Tranquility...that's between shoes and coffee makers.

I haven’t written for the Mess & Clutter for five years.

Why now? One can post directly on Facebook, but Facebook is so Facebookish, I don’t want it as my host.

One of my children is a teacher in Washington DC. Zo is immersed in the life of her region, the dreams of her students, and examines—with a more inside eye than I have—the degree to which the Pursuit of Happiness is within the reach of her friends and neighbors.

This morning I got a report “from the front” so to speak. By which I mean, The atmosphere at a peaceful rally for fair policing.

Not that Zo’s report differs from what we see on tv news or Youtube clips. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen so much gestomping or storm-trooping in my real life lifetime than has become popular under flaccid but rhetoric-fueled hand of the 45th occupant of the Oval Office.

There seem to be no parts or pieces of the 1st Amendment that the current administration appears to appreciate. The right to assemble peaceably and petition for redress may be 45s un-favoritest, and the goobers with whom he’s surrounded himself are pretty peachy on the liberal deployment of flash-bangers, tear-gas, and oppressive cops who could easily be exchanged for the Cybermen of Doctor Who.

Ok, now I’m speaking to my peers. My fellow people hiding their grey hair. (I’m not, actually.) I know you want peace and happiness, and shopping at Kohl’s. Me too. 

Do you think there’s ever been an underclass that didn’t push back? Yeah? No. Check out this Henry Louis Gates article on slave uprisings in American History. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/did-african-american-slaves-rebel/

The funny and quaint thing to think about, is how—at the time these events occurred—there were “many fine people” (to use a trumpish phrase,) who viewed them as terribly disruptive to their tranquil sense of comfort as they went about their shopping at whatever predated Kohl’s. I’m sure it was very awkward to be planning a tea, and hear that the slaves in the next town were burning down barns. I bet you would have wished things would just settle down.

I can’t do a meaningful exposition, right here and now, about how uneven, and full of land mines, the playing field has been for minorities in the U.S. since we finally outlawed enslavement. But it’s a valuable and essential course of study! Ask me if you’d like suggestions for study material!

Are you ready to show support where support is needed? Vote for fair-minded leaders? Or just go to Kohl’s. Things WILL settle down again. ish. For a time. 

Je suis, donc je déménage...

Not blogging too much these days, because I just don’t seem to have the time or motivation. Or that intense need to dispatch missives into the Cosmos as a way of reassuring myself that I am still a human having a life. There seems to be little doubt of that lately.

I don’t think moving trucks get much bigger than the one now parked in front of my house (well, mine until June 8, 2015.) The upstairs is emptied, the basement is emptied, and the first floor is emptying. Except for the bags and baskets of stuff the Olivia-child left for me to sort through within the next week. Last minute scramble to make an inventory of what she does or does not want.

Five dudes of assorted sizes (mostly large) carting things from house to van. It is, fortunately, a lovely enough day that parking myself on a bench on the front porch is as good a vista as any. I would rock, but the green rockers (currently heavily dusted in a lighter green shade of pollen) are destined for the moving truck. My upper respiratory system has also been dusted in pollen, and a Sudafed helped with that. 

How do people feel about these things?...Leaving a house where so much happened; so much nurturing of small-to-fledgling humans, and an older one heading into the peaceful place of life’s closing chapters? I hammered more than a few nails into the floorboards, and cemented bathroom tiles a’plenty. Wrote 4 books, composed a few songs, and inexpertly played a few more. 

In my hard-earned way of compartmentalizing, I've put wistfulness in my pocket, where I will occasionally discover it, like a wad of soft fuzzy lint, and roll it around between my fingers. I will miss it here. But not regretfully. 

Aye-aye eye yi yi...

Almost a year later, I have two main thoughts about cataract surgery. The first is: I’m glad they can fix these things. The second is: Don’t let ‘em mess with your eyes if you don’t absolutely need it. But I did. Why I developed cataracts so soon...who knows? But the double-vision was worsening and uncorrectable, and impairing.

Now and forever I have two eyes with two different fixed foci. It’s a funny kind of choice to have to make. You’re told about it, and you do further research, and you conclude that the brains of most people who choose permanent monovision will adapt handily. (Monovision, though a counterintuitive name to my way of thinking, indicates that you have a single eye focused on distance, and a single eye focused on close or mid-range.) So, you pick, figuring that your brain darn well better be the accepting sort, because you only get one shot at this. (Your other main option is distance focus, both eyes, which means that you will, ever after, wear glasses for anything other than ship’s lookout duty.)

So I have monovision, and it’s a decent multipurpose way to view the world without corrective lenses...for the most part. For close-up work, spectacles remain essential. I do a lot of taking the specs on and off. Maybe I just haven’t adapted to the idea or feel of glasses as a full-time appendage. But it is a marvelous thing, what glasses do when you need ‘em.

It turns out that I also have some issues with intra-ocular lenses as full-time appendages. Light halos in the dark is one of the most annoying side-effects. This is particularly distracting at night, while driving. When your visual interface with the world is comprised of shapes and light patterns--as night driving primarily is--there is enough disadvantage compared to daylight. When each of those points of light--the stoplights, the headlights, the streetlights, and the reflections of all of those on rain-slicked asphalt--is “enhanced” by the appearance of its own halo, you end up with some significant visual cacophony. These halos are, more or less, an eyebrow-like arc running along the upper hemisphere of a light source, which overlaps with the arcs from every other light source in the night.

