Forgetting

I was talking with Debbie the other day. In and around everything else, I told her about my last visit to see Mother ... and about my concerns that Mother is getting so forgetful. (I didn't go into details. On the other hand, she dealt with her own mother's decline, so she understands the idea.)

Anyway, in and around talking about how much of a change this is in Mother, since she used to be sharp as a tack, I suddenly remarked on something else.

I have a regular weekly call with Marie. And over the last few months there have been a number of times—two? three? four? something like that—when she has mentioned casually some discussion we had a few months earlier and I haven't remembered it.

So what? Right? How big a deal can it be?

This is where I start to sound unspeakably arrogant. But you have to understand that, for me, what I am about to say is not arrogance but simple reality.

It's a big deal. What I am used to—for decades now, really for my whole life if it comes to that—is that if someone references a conversation we had some time in the past, I remember it! Verbatim. I am used to remembering conversations from a decade ago well enough to be able to say, "Wait, is that what you thought I was saying? Oh no! It's true I used those words, but then I followed up by saying this other thing in the very next breath. And in context I was talking about something totally different." Even if the conversation was ten years ago or more, it would make no difference. I must have made that exact declaration to Wife dozens of times over the course of our marriage, because she was always pulling out some lunatic opinion ... insisting it was mine ... and then justifying herself with, "But you said ...!!" 

And now when Marie tells me that I recommended she buy a bell on this or that website—advice which she took—I have no recollection of the discussion. Sure, it sounds logical. I might have said it. I don't dispute that I said it. But I have no memory of saying it.

My memory used to be flawless. Unimpeachable. The final authority in any dispute. Now? As far as I can tell, now my memory is still pretty good, but no longer perfect. Now it's pretty good, but more or less normal.

How the mighty have fallen.

I know, I know ... it's arrogant to go on like this. And self-centered. Rude. Antisocial. "Not to mention other adjectives," as Tom Lehrer once put it.

It's also depressing. I'm getting old.

In other news, I'm starting to feel it in my knees every time I go up or down stairs. Even a year ago, I think that wasn't true.

Maybe if I lost weight, that might help my knees. Would it help my memory?

           

Mother is aging, 3

Last weekend I drove down to Big City to visit Mother. (I'm writing this on May 2. I visited her April 25-27.) It's starting to worry me, how much she is aging. (See by comparison this post, or this one, or this one.)

The ostensible purpose of the visit was to go through some of Father's old clothes, to see if I wanted any of his old shirts so that she could clear them out of the closet to make room. Father died almost eleven years ago, but it always took my parents a long time to get around to things. Well, we found something like two dozen shirts which both fit me and more or less matched my taste. (Brother and SIL had been there the day before, and had pulled out only two or three.) So I was able to clear a lot of space out of her closets, and it saved me the trouble of having to buy more shirts. That's not where the problem was.

First story

The first morning I was there, I woke up before she did and wanted to check my email. But my computer couldn't find her network. I looked around and saw that she had a new router. But unlike the old one, it did not have the network's name and password on a sticker. So I waited for her to get up. The after breakfast, I asked her about it.

"It looks like you got a new router."

"Oh yes, I did."

"What's the network ID and password? I want to check my email, and I can't connect."

"Isn't it on the router?"

"No, I checked." (But she went to check anyway, which was fine of course.)

"They never gave it to me."

"That's not possible. They have to have given it to you."

"Well they didn't! You know, Brother and SIL were here when they installed the router. Maybe the man gave it to them."

"What?"

"Oh yes. They handled it completely. They did all the interaction with him. So they must have gotten the password from him."

"But then they would have given it to you."

"Well they didn't! I don't have it, and I never got it."

"That's crazy. You have devices that connect to it. All those devices must have been reprogrammed with the new password."

"You'll have to talk to Brother and SIL."

"OK, but they're not here. I can text them, I guess, but they might be busy."

"Well that's what you have to do."

So I texted Brother. I also poked around on Mother's desktop computer to see if I could find any place the new wifi password had been stored. Mother went to get her handwritten password book, and looked up the name of the service provider. There was no entry, and she showed me that to prove that she had never been given the password. I never heard back from Brother. Finally I paged through the rest of her password booklet. At the very end, under "Wi-Fi," was the new password for her new network. I tried it, and it worked.

