I'm back.


Unfortunately...

I haven't written for lack of inspiration.
Also because of my fear of the truth seeping onto here.
It all becomes far more solid and less vague when it's in the written word.

My dreams have stopped.
It came abruptly. The last dream being a very sexual dream in which I turned her away, she stopped and asked why, and I responded with, "because you left me."
Then a few nights after that I had another dream which was mostly concerning my mom. But there came a point in which we were at some sort of party that my mom was having. And there, sitting on a couch was she. My mom offered her red wine with a smile. She declined it. She seemed sad. Very sad. She never looked up at either me or my mom.

That's about the last I've trully seen of her. Or in those kinds of dreams in any case. She's made a camio here and there, but it doesn't feel the same, at all.



I appreciate and thank all of you who had my mom in their thoughts and prayers.

The surgery did NOT go as expected.

The plan was to go inside, take out about half of her liver, close back up, and hope that that would remove the whole liver cancer ordeal. The liver would have grown back in time and every wrong would have been righted. Or so it seemed.
The procedure was a difficult one. And there was a 4% chance of death. To translate that percentage it: 4% = 4/100 = 1/25 = One out of twenty five patients die during this surgery.

The surgery was supposed to last 4 hours. At 2 and a half hours they called my father and I to meet with the doctor and that my mom had come out of surgery. This meant good and bad news. It was clear. The good was that she was out and alive. The bad was that obviously something had happened in those 2 and a half hours that was unexpected.
The doctor, who looked very down and frustrated sat us down. She said that things didn't go as she planned. We were expecting a small tumor on the right hand side of the liver the size of fingernail. When they opened up they looked around and to make sure took a sonagram of the liver directly. The tumor that was supposed to be the size of a fingernail was instead the size of a large walnut. It rests on an artery that goes to the heart. Also, there were two smaller tumors the size of a fingernail spread out in the center of the liver. And the last tumor they found was the size of her fist. And she's not a small woman. It was hidden behind the liver and under the diaphragm, which is very close to her liver, and behind a clip that was placed there in a previous surgery which hid the side of the tumor on previous scans they had done.
There was nothing she could do.
That was basically the whole liver taken over by cancer.
My dad was fighting back tears.
I've only seen my father cry twice.
So, the doctors had closed her up and told us to let her rest for about a month.
She wasn't allowed to do nearly anything.
No driving. No lifting of heavy objects (anything over a gallon). No bending over.

Now, we're back home.
The day after I came back home I started work. From 7:30 to about 4:30. I have to wake up at 5:45 to have time to get ready and get to work on time.
I've had more to do than usual, but it's gotta be done.

We're going to see if she can take brand spankin' new drugs and chemo or even experimental drugs. I mean, what else is there to do? She's also trying these plants from Mexico that supposedly have helped out alot of other people. The doctor said that she probably wasn't going to get cured anymore. That it probably would spread. But doctors have been wrong before right?





My dad did ask one more thing.
Something that I've only shared with one person.
I don't even know if my mom knows this...
"Exactly... I mean,... How... What is her life expectancy?"
The doctor shrugged. She said she wasn't sure.
"A year and a half maybe? Two years?" she responded, "It varies from person to person."






My life is a mess. I'm not content with it, with my life that is. By any means.

But what else can you do?














Oh and I got a skateboard. Weird.

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So, I'm in the waiting room right now...

Thank God for labtops, no? At least my dad, for mine.

I had forgotten how beautiful it is up here. Man! It really makes me hate Texas all over again... *throws tiny texas flag to the floor* Well, maybe not hate, per se, but I definitely miss everything up here; the trees, the farms, the accents, the pies!, EVERYTHING.

So, I've honestly been really worried.
Not semi-worried, but SERIOUSLY worried and nervous and concerned and whatever other synonyms you can add to that.
I haven't really shared that with anyone, because, well..., that's just how I am when it comes to my mom and stuff like this.

