Dear Camilla:
 
Now you've made me weep.  Poetry certainly gets to the root of it....
 
Thanks for the quick view of my soul, from which I retreat too quickly.
 
k.
 
 
>Dear PD friends---we were moved and stimulated by David Boots' posts in
>which he deliberately invoked   our feelings, and recognized that sharing
>these is perhaps often as therapeutic as discussing Sinemet dosages. :-)
>We are , of course, feeling beings, as well as collectors of facts. Our
>industrious fact collecter, Wendy Tebay, who digd up all that important
>info on toxins and pollution ALSO shared with us poems she had written
>about how she FELT about these matters.   One of the ways that I, as care-
>partner for Peter, deal with my feelings is also to write poetry (another
>is _dreaming_ and realizisg that many things about our life with PD are
>relegated to an unconscious level, so that we can keep functioning, and come
>out in our dreams.)   This is all prelude to some minor risk-taking, and a wish
>to share with you two poems I've written that may possibly also "speak to
>your condition":
>                        LIFE ON THE EDGE
>                   With eyes closed,
>                       I see us----
>                   standing on cliff-edge,
>                       clinging together.
>
>                   (Not yet in free-fall, but so close at times
>                       I almost sense the terror that would bring---
>                       earth giving way beneath us,
>                       rush of air,
>                       impact of loss---)
>
>                  Today we step back
>                       and are saved.
>
>                  Tomorrow?
>                                            CHF, 5/18/95
>
>
>                          LOSSES
>
>         Given a choice, I would hold fast to you--
>             would stop the slow erosion of our lives.
>        It isn't fair, that we who've loved so long
>             should be the losers, even though we love.
>        We are not what we were, nor will we be
>            the travelers of our dreams, and journey far.
>        We try to hold the edges of our lives
>            and yet they slip away, out of our grasp,
>        Like sands the  waves consume along the shore.
>
>        The edges crumble, but the center holds---
>            you are still you, and I am still myself.
>        That will not change. The loving will  endure,
>            through illness, age, and death (the final loss).
>        I cling to what we have, and push away
>            the thought of how, by inches, as I watch
>        you seem somehow diminished, letting go
>            of little daily things you cannot hold.
>
>        We walk this path together, after all,
>           and if you stumble, I will take your hand
>        and if I tremble, you will hold me tight.
>           All is not lost to the approaching night.
>
>                                    CHF 12/16/94
>Friends, how do YOU cope?
>Camilla Flintermann, Oxford,OH
>
>
 
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