sharing magic.... 'In the Absence of Words '

Life is full - not all bad, not all good - and I have so little time that blogging does not often cross my mind these days. You do, you who have been faithful, but blogging is just not climbing into the priority range. But there is time for this. A friend on Facebook (proof that online friendships can be as compassionate and deep and caring as any other) forwarded this piece to me.

Thank you Elizabeth. I love you Mom.

In the Absence of Words | EOAGH:

truth and intentions

Somewhere between grades eight and nine everything changed. I mean, things had changed a lot already. Dad was gone, a few years gone, and Mom had turned home into a group home, and I was living in the shed, and I was still awkward and happier in my own company than anyone else’s.

rituals of grief

I mentioned on Saturday afternoon that Lylune, beloved kitty of my beloved, Gena, was very sick. In the space of a week she had shed a third of her body weight, stopped eating and drinking. Gena had her in to the Vet on Friday and they could only speculate – renal failure or cancer - probably, considering the rapidity and the symptoms - cancer. They hydrated her, filled her full of electrolytes and nutrients and drugs to try to get her kidneys working again, and that was about all they could do. 

“If she responds,” the Vet told Gena, “we’ll talk about treatment options on Monday."

But she didn’t respond. She was in less distress thanks to the IV, but she never got her groove back, not to mention her appetite, and she passed away quietly on Saturday evening.

the most delicate paw in the history of paws

the long ones

There are days, with dementia, when good memories abound. When I visit Mom, almost all of the time, that’s the case. We're very lucky so far. She doesn’t put together my visits into any kind of continuum very well, so every Monday and Friday the visits seems a bit like a treat – like I haven’t been around for a long time – and the good will ensues (there is a lesson to learn in this, I think). Lots of love, lots of nice memories, smiles, laughs.

But not always.

i'm older today than i was yesterday

It’s my birthday today. Forty-five years. I’m not sure what that means, or if it means anything specifically, or even if it's supposed to.

I’m not much of a sentimentalist, although birthdays and New Years are about the only national holidays that I don’t consider hypocritical in most ways. They remain what they have always been: reasons to party. And numbers don’t mean much either, do they? I appreciate the experience that the extra time provides, and occasionally wish I’d known then what I know now, but I had to not know it at some point to be able to learn it, right? Chickens, eggs, always getting us into arguments.

renewing acquaintances

Three months. That’s kind of a long time for an unannounced hiatus. Although the writing was on the wall even back in November.

Mic check. Mic check. Anyone still out there?

What can I say? I’ve been busy. Some of the busy-ness has been good, some not so much. Most of it remains, but I cleared a bit of time for you and me.

some days are better than others

Yesterday was nearly a perfect day. As nearly as I’ve had in a while, anyway.

Today was pretty great too, full of late lingerings in bed and hikes in the snow, but there was a mishap on the other side of the bridge that backed up traffic for two hours, a retaining wall, a brand new one, collapsed at the sight of a new overpass. That meant that I couldn’t go to aikido this evening, which sucks. Of course, it also meant that I had time to come here, to a favorite haunt, get a pot of green tea, and write.

So see? That silver lining shit works sometimes.

random check-in

Wow, it’s been a while.

I’ve been a bit confounded by Mom lately, just making sure everything is up to date, chasing clarity and clarification. Truth is she’s doing okay right now. She’s settled since the last couple symptomatic episodes and we’re basking in the eye of the storm for the moment.

Also I was, I think, desperately missing the manuscript. I spent some down time, while I was waiting for beta advice to come in, working on a synopsis (I may actually hate them, synopses, for all the magic they take out of a story), starting the second volume of the saga, but they felt like cheating, like I was being unfaithful. Or maybe it just felt like hubris, as if I was presuming too much. Finishing the first one, making it as shiny (or gritty, as the case may be) as I can has become (appropriately?) a holy grail of sorts.

Anyway, I got the beta critiques back last weekend and started on revisions, possibly the final round before I actually consider it ready for agents to look at, and the clouds broke as I began. You’d think I’d learn.

…

About Mom, one of the things that got me down was the thought that diagnosis of degenerative dementia, probably like any degenerative disease diagnosis, is essentially a call to start grieving now. It’s a time bomb with no counter – it’s just going to go off, a bit at a time, until the final big boom. And there’s not much you can do about it. We can only work hard to try to stay in the moment. And sometimes, often even, that works, mostly when we’re together and laughing and talking. But there are the quiet times and, in the silence, sometimes, the idea of a clock ticking down feels a bit overwhelming.

It’s all the journey though, right? Good goes with bad, darkness with light, the bitter makes the sweet taste better.

…

I was thinking about how it’s our cultural nature to make things as difficult as possible. We create our society based on the square, fighting nature. We make things straight and hard, all roads and stairs and sidewalks, doors and walls and ceilings. Even when we absolutely have to bend to accommodate nature, the goal is still to minimize the incline, reduce the curves as much as possible, tame the topography.