Then there are the moments--extended moments, generally--where I have the odd sensation that I’m not looking through my own eyes. Not sure, actually, whose eyes they are, but it can make one feel oddly disengaged from what is meant to be reality. (This may or may not be exacerbated by the fact that I am losing my hearing a bit. How old am I now, anyway?...is that all?...who ordered these parts and from where?--the Oriental Trading Company?)

Then there’s this--my eyes are dry. I think the surgical process sets you up for that. For this reason I am disinclined to move to Arizona, and may, in fact, opt for a rainforest, given my druthers.

Not so bad: The fact that my intraocular lenses reflect light at people in a way that might lead them to think I've been assimilated by the Borg. I have not. As far as I know.

Nevertheless, I cannot complain about the whiz-banging precision of the modern-day laser-ophthalmic surgical center high-tech assembly line. Or the relative ease of the surgery. Or the fact that I can now read comfortably with glasses. Or that I only see one of each distant object, as is appropriate.

I would prefer parts that don’t wear out, and mean to keep my joints forever, if at all possible. But my eyes’ original lenses gave up prematurely, and I am grateful for vision. Just let me say this--don’t do it if you don’t need it.

Why we aren't. Married, that is. In the technical sense.

My kids think it’s fine. My mom thinks it’s barely tolerable and very wrong-side-of-the-trackish. My estate-planning attorney thinks it’s wise. Most friends and acquaintances are probably neutral to who-cares about it. Whether I should even attempt, here, to articulate what I think is an iffy proposition. But is there anyone whom I wouldn’t want to know this? Not really. 

When I talked to the above-mentioned attorney, to re-do wills and whatnot after Jeff died, she gave me (upon learning that I had a significant other,) a 15 minute lecture on why people “our age” don’t need to, and probably really shouldn’t, remarry. Her thesis was very finance-based, because that’s the capacity in which she is generally retained, and it made a certain amount of sense.

It made me a little sad then, and it makes me a little sad now. Because I am re-partnered for life, and I’d like the world to know it. I want everyone to know what I know about us, and I don’t (without the marriage thing,) have a way to convey it. Yeah...I think that was as good an articulation as I’m going to muster.

But, there are serious points. It would be a seriously bad thing if any of our kids felt that the other of us represented any kind of impediment to their future financial position. Because we don’t. I would sign a pre-nup to that effect if it were practical to marry, and that’s that about that.

My marital status presents the bigger problem. Staying as is, (as far as Uncle Sam is concerned,) preserves a good sum, which my kids would otherwise be paying to the IRS in the future. (post-me.) When I even think about forgoing that benefit (as my mother thinks I should,) I am faced with an ethical dilemma more compelling to me than whether my cohabiting behavior would get me ejected from a Texas-approved textbook. My kids had a dad who worked hard for them, and they deserve his estate tax exemption. I can’t make a personal choice that forfeits that benefit to them.

It is possible that there is some way of finagling trusts and such that would build a work-around for the problem. But I’m not sure. It seems pretty complicated. It may just be that protecting our five (collective) kids from the consequences of our actions may be best accomplished by inaction.

I guess I shouldn’t worry about what the world thinks. I’ll just leave it with a few thoughts: World? It’s not that I wouldn’t. Because I would. It’s not to keep options open. My heart has made it clear that Allen is the only option. Is there a better word than partner? I’d like a better word. Maybe we need to make one up.

choo choo

I feel a little like a new Hogwart’s student, running pell-mell toward a brick wall labeled “Platform 9 and 3/4.” 

It’s a little unnerving, but there really haven’t been many moments of NOT feeling a little unnerved by life since I stepped off the baby train and grew those same babies to the height where most growth charts end. And, to be fair, I was equally confused by the pre-baby days. The thing about baby-rearing is, it doesn’t matter if you have questions about life-at-large. The steps you have to take regardless of your relative lack of self-actualization are so incontestable that there isn’t much time to dwell in life-doubt.

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the analogy in paragraph one evokes a pre-train moment of uncertainty, I know where my seat is, and I know who’s occupying the one next to it. The issue, if there is one, is how are we going to arrange all the luggage? Maybe the question should really be about the size and contents of the trolley I’m careening toward the brick wall with.

I noticed, just today, that maybe the funny idea I sometimes have that my home and surroundings should be settled by now (as in by this age,) is fallacious. Have you ever--so far in your life at least--hit a point where you don’t have to finesse your way around various rocks in the road, earn the trust of new natives, or just generally adapt as a strategy? Yeah, probably not. If your life is not static, you most likely have to keep doing these things.

Ok, it’s fine. I’ll take that.

Gyming, Part 2

I am somewhat impressed by gym people who can hop on one machine in the room-where-propelling-oneself-causes-no-forward-motion, and just go for it--for tens of minutes at a time. I think the real name for that area of the gym is cardio room, as it is a place to elevate your heart rate, but I don't know. I'm not very gymmy, I just go there. It is also the room where people can watch you huff and puff as they take their dogs for grooming or hit the local hash-slingery for breakfast.

