Space

It's puzzling.  We have all, I think been through the range of emotions as our friend Diana passed away from her relentless cancer.   When I got home and logged on I learned that she had passed away yesterday morning.

This is not surprising, since the night before I listened to the long spaces between her labored breaths.  The phrase "labored breaths" has been overused, but it certainly applied.  She was working very hard to live.

Now I'm trying to decide how I feel.  How do we interpret this new world without our old friend there to comment, smirk, prod, support?  I think we must each carry a little more of the weight now that Diana is not shouldering her portion here with us.   There will be a memorial and we'll come together again and celebrate her memory.  Our memories of her will come with us on our journeys.

For my part, I have been struggling with hiding from death for a long time.  I hid from my father's death by being far away.  My Mother's deterioration just added insult.  I avoided the funerals and ceremonies of others who died because I couldn't resolve my grief and anger.  Over time, as Dad died and folks supported me, I came to understand this part of life a little better.  I'm proud to say that I didn't shrink from Diana's death the way I once might have done.  She provided me an opportunity for me to heal my own wounds by being present for her physical ones.  It was easy.  I live here and her life was already a regular part of mine.  Nonetheless, I am forever grateful for my opportunity.

Now the world is strange, new and unfamiliar.  It's rhythm is disturbed for a moment and the Universe takes a deep breath, then exhales.  For a moment all is silent.  Stillness, like a measure and a half pause in a great symphony.

Then a bird chirps on a slender branch.  A child rolls over in a morning bed.  Somewhere someone sips a cup of coffee.  Life continues.

Heavy sigh.

This is a sample of my father's impossible handwriting.  This is his legible version.  He wrote longhand on legal pads and as he wrote in a hurry all the lines began to blur and smooth out and become illegible to all but the initiated (me and Mom and probably his parents).

Our dear friend Diana is working harder at passing away, now that we have all said our pieced and spend our time.  It is now her turn to do business with entropy, or Fate, or whoever is in charge.  It makes me think of saying goodbye to my own father, something I'm still doing, really.

When things were bad, he would sometimes rage or argue, but often he would just sigh.  It was a long, drawn out affair, this sigh.  It started with a deep and luxurious intake of breath, followed by a slow, expressive exhalation, drawn out for maximum effect.  I remember those sighs so well that sometimes I find myself channeling them.

When he died, Dad was with Mom and her best friend Frances.  They were talking quietly on the other side of the room and Dad was breathing in a labored way.  Mom told me that at one point, he took a very deep breath and let out a long sigh.  It was his last.

I know exactly what that sounded like.

New guy

"Can you call me, please, Sam?  I can't find my wine.  I think they may have confiscated it." 

Mom's voice on the voicemail, confused, irritated.  It came in while I was doing therapy so I called her after an hour or so.  Mom suspects I do this, but she can't prove it.

"You have wine, Mom.   In Marion Assisted Living places have to keep the wine in the nursing station."

"I don't want to live here.  I want to go back to Wichita.  I want a second opinion!"

She hates this place.  She wants to go back to her house, her woody back yard garden, the goofy neighbors and all the Latino people walking around.  There were little guys on backwards tricycles with coolers between the front wheels ringing bells and selling Mexican ices.  She had a big deep porch and lilacs and peonies that came from Aunt Zella.

I'll go over tomorrow and visit or take her out and she'll be pleasant and tentative, trying to remember what she was mad at me about.  Trying to remember what the next thing was going to be.

I don't want a second opinion, I want a different one.

Once, when I was still miserably married to Nancy I was sitting on the front porch, contemplating divorce, entropy and dandelions.  There were a bunch of 10 year old boys from the neighborhood playing army and one by one they all died horrible dramatic deaths, until finally they were all lying across several late July evening front lawns.  Sweaty little corpses, still warm, holding perfectly still.

After a little while, one boy began to stir.  He had a crew cut and a striped shirt and he raised his head up and looked around him.

"I'm a new guy, now, okay?" he called.  

That's what I need, I thought.  I need to be a new guy now.

Mom's battle has no tag team mate waiting to give her a rest and she's not going gently into that good night.  She wants a goddamn glass of wine without asking for it.  Not much to ask, now that I think of it.

Prom pictures for the Crawley women

Caitlin has always been our plan maker. She once planned a Summer Birthday, because she got sick of January ones. She was 7 years old and happily had a minor celebration of the January date, waiting for the real party in June. The weather that June was very cold and we tried to de-escalate her but she continued planning, inviting all her friends to a "water party," when the temperatures outside were consistently in their 40's. On the June day she'd planned for her birthday a heat wave descended on us and things went off without a hitch. I learned not to underestimate the power of my daughter's determination.

That being said, Caitlin has been thinking about Prom since the first day she ever put on a princess dress. And that was a very long time ago. What follows are the usual pre-prom photos including her boyfriend, Nathan, who seems to be a pretty good egg. She came home sober and happy, and that, my friends, is as good as parenting gets.

Spoils

I found myself yesterday in the awkward position of asking after the car my dear dying friend. I'd been wondering about the car, now that she's clearly not going to drive it. My daughter is going to need a car soon and so I'm just scouting. So, practially speaking, why not just discuss it out in the open. We did, and someone else actually has 'dibs,' and that's cool.