And then I thought about hiking, being out past the manicured paths. Out there you follow the line that makes the most sense, often following in the footsteps of animals. The lines aren’t straight, nothing is manufactured – it’s organic, and logical in a way that only the wild can be. Intuitive.

And hey, when you find a pause on the path, whatever the reason, the view tends to be fucking awesome. Double rainbow awesome.

P.S. Don’t you love how rioters in the UK are either all stupid, selfish looters and hooligans, OR all politically marginalized and disenfranchised citizens expressing legitimate rage? Why don’t they use AND in that equation? How can they not use it? How stupid does one have to be to not see that there’s legitimate rage AND selfish violence in the dynamic? And why is the UK so goddamed different than Egypt or Tunisia where the frustration was lauded?

P.P.S. I’m reading Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad this week. And loving it. It’s as brilliant as a Pullitzer winner should be. I read Neil Gaman’s American Gods last week (AG was on recommendation from Judy Clement Wall – how did I miss that one?) and loved it too. It’s been a helluva good book month so far.

zero sum

I was thinking about masks, how we wear them even when we’re trying hard not to. It’s an onion thing, I think, peeling them off one by one only to find another layer of them. When we peel the last one off, do we cease to exist?

The inversion was about getting rid of masks, or at least minimizing the number of them. I try not to have a work mask now, for the casino slavery, but I know there is one. Maybe, on the good days, it’s more translucent than any I’ve ever worn, but I still bite my tongue too much to think that I’m not wearing one.

Mom’s definitely receding. I saw her Community Care nurse and worker on Friday. They don’t make diagnoses or provide prognoses, of course. They concentrate on the now, on the care. An appointment with her psychiatrist will be next. He should be in a better position to provide insight into what to expect, what the timelines might be. I both want to know, and don’t. We’ll still be measuring in years, I think, but small numbers.

That led me to think about minimalism: What we need as opposed to what we want, or even what we think we need. My working theory suggests that the less we use, the more we have to give away. It’s the opposite of modern consumerism. For me, it’s still an ideal. I can trim more, perhaps actually develop enough self-discipline (a virtue I lack) to create more space for giving even when I am in a place where using much isn’t an issue.

One of the reasons that getting out of the casino is so crucial is just simply to not have to wear that work mask. I think maybe that I’ll be able to measure success, my version of it, by how few masks I have to own. None would be ideal, but that seems like a dream more than a goal. I’m not sure humans are meant to be mask-less. Or maybe capable is a better term for it, not capable of being mask-less. At least not in our culture. We can only strive to limit the number and make the ones we do wear as authentic to what we think our true selves are as possible.

When I die, I hope there’s no more onion left to peal. That’s a nice thought. For Mom, and for me, I need to remove myself from the equation of her care. She deserves something as selfless as possible, so I need to not be worrying about me. That will require some intense peeling which, in the end, will actually help me. And that’s how the universe works on the good days.

aftershocks

So, the story goes that Mirm went out to do a couple errands. While she was gone Mom became anxious because of the stranger that came into the condo. It was the stranger that Mom asked to leave last Wednesday, even though it was Mirm that asked, and Mirm that went for air, and Mirm that came back.

Today Mom called to ask if I’d come into the condo briefly this morning. She was sure that she saw me, but I was at home and Mirm confirmed that I didn’t, and Mom was disturbed by the dissonance. Hell yeah, it disturbs me too.

Depending on the online resource I tap into, these are symptoms of either late stage five or early six, but I’m no doctor, and it’s pretty obvious that the symptoms are a bit interchangeable depending on frequency, severity, etc. The bottom line is that it’s both as bad and not as bad as I’d thought. One of Mom’s medications was changed, or rather her schedule for taking it was changed, and there’s at least a reasonable probability that these symptoms are related to that change, to the affect the change had/is having on her stress levels. The rest of the time, most of the time, there’s little change and the treatments she’s on have mostly arrested the progression for the last year. It makes me more thankful than ever that the life inversion happened when it did.

Mom’s stress jumps now when Mirm has to go out; when she’s alone for any amount of time. It’s like she looses her tether to the now when she’s alone and, in the absence of the anchor that company provides, her anxiety rockets – the panic of sudden confusion, as if abandonment were perpetual and unavoidable.

I don’t know, maybe that’s part of it. Maybe I’m out to fucking lunch. Trying to imagine this stretches my somewhat considerable imagination, and I know that I’m simply not able to actually get it. Selfishly, I hope that I never do, not completely. I’m also in active denial regarding the stage descriptions that I read online, especially the timeline they provide for progression. I hate time today. Living in the now is the only strategy I can respect at the moment.