So I texted Brother, "Never mind. She found it." But wow. How is it possible that she could have concocted this story that they never gave her the new password? Was it a confabulation? For that matter, is it true that Brother and SIL were the ones interacting with the guy from her Internet service? Or did she make up that part when she needed a way to explain why she "never got" the password?

Is Wife sundowning?

I learned a new word today. Sundowning. Apparently that's when someone who is suffering from dementia (or borderline dementia, I guess) gets progressively more confused as the evening wears on. Sometimes it can lead to agitation or violence.

Son 1 visited me for a couple of hours today, and he explained it like this. "You remember Joe Biden in the Presidential debate? Everyone said he was fine at lunchtime. But by the debate he was lost, because it started at 9:00 pm."

Son 1 thinks that Wife is experiencing the same thing. Maybe I should back up and tell the story.

Son 1 texted me this morning, asking if I would be here later. Sure, no problem. Turns out he was flying in from a week where he was somewhere else for work. My apartment is en route between the airport and the town where he lives with Wife, so he was thinking of stopping by. Sure, that sounds great.

The nominal reason for his visit appears to have been so that he could wish me a Happy Father's Day, which he did. We never made a big deal out of those holidays when the boys were growing up, but sure that's fine. And it's always nce to see him.

We talked about his work for a while. He told me funny stories about the trip he was just on, and I told him (or reminded him) of comparable stories from when I was working. It's ironic that while his job title is nominally very different from mine, he has nonetheless ended up doing work that is topologically very similar. I asked whether he has any prospects for future advancement, and he discussed one possibility that might be on the horizon. (But nothing is certain yet.)

Then he shifted the conversation pretty abruptly to talk about Wife. At first he was talking generically about her inability to read people, and her consequent tendency to get into fights with everyone. He says he cringes every time she calls one of her doctor's offices, because she always gets into a fight with them over nothing. He described times that he has to handle difficult tasks for her, when he deliberately leaves her at home because it's easier that way. I agreed, and tried to describe some of the techniques that I used to manage her behavior when we still lived together.

Only towards the very end of the visit did he say that he thinks she is starting to experience dementia. He was careful to say that he didn't just mean occasional forgetfulness. But apparently there have been numerous times when he has come home from work, talked with her for half an hour or so, and then gone back to his room to rest before making dinner. If he comes out in ten minutes, all is fine. If he comes out in an hour, Wife says, "Oh, Son 1! When did you get home?" She has no memory of having talked to him before.

And she will get into spirals as the night progresses, where she can't stop obsessing about something long enough to go to bed.

Just as he was getting ready to leave, he asked obliquely if I've had to deal with the same things with Mother yet. (Answer: not exactly, or at least not that I'm willing to think about.) He also said he has no idea what steps need to be put in place to care for her when the time comes: power of attorney, for example? What about her accounts? He hopes maybe I can give him some guidance on these things. Maybe he can come back for another visit next weekend.

Wow. I don't know much about any of this stuff. Maybe I need to learn.

First Ma Schmidt, and now Wife. I'm starting to see a pattern. If these things go in threes, then I guess Mother is the logical third.

I suppose it's a good thing I didn't follow up that job opportunity last year. Maybe. We'll see.     

         

Mother is aging, 2

Over the weekend, I visited Mother. While there, I told her about my visit to Schmidt, and explained that Ma Schmidt has effectively no remaining short-term memory. Mother said she worries about that too. But she still works (part-time) at an intellectually demanding job. Also she's five years younger than Ma Schmidt. And five years ago (at the time of this visit, though I don't discuss the topic in that post), Ma Schmidt was already showing more signs of memory loss than Mother shows today. So I told Mother than I guess her work is keeping her mind active. She said if she starts getting forgetful about her work, she'll have to retire.

Then this morning I was making us some eggs for breakfast, She got out a loaf of panettone from Trader Joe's, cut a few slices, and put them under the broiler to toast. Then she wandered off to fiddle with the coffee maker and make us some coffee.