However

On the plane ride up here there was this girl that set in the window seat, so I sat next to her, with my mom in the aisle seat. She said "hi" when I was sitting down and pulled out a magazine to read. I thought she was around 14. When I got situated I looked over and noticed that the magazine she had was a Smallville magazine. We got to talking from there. Apparently Smallville and Roswell were her two favorite shows, she was a junior in highschool, and had gone to Plano, Texas to visit her cousin. She seemed pretty cool.

Last night as I lay there, trying to go to sleep after having prayed with my mom and dad, I thought and thought. Then I thought about how I shouldn't think. I remembered Pastor Lo along with so many other people telling me to think positive...

I burst out laughing.

My parents on the other bed asked me why I was laughing.

I told them what happened.

You see, not too long ago I had a conversation with Helena over flying. She mentioned how even though she knew and understood how flying was possible, that planes still weirded her out. How "it's still a giant metal tube flying in the air". So, as I rode on the plane I realized how right she actually was. And began to fear just a little. Not long after, the girl who I spoke with in the window seat, looked away from the window and back at me as we were nearing landing and said,
"You ever wonder how many people in here are imagining the plane catching fire and exploding or something?"
Panic struck me. I said,
"I don't think anyone really tries to think of that. I think everyone likes to keep thinking positively. ...like Peter Pan. As long as we have our 'happy thoughts', we'll keep flying." She giggled.

I laughed at the memory of that.

Of course!

It doesn't really matter what we think.
At the end of the flight what matter is the plane, physics, and the pilots.



So, I came to understand what trusting God is like...

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We leave tomorrow morning. REALLY early tomorrow morning.
My mom's already packed and everything, quite contrary to me.

Today at church they prayed for us. It was pretty cool, I guess.

I've been sick, though, and it's making me quite upset. I don't need this right now. I have hardly any energy. And I need a haircut. Bad. Seriously. But my mom wants me to wait until we get up to Minnesota.
And the fact that we leave tomorrow means I'm saving all my nice clothes for the trip there. So because of all of this, I look like general crap today.

After church I took most of the youth to get a burger, than home. I didn't eat where they ate, since it looked to greasy, but that's what they wanted.
I ended up going to a chinese restaraunt with Paul, one of my youth, and Helena. The food didn't sit well with me, so I felt even worse, and probably looked even worse.
Paul really wanted to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and I was willing to see it again, just because it's him. He's cool. So, we bought our tickets and walked around the mall for a little bit.

As the song that I currently have up, played in the background, Helena, Paul, and I walked through the mall. I kept my eyes down most of the time. (There were alot of people). I'd glance up once in a while.
Glance up - random people.
Look back down. Stay down.
Glance up - random people.
Look back down. Stay down.
Glance up - random people.
Look back down. Stay down.
Glance up - her parents.
Look back down, wait-what?
Look up - raise hand in a general akward/ashamed gesture which signified "hello".
The mom returns it - the dad looks away.
And I stare back down at the floor and walk past them.
A minute or so later I looked over at Helena. She's looking over the rail at the carousel. She had no clue. ...like usual.


We arrived late to the movie.
We exchanged the tickets and returned mine. I went home and they went to the 7 o'clock showing.

My stomach couldn't stomach it.

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Interesting days.

I was really upset a while back. My mom's surgery was going to be the 26th of June, or so I thought, in the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. And that fell right during the Summer Component, where I'll be working. I figured I could get a couple days off, but my mom said her recovery might take a week or more. She also told me she really needed me to work, since we won't be making any money any other way. So, I'd have to stay here, while my mom went to surgery. I was pissed. It was the stupidest situation. Then my mom and I were talking and somehow we came across the surgery and when it was happening... My mom meant May, not June. I felt so incredibly idiotic yet relieved. So, a week from now I'll be in Minnesota with my mom getting ready for her surgery on the 30th (I got the day wrong, too). I'm really glad that I got to go, but at the same time... Well, It's STILL a surgery. Not exactly something to be glad over. I can tell my mom's worried about this one. I'm not going to lie. I am, too.

