Between Fear and Fearlessness

The Patient died on the morning of December 5, 2014. 

Thanks to magic of hospice, the house was empty of the deceased, as well as all the hospice gear like O2 concentrator, hospital bed, wheelchair etc. in time for a late lunch. When we returned, all that was left was a counter full of unused medicines and a clipboard with a dozen pages detailing his condition and meds in the final few weeks of his life. And the empty rooms were filled with an air of mystery and disbelief that this inevitable, unimaginable event had ever happened. The Patient and I were both ready for this to be over, and yet our final moments alone together were overtaken by shared surprise.

As C.S. Lewis said, “No ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

What’s in my head now is this swirling soup of emotions and memories  - like a beautiful china dish broken into a thousand glittering pieces. Soon, I’ll begin to re-assemble the pieces into a mosaic that will reflect the important and good parts of this wonderful person and leave out the bad parts of the sick old man who recently died. I’ll leave out the selfish jerk and remember the compassionate man. I’ll leave out the relief and guilt and remember the joy and comfort. His life was more than his final few years: the trick is not to remember him chronologically.

I will return to this blog when I resume saying reasonably coherent things in my head. The past few weeks have been an exercise in regaining balance on the tiny limb stretching across the abyss - of relief on one side, and guilt on the other. 

Meanwhile:

May we be filled with loving kindness.

May we be well.

May we be peaceful and at ease.

May we be happy.

May the fearful become fearless,

And those struck by grief find joy.

May the despondent become resolute,

And free of trepidation.

"The Promise"

If you wait for me

then I'll come for you

Although I've traveled far

I always hold a place for you in my heart

If you think of me

If you miss me once in awhile

Then I'll return to you

I'll return and fill that space in your heart

Remembering

Your touch

Your kiss

Your warm embrace

I'll find my way back to you

If you'll be waiting

If you dream of me

Like I dream of you

In a place that's warm and dark

In a place where I can feel the beating of your heart

Remembering

Your touch

Your kiss

Your warm embrace

I'll find my way back to you

If you'll be waiting

I've longed for you

And I have desired

To see your face your smile

To be with you wherever you are

Remembering

Your touch

Your kiss

Your warm embrace

I'll find my way back to you

Please say you'll be waiting

Together again

It would feel so good to be

In your arms

Where all my journeys end

If you can make a promise

If it's one that you can keep

I vow to come for you

If you wait for me

And say you'll hold

A place for me

In your heart.

 -  Tracy Chapman

I'm Freezing

He kicked the covers off. They are piled at his feet. 

Choices

If you have the energy to argue, you have the energy to agree. If you have the ability to choose one or the other, it means you can still choose whether to be mean or to be nice. 

Our choices affect those around us, and in turn, influence the choices they make. 

Without a doubt, I have a greater responsibility and ability to control my behavior. 

I wish we were both choosing more wisely. 

Revised Bible

Simon, art thou reading a book? Wilt thou not watch 24/7 with me?

Matt 14:37 (paraphrased). 

And Now for Something Completely Different

My mother died on November 13, 1994.  My father died on November 13, 1995.

The Other Guy (my husband of 28 years) moved out of our home on November 8, 2013 into an assisted care facility because he had decided my job was to be his mommy and wait on him since he has COPD. 

The Patient (my husband) moved back into our home on November 9, 2014 after a brief and unexpected hospital stay. I had one year. Once back in my formerly organized and clean home, TP has become completely incapable of doing anything for himself. Amazingly, although it tires him greatly to feed himself home-cooked meals put in front of his face three times a day, he manages to get himself to the kitchen in the middle of the night for milk and doughnuts. So exhausted however, he leaves the milk on the counter next to the empty glass and crumbs.

My anger has been mostly directed mainly at inanimate objects like my hapless HP printer, which has evolved consciousness and an unaccountable determination to mess with me. Then yesterday, Heather called.

Heather:  Hi, my name is Heather and I’d like to talk to you about an exciting opportunity for a credit card with zero interest for the first year…

Me:  Heather, are you a real person or a robo call?

Heather:  (continues talking from the script for a moment, then pauses) Yes, I’m real, I’m excited about… (resumes script)…

Me:  Heather! I’m so glad you called! I just heard from your Mom’s doctor. He called me because your phone is always busy. He asked me to tell you that your Mom has late-stage syphilis and your symptoms of talking incessantly and interrupting rudely are probably connected with your own advancing and irreversible congenital syphilis. I’m so very sorry.

Heather:  hangs up.

