A few nice Aurora Back Pain images I found:

selfstyleddiscectomy


Image by Rob!
dear family and friends, here’s the deal; after spending an night in the er, heading back to aurora for a spine consult, back to denver for an mri (massive thanks to ADVANCED MEDICAL IMAGINING for getting it pre-approved with my insurance and having me in the machine within 2 hours), back to aurora for a surgical consult, it has been determined…

We’ll take a cup of kindness yet


Image by prodigaldog
This is getting to be something of a tradition….

Then there was the New Year’s Eve party, a throng of people gladdening the house I’d so sadly come by. It was strange to see people in the house, I thought, having lived there a half year alone. As I stood in the doorway accepting gifts and greetings, I became unsure of my own place in time. So little had changed since June, when I’d stood in the same doorway extending a hand, kissing a cheek in greeting, accepting a condolence. The last time this many people were in the house was after my parents’ funeral. But that had been summer, and the open windows had washed the mourners with cool evening breezes scented with wild flowers and fresh-cut lawns. Then, laughter had been a shield against tears. Had that changed in these six months? I honestly didn’t know as one eruption of mirth after another swept over the assembled host. Tonight, the house shut the revelers in, wombed them against the frozen air that groped at the siding and padded by the window panes seeking a crack, a joint, any way in. Was tonight’s jovial mood proof of progress, or just an example of how easily we can be induced into forgetfulness? The ghosts of the ancestors walk among us, I thought, and how little notice we take of them. Several times I thought I heard my father’s voice or my mother’s laugh in the party sounds, and looking up expecting to see them found only neighbors, strangers, dates. Perhaps I alone could hear. I thought of Freda living alone in her parents’ house now, sleeping in her old bedroom. The thought of her lanky, womanly body surrounded by the stuffed animals and other remainders of childhood disturbed me. Did she see and hear the same things? Did she ever open a drawer to find one of her mother’s earrings or, turning a corner, suddenly smell her father’s pipe? Had she spent any more evenings listening to Stan Kenton in the darkened family room?

Steve and Martha cruised the rooms, simultaneously partying and policing little Chris and Mary Martha: the first year the kids would be allowed to stay up. Another milestone. On one trip through the kitchen, Martha drew close and took my hand for a moment, her sympathetic eyes searching mine. Suddenly she was Siobhan, and I barely choked back a sob that stung at my eyes and swelled painfully in my throat. I summoned a smile from somewhere and forced it to my face. I could tell she saw the pain that banged against the back of my grin. Her eyes softened, her lips pursed briefly before squeezing my hand a bit harder. A child’s squeal from the family room drew her attention. Gone. She was gone. The lump hung in my throat at the blunt recognition of time lost and opportunity flown.

Late into the evening, as the final minutes of the year ticked away, a tall woman stood alone on the patio playing Auld Lang Syne on a trombone, the aurora borealis reflected in the brass of her instrument, her figure silhouetted against the starlit blue-white of a new snowfall. She turned only slightly as a swath of light spilled from the door and a shadow emerged from the house. I approached slowly, my footsteps crunching on the frost-covered bricks.

"You coming in?" I asked her profile, my breath clouding in the cold, hands thrust deep into my pockets. The cold reached into my sweater and knotted my spine in a dozen places. "It’s almost midnight."

The song stopped mid-measure, unresolved, subdominant notes echoing into the distance. Seconds passed. I counted my breaths in the frigid air as I waited for a response. Beneath our feet the world rolled on in its celestial groove toward the midnight hour. A stiff breeze came up, sending sheets of fine snow sliding off the roof, the tiny crystals swirling into spirals as they drifted up and off. The clockwork heavens moved minutely within their courses, the stars twinkling brightly in the cold, clear air.

"I’ll be in," Freda replied finally. She talked out of the side of her mouth, never fully taking her lips from the mouthpiece.

"Mom and Dad used to dance to this song every New Year’s," she said after a minute, her eyes straight ahead, focused on something far away. "I remember how they moved together. Then Dad would… would give me a sip of his Scotch and take me in his arms and swing me around like we were dancing. I remember the warmth in me… and from him."

She paused, swallowing hard. "I s’pose I’ve spent my life making mistakes because of that memory. I… I guess I wanted to be like them on New Year’s Eve."

She stopped. In the starlight I could see her eyes were moist, her nose red, but whether from the recollection or cold I couldn’t tell. It had been a tough year for us all, I thought. I took a step toward her, but the north wind swept down from Canada and caught my back, an icy bayonet stabbing through me. I started shaking violently, my teeth chattered, a dull ache ratcheted my spine. Now it was nature that kept me from her.

Freda resumed the good old song, her disconsolate notes lifting high over the broad lawns now sleeping under winter white, out over the stubbled, hoary corn rows where farmland had not yet succumbed to tract housing, over the stilled flat of the frozen river that in its depths ran secretly oceanward nonetheless, through the boughs of the ancient, barren hardwoods and snow-blanketed evergreens that covered the surrounding hogbacks once sacred to Senecas, up to the stars where our loved ones look down.

"Well don’t freeze out here," I said, turning to go in. "You know, it’ll be all right," I called over my shoulder, not sure if she could hear. Light and the party’s din washed into the yard again as I opened the door and placed my foot on the first step.

"THREE!… TWO!… ONE!…"

I spun back toward the patio, back toward the horn’s heartbroken tune, back toward a new year and whatever the next second — and all those many, many seconds to follow — would bring.

© 2006 SH McCleary

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