Run for the Exits - and Watch Out for That Right Eyebrow...!

10 Days in the Country

If this was a conspiracy, it was one of Events. A death, a dislocation, a disconnection (very much in descending order of importance), while I got some teeth ripped out and replaced. Not quite replaced, yet - we're 2/3 there, but that's the setting. The dislocation was to a small river town on the Columbia, where my sister chose to live and where she chose, very kindly, to look after me.

Anyone - certainly all of you who read here - can duplicate the disconnection on their own; pretend you're on dial-up, limit yourself to 30 minutes a day connection time, max - also strictly broadcast TV channels, no cable access. Actually, add to this no computer access at all, even off-line. I brought mine with me, but she had cleverly put obstacles between every electrical outlet and my box, so after a little exploring, it was clear that I'd have to fall back on older technologies. E-mail checks only, and at her convenience (I still think, after nearly 10 years on-line myself, that she harbors suspicions that I'm Up to No Good when I log on - I do not intend to wise her up). For some of even the most Progressive people, e-tech - indeed, almost any tech - is suspect, and likely to be e-vil. My sister is as determinedly Progressive as they come, but I had the feeling that she was scanning me for signs of having, you know, imps or familiars hanging around in my aura. Maybe I should never have mentioned my love for Buffy all those years ago....

While my sis moved where she did for the Quiet Life, it's no Red County in a Blue State - it went 51% to 47% for Kerry in 2004 - and if you walk a couple of blocks down the road, you'll find Safeway shoppers and staff who will go out of their way to help you, and who probably like their Jon Stewart and Olbermann, too. Bet they check out The American Street (they live on it), or FDL (where Jane is a p/t Oregon resident), too. I was stuck with Mrs. Miniver (literally - it was the featured DVD my last night there, no arguments - and fucking appalling).

As far as the old technologies went, I was able to finish books I had put off for months. See above for one of those. That was a joy, but I still felt penned - and is there anything worse than not being able to share jokes with someone you love, with whom you have a great fund of shared experience, and who now wants to hear only about what is comfortable and familiar, which does not include you? I made great friends with the cat, but both of us ended up pussyfooting around together, avoiding the tripwires.

So, finally, there was no trend to be found out there. The particular and the personal were the vivid things, and they can't be categorized, or be made to fit a scheme or a plot. I just hope I don't have to watch Greer Garson again, for a long, long time.

[Update/Second Thoughts - Weltschmerz Edition: Among other thrills, Tom Delay resigned during the 10 Days described above. I couldn't help thinking, under the circumstances, of all the delicious snark, all the sharp analysis, I was missing. I wasn't getting any from broadcasts; poor Mike Allen of TIME looked poleaxed (and fumbled for words) on the PBS Newshour - you'd have thought he'd lost a mealticket. It was Norman Ornstein who gave the story some structure, and quite unsentimentally {he must have some special dispensation from his robot masters to be insightful).
Once I was all moved in and reconnected, it took at least two or three days to catch up on the posts of the few dozen sources I read regularly. It's now two weeks from that day, and I'm finally feeling properly oriented. I also hang my head for complaining about anything after seeing Michael Bérubé's list of meds he was on last week - and he was writing, and posting...!
There will be a lit post tonight, on the wonderful Alan Hollinghurst. I'm not sure about the Google-y ads, but am willing to give it a shot - more on that later, too. ]

Mary Anne, and the luscious Ginger.... 

Mary Anne, or Ginger?

It's that time of year again, and time to choose a Chosen One (you know, Rite of Spring, all that...). Let's all pretend we are Anne Baxter and we have to decide between Mary Anne and Ginger. My favorite teacher of maybe all time was named Marianne, so if I chose her it would be almost incestuous, and that's criminal in most states, so I'm a Ginger Boy.

Now it's YOUR turn.

Horizons

Only a week away from full re-connection. Expect a flurry of postings (not least on the agony of being unplugged from my accustomed sources of information...it is no wonder a third of the country persists in believing BushCo fantasies, if what reaches them through the airwaves alone is any evidence). Have much reading, of a literary nature, to report on, too - and that's balanced the isolation.

Cheers to all who've stuck with me - you will be rewarded very soon.

Update : Yeah, like - what, 12 days later? Sorry about that - it's been very goofy with the move, the re-settling and the General Chaos (and yes, that's a Butters reference....). More tonight..

