10/01/2005
Things are strange but my mood is inexplicably
decent. Went to bed with the burning hope of heading for home, the car
already packed, my suitcase handle ready for duty. I slept on the couch
cushions on the floor of the living room last night and on the chaise in Mom's
mostly empty bedroom the night before to avoid her snoring. Ann B woke me
up to tell me Mom was not feeling well and calling for me. So Mom has some
food poisoning or nerves about the move or both. After much moaning,
trembling and dizziness, I walked her down to her bathroom. As of noon
she's only puked once and I am very grateful that she is still sleeping (but
gurgling).
I've never been in this position before.
Granted our roles of parent and child have been backward for a while but this is
that reverse polarization in a stark extreme. I hope she feels better and
fast, for her sake and for the trip. I don't feel much about it, I think I
expected her to become this dependent but I don't know what else I
thought. Someone else's sickness hadn't occurred to me as being my
responsibility... that always belongs to parents or doctors and I've hoped
never to be either one.
10/03/2005
Whew! Only a few
more yukes and we were on the road around 4pm CST. After overniting in
Amarillo we made it to Parkplace at 4pm MST. A good fast run.
Running to get home as excited and exhausted as I was made Texas go by
quickly. It was a sad and odd departure. No Tessie, not even anyone
else around when we left. It was hard to hug Barb goodbye even as they
have never left our lives it felt like an ending of a painful sort, a
resignation in lots of ways and also a relief for them, I hope. I am just
so happy to be home. The Parkplace unit looks great, the purple is
beautiful and most of all Mom likes it. We get to do fun stuff today like
some shopping and getting ready for the moving van. Yeah! So far so
good.
10/08/2005
I start this entry
knowing I have lots to write, not knowing what it will be, but knowing that I
feel exhausted. We're mostly unpacked at Mom's new place. She was in
a bad funk tonight. Maybe confused and tired, maybe upset she didn't get
the bracelet she wanted, upset she wasn't the center of attention with Pat in
town and Elise and Stephanie and Chris out for dinner with us tonight.
Tomorrow will be...?
Loads of Elise's things have
been arriving here at the house. Plans to move the music gear and to shop
for some warehouse/commercial/studio space are in flux. It was a very
emotionally demanding day. Moving Mom here and my relationship with Elise
present two very distinct and new situations that impact my life and the lives
of those whose plans lie near mine. Things laid out before Mom or before
Elise need to be revisited and updated. I don't mean to sound like my
balls are out on loan: Elise is definitely displaying adaptability I've never
been privilege to in a relationship, and my needs are roughly the same: a place
to share, write, play music, and sleep. The intensity and intimacy
deserves more privacy than a dorm room and even without the urge to reproduce, a
healthy love precipitates some nesting instinct. Incorporating my own
positive experiences of community and the benefits of a proper civic fabric in a
place that's affordable and amenable to the new dynamics of our love will be
challenging. If Ian and Edwin and I had followed through on some sort of
compound, what would've happened? Ian's life with Jen resulted in a marriage and
their own single family home, what will become of the rest of us? I feel like I
want a unique space... industrial or communal or coopted for our uses as
freely as we see fit but what will it be and who will live there? I said earlier
that I don't think I'm Jesus and feel this is a good time to say I don't feel
like Bruce Wayne either... or do I?
I spoke with V today and visited Amy at her work. A lot of the same hurts and accusations and barbed pitiful statements surfaced with V but there was some new civility, some glimmer that despite the bitterness and the pain there could be an understanding, even if that was all. Amy is in a very tough spot. I feel for her and find myself continuing to give out support when I think I gave 110% (not for her but for everyone I love)... and then 115%... and then saying,"what the hell, it's not like it will run out". Part of this writing process is to put down some of those plates I've been spinning, to take a moment to close the page of today, to be able to wake up tomorrow and give to get.
I love all of you and I am so grateful for my life. Thankyou Elise for being a heart that is both pump and reservoir. Thankyou Edwin for your support, like timber holding up rock, like Atlas, we are. Chris thankyou for your patience and understanding, always. I know other people will read this and so many deserve all I can give in return. It brings me to tears to think of all that has been given for my Mom, from Barb and Bill and Cyndy, from my Dad. We should all be so blessed.
God, I am so tired. I've got to take up
quitting as a hobby. I take so much upon the top of my bony head that I
don't have to and then cry, "woe is me". I'm going to
bed.
10/13/2005
What a strange week, twisting around upon
itself. There was to be a Burning Man decompression party, now not.