I can force myself to fake-row for ten minutes straight, or fake-run on the fake-road-made-of-bungee-elastic for fifteen...but then, I am sorry to say, I am bored out of my skull. So, for me anyway, the object of having many kinds of machines is to compensate for my attention span.

Sometimes I wonder if people choose their treadmills on the basis of closest tv screen. Fox, appropriately, is on the far right side of the room, near the window. CNN is to the left near the water cooler. And I am usually somewhere toward the back, wondering whether I can, with athletic integrity, jump off the silly machine and go spend some time figuring out how you wrangle the weird devices toward the back of the gym which purport to zero in on your foot arch/mandible/muscle between the 3rd and 4th ribs, or whatever that one specializes in.

I have done the 5:30 am spinning class a few times. I will not do it tomorrow because I cannot maintain the "hovering" posture for as long as the commando-lady commands, and the bike seats do crazy torture to the pin bones if I slack off too much. My pins need a break. Instead I'll vary the fake-rowing, and fake-running with a real run-to-nowhere. If a conveyor belt is good enough for luggage, it's good enough for me.

Gyming, Part 1

We go to the gym. I am using the present tense, indicative mood of the verb “go” purposefully, as it best reflects the mindless intentionality we must adopt to keep making this statement real, until such time as it becomes as much a given as “we brush our teeth.”

I will refer you to the book Younger Next Year, by Chris Crowley and Henry Lodge. This is, as I say, a reference, not a recommendation, because the last thing I want to be is a lifestyle evangelist, but this is what happened:

Allen likes library books. Liking library books is a good thing, because you are required--after a certain time--to return them to the library. Most of the books that flit through the shared part of our world are relatively easy for me to ignore. Tractor Beams for Trawlers, The Captain Vegetable Diet Plan, and What Color is Your Parallax Solar-Powered Surfskimmer, all seem to cover topics I can take or leave. So I don’t know why I picked up the Crowley/Lodge book and started reading it, but I did. And now we GO to the gym. 

The argument that aerobic fitness and weight-bearing exercise are health extenders is really quite compelling once you start to pay attention. And, as fuzzed as I am by the perimenopausal fog these days, I know several things: I hold mobility in high esteem, and I hold loved ones in even higher esteem. So, if--through the expenditure of effort which is, at times, unappealing--I can help preserve both of the above, I guess I’m in. 

What happens, if you’re in it together, is that it only takes one person to say “move it babe, it’s 5:45 am,” and the other rarely complains too much. (Well yes, early.) Because there’s always some reason, after breakfast, to not [get stinky/hack an hour out of the day/be available.] So, first thing. Then breakfast, then walk the dog. It’s just easier.

Chair-fixing, incidentally

It's standard operating procedure for Allen and me* (*correct grammatical usage) to do some farting around (In the words of Kurt Vonnegut) after breakfast on Sunday (which is usually out.)

This morning we meandered across Route 50 to where backroads through the area of St. Margaret's become winding and secretive, opening into surprising little enclaves, or sudden presentations of ill-fitting new tract homes.

Around a bend where hedges and trees obscured visibility, I spied this shingle.

photo credit: Allen Flinchum ; )

"Go back," I said. "Someone there does caning."

Small children are hell on woven chair seats, and I have 2 ladderbacks in the basement which were rendered unusable twice during my small-child years, and remain so. I am sorting, I am choosing. What furniture is useful, and what might I store in the basement in my next, smaller, abode? Not chairs with holes in the sit-zone.

Allen turned the car around and pulled into the drive far enough to snap that shot, at which point we realized that cars were whooshing by behind us at a rate that, combined with the restricted view, made backing up unlikely. So we forwarded.

We forwarded past a house where grinning sculpted gourd-like heads topped fence posts, and shutters were hand painted with stars and vines. There was a 1970 VW Beetle rusting in front of a detached garage/workshop, a wooden rowboat named "Raccoon" up on sawhorses, and a woman looking at us curiously. So we rolled down the window and explained ourselves.

She happily leaned in and started to chat, and we exchanged inquisitiveness and insights about each other (we like to poke around, a VW such as that was my first car, Allen fixes boats. Her father built Raccoon for her when she was five, she will not be able to watch when someone comes for the VW which she has decided to give up, and she does chair seats.)

Chief among attributes which were mutually noted was that Wendy, age 66, and Allen, age 59, both like their projects, and have a goodly number of objects in their lives pertaining thereto.

"I'm trying to get her to move in with me," said Allen, as partial explanation for why he hoped to at least reduce his stockpile, (not mentioning that we plan to circumvent the problem by means of the two contiguous house strategy.)

It was clear that if I would not, then Wendy would. "Oh, you should move in with him," she said, both almost immediately, and as parting words.

And I eventually will in a more thorough way, once some of our housing concerns reach a place of better resolution. I will also bring my ladderbacks to her. Both for repair, and to keep an eye on her.

