There’s this singer called Caamp. I don’t know anything about him, except he sings a song called 26 that Jessie and I have always felt is about her and her boyfriend.Well I found out yesterday that I’m in love, it begins. How could he have only found out yesterday, we have wondered? And yet he already wrote a whole song about it and it’s really good? I don’t know what else to say, he goes on, but thank you Lord for that sundress on that Saturday walking barefoot down the beach. That’s clearly Jessie right there.
Later in the song he suggests that he and his love move on up to Alaska get married just for kicks, get a job stacking bricks, stay home with the kids and I’ll bring the bacon back home to you girl. I’m not crazy about the getting married just for kicks part. And when she suggested the brick-stacking job to her boyfriend he wasn’t really stoked about the idea, but we both like making the best of this world which is how he ends the song, and we particularly like the jaunty tune the whole thing is set to. We play it a lot and we sing along and look at each other and grin.
It’s not that I listen to songs all the time and feel that they are about me or people I know but now, even though Caamp surely doesn’t know me, he has written a song about me!
I hadn’t even heard it until this morning. I was going back to work after my one day off for Christmas and it was not a day that began auspiciously. For a start, I scraped a neighbor’s truck with my car as I backed up my road, making a turn I have made a hundred times before. Then, after I parked to write my I’m really sorry please don’t say the repairs cost seven thousand dollars note, my car wouldn’t start. Then when it did, my texting wasn’t working so I couldn’t read a possibly important incoming text from my supervisor.
But being a hospice nurse gives you a wonderful perspective on the relative importance of the things that happen to you. Annoying as a scraped truck was, it wasn’t a six-month prognosis. Still, it was the day after Christmas and as I drove through the quiet streets of Fairfax, I couldn’t help feeling a little bit sorry for myself because everyone in my extended family that I hung out with yesterday and everyone I was seeing in the quiet streets of Fairfax with their kids and their dogs did not have to work today, and I did.
Then Caamp came on Shuffle and I heard him singing about how I shouldn’t throw my heart out because I’m good for another round, and my ears perked up. How did he know this? All of the times, he sang to me, you’ve tried and failed, they hurt like hell deep inside, but you kept your pride. By now I was just getting on the freeway, a moment I love because of its sharp acceleration, and I was singing along with the chorus and I was feeling pretty damn good. Don’t count yourself out baby, I sang, pretty loudly as I was on the freeway now, you’re good for another round. I resolved immediately to tell Jessie about my new favorite song and play it for her because she has this narrative that I only ever like sad sack depressing songs. The end of Caamp’s chorus does go Cause it’s just love, only love, and it hurts, but I reckon that’s not depressing, it’s just saying it like it is.
I went to see my first patient and that was an okay visit. Nobody died. Next up was one of my favorite patients. You are not supposed to have favorites, but come on, some dying folk are just more wonderful than others. This guy is wonderful in so many ways and he cracks me up every single time I visit him. Today he stared hard at me and then told me kindly that my eyeballs looked pretty good, which was a big relief. But I can’t tell you anything more about him because of the HIPAA law. I can tell you that his caregiver has a very sweet and adorable two year old who spends most of my visit giving me her toys and sitting on my lap playing with my retractable badge. She’s amazingly gentle with it. Even though her mother remonstrates with her all the time to get off my lap and leave me to do my work, she has no intention of getting off my lap and I have no intention of letting her. In fact, one day I’m just going to take her home with me, see if they notice.
Today, the day after Christmas, she had an unusual bounty of new toys to deliver into my hands. Her favorite, not surprisingly, was a purple star-shaped wand, which she told me made her a pwintess. I asked her if she could do magic now, but she just handed me a headless mermaid and some tiny plastic farm animals, clambered on my lap and began gently pulling my hospice badge in and out. It was right around then that my patient told me my eyeballs looked pretty good. All that was magic enough for me. Who needs a wand?
As I drove to my next patient, a tough visit usually, I played Caamp’s song three times to gear myself up. We get reimbursed for mileage at hospice, so I have to calculate how many miles from one patient to the next, but usually I think of the journeys in terms of songs. This drive was three times Song for a Friend.
It was a tough visit. More for her than me. When I was leaving, she told me to be safe out there. I didn’t share with her that I had already banged up a truck today. You don’t want to add to their troubles.
When I came home and was charting on my patients and documenting phonecalls and preparing for my team meeting tomorrow, I played some more Caamp songs to see if any of them were about me. There are some lines in Strawberries that go: Be my light, sunrise laughing cause we stayed up all night, be my map and we’ll leave with all the treasure we can grab. That sounded pretty good to me. And then the last line goes Be my heart, I’ve got you in the end I wish I had you from the start. Maybe he does know me?
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