Mom was insufferable yesterday while we were running errands. I can't
explain the frustration but I know it to be the tip of an iceberg. I know
it's an unfair comparison but my odds of wanting to be a parent were never even
above ground and this demotes the idea further. Elise bore the stress of
another court date a day after I spooked her by not being more considerate of my
sharpness when I'm angry... I felt I was flicking a stone to sound the depth of
a puddle I might have stepped in but she felt a boulder coming down on
her.. I am still very sorry. Edwin and I trade off on Mom watching,
albeit awkwardly sometimes (see gratitude to Edwin above). I had stressful
dreams about Cyndy and my role in the lack of relationship between her, Ian, and
Jen. I am certainly being called to listen to Cyndy. It's just so
much easier when everyone is big and honest instead of pained, bitter, and
fearful... but I don't see sometimes how these things could be otherwise.
I visited with Amy again and felt my stress at having facilitated her and Chris
going out last Friday... despite encouraging honesty and frankness it was
difficult and awkward for her (Chris has more wisdom, experience, and stability
in his corner) and I feel I slightly betrayed her. She's strong enough to
want to clear the fog and I hope she and Chris find some plateau they have in
common because they're both such excellent folk. I am out of time but I
hope to be back here today. I feel like I'm fishing for the salient, the
me in all of this but instead am catching a laundry list of
worries.
Well, it's later now... so late it's:
10/14/2005
So I'll pick back up but not where I left
off. Most people don't like snakes. Even if you have a cool, at
arm's length respect for them, like sharks, you don't want one in your
house. Elise has a ball python named Cleo. Admittedly most pets
don't make sense anyway, but Cleo is pretty and smooth. I was not enriched
by her existence nor she by mine, but I did learn something tangentially.
The cold necessity of feeding her live mice is what I thought would be
upsetting. I went with Elise to the reptile shop to pick up Cleo's
dinner. Since she hadn't eaten in over a month we came home with a box of
five large mice. She killed and ate them all in a few moments. It
was not as cool nor as grim as folks might think. It seemed like a natural
process. What didn't sit well with me, what seemed to be unnatural,
included a snake kept in captivity as a pet and friendly furry mice bred as food
for captive pet reptiles. Cleo's purpose in life as a pet seemed a
contrived and wasteful affront to nature as much as the mice being bred to be
killed and eaten by the captive predator. After a few days of getting my
heart and mind around that truth I realized that the entire meat industry to
feed us is the same: an unnecessary and wasteful cycle. Mountains of
cattle, poultry, pigs, mice, are called into existence through the miracle of
their birth only to swell in mounds and then cascade over the edge, wide eyed
and full of panic at the end of their lives. The gift of life given by
such a broad open hand is simply then turned and slit. Isn't there enough
suffering in the birth/death cycles of the world without us creating our own? Is
life so wondrous and precious that the more creatures alive the greater the
satisfaction? Who decides? Please realize these are are my own thoughts and I
expect everyone will come to their own conclusions about snakes and puppies and
the wondrous modern selection of pets and meats at our finger tips and fork
tines.
Dog will hunt.
The room I'm in is dark save the monitor and out the open window is the Fall: coldly lit by an orange streetlight, broken by shadows of bushes, trees, a street sign. It's 1:30 am after taking Edwin home from Parkplace (he dropped Mom's car off after using it for airport shuttle). He had noticed her bedroom light was still on. He could see it through the 17th floor window. She could be awake or asleep in her late twilight of consciousness, so many parts of herself already asleep like the city at this hour with memories scattered atop each other, bleeding into each other; some so incomplete like only a corner of a photo. Most of them are so far from the surface, the words to share them on the top shelf out of her reach. What of those sleeping parts, those roaming brownouts of the plaques and tangles? Merciless is the absence of dawn over them, lost to the bottom of the well.
The light of this day was so very yellow with fall. Edwin drove us in her car to get her prescriptions filled. Southbound on tree lined Logan Street I thought of the psychological doctor's kit available to Cyndy. Who heals the doctors? Miracles by definition happen, otherwise they'd be dreams, prayers. If we are without a miracle (and the odds are cruel) then what is my position towards my Mom? What handholds and moves are allowed? The fierce anger wanted to abandon her at the mall. She'd shop for a new watch as she wore two until she couldn't buy one because she didn't have her purse. Unable to tell security a phone number, an address, and invisible as of yet on an Alzheimer's database she'd be adrift, her criminal children loose like arrogant heir/fugitives.