Sea legs for the brain

I think that one of the ways I skimmed through my childhood without managing to acquire any particularly useful skills, or rack up many meaningful accomplishments, was to tune out lingo which I saw no compelling reason to make sense of. There were, after all, acorns to be run through with toothpicks, and miniature villages to be constructed out of twigs. I could ignore the encyclopedia maps that my brother was painstakingly tracing and invent my own geography. I guess I was sure it was just as good.

Somewhere along the line, probably after childbearing chemically altered my brain toward the more practical, I began to recognize the value of skills, and started to at least try to pay attention. This remains an ongoing process, and I am often filled with regret to be catching up after goofing off.

As such, partnered with a boat-fixer, and spending half my time 30 feet from a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, I'm trying to learn boat stuff. From 11 years old to now, I've paddled many a small paddleable vessel, but I can neither sail nor pilot a larger craft with any authority, and we're working on that.

The funny thing is, I've spent my entire life amongst boaty people and their boats. But it didn't rub off. Because I can be that oblivious.

Typically, Allen and I will be somewhere--anywhere--and someone asks him what he thinks about a 20' Grubbly-Toader semi-trawler with a 2 cylinder Hackenputt, electrolyte-cooled downpiper.

So I listen, trying to look like I'm in on the lingo, and hoping that if you throw enough words at me I will--like a toddler--begin to assemble them in a useful mental grid.

Today's random encounter involved a discussion of the merits of pokewood for decking, fungible bilge wafting, and surgical steel tampers. I noticed a small grayish-green frog clinging to a nearby planter, but still I paid attention, and let the words try to seed my brain, until sprouts of comprehension could grow into a usable mesh.

And then I contributed some useful information about carpenter bees and woodpeckers who peck cedar, when the conversation skewed briefly in that direction.

"What kind of engine is that?" I will say to Allen, pointing out a Pondcrawler 38, jacked up in the boatyard.

"It's weird," he'll say. "Runs on a blend of high-test and Gatorade. They only made them out of clapboard between '74 and '80."

I nod. I've got it. For sure.

Meanwhile, the course I'm taking on piloting, and all the compass headings I'm plotting and nautical miles I'm calculating should at least slap a coat of paint on the framework.

Hover-craft

I went to see the naturopathic doctor a couple weeks ago, and as I lay on the table for some craniosacral manipulation, she said something interesting. I was, she said, holding her hand about four feet above my abdomen, hovering up there. Apparently not fully situated in my body at all, at that moment. 

I had to think about that one. I do know that I wasn’t feeling my best that morning, and  that the craniosacral therapy did relieve that, even though later I discovered that the problem was I was on the verge of a urinary tract infection. 

At my next appointment, sans burgeoning infection, I was (she reported) firmly ensconced in my corpus. So, was my hovering (attributing what credence you are willing to the story,) a form of dissociation from a body in discomfort? 

I am interested in the psychological concept of dissociation lately. On the Alzheimer’s Spouse forum, there are often members who report that the process of life with AD has driven them to depths of depression from which they can hardly cope with the need to get out of bed, let alone be the sole thinker and driver in a two-body operation. 

I frequently wondered, as I traversed the emotional mine-fields of Alzheimer spousing, how I was able to cope with such relative equanimity as the person who was, in a very real sense, my other half disappeared from view in every way but the corporeal. Was I frozen, uncaring, wooden? How did the lightness I could sometimes maintain come across to others, whether or not they were dealing with the same? Did they imagine that my ability to approach the problems clinically were a sign I didn’t love Jeff? If so, they would have been very wrong.

This did not worry me much. I understood, from living within my own psyche, that I had constructed what emotional walls I needed in order to stay afloat. The structure, to me, was almost palpable.

I didn’t specifically identify the strategy as dissociation until later, when I came across the concept again, some years after studying psychology in college. But I recognized it this time, because I’d done it. And I recalled that prior trauma had triggered a similar protective mechanism in my brain.

And now I wonder...can anyone do this? What enables a person to bypass the immediate experience of a trauma through dissociation, while another is toppled, at least for a time, by similar circumstances? Is one way better? I can tell you that the dissociative route does leave a person with emotions to experience and reintegrate later. Maybe the person who is laid low by the immediate experience arrives at the other end more settled, less to resolve.

Floating, as Stephany the naturopath said, is neither good nor bad. You just don’t want to do it all the time.

The water is turquoise.

You have to do a bunch of hustling if you want to relax in Anguilla. Not that this is anything I've ever done before, nor would it be a plan I'd formulate, left to my own devices. But when Allen's niece scheduled her destination wedding for the Caribbean in December, I wasn't going to pass on such an adventure.

there's a Caribbean down there...

Wintry mix was threatening to precipitate on the morning of our departure and, thanks to Murphy, we first had to get from Baltimore to the slightly sloppier latitude of Philly for our flight out of the country. But the freezy stuff held off--just until we took off--and I relaxed a smidge.

Once you land in St Martin (or we should say, since the airport's on the Dutch side, Sint Maarten,) it's time to hand over your passport to one person, and $20 to someone else. Chances are, there's a bit of paperwork, with blanks to fill in, a gate or two, a shuttle ride, another $20, someone else takes your passport, a boat ride, another gate (after $20,) another shuttle, passports again...then they drop you off at your hotel. For twenty dollars.