On the positive side, this all has nothing to do with Mirm. She remains a rock; a laconic, stoic one that I have to drag admissions of simple humanity from, but a rock nonetheless. So I‘ve scheduled an appointment with Mom’s outreach nurse for a week and a half from now. To talk about options, resources. They aren’t ready for me to move in to help, reluctant to give up the freedom they’ve carved out over the years, and I respect that. But Mirm, as tough as she is, is still 81. Hopefully there will be someone that can come in so that Mirm can do her errands, walk the dog, get some air, and still have someone there to provide that tether for Mom while Mirm is out.

I have to look out for Mirm seeing as she’s never been very good at choosing herself over Mom. If she’s not going to look out for herself, and she won’t, then someone has to look out for both of them. That only seems fair.

Or maybe nothing seems fair, but it is what it is.

tremors

Mom called this morning to tell me that she was having some problems with her memory. She wanted me to know. This happens once a week or so, and I can literally hear her blush like it’s a dirty secret. Every time. She’d just finished a big talk with Mirm, the kind that I think takes place more than I know but that Mirm simply doesn’t talk about, where Mirm explains the last couple years, and decades, to bring her up to speed.

This afternoon Mom called again to say that Mirm had left. Mirm had apparently walked into the bedroom where Mom was playing solitaire on the computer and asked if Mom wanted her to leave. And Mom said yes. She was calling me to tell me that she was okay. She thought I should know. That she’d stay at home. That everything would be fine.

In my head I was already making plans to get there, to move in right away. And at the same time I was spinning, trying to figure out what could have happened, what Mirm might have not been saying, wondering how it could have gotten so bad, mentally rearranging my life to make room for taking care of her full time.

The world receded a bit and my ears started ringing. Around fifteen minutes later, the gears not really meshing but the engine revving at high speed, Mom’s name popped up on my phone again.

It was Mirm. The aforementioned conversation apparently took place, although I still think I must be missing part of the context, but Mom had told her that she’d called me and Mirm wanted me to know that she’d just gone for a walk with the dog. Just for a bit of air. She said that everything was fine, that she would never, ever just leave like that. That everything would be okay, but Mom was having a bit of trouble this week. Maybe with some changes to her medication. Maybe.

The truth: It might not be a thing that we can fix with an adjustment. It’s a degenerative disease. There’s a progression that we can’t avoid and this… this might be that and not a reaction to a change in regimen.

We are such fragile things, and yet so tough, sewn together from bits and pieces, scenes and fragments of scenes, scents and colors, faces and eyes and the brushing of finger tips. I often despair a little bit, sometimes more, at the thought of Mom drifting away until she doesn’t remember me, doesn’t remember herself. That is the decline that most terrifies me. If I was deaf and dumb and blind I know that I could still tell myself stories in my head. But to lose that… That scares me shitless. I don’t know how she does it.

When Mom called to say Mirm had left, completely convinced that it was forever, she sounded so settled and sure. She reminded me of the woman who made the strong choice to send my Dad away so he could (or could not – they couldn’t know what would happen then, after all) get his own shit together, and so that she could keep herself and the little boy I was safe. There was no tremor in her voice, and I could only hear the fear way back behind the words she was saying.

For that moment I saw her face young again, as I imagine she expects to see herself in the mirror many days; a younger her, resigned and yet girded, prepared to survive whatever came next no matter what. What must it be like to receive that shock every day, to look expecting a face that matches the memories she has left  and find, instead, this woman that has seen so many more years.

I can’t help but wonder when the moment will come that I tell her I love her and it’s the last time she knows what that means. I’m not sure I’ll be strong enough for that moment.

There are new conversations to have now. There is Mirm to consider too, after all. It’s time for more honest talk and, perhaps now or maybe soon but unavoidably, hard decisions. And this too is love.

Fragile things, and yet tough. Everyday miracles, every one of us.

go figure

I visit Mom on Fridays, make dinner, give Miriam a night off from cooking and cleaning duties. It’s a tradition now.  Yesterday, Saturday, 24 hours after I left for work on Friday, I got to my friends place after work and turned on my computer to find three e-mails from Mom. The first read:

Hi Mike would you please come home and visit me?  Love you, Mom

The second:

Mike please get in touch with me I want to talk to you. Love, Mom 

And the third:

HI MIKE, IGNORE MY OTHER EMAILS. I AM FINE. TALK TO YOU LATER. LOVE YOU, MOM

Naturally, I called right away. Miriam had left to get something from the store, something that they couldn’t wait for. Mom prefers not to go out, so she stayed at home.

And then forgot that Miriam had left, forgot that Miriam lives there, forgot that she wasn’t actually alone at all, forgot pretty much everything. The thought of what that would be like makes me cringe.