I examine these feelings tediously. Because I can, the luxury is afforded me. I have so little understanding of what this would be like for the billions of families without the money. I am crazy to think this is difficult. I know I give so much of myself to everyone around me and somehow I still feel guilty. Perhaps appropriately, I can not earn the life I've been given. There are always piles of somedays...like I am really going to slow myself down and pick the dreams off my list and make them happen. Tuesday or Wednesday of this past week I was supposed to give myself a few hours. Didn't happen. I forgot.
So long to those cold cold parts of my sleeping
mother, to the darkened sections, to the lost quadrants. May you fight
until you are out of arrows and you break your sword and bloody your fists
against the nothingness. I can no longer pretend to stand between it and
you. I never even knew I was, but often our hearts work covertly. I
hope through the fog you see I am still next to you, the comfort you knew me to
be.
This is an exhaustive post and I have not lost hope but
these little deaths prevent exasperation and maintain my own mental health...
like the amputation of gangrenous limbs to save a life.
By
2:30 am I had reread quite a bit, fixed some spelling, browsed my other journal
pages and had my phone ring. Mom called to see if I had picked up Ian and
Jen ok. Neverminding that Edwin was the one assigned to airport shuttle, I
asked her if she knew what time it is. "Yes," she answered in complex
tones of arrogance and doubt.
"Then if all else is ok, I'm
going to get off the phone and go to sleep and see you in the morning?", I
said.
"Ok".
"Ok, goodnight".
It's after three and I am still haunted by other thoughts to write down. I
feel she's still awake; reading this on her ceiling.
10/20/2005
That's some grim stuff I've been writing. What
has sorely been missing from my days as of late is anything physically
constructive. Since planting 18 lavender bushes, replacing the bus stop
trash cans and installing some shelves in Mom's bathroom, I feel better.
I've got three trees and a whole heap of bushes to go today. A few times
I've arrived at Parkplace to take Mom to breakfast or lunch and found her
already in the dining room, having a meal with other residents. God be
praised. My life is happier today as well. Despite not feeling well
at all Elise decluttered the desk in the bedroom. The small spaces within
the rooms that make up my house are unforgiving to clutter and what had once
seemed an open cheery room began to feel dingy and crowded due to mutual neglect
and distraction. I have my own work to do in that arena. It's
Fall. It's going to get cold outside and I have lots of clothes I don't
need and someone else does.
10/28/2005
So I talked to my Dad and he helped me realize that
maybe this isn't the best place to work out in grisly detail all that is grim
and obsessive about my emotional self state. What I really accepted was
that expressing what may cause stress to others without the key to alleviate it
could be selfish, anxiety pollution. I work through so much on my own,
privately and quietly. I want to find the right balance, the path to the
eloquence and flourishing efficiency of artfulness. I know there are lots
of lessons I want to learn and unlearn about my life: being a person, a man, a
son. In a formative moment of my life I had a long discussion with PJ's
uncle when I was maybe twelve years old. We chatted in the sunroom of the
waterfront Leonard family home in Massachusetts. Perhaps in August of 1985
the rest of the troop was out sailing or gone for ice cream. We came to
the same agreement on a worthy life goal: become a whole person, whatever that
meant to you.
Discovering what a whole person is to me,
well, that required some inventory, introspection, and experience. I sit
unemployed but by the work handed me by the grace of my family. I'm old
enough that had I lived my Father's life, I would have a son before the end of
next summer. I'm fed by wealth earned, stolen or accumulated by ancestors
I never knew. I could be squatting in an unnameable shantytown. I'll
be very careful not to write a sentence including what I should be up to but I
will think it.
Ian professed his intentions last night to run for
elected office by 2008. He's expressed it before and we have a history of
some languished plans but I'm grateful for the inspiration. I read the
Nov/Dec 2005 Adbusters magazine cover to cover maybe twice in the past three
days. There's some guiltily sounded alarms that lead to dead ends and
mimic the Bush administrations fear pandering but overall there's a lightening
effect by simple precarity. The humongous power void left by the shrinking
Mr Bush has me hopeful that positivity isn't beyond our country. I read
that Blair criticized any attempt to understand causality of the terror attacks
on Spain, America and Britain as obscene. I am happy to oblige the
obscenity that our foreign policy earned the motivation but our innocent
citizens did not deserve to be the victims. I feel emboldened. Throw
a rock in the air, you're bound to hit someone guilty. My quest for the
Blackspot location is invigorated. A banner, lazy but desperate, hangs on
a new condo building along Speer within the Golden Triangle and proclaims,
“Live, Love, Lease”. Die capitalist pigs, die.