Yesterday, I took my friend, Monica, to her interview. She's going to be working at the Boys and Girls Club Summer Component along with me. While we were thereI learned of the staff meeting we were having at 4:30 that day. A staff meeting I was supposed to already know about. Awesome. But I'm used to that where I work. So, me and Moe (Monica) went back to my house and watched her senior directed one act play, "the Respectful Prostitute"', which was quite enjoyable and very well done (of course). Then we made our way down to where the staff meeting was being held, at Texas Wesleyan University in the ghetto's part of town. During this meeting Moe and I both noticed trouble.
First off, I do NOT want to be Mr. Theriot's teacher assistant. Lord Farquad (Mr. Theriot) will drive me insane, I know he would. Rather, the students in his class would, simply because of who the teacher is.
Secondly, there's some attractions to certain people from certain people. And we don't want none of that in the work place. Great.

After I dropped Moe off, I made my way to a gathering of some people from church. It's a small group whose intents are to raise the bar for each other spiritually and to bring up servant leaders. So, they're having a block party at one of the member's houses to invite the neighbors over to build a relationship with them. I think it's a neat idea. So we prayed over it and made the details of it all. One of them asked me about my mom. I told her what was going on. She said, "I'm sorry, Aldo." and put her hand on me to punctuate her point. I said, "It's allright." and smiled my usual awkward smile with this. But she didn't do what people normally do. They usually just turn away at that point or begin a new conversation. But she didn't do any of this. No, she just stared straight into my eyes. I felt the walls weaken for a second. NO. This is silly. I'm not about to draw attention to myself. I looked away and gathered myself. "It's allright!" I said as I looked back at her with an even bigger more confident smile. She nodded and looked away. I got up, right after that and walked to the kitchen to relieve my mind and thoughts of that situation.
To escape it's existence, like I usually do.
Or even it's memory.

I got home. I was really tired by 11pm.
I turned off the light. And fell asleep.
5 minutes later I woke up.
I then remained awake for the next 20 minutes.
I finally got tired of waiting and went online.
Still didn't get sleepy, but I knew I should rest.
I went to bed near to 1 am.
Turned off the light.
Still nothing
I turned it back on and began to read.
The first Harry Potter book entertained me.
Finally at nearly 2:30 am I began to get sleepy.
I turned off the light and zonked.



And I dreamt.

Despite everything in my life...

She still came.
In my dreams.
She ran after me.
I ran from her.
But she still came.
She caught me.
I ran again.
She was there when I stopped running.
Told me she didn't want me to leave.
It was hard for me not to smile at her.
I knew she was bad.
But I couldn't help what I felt.

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Staring up, everlasting.

That's how I wished to be.

I wished to take his place. It's place.

The heat was pouring down on me. Sweat drenched my in and out.
Unfortunately it wasn't that warm...

His cold, empty eyes pierced the sky. Pierce the sky.
Of course, the ground first...

It hurt.
Deep.
I haven't felt this pain in months.
It was ridiculous. It was retarded. Out of all things this shouldn't be what gets to me.
Not this.
I'm a fool.
Foolish for letting myself hope and care.
Foolhearted for feeling so much for something like this...


I opened the door and peaked at him.
His head was sticking slightly out the hole in the cage. Maybe he had been trying to get out. But he didn't look well. No, not well at all.

"The vet isn't in. He's only here when he has appointements. Would you like to set up an appointment?"
I looked at the pet-carrier and back at the receptionist.
"What time is your next available appointment?" I asked.
"2:45" she responded.
I looked at my watch. It was 9:30.
"...allright."

Maybe if he just drinks some water...
I put the water bottle up to his mouth.
Water dripped on the floor.
None was swallowed.
He looked at me. With those eyes... Those eyes.

The look. You never forget the look.
It's a sort of pleading mixed with sorrow and surrendering.
I stuck his head back in the cage.
I opened the cage door and pet him.
Come on, buddy. Just make it till 2:45.

I had called Helena so she could do me a favor when I had left the vet's office.
All the other vets in Fort Worth are by appointment only also.
One doesn't even see rabbits except on certain days because of his allergies.

I checked my watch.
It's 11:45.
I pet his head.
Then he breathed hard once.
Twice.
And a last time.

I stared.
I pet him.
I felt... nothing.