Choppers! 

The Chattering

There's going to be a pause around here - and I mean a real one, not a merely lazy, distracted one - as I move and am attacked by dentists and oral surgeons (nice guys, but they are going to do phenomenal damage - though they might call it repair). I'm usually pretty good about this kind of stuff, apart from putting it off so long that it balloons into a major project. It's almost assured that my head is going to balloon a couple of times, and I probably deserve it. The finished product will be, however, dazzling. Perhaps not Martin Amis dazzling (or gruesome), but we'll just have to find out.

In the meantime, please check out the launch yesterday of And They Cook, Too - a fundraiser for Doctors Without Borders. I have a couple of entrées in, and having reviewed the contents pre-launch, can vouch for the overall deliciousness - it's a huge boost for me to be included in company like this, as both writers and cooks. Once I get my kitchen reconstituted (and am able to chew), I'll be working on some new stuff. Friends, family, dinner guests - be warned!

To their right praise and true perfection!

How many things by season season'd are...

And here I interrupt. Got less than 36 hours before this long season is ended, and I don't feel well-seasoned at all for the next. There's the adrenaline-junkie side my most recent shrink saw, and then there's the antiquarian sensibility one of my school advisors saw; it's an odd kind of conflict. As often as I wanted to escape the fences patient care put around me, I will miss this house, this place, the routines Val and I made up - song and dance and patter - to give life a shape. I think we succeeded pretty well, certainly enough that when she left it, she wasn't leaving chaos.

For me, if it wasn't still unseasonably gloomy and damp out, I'd be dazzled by the light. I am dazzled, in fact, and for the time being must put up with it. It's Spring again, after all - just a little late this year.

Remember the Alamo! 

Happy Birthday [Week]

For res, and for all the other beloveds who hang out in the Republic. Arf! [see above.]

Florence Green is 81 

Up in the Air, Aloft

And, yes, that's an homage to Donald Barthelme. It's also how I'm feeling right now, suspended, and in suspense. There's a dentist appointment this afternoon. There is a sibling confrontation this afternoon. They are joined (take that, Jeffrey Masson!), and only in the afterglow of their unholy congress will I be able to take my bearings and figure out what needs to be done in the next ten days. A real 3-way.
I always loved tha opening of Snow White, where Snow and the dwarfs took lovely showers together, before the boys marched off to wash buildings and make Chinese Baby Food....
Où sont les neiges d'antin?

Now, back to editing The Journal of Sensory Deprivation.

See you this evening.

Juggling

After last week's Decompression/Limbo Contest, the fun this week has been getting the jobs/housing/moving projects in gear (I am thinking of something resembling Howl's Moving Castle...) - and that's left little time for posts. This will be corrected this weekend.

On Wednesday, Noodley left for his new life, with a gift baggie of his toys, treats and bones, and our patient's two favorite small blankets (which, I assure you, he knows very well). Something familiar to burrow into. The farewell was dry-eyed, but warm - can't guarantee what will happen when I see him again, though. Reunions could be weekly.

Thanks to my readers for all the comments and mails these last two weeks - you are all golden.

[Update: Dropped in on Noodley Friday afternoon (he has a whole needlepoint shop to patrol now), and his sang-froid was remarkable - boy is not pining at all. His new mistress is a bit disconcerted by his aplomb - compared to more slavish canines, N seems to her inexpressive. She is also discovering his native dachshund stubborness. To me, he is looking comfortable, a bit miffed at all the changes in his life, but putting up with the inevitable. Good boy!

Having been sequestered with me and the Old Lady for such a long time, I am eager to find out how he responds to the society of the Dog Park - nearly 6 years old and never met a bitch in heat....hmmmmm. Late bloomer.]

Never Underestimate Pooch Power.... 

Pard

Time to come up for some air. It's very strange to have been suddenly let off the leash; 24/7 patient care forces you to accommodate to all sorts of personal restrictions, you get used to them, and, when they are removed (especially as you seek new gigs and digs), it's pretty disorienting. I still have a gigantic sleep debt, for example, and I have needed to make up at least a small part of that if I am going to run around like a maniac in the next few weeks, taking care of business.

Before all of that fascinating stuff gets fully underway, however, I have to pay tribute to my partner, the doggie who was here when I arrived, who became an ever more adept therapist, companion and friend throughout my tenure. I posted about him last year, and everything I said then is still true. I can happily add that he's gained new respect from his titular owners in the meantime. He's still stuck with the ridiculous name - Noodles - (where the hell did that come from? The DeNiro character in Once Upon a Time in America? I don't think so...) - but he will always be my Noodley.