This morning I woke up to an e-mail from the UK, from my Dad. He’d received a troubling e-mail from Mom yesterday too, one desperately asking him to come home because she was alone and needed him. They’ve been divorced for 27 years, of course, and the tans-Atlantic flight is a serious commute, but in that moment…

Well, she just felt alone. Utterly, completely.

There’s a disconnect that I don’t comprehend in all of this. It defies logic. She knew to e-mail my Dad because he was far away, used a computer that she can barely turn on and e-mailed me too, three times, but never thought to pick up the phone and call me even though the number is by the receiver. But I don’t think logic has much to do with ALZ or that kind of fear - that sense of isolation even if it isn’t really the reality. For her, then, it was real, and she was at the computer, and she just reached out, pleading.

When I called her, everything was already back to normal, whatever that is. Miriam had returned (she’d only been gone twenty minutes), and Mom was re-centered. She’d just needed a prompt to put things back in place and regain the semblance of a perspective on her world. We’d be lost without Miriam.

I thought, What would it be like to lose your whole world in less than twenty minutes? That made me think of Japan, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan... It was a somber evening.

When I got up this morning, after I sent Dad an e-mail to let him know that everything was okay (whatever that is), I found this, a quote posted by a yoga-instructing friend on Facebook:

‎"What if our religion was each other ~ If our practice was our life ~ If prayer our words ~ What if the temple was the Earth ~ If forests were our church ~ If holy water - the rivers, lakes and ocean ~ What if meditation was our relationships ~ If the teacher was life ~ If wisdom was self knowledge ~ If love was the centre of our being" ...Ganga White

It made everything a bit better - that thought, that big wish. The tragedy in Japan is creating a new, renewed appreciation for the most admirable aspects of Japanese culture. In Egypt, over 70% voted for constitutional change in a referendum. And there are people who think of and write giant wishes across the parchment of our world; ones so big that they can have a life of their own. And there are friends that can make losing the whole world better with just a few words.

In Hiroshima, the first springtime after the bomb, green things grew where nothing was supposed to grow for fifty years. Today Mom’s having a great day.

Go figure.

now and again

It snowed most of the day and night Sunday, at the end of a long cold snap here in southern BC. Nasty weather with temperatures in the minus twenties Celsius. And then, yesterday, it was calm and the sun came out, and the snow started to melt.

I took Dax and Bella, my roommate’s dogs, out for a walk, up the street and through a small neighborhood park, under the monkey bars and past the slide, and then down a hill into the woods until you couldn’t tell for looking that there was anything remotely like civilization anywhere around. The snow even made the paths look less civilized, like they could have been deer paths instead of hiking paths.

It was still and warm, the sun shining through the trees. Dax and Bella let loose, chasing each other around the plateau we were on, nosing into the snow, doing doggie MMA. And the melt off of the trees made it like standing in the middle of a sun shower. It felt like the dawn of time.

On Sunday, while I was at work, my Mom called. She fortuitously caught me on a break. She was having a tough morning. Miriam had gone for groceries and she was alone, anxious. Miriam, I have mentioned, is a quiet, stubborn lady, tough as nails and just as taciturn. I think that she plays down what mornings are usually like. I think that Mom has it tough most mornings, waking up to find huge parts of her past gone, not feeling any sense of continuity. I think that Miriam spends most mornings reminding her of where she is and explaining, day after day after day, that her memory is going.

So she was freaked out a bit, feeling displaced. Mirm was out and she found the list of phone numbers, of those few people that she still really remembers, and started making calls. I was second or third. She’d already talked to a couple friends, but hearing again and again that they already know she’s feeling history slide away can’t help much. So we talked for a few minutes and reminded each other of the important things.

When I called later, she was better, more relaxed, in her Zen place like she usually is when I visit, the anxiety of awakening already dissipated.

When she called again yesterday morning, just before I took the dogs out, she said that she felt better. She said that Miriam had taken her to see the doctor and she was on medication to help with her memory and one for her anxiety. This is an appointment that happened last year, in the spring, but it seemed like last week to her. Or she wanted it to be last week. She said she though it was helping, the medicine, and hoped to have her memory improve soon.

She didn’t remember the call on Sunday though.

And that’s what I thought about yesterday, in the trees, with the melt falling like a shower and the sun shining and the dogs running and jumping in the snow. We make plans, we humans, using our big brains to map out the future while we try so hard to untangle from the past.

But it’s really all about the now, the ever shifting now of moments both mundane and profound that flows over and past and around.

I wish that Mom could have been with me to see the dogs playing. I think she would have loved it, even if just for the moment.

chasing dragons

When I was fourteen or so, back in the days of Mom’s heroics, I fell into a fairly profound depression that lasted for about six years. As amazing as her actions to keep us roofed and clothed and fed were, as super-human as her efforts to care for our schizophrenic borders were, the effort took its toll too. There were large rents in the fabric of our lives, and I slipped through a few of them.

