A tribute to my cousin Andrea, with thanks to the poet Mary Oliver

Hospital tape leaves a gray sticky residue that seems impossible to get off the skin.

I know this because there is a line of it across my arm right at the elbow joint, where it was used to hold a cotton ball to the spot where a kind nurse stuck a needle into a vein while I was in the ER on Sunday. I warned her my veins were tricky before turning away to avoid the sight of a needle going into my skin and sucking out my blood.

"They just like to wander," she said.
"Well, that's ok, I guess," I said. "So do I."

She laughed. And I am realizing I am letting my thoughts wander right now. I thought I had this essay mapped out. I thought I knew where it would take me, but now I'm not so sure.

I'm feeling overwhelmed. And awestruck. I have just returned from the ER for the second time in a week, but this time it was for my dog, a 17 pound yorkie-poo named Friday who had tiny lacerations in his eye from visiting the groomer and getting soap in it. It's funny. I debated less about bringing him to the ER than I did myself, having been told by a woman at the nurse's hotline that I called that I should see a provider within four hours because of the injury, the bruise, on my head that I don't recall ever getting.

I have had concussions several times in the past, and migraines that have left me speechless, nauseous, and sightless, so I have visited the ER a couple of different occasions for brain trauma. This didn't feel like trauma, but the nurse sounded concerned. I thought of my cousin who died nearly two years ago. A freak blood clot working its way through her veins. She was 33. I would turn 32 in two days. I weighed the cost of an ER trip on my left hand, and my cousin, her beautiful life ending in a moment, on my right.

I went to the ER reasoning that I would have even less money if I were dead.

With my hound, I listened as the vet tech told me the cost of a visit and simply said, "Ok." There was no hesitation when he said it was better to take care of eye injuries right away. I just wanted my dog to be better.

Sometimes I think it's easier to love others, even if they are small, furry, and weigh only 17 pounds, than it is to love ourselves.

"Why didn't you call?" asked one of my friends on Tuesday night as we were celebrating my birthday with a few other friends. I had driven myself to the ER, a fact that caused my doctor to roll his eyes and smile, especially after hearing I only called the nurse hotline because I wanted the ok to play soccer that night, that the only dizziness I had felt was when I put the ball on the tee at my 8:30 a.m. golf game, and that the only possible moment I thought I could have bruised myself on my head was perhaps while swing-dancing the night before at the local VFW after riding a karaoke bus to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday.


Why didn't I call a friend to give me a ride? "Because she's stubborn," said another friend, a man with a white eyebrow, "and too proud to ask for help."

I nodded to this comment. It's true. I have such a hard time asking for help. I feel this is especially the case as a single woman. At least for me. When I was married, of course I had no problem asking my husband to help me. To do the things I couldn't do, like drive me to urgent care when a post-soccer game migraine had me lying on the bathroom floor with a towel over the crack under the door to keep the light out of the completely darkened room. But as a single girl, it's harder.

I did call my parents, though. And a dear friend. "Lan," I said while waiting in the lobby and trying to calm down so that my blood pressure would drop from the shockingly high number of 202 over 127 that it had just read a minute ago. "The only thing I could think when the nurse told me to go to the ER was 'I can't die. I have a book to write!'"

"Yes," she replied. "I am so glad you went. I know you are ok, but you are just too precious. The world and I need you!"

Her comments made me smile and made me feel loved, but strangely did nothing to lower my blood pressure.

"Someone just got moved to the top of the list," said a nurse in the other room when the woman who had taken my blood pressure reported I was still off the charts. The ER was busy and there was a shortage of beds, but apparently when you have crazy bp scores, you become a priority customer.

After a barrage of tests done by extraordinarily kind people, complete with witty senses of humor and everything, I was pronounced O.K. but told by half a dozen people that I had high blood pressure.

"Yes, I keep hearing that," I said and smiled at a red-faced middle aged nurse named Jim. He went over my post-ER directions of health care and smiled at me from his round face. After I changed out of my hospital gown and back into my normal clothes and emerged from my curtained bed, he pointed me in the direction of the lobby, sensing my disorientation and smiling when I left.

It was a relief to be ok.

I drove myself home on a gorgeous June evening, up France avenue and past Lake Calhoun. When I got home I greeted my yorkie-poo and we went for a walk to the lake, he stopping to make friends with every group of people and furry creature that was joining us for the beautiful Minnesota sunset that evening. Sailboats dotted the water, weeds broke the surface into the air, and an orange sun painted the sky pinks and yellows and blues and purples with large water-color strokes.

Friday went up to a group of three Somali women and pulled me along behind him. "What a cute dog!" they exclaimed as he snuggled into their laps and gazed up into their eyes. He is such a flirt.

We left and rested under the shade of the tree, Friday panting, I thinking. My cousin rarely leaves my thoughts this week. She had a dog, a pitbull who she loved. She was 33, blond, and had been through a lot of interesting life chapters: from high school valedictorian, to fashionista, to grunge music-maven, to girlfriend-of-a-druggie-who-had-a-son, to debt-stricken ex-girlfriend living in Vegas after the boyfriend took advantage of her, to woman pulling the strings back together only to hear her mother was dying of terminal cancer. And then she got a blood clot. And she took a nap. And she called her mom. And her mom told her to go to a neighbor's and call for help because of the mysterious leg pain she felt. And she walked out the door, pitbull on leash, and collapsed on the steps. A neighbor saw her and called 9-1-1 immediately. Her phone was still on. Her mother was still listening. The dog ran away. There was commotion. The ambulance arrived.

They couldn't save her.

"It was probably a blood clot that traveled to her lungs," said the doctor taking care of me, the one who had grabbed my toe when he told me everything would be ok, "and then it stopped her breathing." He was quiet for a moment and I appreciated his bedside manner, which only furthered the crush I had developed when he grabbed my toe.

But I couldn't stop thinking about my cousin. And I can't stop.

I remember telling a friend over buffalo wings on my 30th birthday how angry I was. We were sitting on the outdoor patio watching traffic pass on Hennepin avenue. I wanted to blame someone. I wanted to blame her dad. I knew her mother was terminally ill and I knew her father had always been too hard to live with, too hard on his only daughter. To me, it was as if when her mother died she would be an orphan. It almost felt like she chose to die, rather than be without her only ally.

This was grief talking, of course. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. I just wanted my cousin not to be dead. I wanted her to be alive.

I remember her burial, though I've blocked the funeral out of my memory. I remember the soggy ground, the smell of fertilizer and grass and prairie flowers in northern Illinois. I remember the smell of earth and the sound of birds flying overhead. The early July heat. The air pressing down on us and the heels of my shoes sinking into the earth. I remember the sky was bright blue and the grass was impossibly green. And I was still angry.

Life is so short. And life is so beautiful. Even the burials are beautiful. And the trips to the ER are filled with startling beauty in the jokes of the technicians and smiles of the middle-aged male nurses. And I am glad I took care of myself. And I am glad I took care of my dog. Because when all is said and done, we only get one chance to do what we want with our one wild and precious life.