WISIMH:  Imagine that. I hated to be the one to have to deliver the shocking news to Heather, but I totally understand how I’ve caused her world to come crashing down with this news. It will take her some time to process.

If you didn’t know me, you might suspect that I will totally fuck up anybody that gets within range of my anger. I will unhesitatingly burn them to smoldering cinders in a single piercing glance - from the deadly resentment that flares out of my eyes like a radioactive flamethrower. I will leave a smoking crater deep enough to bury Heather’s bloated poxy mom, and then use a bulldozer to cover her with all the shit she’s left behind in her apartment for me to clean out. Like The Patient, Heather’s Mom appears to have suffered from senior squalor syndrome (a real recognized subset of hoarding disorder: I shit you not.)

To be clear, this would be a kindness performed in order to spare Heather’s Mom from her final suffering.

Because, I’m nothing if not a compassionate and humane caregiver, with an indifferent approach to housekeeping and a high tolerance for used Kleenex sitting on a table next to the trash can, and an obliviousness to clutter. And without a trace of bitterness or resentment. Nothing.

I sure hope Heather can cope as well as I am. If I had her number I’d call her back and give her the benefit of some advice that was recently given to me with a straight face. Heather, I’d say, don’t forget to take care of yourself, dear, because being a caregiver is exhausting. This would never have occurred to me had not the hospice social worker sweetly delivered this message shortly before I cold cocked her with a haymaker to the throat.

Airport Pickup Policy Statement

When I am picked up from the San Diego airport upon return from a trip to any other time zone, I will be driven directly home without stopping for a restaurant meal with my driver, unless, at my sole discretion, I elect to do so.

I left Detroit the other day on a flight that departed at 6:15 AM. Detroit is in the Eastern time zone. Because the drive to the airport was relatively short, I only had to get up at 4:00 AM local time. I arrived in San Diego and was met by TOG and DYS at the curb at exactly 10:46 local time. That’s 3 hours later than the time I was acclimated to.

DYS has been staying at my house cat-sitting and going through my drawers and had conveniently placed her matching luggage (Wal-mart bags) on the back seat near the curbside door where I had to move them over before I could put my own suitcase in on top and scrunch in.

WISIMH:  You two have the collective intellectual capacity of Albert Einstein. He might have been smart in his day, but he died in 1955. So, zero.

TOG:  Would you be interested in going to Sammy’s for lunch?

Me:  Not particularly, I’ve been up since…

TOG: (Interrupting) We’ve been waiting at Spanish Landing for almost an hour and we’re starved and (he kept talking but I stopped listening).

WISIMH: (Interrupting) because you couldn’t be bothered to get up earlier and stop for breakfast, or bother to do the math and consider I might be a bit tired and cranky?

WISIMH: (Interrupting) And yes, that’s a rhetorical question. You know that because it has the word “consider” in it.

So, DYS drove us to Sammy’s with TOG navigating which meant we headed west to a restaurant that is due east of the airport. On the wrong freeway. And when we got there, we missed the turn I was trying to point out because I was scrunched in the back seat behind TOG who has his seat moved all the way back and who was interrupting me. In all fairness, I was whimpering more than attempting to navigate. I'd lost the will to live.

WISIMH:  Doing the math, I’ve been up since 1:00 AM local time. I spent five of those hours on a cramped plane, in a seat where my overhead light was out and the lady in the window seat pulled down the shades to nap. After our pleasant dining experience, I have to drop you off and then your sister, so it will be at least another hour even if we go directly home.  Why do I bother? I got home at 2:15.

Hence, the new policy. I have yet to write the implementing procedures, which include the option for me to pay $50 for a cab rather than be set up like this again.

The Imaginary Race of the Overclocked Mobility Scooters

TOG invited me to join him and DYS at Outback Steakhouse today. The deal was that he’d bring down the HEPA filter and I’d bring the ultrasonic cleaner. Our waitress was nobody’s fool. She suggested that TOG and the husband and wife team in electric wheelchairs at the adjacent table have a race after lunch. Nobody laughed but me, but I was picturing those scenes where teenagers drag race their cars to/off the edge of a cliff.

After a brief discussion of DYS’ latest divorce woes, we drifted on to some issues at the deeper end of the conversational pool:  how Castle WTD (Castle Waiting to Die, aka, La Vida Loco where TOG lives) has three kinds of coffee creamer in those tiny white cups: non-dairy, real half and half that inexplicably doesn’t need to be refrigerated, and we could go on about that practically forever. And then, there’s the vanilla non-dairy, and boy, is that sweet.