As our patient got weaker and weaker, he became ever more attentive, warming her body, giving her morning kisses. He couldn't spend nights with her, but he spent most of every day, and after she died last Friday, he would run downstairs and post himself under her (now empty) hospital bed, or take a post at the front door, under the misapprehension that she was out for a clinic visit. Neither of us could immediately persuade ourselves that she was gone. When the baby-monitor was still plugged in and active, both of us leapt to attention if we heard a Val sound - "Let's go help Mom!" I'd say to him and we'd be off. Ten seconds and we'd be there. This past weekend I kept thinking I'd heard her, when that was impossible. He knew better, but he'd cock his head, anyway, when I'd turn mine, and he probably sensed when she intruded in my dreams, too.

He's been my buffer and teammate - a surrogate for the kind of emotional attachment with my patient that would have endlessly complicated doing my job. I cannot overvalue his contributions, or recommend highly enough the services of an intelligent, loyal, sensitive animal as a caregiving helper. So this is for Noodley. He's fully worthy of the Gromit pic, above.

[We watched Curse of the Were-Rabbit last weekend, and enjoyed it immensely!]

An End

Less than an hour ago, my patient died, in her sleep, and to all appearances at peace. It's a release from years of great physical pain, but we lose a very fierce spirit, an engaged mind, and more than 97 years of personal history. No posts for a couple of days, as things sort themselves out.

[Update: Thanks to all my friends/mates/buds who have commented, called, or mailed about this. You are true family - you're golden.]

Diptych

Dine, for Val

A Fine Line

We are on the downhill here, and very far from Torino. My patient seems to be fading incrementally, visibly, each day, and the days can seem like weeks. She was lively (and rather combative) last Friday night/Saturday morning, then crashed. This was not unprecedented; periodic nightmares have destroyed her sleep over at least the last year, and while adjustments in her meds have moderated them, they haven't gone away entirely, and they are exhausting, for both of us. In the last couple of months, however, her body (at 97+) has stopped replenishing itself. Nothing catastrophic - everything still works, there is no raging disease - but it is not fighting so much anymore. It is hardly fighting at all.

If there was a single hallmark on the last 3 1/2 years, it's been the passion of my patient to defy the odds. Manifold arthritis and osteoporosis - longstanding conditions - made her glass-fragile. She took quite large amounts of morphine, daily, but maintained her lucidity and her interest in the world. We watched the 2004 presidential debates together, critically; she paid attention to American Idol on her own. Having been married to a lawyer, she loved courtroom shows, the more lurid, the better (a big Boston Legal fan, for instance).

I've rehabbed her through a knee break and a hip break/replacement - she got through both and was ambulatory (with a walker, and with close care from me) until very recently. The stamina went first, and that infuriated and depressed her. She likes giving orders, but she'd rather do it herself, and only recently has she relinquished her hold on her old determinations. If anything constitutes a fine line between holding to life and letting it go, that one must be signal. For a woman of such will, acquiesence is not a compromise, it's a defeat. I kept hoping it was an aberration, something passing. It seems not to have been.

You take care of a person - body and, to the extent that you can, mind - basically 24/7 for more than 42 months and you are invested in them, their health, their survival, their peace. On many more than one occasion my patient tried to mother me, and I had always to remind her that I already had a mother, and one was quite enough (they met once, finding each other adorable). But closeness and dependence and jockeying and setting boundaries (and seeing they are observed) tend to erode any pretense to pure professionalism - we've gotten on each other's nerves, entertained ourselves, given each other grief and delight. As much as you might want it to end, you also want to see it through. I'll be here until the end, and until the fine line is crossed.

[Update 1: The Sleeping Beauty revived somewhat this afternoon, which delights me, but also reminds me that this is going to be a roller-coaster for a while - and I truly hate roller-coasters (jerk you around, your glasses threaten to fly off, you puke...). I am sure her family will hate it all even more - they were unhinged on Sunday, and they may not be prepared for even temporary improvement. Unless your patient is alone in the world, you are caring for the entire extended family, and they don't necessarily want to admit that, or like it if they do admit. Aplomb, baby, aplomb.]

Frivolity Pure....