And now I feel bad about even bringing it up.

My home is full of belongings that have come to me, through my mother, from my father's side of the family. There are a few from my mother's side, too, but her family muliplied and prospered, at least biologically. My Dad's side, was a sort of geneological 'funnel' with me at the narrow end. Dad's side of the family is full of single, or at most, double child families, and our particular line is full of only children, so we came to have the vast portion of the family loot.

Now, as my mother's world narrows, diminishing to a single room, I am sorting through more of her remaining belongings, deciding what to keep and what to store or sell. I haven't sold much. It doesn't really seem as though it's mine to sell.


When Mom comes over, she can't remember what she gave me and what I have just kept. I have consulted with her on a lot of it, but she can't remember, and so consulting my mother has become sort of a courtesy to myself.



I was thinking about my mother's panic that I had extorted her money and that she had lost all control. In a sense this is true, in that the result is the same. I now control my mother's life and her money. I choose what things she keeps and what she gives up.








I make her decisions now.

To the survivors go the spoils, what we choose to call the earthly things, the belongings we chose to cart along to the bitter end. Mom's money is spoken for. She'll use it all. I'll interit antiques and art, scads more good books to store in the basement. Eventually Robyn will prevail and I'll have to get rid of some of it.

There are a number of facile conclusions here. It's just stuff. You can't take it with you. To every thing. Ashes to ashes.

It seems there are advantages and disadvantages to watching the dispersal begin while you're still present to attend to it. In Diana's case, it seems to be a process of being open and practical. In my Mom's case, it may be a last way to measure the gradual loss of self.

I am invited by a small sad part of myself to feel guilty. After some consideration, at present, I respectfully decline. Mostly.

Afternoon showers

I got a call from Mom yesterday in the middle of the work day, asking about the bank.   She said she'd called the bank and they said she had no account there.  Since everything she has is at the bank, this caused her considerable anxiety.

She called my Aunt Peg and told her that "Sam has embezzled my money!"  Mom asked Aunt Peg to connect her with a good lawyer.  Aunt Peg insisted that Mom call me, and I explained that her money was still there.  She seemed reassured.  Aunt Peg wasn't.

Not that she thought I was stealing from my mother, mind you.  I'm not.  If I took her money I would just have to support her anyway, unless I also engaged in elder abuse and abandonment.  Seems a little late in the process to start that whole scenario, and besides, if tables were turned Mom would take care of me.

Aunt Peg is still chasing content.  I explained to her again that after this small storm Mom will again be calm, reassured, and will (I hope) forget that she suspected me of venal behavior.  She forgot she was furious about coming back from Aunt Peg's house and going to a new memory care facility.   She forgot to notice that it was a memory care facility.  Mom's like the weather in Kansas.  She's variable.

All of this is about taking the details of life and drawing conclusions based on linear continuity.  Each day we take in information and sequence it, forming hypotheses, executing them, managing our worries, desires, tasks and ideas with the aid of short-term and mid-term memory.  Mom is still a reasonable person, in that presented with facts she can usually make a good choice.  When she has to hold multiple facts and tasks in her mind simultaneously she is getting to the point where some of her conclusions are a little skewed.

When we moved her up here, I got Mom in touch with a colleague who is a fine attorney, so that we could make sure all her legal matters covered in Iowa.  Jean took Mom into her office without me present and talked through what Mom's wishes were.  She presented me with completed documents and did not allow me to be part of the process.  I understood it then, but I really appreciate it now.  Mom got a chance to speak her mind and express her wishes back when her conclusions were pretty solid.

So much of life is about process.  How we put things together, reason things out, related to common issues, pay the bills.  From here out, in my mother's life, content will be secondary to process.  The future and the past give way only to the moment.   Troubles will arise, dissipate and disappear again, like spring storms on the prairie.

This is sad to see in one of the finest organizational minds I have had the privilege to know.  On the other hand, the tree is falling in the forest, and no one remembers the sound.  So no harm is done.

My Inner Diana

A friend of ours is dying and it is almost not imaginable. It looks as though Diana ("well, what did you think I was gonna die of!") Paulina may succumb soon to cancer of the inevitable. It's enough to make a person ache.

It almost didn't seem inevitable. Diana is a tough, passionate, brilliant bundle of Ukrainian orneriness. I really thought for a very long time that she might beat this. She still might have something up her sleeve. I never bet against dp. But it just kept coming, this cancer.

There are people in our lives who have been part of raising us. I would not be in my profession or know how to work a computer or ever have been beaten at Scrabble if it weren't for Kevin and Diana. Okay, I would have been beaten at Scrabble. I have been my best and my worst with them, and they with me (I suppose . . . maybe they were holding back). Who they are is woven into my sense of myself.

I was driving around today, thinking about this and having vaguely agnostic thoughts about all this and it occurred to me that death will not eradicate that part of Diana that is woven into me. As long as I draw breath, whenever I tell an oblique joke, or solve a puzzle, make a pun, or charge off to tilt I windmill, I will summon my Inner Diana. I will fight and argue, push and advocate, I will cook and cheat at poker (just kidding), and try to live my life with the vigor, intelligence and whimsy that has characterized my good friend.

As long as I possibly can,

I will summon my Inner Diana.

s.