Plan on $40, and a couple of passport handovers to get through Blowing Point.

By then you're thoroughly relaxed, because you're in the Caribbean, meeting 38 new people.

At the Viceroy resort, on the west end of Anguilla, they want you to want to buy a villa. So they will leave a card in your room inviting you to a " manager's reception," and the maid will, each of the 2-3 times per day she fusses with your room, leave the tv on and tuned to the resort's own station which features crisp shots of what you'd see if you weren't inside looking at the tv. Except in that the people you'll actually see are probably not models.

But since you really are there, you'll go outside, swim in the sea, eat fruit, and decide that if you could obtain a prawn sandwich where the bun is a sliced johnnycake, back in your real life, you might even be willing to overpay for it. But probably not for all the leftover slices of red velvet wedding cake they serve at breakfast.

Well, I'm not sure you'd do just those things, but I recommend them. I also recommend renting a car so you can drive (On the left! On the left!) away from the cool glitzy marble-esqueness of the Viceroy, to distant island points where goats and dog play chicken with your car. As do chickens.

Frolicking goat

Cow, not exactly frolicking.

In spite of the rain which fell sporadically (and one night while we ate under a covered pavilion, horizontally,) we did relax. There was not much else we could do, outside of the wedding festivities.

Cacti at Junk's Hole, east end.

Volcanic rock instead of beach down this way.

We are thinking that, should we return, we may stay on St. Martin and save ourselves 3 or 4 gates, handing over of the passports, and $20 handoffs. Then again, Nags Head is closer.

We won't all agree, but it's ok.

“Anonymous,” in a follow up comment to a recent blog post of mine, raised an interesting question. Would I--were it one of my children who had recently died after a lengthy illness--add a “replacement” (my word) child, and blog about it?

 I’m not sure the analogy quite works, but I grasp the point. Is it seemly, in blog posts or any open forum, to express the happiness that my significant other adds to my life so soon after the passing of my spouse, not to mention during the time he was lingering in the Limbo of late-stage Alzheimer’s?

 I understand where/why some people would question the choice. It could be construed as dismissive of the enormity of the value of Jeff’s lost life. It could suggest that I’m not feeling the normal and expected emotions that accompany death of a life partner. There is just not enough wearing of the widow’s black going on, metaphorically speaking.

 Don’t be fooled. A happy aspect to life has not squelched the feelings that burble to the surface unexpectedly, filling me with visceral, almost tangible, memories of Jeff and our beautiful relationship of half a lifetime. I can’t imagine that there will ever come a time where I won’t miss him and won’t regret missing out on living out life with him.

 And the other thing is: I kind of agree with you. It’s not quite seemly. So I will offer either a defense or an explanation (I’m not sure which it is.) I was emotionally flat for many years, suppressing feelings as a way of coping with a partner who could no longer partner, and ultimately not even know me. When seedlings of happy begin to uncurl their little green leaves on what looked to be pretty barren ground, it’s hard to keep them secret. It’s a bit irrepressible.

 There is also this--I want to be fair to others in my position who may be wondering about the possibility of new growth after huge loss. Even with Barry Petersen having “come out” about having a new partner while caring for a spouse who no longer knows him (see Jan's story) it would be easy for less renowned Alzheimer’s spouses to feel that such a choice will come with stigma. That it's something that should remain untalked about. I would rather encourage dialog than hide.

 Some would make this choice, some would not. There are plenty of reasons pointing both ways. But I’m inclined to reject the instinct to disappear and not talk about it, as a spouse then widow who is loving again. Frankly, I am ok with anyone telling me how he/she feels. I would accept honesty and respond with honesty.

 I Google-stumbled across this Psychology Today article when I was sifting for thoughts on this topic. This is a column by a philosopher, not a summary of a scientific study, so read it as such. Here is a decent encapsulation and quote about the complexity of loving more than one person:

Although a new love might physically replace the previous one, from a psychological viewpoint the widow will now love two people at the same time. Her love expresses the nonexclusive nature of love more than it does its replaceable nature. Thus, one widow writes: "'Second love' is different, but it's very good. I will always love and miss my late husband. It's really hard to understand sometimes how I can go from tears for my late husband into smiling and thinking of my new guy. There's an odd ‘divide'. I love both of them, one here and one gone." It seems that we are blessed with a heart that is very flexible and can accommodate various people at the same time.

Yes, pretty much. Again noting that these are the thoughts of a philosopher, not the findings of a scientist, it’s interesting that he refers more than once to the idea that the world may judge widows a little more harshly than others where new relationships are concerned.

I had to think about this. Yes, here’s the thing: We earn some super-good karma points through what we do, as Alzheimer’s spouses. Even though we’re just handling the cards life dealt us, it’s a tough road, and people are appropriately inclined to notice, with admiration. Maybe, by not waiting “long enough” (whatever that is,) to reclaim the right to love, we forfeit some of that karma.