Within sixty seconds—maybe more like thirty—the panettone was burning and smoke was flowing through the kitchen. I jerked it out of the oven and turned off the broiler. Mother continued to fiddle with the coffee-maker, and suggested, "You can flip them over and toast the other side too." "No, I'm dealing with the eggs!" Five minutes later the eggs were done and the coffee was finally dripping. Only then did she wander back to the oven to toast the other sides, and I told her no, we were ready to eat.

Was it forgetfulness? Maybe, but maybe not. It all happened too fast for me to be comfortable blaming forgetfulness. It was certainly bad judgement. 

Was it a new phenomenon? I don't know. Cooking really isn't her thing. If I had put food less than two inches from a 550° broiler and then ambled away, it would be a clear sign that I was either drunk or senile. But I cook more than she does. So it's hard for me to diagnose.

I feel like I'm seeing the first cracks in her hitherto admirable intellect. Or not quite the first cracks—see also this post from just about two years ago—but some very early ones. I don't want to admit it or think about it, because she's my mother and I love her. Also, if her fine mind starts to become unreliable, it will mean someone has to move in with her (and I'm the one without a job) or else she has to move into managed care. Either way means a huge change in the way all of us lives, including me. So I want to postpone that day as long as possible.

But like it or not, Mother is aging.

      

Another classmate died

I got the latest issue today of my college alumni magazine. Another classmate is dead.

That makes five, now, that I know of: not all the same year, but close enough. Many of us hung out together, at least from time to time.

Today's news is about a woman I've mentioned a few times before. When I first wrote about her I called her "L" (not to be confused with the sex-blogger formerly known as L!), but at this point I think I have gone back and changed all those references to call her "Flora" instead. So "Flora" it is. And I've written about her in a number of posts: for example, she shows up in some of Marie's recollections (here, here, here, and here) and also in one of mine (much tamer, here). 

Flora was a science major, back when we were all undergraduates. Somehow (maybe because we were all young) many of the stories I remember about her have to do with sex. 

• When I got to know her (through R–, one of my circle of friends), she had already had an affair with one of the science professors. 
• During the time we were in school, she settled into regularly fucking both R– and Mac (q.v.)—though to be fair, I learned not long before graduation that R– and Mac were both fucking each other as well. (Yes, they are both guys. It's amazing the things people will say casually when everyone's on MDA.) 
• She wanted to fuck Schmidt, who really wasn't interested. He had determined that "Everyone who fucks Flora goes crazy," and he didn't want to go crazy. He later said that at one point he had to make a point to fall asleep at a strategic moment, while she was trying to seduce him.
• Marie remained friends with Flora after that time, and fell in love with her for a while. Marie tried to go to bed with Flora, but it never worked out—as she describes (with some anxiety) in the selections linked above. 

Not long after Marie and I got back together, she [Marie] contacted Flora to ask her some questions about relationship-management, and to catch up. It turns out that in the intervening decades, Flora had married and her husband had later died. At that point she was seeing someone new. The way she described it to Marie was delicate, but to my ears it translated as "We are fucking but we're not monogamous yet—or at least I'm not." (I don't remember if I ever discussed this with Marie.) I never heard Marie mention her again. I thought of getting in touch with her independently, but it felt like Marie discouraged that.

Anyway, now she's dead.

Do men profit from marriage?

The second depressing article I read this evening was a long LinkedIn post under the heading "LES HOMMES NE PROFITENT PAS DU MARIAGE" ["Men don't profit from marriage"]. The English translation runs like this,

MEN DON'T PROFIT FROM MARRIAGE

1. He's 70 years old.

2. He has retired from active work.

3. He worked all his life to raise his children.

4. He has deprived himself of the pleasures of life to pay for expensive school fees and living expenses for his children.

5. They are now well-off in Europe, Australia, America, etc.

6. His wife, 62 years old, moved to live with their children.

7. He stays alone at home.

8. His children hardly call him.

9. He must start the single life again.

10. He fights high blood pressure and other ailments related to old age.

11. How long will he survive alone?

12. This is the reality for most monogamous working-class men: their old age is often lonely and, in many cases, sad.

13. No matter how good the man is, women tend to love their children more than their husbands. The older he gets, the less they seem to serve him.

14. So, what do men really benefit from marriage?

15. They sacrifice so much but receive little recognition for their hard work, while the woman seems to reap all the benefits.