Elise
got lab results back from our early morning trip to the hospital: her gall
bladder has got to go. They kept her on edge today, urging her to monitor
her temperature, threatening that she should go to the emergency room if the
fever rose. Tomorrow she meets with a surgeon. It seems the camera
and equipment invade through a small incision in her side, find the wanted
organ, and quarter it until the pieces fit back out the hole. Edwin
suggested she keep the pieces in a jar in case she needs to have it
reinstalled.
Not sure 'bout all this noise
Known the land, the killer's
poise
everything everything in orbit of
another
the shadow and the form dip and sway
the yellow color of the sun, the color of faded maize
beaten back, beaten below the particle belt
into fallow grey, glass green, concrete blue
the urban camouflage of the new hyena
11/15/2005
I left Mom at the dining room host's podium tonight
as she went to dinner and I went home. I thought to myself that she must
have eaten fifty meals in that room by now. Outside the wind was fierce
and sadistically lashing the last breaths out of our warm Fall with real cold...
single digit cold and blowing snow. The dining room shown through the
windows out to me as I walked to my car parked just beside the windows. It
felt as cold out here as it looked warm in there. Chatting residents sat
many to a table and Mom dutifully followed the host. No one said,
"Hello". No one raised a voice to her and my gaze fell dumb on the back of
her hair. She arrived at the indicated seat, sat, and looked at the empty
plate. I was cold enough, outside in the night and the wind, that I turned
away and drove home with my head empty but my heart aching.
I'll break my two week silence on my journal by saying again how I love
everyone. Elise, Dad, Edwin and the Freys have all been in my path lately
and I've braced myself on them as I began to know something about my recent
experiences. I'd lost some hope in the face of dealing with Mom. I
took the first six weeks of her time at Parkplace to observe, troubleshoot,
support and hope for the best. I feel like I failed. I may have to
come to terms sooner than I'd like with the fact that my Mom will not exist
without more structure than we are capable of family-installing or
kick-starting. I fell down on replacing Tessie, I couldn't do it for the
dog's sake. I fell down on hustling Trigger out here, putting it off until
she was more settled. The process of interviewing barns and trainers was
just the beginning of getting Mom back into her saddle and never seemed as
pressing as the paper I chase in three directions every day. I let her
loose into the independent population at a retirement home thinking she would
shine, gather some aquaintances, and take happily to the security and
regularity. Instead I fear she has been sniffed out as placqued and
tangled, as incapable of returning the class warfare waged in the lobby, and she
pays the price of being ostracized. The country club ugliness, an
unforeseen circumstance, could possibly be as simple as the reflection of my
resentment towards the residents for not taking on any responsibility that ought
to be mine. Mom may have earned her own shunning by behaving petulantly,
but in any case, progress is disappointing and my denial of her incapacity is
partly at fault.
I still have hope that coordinating
increased antidepressant dosage and the final arrival of Trigger may start a
climb, if only a temporary flight, of her assimilation into the "independent"
population. As if I had an Eight Ball that was magic, I ask myself what
she would want, what of God might be sewn by me in this. I hear myself
being told, "not good enough". I may be in love with the bittersweet in
life but I am not in love with the pain, with the certainty of a downward spiral
and failure. I come here to dump and I want to learn to do it
constructively so that when it's done the next plan of attack, the next attempt
at the summit is ready as I am ready. I wrote a poem in college about
hoping the next collapse would be the last, the one that brings the ultimate
entropy of a black peace, a nothing. I knew then and am reminded now that
is my permanent state. I will resonate with the energy, hope and love
until my filament snaps and my eyes go dim, there is no rest between and none of
those things may be enough to save anyone, least my Mom. I know I'm on the
right track when it is hard, when the tears come easy and months interchange
with years. If I took a picture right now, it would be the
picture.
11/16/2005
So
Elise tells me today I might want to temper yesterday's post. I am
fine. I work through it here, getting close to the pain and staring it
down. It's all good. I walk with a bounce in my step and smile at
people on the street. I keep it where it belongs and that doesn't mean
alone, just I expect people to read this as they would a journal. I don't
have a visitor counter, for all I know she's the only one that's read it.
Anyway, gentle readers, know that when I'm not ok is when this stops and I stop
talking about it. Sea to shore, see to saw, rock to wind, birth to death,
my heart and my mind ride the waves and here be my captain's log. There is
a point where sun touches sea, where sky touches space, the birth of thought,
ache and joy, the Promethean synapse, that is my destination. Love to all
and me.