The writer of the article, Aaron Ben-Zeév, makes the valid point that it is probably somewhat easier NOT to enter another relationship, and that sentiment has certainly been expressed by fellow Alzheimer spouses I know. There are some mighty complex and confusing emotions to sort through if you do, and you need to be pretty good at untangling the whys and hows of your feelings.

For me, I was pretty much carried by an awareness that there was a vacancy in my heart for one more. That drove my willingness and actions. So, no apologies. I love Jeff. I love Allen. I’m happy to discuss it, openly and frankly, with anyone.

Thanksgiving Project

There are a variety of methods suggested for mounting an amateur radio antenna high in the treetops. You might actually climb the tree, or you might rig up some kind of bow and arrow. I engaged the tools and skills of tree-climbing daughter Rachel who, in this instance, didn’t actually have to climb. Using her giant arborist-quality slingshot, she fired a weighted bag up and over the branches, and it pulled an attached line with it. 

What happened next is best described by this page, which provides instruction for hanging an antenna by means of “tree savers,” which are comprised of a length of webbing with stainless rings at each end, through which a parachute line halyard will be threaded in order to hoist the three points (center insulator, and the end of each copper wire “leg”) of a dipole antenna into their roosts.

I had prepared the strap and ring assemblies, according to instruction, but was having trouble visualizing exactly how the mounting procedure would work. So Allen and I simulated it, using the backs of kitchen chairs as branches, until the 3-Ds of the process became clear. Then, on the lovely sunny Friday after Thanksgiving, we went to work.

With all in place, there is still a glitch. The 1970s vintage Kenwood TS 530S transceiver with which Allen had been gifted by a late acquaintance, while beautiful and sharp in its receptive abilities, seems to be impaired in the transmitting department.

We will have to do something about that. There is no way for me to jump in and help save the world in the face of man-made or natural disasters if I don’t have a functioning rig with battery back-up. Perhaps I will buy something. 

KC3BKR (Yes, I passed both the Tech and General Amateur Radio Operator licensing exams this Fall,) signing off for now.

Taking aim at the big tree

It's pretty high.

positioning the south corner wire

Getting a bead on tree #2, southeast corner.

There was quite a bit of line detangling to stay on top of.

Critical audience

Em's mom came to watch too.

hoisting a leg of the antenna.

Can't transmit!

weirdos

Gestalt

This past weekend I gestalted Jeff’s passing, and our goodbye which, in reality, did not occur. Well yes, the passing really occurred, but not a two-way goodbye with acknowledgement of the significance the past 10 years (not to mention the past lifetime) held for the parties involved. Such is the nature of Alzheimer’s though. A person is lost long before he is finally lost.

I don’t think gestalt is really a verb. But Gestalt therapy is really a concept, and the particular warm and humane version practiced by Mariah Fenton Gladis and her team of therapists and apprentices at The Pennsylvania Gestalt Center’s weekend workshops is really a process in which a person can take part. And I did.

A cluster of people spend the weekend together (we were at capacity, with 40 or so participants,) and engage in discussions and exercises. The greatest part of the weekend, by weight and volume, is devoted to “hot seat” work, in which a person, for 30 minutes more or less, confronts through some imaginative form of re-creation, an aspect of his/her life that is in need of looking at. 

There are parent issues, regretted decision issues, difficult relationship issues. You can imagine. People usually like the opportunity to take roles in other folks work, and that is usually how the process is carried out--through surrogates, standing in for whatever or whomever needs to appear...sometimes maybe even a person having a heart to heart with self. 

I knew, or at least I assumed, that once I started talking during my turn, I’d have to pick someone to be Jeff. I had, for that reason, already zeroed in on someone I’d met, (who, for confidentiality reasons, I will call Hank) and he did a fine job. It was me I was more concerned about, performance-wise, even though performance isn’t really an apt word in this context. Really I just wondered whether I had the capacity to drop my intellectual, detached observer of the process stance sufficiently that I could even experience anything psychologically or emotionally meaningful.

I need not have wondered. Mariah has some well-honed insight into humans, and great intuition when it comes to setting up the right evocative scenario. By the time she had me sitting by Jeff-as-played-by-Hank’s deathbed with my head on his chest and arm around his torso, and he acknowledged the care and love and work I’d tendered over the past decade, and expressed his desire that I move on and have a life (things which I knew to be true of Jeff,) I couldn’t not have a cathartic, moving experience. 

I do not, at this time, know just what I took home from the weekend. I liked it. I will be processing the loss of Jeff in whatever private way my psyche sees fit to employ for quite a while, I imagine. I’m not sure what role my Gestalt work will have played. Several people told me I looked much more relaxed that afternoon, and the next day, than I had prior to my turn. But maybe I was just anticipating being brave enough to jump up and take that turn, and relaxed after. I don’t know. Didn’t, still don’t.

I think I’d do it again though

marbles

Life is a little like a bucket of marbles. Just try to shift them around because you’d like to make a little more space in the middle, or maybe you want all the cat eyes on the top. Good luck. If there’s a hole, it’ll soon be filled by tumbling entropy, and the marbles will mix themselves up any way they want to. 