WISIMH:  I’ve fallen into a time warp. I feel like we’ve been discussing dairy creamer for several weeks. Or I’ve slipped through a crack in the space-time continuum. I think the song playing over the restaurant muzak channel is “All the Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (wlll realize the minute they die that they were suckers)”? Dramatic foreshadowing?

TOG:  I had a cherry tart for dinner last night. Tiny but delicious. It had a little crust, and under that cherries, but what they didn’t talk about was what was under that was this... was … creamy -  but not whipped cream… this…. like custard?

Me:  Yeah, probably.

TOG:  Pink custard. I’d ordered it with a la mode on top (yeah, he said that) but in all the confusion it came without.

Me:  You don’t say? Without ice cream on top, on top?

TOG:  Yeah, no ice cream. And it’s just as well because of the creamy stuff under the crust, then under the cherries. It was like… like…

Me:  Custard?

TOG: Yes!

Waitress:  Would you like more wine?

WISIMH:  I’ll have two Harold Pinter plays and a 3-pack of Slim Jim Smoked Pepperoni sticks, please. To go, please.

TOG:  (Tipping empty glass) Yeah, it all spilled out of this hole in the top of the glass.

Waitress:  Well, that’s taking “dry” wine a little to far.

WISIMH:  And here we thought she hadn’t heard them all. She must fucking love her job.

Waitress: So, have you looked at the menu and decided if you want something sweet?

WISIMH:  Wait. For. It.

TOG:  The menu? Oh, I thought something sweet meant you.

Waitress:  They took me off the desert menu several years ago. Too much fat.

WISMH: I bow down before your genius, little lady. Can we be best friends forever?

So, then we talk some more about dialectical materialism and whether we should climb out of the entrenched narrative and re-think what post-colonial capitalism has done deter germination of the seeds of democracy in Middle-Eastern theocracies based on outdated Books. And then global warming. And then how Michelle Bachman actually said America should be a Christian nation because otherwise it would be a theocracy and that’s bad. It’s like she’s having lunch with us.

Me:  (Regaining consciousness to realize we’ve all stopped talking) So, that Off-Broadway show I went to the other night was dreadful. There were these two male 50-something guys in 30-year old tuxedo jackets singing songs from the 80s while their overdressed wives collected tickets and served diet cola respectively.

TOG:  Funny though. Some wives like to share their husbands’ interests. Like collecting currency.

WISMH: You really just SAID that? Can I just say one thing at the speed of light?

The relentless intensity of your tired humor is lamer than Chester on Gunsmoke after somebody threw him from a moving train, albeit more painful. Your humor is more tired than a convict on a forced labor gang after an 18 hour workday and a long rush hour commute; and more insulting than the Supreme Court is to women in general.

You have been an inspiration to me the way Hobby Lobby has been a champion of women’s reproductive rights. You have been a support to me the way Dick Cheney has been a support to democracy in Iraq. You are as articulate as Bush II, albeit possibly a better painter. Your tireless efforts to help me through the trials and tribulations of daily life have been as effective as the Republican House of Representatives has been in creating jobs.

Your best intentions are as gratifying as a deathbed confession of serial murder who can’t remember where the bodies are buried, albeit, slightly less comforting. The sincerity and incommunicable poignancy of your heartfelt professions of love, and your overdue apologies are more believable than the exuberant passion of hooker on her last weekend shift, albeit resulting in a slightly lower level of customer satisfaction.

Your constant and hilarious constructive criticism of every breath I take has made me a better person in the same sense that sodium chloride has made the Great Salt Lake into the best trout-fishing hole in the world. The degree of respect I have for you would freeze water on Mercury. I love you the way Marie Antoinette loved cake, the way a synonym loves an antonym, the way zombies love brains, the way hair loves wet soap, the way Hamlet loved Ophelia, the way Othello loved Desdemona.

Then my blacked-out vision returned and I found that I could speak again:

Me:  Well, there you go. Couldn’t make it through a one-hour conversation without a passive aggressive wisecrack. Congratulations.

TOG:  So, now, you’re going to tell me how not to be like that any more.

WISIMH:  Evidently, you’re going to not be like that any less.

Me: And we have another home run!

WISIMH: And we all wonder why I’m angry all the time.

Me:  So, finally, I was….

TOG:  This cake is even sweeter than the vanilla non-dairy creamer. Have some more of this cake, you could be a little sweeter.

Me:   Another hit high into the centerfield stands, ladies and gentlemen. We have the passive aggressive hat-trick: three in three minutes. (And no, I did not say that in my head.)

Postscriptum: I brought the ultrasonic cleaner. TOG didn’t bring the HEPA filter. Nobody was surprised.