I haven’t posted anything for awhile - it’s not because I’ve given up on this blog or anything like that. I haven’t posted because it seems that when things happen in my life they all seem to happen at once.

Soon after we got back from out trip to El Paso Texas my mom started to feel a little sick. It was a sickness that came quickly and rough. One day she was complaining that that she didn’t feel well and the next day she was laid out in bed, aching and in a feverish state. It got to the point where I had to take her to the emergency room.

Walking into the emergency room was strange because almost everyone was wearing one of those little blue face masks to keep from contacting anything contagious - or at least anything that is transmitted from person to person such as the swine flu. As usual, when you to the emergency room we would have to have to wait and I could tell this was going to be a long wait. However, as soon as the nurse found out that we had recently been to El Paso they took my mom into a little room where she was kept in isolation until they ran tests on her. New cases of the Swine Flu were being reported and I don’t think the hospital personnel had much in place to deal with a potential case other than isolation.

I waited in the almost full waiting room for what seemed like a lifetime, but I guess when you sit anywhere that you don’t want to be - waiting for any length of time will feel like a lifetime. I hate hospitals and I really hate hospital emergency waiting rooms. They just seem to bring back a lot of memories that I’d rather not relive. As I sat there a big bodybuilding guy came in and walked toward where I was sitting. Although there were other chairs around for some reason or another he decided that was he was going to sit next to me.

I was like, “Oh man, don’t sit next to me” but my pleas went unheeded.

The chairs are so close to each other that two average people would feel close together if they sat next to each other. I’m not a big bodybuilder, but I’m no skinny guy either so, I’m not liking the fact that I’m sitting next to a big sweaty dude whose so close to me that my arm and shoulder are touching his arm and shoulder. It’s like sitting at a movie theater and fighting for that center armrest. I wanted to push him off the seat and yell at him for invading my personal space, but I’m not foolish and that would have been a foolish thing to do.

“It’s strange to see everyone with masks on” the big guy said, trying to strike up a conversation with me.

It took me a few seconds to realize that he was talking to me, but when I did I said, “Yeah, it looks like CNN footage of Mexico, except with white people.”

The guy next to me didn’t think it was as funny as I thought it was. I actually thought it was funny enough to twitter it, but no one responded to it, so maybe, it wasn’t funny or as funny as I thought.

It was at that moment that my best friend Dave sent a text message saying, “It was once said that a black man would be President ‘when pigs fly’ - indeed, 100 day’s into Obama’s presidency…Swine flu”

I’ll admit that I laughed at the text, it was new and had not yet been twittered or re-texted much. The big guy next to me leaned over to try and see what I was laughing at.

“Dude,” I said. “You’re getting way into my personal space.” I almost told him the joke, but decided not to. “I need some air.” I said as I stood up and headed toward the door.

I walked outside. As the cold air hit me I realized that it was dark. We had arrived sometime in the afternoon and now it was late. The battery in my phone had gone out, so I didn’t know what time it was all I knew was that it was dark and all that time had been spent in an emergency waiting room full of people wearing little blue masks to save them from a pandemic that may or may not come.

As I stood outside I could see into the waiting room and I couldn’t help but think “I really hate hospitals and I really hate emergency room waiting rooms.” I walked past the window still watching the people waiting their turn to be seen. I felt like I felt years ago sitting on bus making a journey I would remember to this day.

I remember that I huddled close to the window watching as the city lights passed. Memories flickered in and out of my head like images from an old broken movie reel. I closed my eyes to shut out the images, but my thoughts lingered in the past. In my mind I saw my mom in the waiting room her eyes rimmed with tears. The words, “they found Cancer” echoed through my head. It’s strange because even now, I can remember everything about that moment from the look in my mom’s eyes, to the way my father held her hand in his, to the way my sister sat with her head on my mom’s shoulder. I even remember the song that was playing overhead in the waiting room. The moment my mother spoke those words all our lives changed.

to be continued…