I looked at my door.
The vet.
I thought of punching it.
No. My anger wouldn't cease there.
And one hole in my door is enough.
The next would surely break it.

I called Helena.
I told her to cancel that appointment and hung up.
I didn't want to think about it.

I still hadn't showered.
I went to my bathroom and began to shower.
I hope none of my neighbors heard me.
The window was open.
Flashes went through my head of all I've come to lose.
In my life these things aren't few.
And it only promises more.
And the ones to come will be the most difficult of losses to come.

I cleansed myself as much as possible of all my filth.
In the end you're never trully clean, though.
Calm and cool, though.
Stoic, even.

I got dressed.
And went out to my backyard.
I found my shovel.
Right where I had left it last.
Where do I bury him?
Most of the places where already occupied.
...or previously occupied.
Probably rotted away and eaten by now.
Delicious food for the earth that craves life.
Hard to find a spot amidst all the roots.
"Everywhere I lie, there's a dirty great root sticking into my back."
And I wanted him to rest so I kept looking and digging.
I found a place between three trees.
I dug.
Earthworms wriggled as they were torn from the comfort and protection of their homes.
Went back to the garage.
Tried to get him out.
I couldn't.
It was too difficult...
During that short time his body had already become rigid and stiff.
I carried the cage out to his place.
Gently, I pushed his body into the living ground.

He stared up at me.
No.
He didn't.
He just stared.
Into nothing.

The sun beat down all in spots amidst the trees.
I took a picture.
I don't know why.
So, I would never forget I guess.
Though you never really can, I guess.
I then poured the moist earth on him.


Later that night I stared at my cieling.
Knowing he did the same.


Staring up.
Everlasting.

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Taken from the April 2002 issue of National Geographic:

""

She remembers her anger. The man was a stranger. She had never been photographed before. Until they met again 17 years laters, she had not been photographed since.
The photographer remembers the moment too. The light was soft. The refugee camp in Pakistan was a sea of tents. Inside the school tent he noticed her first. Sensing her shyness, he approached her last. She told him he could take her picture. "I didn't think the photograph of the girl would be different from anything else I shot that day," he recalls of that morning in 1984 spent documenting the ordeal of Afghanistan's refugees.
The protrait by Steve McCurry turned out to be one of those images that sears the heart, and in June 1985 it ran on the cover of this magazine. Her eyes are sea green. They are haunted and haunting, and in them you can read the tragedy of a land drained by war. She became known around National Geographic as the "Afghan girl," and for 17 years no one knew her name.
In January a team from National Geographic Television & Film's EXPLORER brought McCurry to Pakistan to search for the girl with green eyes. They showed her picture around Nasir Bagh, the still standing refugee camp near Peshawar where the photograph had been made. A teacher from the school claimed to know her name. A young woman named Alam Bibi was located in a village nearby, but McCurry decided it wasn't her.
No, said a man who got wind of the search. He knew the girl in the picture. They had lived at the same camp together as children. She had returned to Afghanistan years ago, he said, and now lived in the mountains near Tora Bora. He would go get her.
It took three days for her to arrive. Her village is a six-hour drive and three-hour hike across a border that swallows lives. When McCurry saw her walk into the room, he thought to himself: This is her.
Names have power, so let us speak of hers. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is Pashtun, the most warlike of Afghan tribes. It is said of the Pashtun that they are only at peace when they are at war, and her eyes - then and now - burn with ferocity. She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30. No one, not even she, knows for sure. Stories shift like sand in a place where no records exist.
Time and hardship have erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened. "She's had a hard life," said McCurry. "So many here share her story." Consider the numbers. Twenty-three years of war, 1.5 million killed, 3.5 refugees: This is the story of Afghanistan in the past quarter century.
Now, consider this photograph of a young girl with sea green eyes. Her eyes challenge ours. Most of all, they disturb. We cannot turn away.