Mom never knew how bad it was at the time. We’ve talked about it since, cried and accepted and forgiven each other for the missteps and gaps. That’s all there was to do.

There’s no such thing as a normal life anyway. TV is just theatre. I’ve never met anyone that had a “normal” childhood.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m thankful for what we had. It could have been worse. I was cared for and provided for, and I learned autonomy early. I was perhaps neglected in some ways, trusted by default to find my way, but never abused. I always knew I was loved.

But I had a serious mind, and it led me to dark places, and Mom had her own demons to struggle with. I survived it. Barely, I realized later, looking back. There were close calls. But I survived. We both did.

After the accident, when my marriage was falling apart, there was another depression. This time I was able to get help and it was shorter, but the return to depression had been unsettling. Profoundly unsettling. Walking over your own grave unsettling.

Looking back on the last couple months, and especially weeks, I realize now that I was starting to feel a fear, in the back of my head where I couldn’t quite reach it, that I was sliding down the rabbit hole again. That I was falling into pits too deep for me to extricate myself from. That I was slipping away and that all the work I thought I’d done had obviously not been as complete as I’d thought. (And, of course, it isn’t complete, never is, but that’s okay and a different thing all together anyway.) With words all dried up, even the desire to write absent, I was getting very worried that something was seriously wrong.

I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself or anyone else. My friends were worried, I could tell. But I just curled in. It’s what I usually do; try to fix it myself for as long as I can. It generally works, even if it’s not a perfect system. Knowing that support is ready and waiting is usually enough. I still have all those ingrained habits of (perhaps unhealthy) autonomy though. It’s what I do.

But it wasn’t a slip into depression this last few weeks. It was just the mother of all colds, or maybe an inconvenient string of them. I woke up Wednesday and felt human for the first time in a while, then felt better yesterday, and today I’m feeling practically normal.

And I’m breathing heavy sighs of relief.

From here, coming out the other side, I can see that my malaise wasn’t a descent into darkness. The fear was unfounded. But it was there. That’s worth taking note of. I’m taking notes. There’s (always) still work to do.

But there’s good news in this too. When I was telling myself and everyone else that it was just a cold, I was right. While I may have a fear of some of the dark places I’ve lived in, I’m not the person that fell into those pits anymore. Who I was doesn’t define who I am.

And I think I feel pretty damned good about that.

...

P.S. I finished the full reading and notes for the manuscript draft today. The last revisions before beta reading start on Monday.

the last twenty minutes

First of all, it’s 2011, so I’m changing the font. Fuck yeah.

_

Turns out I wasn’t nearly as “over” my cold as I thought on NYE. Turns out that working that night from eight until four the next morning didn’t help. Casino hours… what are ya gonna do?

So I stumbled through the weekend of dealing cards and then slept Monday and Tuesday, literally. It’s Thursday and I almost feel mostly human again.

All that down time did let me finish watching the World Junior Hockey Championships though, so it wasn’t all bad. I just set my phone alarm to get up for the games and, in between, slept in medicated bliss. I was back on my feet yesterday though, running around, catching up on stuff, and ended up watching the final (Canada vs Russia) in a pub.

Canada lost in a monumental third period meltdown, going from a 3-0 lead at the start of the period to a final, dismal 5-3 loss, allowing five unanswered goals in what will surely go down as one of the greatest chokes of all time. I’ve mentioned before that I watch hockey now for the joy of the game and not to cheer the home team. Mostly. I was a little disappointed.

It was disappointing to watch the Canadian team blow the lead, but not world-ending. More disappointing was that it was a boring game to watch. Canada dominated for forty minutes, and then Russia dominated for twenty. There was very little of that exciting battle between two equals when they go toe to toe in the kind of display of skill and speed that makes hockey the fastest, most exciting game in the world. (Yes, I’m biased. My blog, I’m allowed.)

So I was less disappointed in the final score than I was in the fact that neither team came out to play a full sixty minutes of hockey.

That sounds uncharitable, and it kind of is. These are kids after all, every one of them nineteen or under and subsequently susceptible to vagaries of emotional vacillation tempestuous enough to sink the Titanic.

Nobody will ever know what exactly happened. It looked to me, though, like Canada spent the intermission between the second and the third imagining what the gold medals were going to feel like hanging around their necks, and then came out worried about not losing them. The Russian team, on the other hand, spent the intermission realizing that they had absolutely nothing to lose, and twenty minutes left to them to reach for the brass ring.

And that, I think, made all the difference.

The team that won yesterday didn’t play the whole game as well as they could have, but they played the most important part – the end. Life is like that, yeah? Not too many people manage to figure out their personal legend, to use a Paulo Coelho-ism, early enough to say they were able to play the whole game. I know a lot of people, like me, that didn’t figure that part out until later on.

