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Apr. 29th, 2006 10:12 pmToday I've been working at the hospital where my friend Marie died.
She and I worked together here. When I was training her to do cancer abstracting, we spent long days studying, working, laughing, and goofing off here together. So when I heard that she had collapsed and been admitted here, I thought it was ironic but maybe comforting to her to be in a familiar place. I didn't know then that she was in a coma when she was admitted. I didn't know that she'd end up in the morgue down the hall.
This hospital is 1.5 hours from home for me, and Marie lived about 45 minutes away. She was at a concert here in town when she fell ill. Marie was the concert QUEEN. She worked for me just enough to get money together for the next show, the next road trip, the next adventure. She was always off on an adventure, be it driving 8 hours for a show with one of her favorite bands, a trip to Seattle to see her family, a hiking trek to India or Nepal, or just a show or party in the Bay Area. She knew a LOT of people, especially through the jamband scene. I personally got to know her through an online group of Deadheads, and after a couple of years of email contact we started meeting up IRL. I think it was probably about 10 years ago that we first met online. Sometime in the past 2 or 3 years she decided that she'd like to learn cancer registry and come work with me. It must have been the flexibility that appealed to her. She didn't have a medical background (she had finished law school and passed the bar before deciding she didn't want to be a lawyer) but she learned this discipline in record time. And she was off and running. Smart cookie, that one.
Although she was always off in search of fun, she never flaked on me or let me down with work stuff. We had an easy, happy, fun work relationship, because the friendship was more important anyway. When Blue was born, Marie coordinated some key aspects of my work; in fact, she kept my business running so that I could stay home with my baby. I can never thank her enough for what she did for me this past year.
Her Geo kept breaking down on road trips, so she bought my reliable little barebones blue rollerskate Honda. I loved that she didn't take down the beaded fringe in the back window; in fact, she later mentioned to me that she loved it. She didn't love the Hello Kitty seat covers, but of course I wanted those anyway. :-)
Marie was a bit shy when meeting new people, and she was a relatively unassuming person in that she didn't hog a lot of attention for herself even though she passed around hugs like candy. But she had a huge, loud, boisterous laugh that you could hear for blocks. She was an incredibly fun-loving and optimistic person. At a candlelight memorial we attended for her this Thursday night, after the group hug, instead of chanting om as this group of hippies would normally do, we had a group laugh instead. We laughed loud and long in concert. It made me cry.
So, I should be working and I didn't intend to make this a eulogy post. I am just musing so hard, it's distracting, and I'm hoping to release some of it into this journal so I can work.
The thing is, the department where I (we) work is in the basement, and there are two main ways to get to the cafeteria from here. One way is to take an elevator one floor up, navigate a maze of hallways to another elevator, and take that second elevator up another floor. The second, more straightforward way is to walk all the way down two long halls to the second elevator and take it from the basement to the second floor. But you walk right past the morgue to get to that elevator. It smells of formaldehyde in the hall there. Even though I have long been morbidly curious and clinically inclined, I often avoid that way just because it feels slightly icky to be down that windowless deserted hallway next to the morgue door waiting for the elevator and smelling that smell. Now I don't know if I'll ever go that way again. I know Marie is a coroner's case so her body might no longer be here (whether the autopsy is done onsite or at the coroner's office varies by county) but she was definitely there in that room last Monday. Her organs were harvested and then she was put there in the morgue. And I just feel so weird about being here right now.
She and I worked together here. When I was training her to do cancer abstracting, we spent long days studying, working, laughing, and goofing off here together. So when I heard that she had collapsed and been admitted here, I thought it was ironic but maybe comforting to her to be in a familiar place. I didn't know then that she was in a coma when she was admitted. I didn't know that she'd end up in the morgue down the hall.
This hospital is 1.5 hours from home for me, and Marie lived about 45 minutes away. She was at a concert here in town when she fell ill. Marie was the concert QUEEN. She worked for me just enough to get money together for the next show, the next road trip, the next adventure. She was always off on an adventure, be it driving 8 hours for a show with one of her favorite bands, a trip to Seattle to see her family, a hiking trek to India or Nepal, or just a show or party in the Bay Area. She knew a LOT of people, especially through the jamband scene. I personally got to know her through an online group of Deadheads, and after a couple of years of email contact we started meeting up IRL. I think it was probably about 10 years ago that we first met online. Sometime in the past 2 or 3 years she decided that she'd like to learn cancer registry and come work with me. It must have been the flexibility that appealed to her. She didn't have a medical background (she had finished law school and passed the bar before deciding she didn't want to be a lawyer) but she learned this discipline in record time. And she was off and running. Smart cookie, that one.
Although she was always off in search of fun, she never flaked on me or let me down with work stuff. We had an easy, happy, fun work relationship, because the friendship was more important anyway. When Blue was born, Marie coordinated some key aspects of my work; in fact, she kept my business running so that I could stay home with my baby. I can never thank her enough for what she did for me this past year.
Her Geo kept breaking down on road trips, so she bought my reliable little barebones blue rollerskate Honda. I loved that she didn't take down the beaded fringe in the back window; in fact, she later mentioned to me that she loved it. She didn't love the Hello Kitty seat covers, but of course I wanted those anyway. :-)
Marie was a bit shy when meeting new people, and she was a relatively unassuming person in that she didn't hog a lot of attention for herself even though she passed around hugs like candy. But she had a huge, loud, boisterous laugh that you could hear for blocks. She was an incredibly fun-loving and optimistic person. At a candlelight memorial we attended for her this Thursday night, after the group hug, instead of chanting om as this group of hippies would normally do, we had a group laugh instead. We laughed loud and long in concert. It made me cry.
So, I should be working and I didn't intend to make this a eulogy post. I am just musing so hard, it's distracting, and I'm hoping to release some of it into this journal so I can work.
The thing is, the department where I (we) work is in the basement, and there are two main ways to get to the cafeteria from here. One way is to take an elevator one floor up, navigate a maze of hallways to another elevator, and take that second elevator up another floor. The second, more straightforward way is to walk all the way down two long halls to the second elevator and take it from the basement to the second floor. But you walk right past the morgue to get to that elevator. It smells of formaldehyde in the hall there. Even though I have long been morbidly curious and clinically inclined, I often avoid that way just because it feels slightly icky to be down that windowless deserted hallway next to the morgue door waiting for the elevator and smelling that smell. Now I don't know if I'll ever go that way again. I know Marie is a coroner's case so her body might no longer be here (whether the autopsy is done onsite or at the coroner's office varies by county) but she was definitely there in that room last Monday. Her organs were harvested and then she was put there in the morgue. And I just feel so weird about being here right now.