In the midst of saddest events in life, there is absurdity. Don’t pretend it’s not there, in the interest of preserving the dignity of the moment. At least admit it to yourself. You don’t necessarily have to confess in writing like this: 

Jeff had died. I was alone with him. I’d said goodbye, into ears that may have heard, and he passed peacefully. A little while later, Helen, Gordon, Bill, and Allen had returned to the scene. At the bidding of the hospice nurse, the funeral home team arrived. A young lady and a young man, each on the stout side and about five feet tall, with at most an extra inch or two between them. Clad in black suits, they wore studied expressions of somber compassion, and spoke in gentle whispery tones.

They readied the gurney, then took their positions, one at the head, one at the foot. It was at this point, Allen told me later, that he and Bill looked at each other with the shared thought--should we be helping them? But the “funeral gnomes” (another thought, shared with me later,) carried out their offices unflappably while I was engaged in a phone call with the pastor, to start planning a service. There is no one who would have found the scenario more quirkily funny than Jeff. 

My old dog, Freddi, died four days after Jeff. Her care needs had intensified in her last year. I was plying her with tasty canned stews, concocted for doggies, and carrying her outside and in to meet the calls of nature. By some ways of reasoning, I should be experiencing a reprieve from dog duty. In fact, I am sitting here now, typing away, while Olivia’s chihuahua (snuggled against my right thigh) passes tiny gassy poots, and Allen’s cockapoo (snuggled against my left) snores. There isn’t much of a dog-shaped cavity in my bucket of marbles. 

Jeff

Jeff has escaped, and that--in the scheme of things--is good news. We’ve been missing him for many, many years, and did not wish for him to linger in the no-man’s-land of deep dementia. Truth is, no one can say exactly what that experience is like from the subject’s point of view, but I do know that Jeff as I knew him would not have wished for it to continue.

It is interesting now to carry on and greet the world with the sense of release that is the strongest piece of what I’m feeling since he stopped breathing at 10:25 am, on October 12, as I sat beside his bed. The community knows that Jeff Clement has died, and they received this news, fittingly, with surprise and sadness...without being able to trace immediately just how long it had been since they’d seen him functioning on all cylinders, or seen him at all for that matter.

People who’ve dealt intimately with dementia know, better than others, why I have, as a widow, a more cheerful than average response to their expressed condolences. It’s been roughly 10 years from the early troubling personality changes to now, and I have felt--over that course--the full brunt of every feeling you might imagine gets squeezed out of the Alzheimer’s spousing experience. But I am stoic, and have a preference for emotionally strategizing my way out of negative feelings wherever I can...so the tolls paid do not always show.

There is no question that for those he loved, Jeff would want us to uncover every speck of happy, inquisitiveness, exploration, and worth we can in the years each of us has left. Go team.

Would you like brown, brown, brown, or umber?

Neither I nor Allen really wants an RV*. Well, not really really. But we do, as a matter of recreation, make a point of noticing the many varieties of them which are on the small side. And wondering just how small can you go to achieve the perfect overlap of towability and comfort. (*In actuality, he may--in a sense--want one of everything.)

So this weekend, for a Sunday of entertainment, we headed north to the Timonium fairgrounds to see the RV Super Sale. This is a gathering of multiple Maryland dealers, and the vehicles on offer were packed in like cattle in a feed lot. 

We found a few of the small sort that we admire--specifically a couple of T@Bs, such as the one pictured here. 

Very cute, very efficient. With a trailer such as this, you could do everything from sleep to make a pancake. It all depends on what you want out of life. And of special note: These little campers are not brown. Inside or outside. 

The reason this un-brownness is notable is that everything else, and I mean everything, had an interior design scheme based on the following shades: brown, mud, dirt, and dog hair (provided the dog is brown.) I assume they did market research on this, and ascertained that the sort of people who enjoy camping in a climate controlled luxury hotel suite (with full kitchen) on wheels, also favor brown. Brown cabinetry, brown carpet, brown fake lightweight tile, brown bed coverings, and upholstery where abstract patterns in brown frolic fetchingly in a field of brown.

A saleslady was hiding in one of the giant RVs, and we unwittingly stumbled upon her. “Isn’t this a great interior?” she gushed. “I especially love the color scheme in this one.” Yes, it was brown. I could see why she loved it.

So on and off we climbed, into and out of vehicles which ran the gamut from $10,000 to a couple-hundred grand in price. And this is what I learned about what people nowadays want in their recreational vehicles:

They want: master bedrooms up a few steps from the rest of the vehicle, with a private entrance into a bathroom featuring a walk-in shower, potty, and sink. (Although, in many cases, they also want a secondary exit door located such that whoever’s poised on the head could--if he wished--enjoy a full frontal view of the neighbor’s exterior auxiliary kitchen. As they were enjoying a similar view of him.)

They want kitchens with islands and Corian countertops. They want theater-style seating across from a flat-screen tv. They would like, if you don’t mind, a gas fireplace just below the tv screen. They would really, really like an entire other third of the vehicle subdivided into a room for the kids, with its own tv and mini-fridge, sofas that convert to sleepers with pull-down bunks above. And the exterior auxiliary kitchen I alluded to involves a flip-up panel to expose your outside kitchenette, just in case you do not--for some reason--relish the thought of climbing back into your “Big Sierra Sasquatch” to grab a beer.