Most of the time, we give up. We say that we made our choice and now we have to stick with it. We get fixated on the destination and lose sight of the journey, hung up on holding onto what we've got instead of risking it for the sake of the path. We have a career, families, kids, mortgages*, obligations, responsibilities, and we convince ourselves that personal legends have to come second to those things, because we’re used to lists and priorities that have to be linear.

News flash: They don’t have to be. You can love your kids and spouse and still love yourself and pursue whatever it is that makes your blood sing. And if you can, and if I can, then we all can.

When it comes down to it, how we start is less important than how we end. Lots of us have great ideas, brilliant starts, and then, somewhere in the middle, lose the thread. It’s a marathon, a journey, after all, and there’s lots of time to get distracted, or sidetracked, or bogged down. Win or lose, it truly is how we play the game, the effort we put in to the end.

I lucked out. I truly feel that I found my little bit of destiny to chase after, and I was in a pretty flexible personal position to make drastic changes in order to chase after that fucker. I get that it isn’t always appropriate to flip everything upside down in a life-inversion like I did in order to make changes, but there are always ways. I’m surrounded by amazing people, online and in the 3-D world, that are doing it, chasing personal legends, making it up as they go along, carving out a path through the jungle towards a mountaintop and a cave full of bliss.

They’re reaching for it as if there was nothing to lose, and I find it inspiring to see. It inspires me every day to get in the chair and finish stronger than I started, the skate to the buzzer. Because I have nothing to lose except me, and the only way to do that is to stop trying. Let me say that again: We have nothing to lose but ourselves, and the only way to do that is to stop trying.

I don’t usually do the question asking thing here, but I will today, because I’m truly interested in hearing your truth. What is it in your life that’s worth playing hard for right to final buzzer?

* The word mortgage finds its roots in the French. It literally means “death pledge”. Not surprisingly, they don’t use that particular phrase in French-speaking lands to describe contracts to buy houses. Go figure…

things that go 'boo'

In my opinion, The Amityville Horror (the 1979 classic, not the new one) was, by far and without the possibility of rebuttal, the scariest movie of all time.

Horror movie connoisseurs (of which I am not one) will undoubtedly be rising indignantly, even as I speak, with rebuttals, but I have already said "no rebuttals", so pipe down and take a seat. I’m not saying that it IS the scariest movie of all time; I’m saying it is IN MY OPINION. This leaves plenty of room for argument except in the little world that is me, so you can have your picks. Mine is sealed and delivered. Let me explain.

It isn’t the scariest because of the scary voices, or the room that filled with flies to chase off the priest, or the red room under the stairs, or James Brolin’s wild-haired, scraggly-bearded, fuzzy-eyed madman routine, or the ax, or “GET OUT!” None of that. Although, to my twelve-year old brain those were all pretty scary. No, the elements of plot and special effect and dramatic tension were only accomplices to my night terrors for weeks after seeing the classic fright-fest.

The real credit goes to my Mom.

You see, The Amityville Horror was a Restricted Movie. I’d gone to see it with my Big Brother, Trevor* (this is all post-parental split) who had, in his defense, not realized it was a Restricted-and-for-old-people-only movie, a fact that my Mom was apparently unaware of as well. They both knew it was a scary movie, but not how scary – so scary that only adults could view it safely. Moreover, to his credit, he was ready to turn tail and go bowling when he saw the rating at the ticket window. That would have been when I did the puppy-dog-eyes thing in combination with the don’t-crush-my-young-dreams-of-coolness thing with a side of the I-will-make-you-pay thing. I cajoled and convinced him that my mom wouldn’t mind (which was certainly true - she didn’t mind at all) and that I’d be fine (oh hell NO, I wasn’t). He signed the release and we went in.

The movie was scary. At least to me it was; Scarier than I’d anticipated for sure. but it didn't kill me. I jumped in my seat often and was thoroughly spooked, but it’s not like I cried or anything. When we left the theater I was buzzing with skittery energy, unnerved but trying to be cool about it. I was, after all, nearly thirteen, and I had been the one to convince Trevor that there should be Restricted Movie Watching.

Apparently my act was convincing. Convincing enough at the very least to make Trevor think it was a good idea to prolong the excitement.

I was quietly trying to hold myself together in the dark car, driving home on the dark road when the car weaved. I jumped a bit and braced my hand on the dash. Trevor chuckled and said, “Sorry ‘bout that”. Then we weaved again. I jumped again. No apology this time. I looked over at Trevor and he had this demented look on his face, all scrunched and bunched and leery-eyed. Then another weave. And finally, the coup de gras: An other-worldly voice that sounded like equal parts chains dragging on gravel and blood gurgling through massive fleshy rents started coming out of his mouth. My Big Brother’s mouth! This, along with a now-continual weaving from one side of the dark road to the other!

