Kansas girl

I wake up after about 2 ½ hours of sleep and step into the chrome and white hotel bathroom. I haven’t showered in 4 or 5 days – I’ve lost count. 

I need to get to the respite house and fill out paperwork so they can cremate my husband.

I undress and look at myself in the bathroom mirror. The sink and bathroom cabinet conceal my ass and thighs, which is a small blessing. I gained weight during Covid and continued gaining month by month until it was year by year.

I want to rid myself of the rolls of fat appearing on my stomach, and my heavy ass and thighs. I stare at myself in the mirror, trying to remind myself that I am a goddess: that there are artifacts and drawings and small statues of women shaped just like me, and that I should embrace that. Or lose weight. Or both.

I don’t feel like a goddess.

I feel like a warrior.

I have been strong and I will need to continue to be even stronger in the days ahead.

I try to channel my favorite warriors: Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Sarah Connor from Terminator; Ellen Ripley from Alien. I try to channel my pioneer ancestors, who fought the dust bowl and the Depression and the grasshopper plague. And I think of the most famous Kansas warrior: a girl who has brains and courage and heart, and who is a strong and resilient Kansas girl just like me: Dorothy Gale. 

And now I’m feeling like I can step out of this door and go back to the hospice and start the next hard chapter

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