University of Iowa, since I didn't think anyone would want to pay shipping all the way back from Australia). Dying would have been easier!
The good part about it has been having an opportunity to say goodbye to everyone in our Cedar Rapids lives, and to tell them how much they mean to us.
I ran out of time to write all the thank you notes I wanted to, but I did hit on the idea of gifting a lot of the little knick-knacks I had on my desk to some of my coworkers. So the "Believe" rock goes to our Program Administrator, and the bendable ostrich to my successor as FPC Director ("so you can do what I did whenever there are problems- hide your head in the sand"), and the fake "arrow-through-the-head" goes to the best boss in the world, Gordon, who is always saying "the Pioneers take the arrows". I tried to write 2-3 notes every chance I could the last weeks, but time ran out. 
Let me just say that I so appreciate everyone I worked with at CRMEF- a large group of people who are totally dedicated to our patients and to educating our residents and students. I realize that I have been fabulously lucky to have worked with them the last 14 years. For the last few months Vicki has also been saying goodbye to her friends here, having a lot of lunches with the girls at local bars, and frequenting the local coffee shop. We both went to church the last 2 Sundays to also say aloha. We have belonged to a "foyer group" which met monthly for the last 12 years. Until recently we were the youngest members of this group of 6 couples, which has weathered a divorce, a marriage and two funerals of members during that time.
Which brings me back to change. One of my residents asked me how it felt, was I all packed and excited to go? My answer was, "I am actually terrified now, having no regular job, being homeless, and heading half-way around the world to a foreign country." She nodded her head in agreement- "Yes, that is exactly the way I felt when I left France and came to this country, to only stay a short while, and stayed many years.." she said. Which reminded me that we have been wrapped up in this daily, comforting routine which we can no longer tolerate anymore. We have had to change or suffocate. And we are oh so lucky to have this opportunity. Life is short, brought home to us last month by the untimely death of our dentist of 14 years, Christine Waste in an MVA.
She was so excited and interested to hear about our trip on my last visit to her. Her loss just highlighted our need to GO even more. If we don't try new things, we don't grow. And if we don't grow, we die.
Last Thursday my co-workers tricked me into attending the case conference, which was a post-mortem on my career at CRMEF. Highlights included embarrassing pictures from my childhood (thanks to Vicki's collusion), testimonials from Residents and finally a mass "light-up" of candy cigarettes in honor of my teaching them smoking cessation
techniques in all their patients. Overwhelmed is the only word that fits. (Check out the pictures.)
Leaving on a jet plane"Overwhelming" would be the word that best describes these last weeks in Cedar Rapids. In the nine days before last Monday, I had 5 nights of call, and was up in the wee hours of the morning delivering babies on all of them. This leads to a chronic sleep deprivation that colors all of my perceptions. For one thing, lack of sleep makes me very emotionally labile, so that an old song on the radio while driving between hospitals elicits tears, and I have less patience than usual. Add to that the sense of finality to all things that leaving entails.. So this last week has rushed by in a haze of images and sensations, like a fractured dream. When we finally got into our B&B here in Long Island last night we both fell asleep at 6:30pm and slept for 12 hours.
Don't know when I'll be back again...
Vicki and I had a conversation about this change. "Doesn't it feel like planning your own funeral?" she said. "Yes, exactly, only its more like we have had to organize our own funeral and all the other details," I responded. And it IS like that: we've had to get rid of a lot of household items, sell the house, sell the car, cancel insurances, make arrangments at the bank, forward our mail, stop our magazine subscriptions, and disconnect our phone. The only thing we haven't had to do is arrange for cremation and pick out an urn (although I did thow away the papers I have had in my desk forever, for donating my body to the University of Iowa, since I didn't think anyone would want to pay shipping all the way back from Australia). Dying would have been easier!
The good part about it has been having an opportunity to say goodbye to everyone in our Cedar Rapids lives, and to tell them how much they mean to us.
I ran out of time to write all the thank you notes I wanted to, but I did hit on the idea of gifting a lot of the little knick-knacks I had on my desk to some of my coworkers. So the "Believe" rock goes to our Program Administrator, and the bendable ostrich to my successor as FPC Director ("so you can do what I did whenever there are problems- hide your head in the sand"), and the fake "arrow-through-the-head" goes to the best boss in the world, Gordon, who is always saying "the Pioneers take the arrows". I tried to write 2-3 notes every chance I could the last weeks, but time ran out. 
Let me just say that I so appreciate everyone I worked with at CRMEF- a large group of people who are totally dedicated to our patients and to educating our residents and students. I realize that I have been fabulously lucky to have worked with them the last 14 years. For the last few months Vicki has also been saying goodbye to her friends here, having a lot of lunches with the girls at local bars, and frequenting the local coffee shop. We both went to church the last 2 Sundays to also say aloha. We have belonged to a "foyer group" which met monthly for the last 12 years. Until recently we were the youngest members of this group of 6 couples, which has weathered a divorce, a marriage and two funerals of members during that time.
Which brings me back to change. One of my residents asked me how it felt, was I all packed and excited to go? My answer was, "I am actually terrified now, having no regular job, being homeless, and heading half-way around the world to a foreign country." She nodded her head in agreement- "Yes, that is exactly the way I felt when I left France and came to this country, to only stay a short while, and stayed many years.." she said. Which reminded me that we have been wrapped up in this daily, comforting routine which we can no longer tolerate anymore. We have had to change or suffocate. And we are oh so lucky to have this opportunity. Life is short, brought home to us last month by the untimely death of our dentist of 14 years, Christine Waste in an MVA.
She was so excited and interested to hear about our trip on my last visit to her. Her loss just highlighted our need to GO even more. If we don't try new things, we don't grow. And if we don't grow, we die.Last Thursday my co-workers tricked me into attending the case conference, which was a post-mortem on my career at CRMEF. Highlights included embarrassing pictures from my childhood (thanks to Vicki's collusion), testimonials from Residents and finally a mass "light-up" of candy cigarettes in honor of my teaching them smoking cessation
techniques in all their patients. Overwhelmed is the only word that fits. (Check out the pictures.)