I’m trying to find the words… Imagine, if you will, the sound of an old, hand-cranked siren, beginning low and rising in volume and pitch. It mixes in a horrible harmony with the basso scratchy gargling coming from the thing that is now driving. Imagine, in concert with those sounds, my twelve-year old, gangly frame collapsing on itself, knees drawing up as I twisted, back towards my door, away from him, hands stretching out to fend off whatever demon had possessed (this cannot be stressed enough) MY BIG BROTHER! Finally, picture that cool effect where the wax heads of the Nazis at the End of Raiders of the Lost Ark melt so that the eyebrows and lids disappear and they are all eyeball just for a second.

That was me, sketchy to unhinged in three seconds flat. Trevor stopped immediately and, between uncontrollable guffaws, apologized with a degree of gusto that was admirable, if somewhat undermined by the aforementioned laughter. I think he felt bad the rest of the way home. I think my hyperventilation helped him feel bad, but that might be giving my discomfort undue credit.

By the time we pulled into my driveway I had mostly stopped breathing hard. I think there was even an attempt at macho bravado and some self-deprecating laughter: “Ha ha, I’m such a scardee-cat. You got me real good, mister,” was probably what I was hoping to get across. This to hide the “Ihateyou!Ihateyou!IHATEYOU!” that was actually running through my head.

Trevor offered to walk me to the front door, but I declined. Seriously, I think he was worried about me, but I wasn’t a) going to let him have the satisfaction of knowing I was almost out of my skin scared and, b) he was, at that moment, perhaps the last person I wanted in a position to be the benefactor of my trust, thank you very much.

I got out of the car and watched as he backed and turned, and then drove away. I turned back to the house.

The front light was on, but the rest of the house was dark. It was a late show too, you see, and it was comfortably after eleven. Late. And dark.

I let myself in quietly and left the light off, not wanting to wake Mom up. I took off my shoes so as to be even quieter. I stopped and steadied myself in the dark, rational me in an all-out war with irrational me to enforce calm and reason. I tip-toed down the hall past my bedroom, towards the bathroom at the end, so I could brush the popcorn, chocolate and pop off of my teeth. Everything was going to be all right. Everything was fine. I was home. It was all going to be just fine.

These are the lies we tell ourselves.

When Mom jumped out from around the corner I don’t think I actually jumped in response. I’m sure the story would be better with a jump, something instinctual and epic, perhaps including hitting my head on the ceiling I jumped so heroically. That didn’t happen. That would have required a degree of coordination that was altogether impossible for me at that point.

Rather, there was a general spasmodic herky-jerky, each leg wanting to move in a different direction at the same time, gravity and connective tissue making that somewhat impossible, arms also flying, completely without heed to what the other was trying to do, in opposite vectors. My eyes probably even looked opposite directions.

There may have been a shriek. Yes, yes, I’m quite sure about the shriek.

And then there was simply an implosion. I crumpled. There were tears of fear and a pathetic batting of arms as Mom, suddenly all too aware of how intense her little prank had been on my obviously fragile psyche, and also suddenly far more scary than I had ever possibly imagined Trevor to be, tried to console me.

I am reluctantly proud to say that there was no soiling of pants in any way. This is not repression; I am sure it is fact.

After a few minutes of inconsolable blubbering, and after I had shamed my mother away from me with accusatory glares and unspoken recriminations, I managed a Tim Conway shuffle into the bathroom on my spasming legs. When I came out the lights were on. Silently, my OWN MOTHER standing there and by now managing to both express profound sympathy and laugh at me at the same time, I trundled past her into my room.

I may have slammed the door indignantly.

I’m not proud of the slam, but then, really, what about the episode is there to inspire pride. I figure the slam was my small recompense.

*All names other than “Mom” have been changed to protect the identity of GUILTY PERSONS!

all these moments will be...*

So my dear Mom, fresh back from a road trip with her BFF (she's feeling that good these days - modern medicine has its virtues) is telling me about all the friends she was able to see at the holiday trailer in Harrison. One of them, Jane**, a woman about her age, is apparently having some memory issues herself.

Not able to remember that she, too, was feeling pretty anxious about it herself up until 4 weeks and new meds ago, she says, "And poor Jane, she's having such a hard time with it." She smiles and laughs like Jane is somehow just missing the point and I have no heart to bring up people-in-glass-houses truisms.

"She's so embarrassed by it," says she, my indestructible Mom. "It's like she can't just live in the moment." She makes a pompous face; chin in, shoulders back. "She takes it all so seriously!"

We laugh, because it's funny (not Jane's anxiety - I know, even Mom knows, that it's not especially a laughing matter - but the delivery and expression are perfection) and also because it's just great to hear her laugh.