11/38/2005
This entry is obviously for December but I have unfinished November business
Momentum is a bitch. It just keeps carrying you farther down the line once you've built up a head of steam. Even if it is hot air and your steel wheels are spinning in place, the wheels themselves have their own radial momentum and take their time winding down. My Dad explained to me when I was learning to drive that the wheels of a car build up gyroscopic forces themselves as they spin faster... not just the wobble from imbalance or the mass of unsprung weight. The gyroscopic forces can seem inordinantly strong and variable.. not like gravity or friction which seem to operate at constant rates or predictable coefficients. Then there is the hub, absorbing all the stresses, heat and twisting of the work that the wheel is doing. Spectacular fiery deaths can happen when a hub fails. Rarer is the failure of the great and humble wheel. Next week I'll post about driveline lash.
Stay with me, folks.
I went to Nashville with my antenna turned up on
high gain. Meeting Elise's family and seeing her Mom's house was
confusing. It was a very emotional week for Elise and me. I am
missing pieces to understand her familial relationships but recognize the
familiarity of them. I got to stand in the grey Tennessee November again
and feel the slow crawl of the South. It smelled of Fall and thick
history, of class barbs and stagnation. I felt days with the sky like a
grey blanket released by the leafless trees to keep out the chill of space and,
accidentally, the warm light of the sun. I sat in the rental car, far
below the grey blanket, while Mom cried over the phone about being alone and
depressed.
The week seemed both long and short from different ends. I was rewarded with seeing old friends, even if only briefly. Denver felt crisp and fresh but brown instead of grey. Mom was happy again and Edwin and I finished a few details to set up her place for her housewarming. It went so well, I was glad to see all the friends and see that Mom was having a very good day for the Alzheimer's. I know people see the blanks, the partial emptiness, but she is still joyful and engaging enough to make it worth it, for her and us, what Edwin and I are trying to do. I love all of you and thankyou for coming.
I am going to close with some very specific praise for Chris. Edwin and I worked hard on Mom's place since this whole thing began. From selecting Parkplace to deciding to go ahead and spend her money because we felt she needed to move before she got any worse, regardless of the impotency of her insurance at this stage. Pat and I and Barbara effectively picked all the things that came with her. Edwin helped put it all together and has more than kicked in for Mom watching. But at this housewarming, special to me because of my responsibility, I thought of what everyone coming might think of how she was doing, might think of her place, and judge me by it. We got flowers and balloons to make sure it looked festive to her and everyone but Chris brought a gift for Mom. In spite of all the debris I am dealing with from a stuff intensive family, I was touched. In his gift bag was a small folk sculpture of a rocking horse. Thankyou, Chris, for being so thoughtful.
Now whether Mom loved it or Chris meant it with much gravity doesn't change the way I felt. My Mom, lost in most ways as an adult, will likely make as much progress towards any conventional life goals as the rocking horse. I try to convince myself to learn what I know to be true and I know this life to be a journey and I've outlined my destination but here it was, my Mom's rocking horse, the simple doing, a smile, the security of a cradle's sway with the illusory freedom of a cowgirl. To and fro, each rock successively diminishing until it is still. At that moment the clock will stop for her, the slide will be over and she will be freed.
12/7/2005
I think this has been the longest I have gone since updating my journal. I have been doing some other writing but not much. I am stressed. I remember writing that when I stop writing is when to be worried. I am down in San Antonio collecting all the stuff that I left behind after moving Mom to Denver back in October. There is a lot of stuff. And this is the stuff that's been gone through several times and all the troublesome hard to dispatch items are left. I also remember writing that as I packed up Mom's items I felt as though the next time some of them were opened it would be me on the front line, without my parents. As far as my parents' families are separated, all that is left of our share of my Mom's family items is now overflowing my van. Even if I rent a trailer and get rid of (sell or give or throw away) almost half of it there is still too much. PJ says I need a bigger house. So now her closet is empty, the attic is empty of her stuff and the rented storage unit is half empty. Still the other half of the storage unit, the carport storage room, her guest cabin and the bank deposit boxes to go. I tell Bill that of a universe of problems, this one has got to be one of the easiest: too many things.
I feel better, almost silly about being upset over it as I write. Except
for my Grandmother and my Mom I barely know any of the people that accumulated
these things and what do they hold for me? Am I so stricken by material
reverence that I can't throw them away because they're rare or old? Lots of the
things are very fine and most of them would be difficult to replace even if they
aren't sellable. But what does that really matter? I know where I came
from without them and they are all but forgotten by my Mom. I know Edwin
well enough to guess at what he would find dear... this book or that
trinket. The things marooned with her from my Dad's family are
interesting. Duty calls me to return them to him even though he probably
doesn't want them.