I can only imagine the fun people must have keeping up with an ever-rotating series of Joneses. 

As for us...there weren’t enough campers of a modest size to fuel our acquisitive sides. It will have to keep being one of those things we look at just for fun. Just as well. 

tree

What usually happens, during acupuncture, is I drift off into a place that’s a little better than sleep, because there’s a certain amount of awareness.

I’m sure it’s planned that way. I’m on a comfy massage table, pillows propped just so. Tiny needles, placed to energize the right meridians are twangling painlessly in my dermis. The lights are dimmed, and fairyland music plays softly while a hint of fragrant oils infuses the room. So, once the thoughts of the moment play their way through my frontal cortex, some other brain zone takes over, filling my head with nondescript imagery...sometimes like a subtle form of the Northern Lights.

On Wednesday morning, after asking Sara to work on my Achilles tendinitis, I had a vision of a very large tree. It was an evergreen, conical like a Christmas tree, but with rounded contours and softer cypress needles...and huge. It towered, many stories high, at the crest of a hill up which I’d hiked.

The tree was not perfect. Somewhere, at a point roughly two-thirds of its height, the trunk had diverged into two. The trunk section facing me was bare. Devoid of  branches and foliage, it was nubbed off at the top, and polished smooth with age. Patches of its bareness showed through the tree at many elevations. Behind it, the second trunk was full of branches, and it extended them lushly as if embracing the brittle, empty trunk next to it, giving the tree--though asymmetrically patchy--an overall effect of wholeness.

There's a puppy sleeping in my lap, so I'll just make a silly blog post.

I'm about 1/8 through this. It's remarkable that I've spent my life wedged between 2 rivers and know as little as I do.

Yesterday’s trip was somewhat less than a 3-hour tour aboard the Minnow. The boat’s name was Delight, but I still enjoyed filling the general Gilligan role. The role of Ginger was played by the Skipper’s ex, a trio of children variously took the part of Mary Anne, I suppose the ex’s employer would have to have been the Howells, and several employees more or less covered the Professor. Yeah, that was a stretch. Especially since the torrential downpour held off until we’d been safely back to shore for a couple hours.

This ride was arranged by the aforementioned ex, as a day's entertainment for her company, and the boat belongs to a friend of Allen's--the guy who launches his crab boat from Cypress Marine, then steams and sells them from his truck on site.

From the Delight, looking back toward the Marina. I'd gotten a quick tutorial on which lines to undo, and in what order before we set sail.

There were some pretty darn cute kids aboard. These two had a few things to tell me about Dora and Diego.

It's worth noting that when the water got choppy, whoever was driving got dripped on by water that had pooled in this fixture. 

Captain Allen gives the very cute inquisitive kid a landmark to aim for, while occasionally grabbing the wheel to compensate for the kid's tendency to turn it 180º when a subtle directional adjustment was called for.

No kid, you don't get to drive us under the Bay Bridge and turn around. I do. I pretend to know what I'm doing by driving and shooting pictures at the same time.

Under the Bridge is a nice point of view, and no one takes $6 from you, or reads your EZ-Pass transponder. 

Where it stands...

Cindy, a Sunrise nurse, stopped me as I was entering and she was exiting yesterday afternoon. She wanted to know if I was aware that Jeff was having swallowing problems and we shared the basic acknowledgment that, in terms of disease progression, any semblance of a plateau is long gone.

The swallowing issue was not something I’d seen. I noticed something like that once, a month or so ago, but not recently. And most of my attempts to do breakfast duty lately have found Jeff still in bed. So, yesterday, I returned at dinner. He scarfed it without problem. So swallowing is not consistently unreliable. Eating napkins, should his hand happen to grasp one, is...all part of his being in a very primitive, infantile state, reflex-wise.

I will try again for this morning’s breakfast time. But he does sleep often, if not mostly. When not horizontal in bed, he is most often parked in his wheelchair, somewhere. At his most alert, he might look at you, and you might get a smidgen of a smile. He may mumble a couple words. You probably won’t understand them, and they may not be words at all...just a syllable, repeated, sometimes.

I don’t fear the falling possibility so much now. When he could stand, there remained the risk that he would bash his head on something, and bleed profusely enough that the night staff could not resist their urge to call 911, despite the firm decision--affirmed by family, doctor, Sunrise nurse staff, and Hospice--that he should remain in place with comfort measures provided.

I still see the impulse to stand and “do something.” But what remains of it is his hands feeling the sides or arms of his chair, and a slight push. That’s as far as it goes. He is undisturbed. The memory of the thought that gave way to that push was fleeting, and it doesn’t seem to trouble him that the follow-through action fizzled.

Today I will haul in a bag full of disposable undies, wipes, and bed pads. The pads, in particular, have been disappearing quickly, as one is used for each underwear change.

There’s so little more to say about this. You just go, and you give a few loving words and a back rub, because that’s all that’s left to give. Beyond that, you just have to care for what he’s leaving behind, and that’s people. Because you know that’s what he’d be trying to do if those “do something” impulses could lead to anything.