Then she gets serious. "I just wish that I didn't feel so guilty."

I shake my head. The change of direction is kind of stunning. "Guilty?" I say. "What about?"

Her face scrunches, my fragile Mom, equal parts sorrow and confusion. "Oh, all the things. Your Dad. Everything. I'm so worried that God won't forgive me even though I ask. Every night."

This both breaks my heart a bit, and raises my gorge. Of all the people.... It's just wrong.

The god issue is one we rarely discuss. She knows my thoughts are... eclectic. She was raised Mennonite Brethren - strictly hellfire and damnation. Her utterly illogical and overwhelming guilt, and the institutions capable of using it so carelessly and intentionally, are a big part of the "why" of my eclectic agnosticism. Guilt was injected into her DNA at a young age and we haven't found an effective gene therapy for it yet.

Somehow, I seem to have escaped permanent infection. Maybe it's because I was adopted.

"Mom, don't you think that a god worth believing in, a god that would die for you, would have heard and delivered the first time you asked?"

We've had this talk before, and she's heard it in her heart before - where truth really rests - but like so many things now, it requires re-visitation.

She smiles, remembering, like a star peeking out of the twilight. "Yes, I know. I suppose He would. It's just so hard sometimes. To remember that. You know?"

"I know," I say. "But it's worth remembering. Let's make a post-it and put in on the computer. You can remind yourself every time you sit to play Spider Solitaire."

She gives me that look, very serious like when she used to tell the teenage me that smoking was bad. "That's a great idea. I'll see it every time I e-mail you too."

"That you will. Any idea where your Post-it's are?"

"Oh, I just saw them earlier. Now where did I put them...?" There's a pause and she looks around her, lost. Forlorn.

And she pulls them out of her little emergency bag. Presto. Haha, the jokes on me. And we laugh.


* Extra awesome points if you can name the movie this fragment of dialog came from.
** All names except "Mom" are fictionalized. Everything else, as best as I wish to put it back together, is pretty much true.

World Alzheimer's Day - Sept. 21 - Bloggers Unite

(This is a Bloggers Unite cross-post)

When I was nine my parents split up. My dad, the aforementioned English teacher, left and, with him, so did our family’s sole source of income.

My mom has suffered from chronic depression and anxiety her entire life, has a grade 8 education, was emancipated by fifteen, spent a brief time as a street kid (imagine that in the 50’s), and worked as a data punch processor until she met and married my dad. By the late 70’s when they split up those data punch skills were archaic and useless.

We spent about a year living on welfare.

After Dad left she never spent another night in the hospital due to her depression, perhaps in part as a result of him not being there, but I think mostly because she just told herself that she couldn't. For me.

She managed to pay the bills and the mortgage until she got a job as a graveyard supervisor at a group home for the mentally challenged. She built that job into a career by turning our house into a miniature group home. By the time I was 12, she was caring full time for two developmental challenged paranoid/schizophrenic women. That was her career, seemingly forged out of thin air, and the means by which she kept us in hot dogs and hamburgers.

We never lost the house, I was always fed, always clothed, always loved, and mostly aware of how amazing all of that was. It was, at times, challenging being a teenage boy in that house, but it was also a priceless and unique experience.

To this day, I have a hard time calculating the scale of the sacrifices she made; how much focus and effort a life of service to those two women must have taken; how hard it must have been to not give up or give in to the depression that was and still is a giant cloud over her head; how much she overcame to keep our modified family together.

Thinking about it always leaves me dumbfounded and a little fucked up for a while, but in a good way.

So when I say that she is the most courageous person I know, please understand how serious I am. She is my hero.

Mom turned seventy early this year and has, over the last year or so, been slipping (mostly) gently into the early stages of Alzheimer’s. We’ve had some bad stretches already, but adjustments to her medications have helped her come back twice now, and we’re currently holding.

I know that, realistically, it won’t last forever, but I’m thankful for the time we have, and for her continued courage.

There’s no bullshit around the house. She’s aware of what’s happening and it scares the shit out of her some days, but we talk about it when it does.

We laugh whenever possible. We remember together, and the repeated stories never seem old. She tells me that she’s proud of me and I tell her I’m more proud of her. We say ‘I love you’ all the time, more than we used to, and that’s never a bad thing.

So far it’s a pretty gentle experience and we’re thankful for that too. We know that it won’t last forever, but while it does… well, while it does we’ll be in the moment and appreciate it.

Every moment. Every story. Every hug. Every ‘I love you’. Every. Fucking. One.

Hell, she’s my hero and this is just life. You deal, right?

It’s what heroes do. My Mom taught me that…

September 21 is World Alzheimer’s Day.

Maybe your folks are fine, maybe not. Either way, be thankful for the time you have. It’s precious and too short.