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My dearest friend Beathechemist had a run in with a senior citizen yesterday that echoes my life so much. Check her story on the Spitting Eyes. This is the flip side of Nana's "I'll flake away to nothing!" rant I get everytime I try to push her to take a shower more than once a week.

One time I was treating a patient (as an EMT intern in the ER) from a nursing home. Her skin was so dry that as I helped her out of her clothes and rolled her over onto a clean bed so much dry skin flew up in the air around us that I coughed, gagged and sneezed all at once. You couldn't see through the stuff!

Speaking of old. Today is Nana's 82nd birthday. To celebrate we are going to a doctor appointment and then dinner at a friend's. This morning as I woke her up with singing (Happy Birthday to you) she clapped and said, "Today is my lucky day because I get to live with my Sister Sandy!" (She often calls me sister.) So I started my morning in tears. The good kind, for all that they still mess up my mascara.

Nana has seen so much. Done so much. Loved so much. She really is a special lady. Everyone thinks so. Really, everyone. She has already gotten cards and flowers and calls. She said to me last night as I made our dinner that she didn't want me to get her a present, that the party was enough. That's the thing about Nana. To her everything is a treasure, a gift and a joy. I bring home vanilla icecream as a surprise one day and you'd think I gave her diamonds. I take her to see a school play and you'd think I got her Radio City Music Hall tickets. I am humbled by how easy it is to make her smile, to make her happy. She provides her own joy.

Honestly, each morning I hold my breath for just a moment when I wake her, until she opens her eyes, smiles at me and says (every blessed morning!) "Is it really 5:30 already?" (One of these days I'm gonna get her up at 2:00AM just so I can say, "No, go back to bed, just checking your reflexes!). Yesterday morning she was particularly peaceful and I paused. Obviously I will miss her when she is gone. But in her case, she's had such a good life, I want her to simply go to sleep one night and pass peacefully into paradise. She deserves that. By the same token even though I know she's tired and might even like to lay her burden down I have become so jealous of this time I have with her. I want as much as I can have. There would be such a hole with out her in my days... I paused afraid to wake her up and afraid to let her sleep. Isn't that strange?

I think I will get her butterfly balloons that I saw at Kroger for her birthday. Let me tell you about Nana and butterflies.

Eight years ago, I called her in Kansas and said, "Nana, you goose! Answer your phone!" She called back and left this message on my machine. "I'm not a goose! I'm a butterfly!"

I've never forgotten that. She is a butterfly, a beautiful, colorful butterfly!

Happy Birthday, Nana. May God continue to bless you as richly as you bless those around you with your joy, your laughter and your wide eyed innocence. I love you.