"There is not one family that has not eaten the bitterness of war," a young Afghan merchant said in the 1985 National Geographic story that appeared with Sharbat's photograph on the cover. She was a child when her country was caught in the jaws of the Soviet invasion. A carpet of destruction smothered countless villages like hers. She was perhaps six when Soviet bombing killed her parents. By day the sky bled terror. At night the dead were buried. And always, the sound of planes, stabbing her with dread.
"We left Afghanistan because of the fighting," said her brother, Kashar Khan, filling in the narrative of her life. He is a straight line of a man with a raptor face and piercing eyes. "The Russians were everywhere. They were killing people. We had no choice."
Shepherded by their grandmother, he and his four sisters walked to Pakistan. For a week they moved through mountains covered in snow, begging for blankets to keep warm.
"You never knew when the planes would come," he recalled. "We hid in caves."
"The journey that began with the loss of their parents and a trek across mountains by foot ended in a refugee camp tent living with strangers.
"Rural people like Sharbat find it difficult to live in the cramped sorroundings of a refugee camp," explained Rahimullah Yusufzai, a respected Pakistani journalist who acted as interpreter for McCurr and the television crew. "There is no privacy. You live at the mercy of other people." More than that, you live at the mercy of the politics of other countries. "The Russian invasion destroyed our lives," her brother said.
It is the ongoing tragedy of Afghanistan. Invasion. Resistance. Invasion. Will it ever end? "Each change of government brings hope," said Yusufzai. "Each time, the Afghan people have found themselves betrayed by their leaders and by outsiders professing to be their friends and saviors."
In the mid-1990s, during a lull in the fighting, Sharbat Gula went hom to her village in the foothills of mountains veiled by snow. To live in this earthen-colored village at the end of a thread of path means to scratch out an existence, nothing more. There are terraces planted with corn, wheat, and rice, some walnut trees, a stream that spills down the mountain (except in times of drought), but no school, clinic, roads, or running water.
Here is the bare outline of her day. She rises before sunrise and prays. She fetches water from the stream. She cooks, cleans, does laundry. She care cares for her children; they are the center of her life. Robina is 13. Zahida is three. Alia, the baby, is one. A fourth daughter died in infancy. Sharbat has never known a happy day, her brother says, except perhaps the day of her marriage.
Her husband, Rahmat Gul, is slight in build, with a smile like the gleam of a lantern at dusk. She remembers being married at 13. No, he says, she was 16. The match was arranged.
He lives in Peshawar (there are few jobs in Afghanistan) and works in a bakery. He bears the burden of medical bills; the dollar a day he earns vanishes like smoke. Her asthma, which cannot tolerate the heat and pollution of Peshawar in summer, limits her time in the city and with her husband to the winter. The rest of the year she lives in the mountains.
At the age of 13, Yusufzai, the journalist, explained, she would have gone into purdah, the secluded existence followed by many Islamic women once they reach puberty. "Women vanish from the public eye," he said. In the street she wears a plum-colored burka, which walls her off from the world and from the eyes of any man other than her husband. "It is a beautiful thing to wear, not a curse," she says.
Faced by questions, she retreats into the black shawl wrapped around her face, as if by doing so she might will herself to evaporate. The eyes flash anger. It is not her custom to subject herself to the questions of strangers.
Had she ever felt safe?
"No. But life under the Taliban was better. At least there was peace and order."
Had she ever seent eh photograph of herself as a girl?
"No."
She can write her name, but cannot read. She harbors the hope of education for her children. "I want my daughters to have skills," she said. "I wanted to finish school but could not. I was sorry when I had to leave."
Education, it is said, is the light in the eye. There is no such light for her. It is possibly too late for her 13-year-old daughter as well, Sharbat Gula, said. The two younger daughters still have a chance.

The reunion between the woman with green eyes and the photographer was quiet. On subject of married women, cultural tradition is strict. She must not look - and certainly must not smile - at a man who is not her husband. She did not smile at McCurry. Her expression, he said, was flat. She cannot understand how her picture has touched so many. She does not know the power of those eyes.
Such knife-thin odds. That she would be alive. That she could be found. That she could endure such loss. Surely, in the face of such bitterness the spirit could atrophy. How, she was asked, had she survived?
The answer came wrapped in unshakable certitude.
"It was," said Sharbat Gula, "the will of God."

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