the byrne notes XIII (You gonna’ drink all that money away.)
Excerpt from This Oldman inspired from death of my grandfather © 2001
In those beds the
patients were living to get better, or living to die to get better.
they had their own
worms and insects. only difference was that these worms and insects weren't
from the earth; they were from life supporting machines. Mechanical insects
injecting all the means of artificial nutrients. worms going through their
veins to hydrate them, worms going thru' their respiratory system so they could
breathe. their was no dirt to keep them warm; merely a wool blanket had to do. The egss or feces that laid in the corpses orifices were the pills:
antibiotics and painkillers.
due to the hostilities of the war the
nurses were under supplied to help a great majority who came in. Due to the great number even their beds were made out of any resource that was available:
bundles of dirty clothes, field desks, or litters. many times the same litters
that they came in on alive were the same litters they left out on dead.
it was part of my retribution, had to watch
them die. At first i cried at the tragedy of it all. Mrs. knight and the other
nurses did their best to console me. eventually i thought it was weak minded of
me to let some woman console me. i started going out to the graveyard. there i
would cry asking the lord "Why?" after a while though you learn not
to cry, but rather feel pride at that raw human will thing: how much they fight
the inevitable, how they can tell you the most personal things about their
lives. it seemed so shameless. I was a coward who was very much alive. They
were dying and had the courage to let it all go.
damndest thing it all was... those
patients dying saw so many things that they would again see, if possible, after
death. this was apparently obvious as they would wave their arms thru' the air
trying to swipe away those flies and other insects that none of us would see.
seems very 'mironic that word
"patients." just like patience being a
virtue of dying or
living.
_____________________________________________________________________
19 Mar 01 19:05
they were soldiers wounded in action or
either civilians. Locals who were driven out of their homes. Most of Jewish
descent. One such local I grew quite attached to. he escaped his demise of one
of the gas chambers.
It was an act of pure will for him to
escape. escaping from piles of his family and friends who were gasping for air
. Thick carbonated phlegm oozing from their mouths that was colored yellowish red...blood....brought up from the furious coughing and the airways closing
slowly, in-taking the foreign contaminated breathing source. it was a vindictive rage full fog.
end of excerpt
_________________________________________________________________________________
end of excerpt
_________________________________________________________________________________
Purchased the majority of c.d.s, that I still have and
listen to, from the streets of Bulgaria .
Got wasted the first couple days there. So they forced me to stay in the hotel
the final day. It was kewl. Had caviar for the first time in that hotel.
Returned to Camp Able
Century, had the best Burger King ever on the back of a Mercedes truck. Had six
deaths in Kosovo/Macedonia area that we were responsible for. The neatest
things to me were hearing and reading about events happening around us that I
was dumbfounded to. Dumbfounded of rebels blowing up bridges. Dumbfounded to
fire fights and violent protest just outside the gates. And every Sunday
afternoon the grounds would shake from the explosions courtesy of US Army
Ordnance destroying enemy weapons. There was an area that has burnt trucks and
other vehicles that got destroyed months earlier by bombs.
Came back from the deployment with ten grand in my pocket.
Guided by a comment a comrade said, “You gonna’ drink all that money away.” He
told me that while we were working on a remains of a US civilian that died drunk in a
car accident. “He died happy.” Neatest stitches I have ever seen, a straight
line from his lower abs to his collar bone. Not the traditional ‘t’ shape.
I took leave to Gulfport and put five grand
in cash down on a 2000 Chevrolet Cavalier. My first vehicle I paid for on my
own. It felt good.
Less than a month later,
Comments
Post a Comment