It's a man's world, they said, but it's really for women and children. Dear men, this could be your situation over the next few decades. What are you doing about it? What is your retirement plan?

Take care of yourself as much as your family. Love yourself.

Learn or perish.

Again, really depressing—not least because there are elements in the description that could apply to me and to my life.

The empty table

A while ago—maybe it was last week—I subscribed to The Daily Dad emails, from Ryan Holiday. It's not like I thought I was going to get advice I could use in a practical sense, since the boys both moved out years ago. But fatherhood is a subject that I acquired a lot of opinions about over the years, so I thought I'd like to see what Holiday had to say about it.

Last Tuesday—when I started writing this post that was still "yesterday" but I see it is now after midnight so let's call it "the day before yesterday"—the Daily Dad email was on the subject "This Is How To Hold Them To You." The idea was that you should be encouraging and supportive while your children are young, not an asshole or a martinet, so that when they are adults they'll still want to spend time around you. Fine, that makes sense. And while I certainly didn't hit 100% on that scale, I think I did OK. Is that all? 

But then he introduced another concept (one that linked to another essay, in fact) and it made me think about the topic in a little more depth.

You say you don’t want to lose them, that you want to see them, that you want the crowded table. But what do your actions say? How are they making your kids feel? Are they making your table an inviting place they can be themselves? If not, then maybe it’s time to let things go. Admit you’re wrong. Apologize. Otherwise you will have no one to blame but yourself for your empty table.

"Auxiliary backup parent"

I got a call from Son 2 today. He explained that he and Beryl have been fixing up their space so that they can accommodate overnight guests. And he invited me to come visit sometime. Not today, exactly [and that's fine because he lives at least an eight-hour drive from here!], but sometime when it's convenient.

It was a lovely invitation. I thanked him multiple times for it. And I have spent the rest of the day disgruntled.

Maybe it was partly because he started the call by explaining that he had just been talking to Wife, and so he figured sure, what the hell, why not call me? I forget his exact words, but somehow or other he said that of course I'm the "auxiliary backup parent," but he was in an expansive mood so he called me too. (I don't remember the overall remark, but I'm certain of those three words.) And later, as he was explaining how they have fixed up the house they're in, he mentioned that they invited Wife to come visit for Thanksgiving, Son 1 to come visit sometime in the fall to go shooting, and Beryl's brother to visit them over Christmas. And then, he said, he was left wondering, "Now who am I forgetting …?"

Very likely some of this was meant as a joke. Maybe even most of it. But of course it struck me kind of hard because it doesn't feel like a joke. Not really. 

• I've written about how I feel out of touch with the boys' lives. (See for example this post here. I feel like I've written about it in other places too, but I can't find them right now.) 
• I've written about feeling jealous that Wife talks to them a lot more than I do—and of course she is actually living with Son 1. (See for example this post from ten whole years ago, or this one that is a lot more recent.)

And Son 2's remarks re-triggered all those feelings again.

I'm writing this post because I want to force myself to think this through, instead of just reacting to the emotions.

So let me think.

THIS is why I couldn't move to Sticksville!

This afternoon I got a call from Brother. He wanted to talk about Mother, but he didn't know where to start. So he just started.

Sunday he and SIL had gone out to see her impromptu. When they got there (midday) she was still in bed, more or less unconscious. She had been sick, vomited in the bed, and then fell back asleep in it. They pulled her out of bed, washed her, washed the bedding, and tried to talk to her. But she was pretty unresponsive, and had no interest in eating or drinking anything. They had a lot of trouble just getting her to eat some toast and drink some fruit juice. They stayed over Monday as well. (Brother had to take a day off work.) She wasn't much better, but at least a little. Today they left. But they are—understandably—really worried about her.

No shit. With a story like that, of course they are. So am I, now that they told me.

Changing a lightbulb

Over the weekend I visited my mother, and on Sunday we went out to a concert at the philharmonic in the big city nearby. I always enjoy visiting my mom, and the concert was delightful. But just at the moment I'm feeling very thoughtful.

Saturday evening I went to turn on some lights in the living room. One lamp wouldn't light up, and I saw right away it was unplugged.

"Why is this lamp unplugged?" 

I forget what she said. It was something about Son 2 visiting during the weekend before, which indeed he had. Whatever she said didn't make a lot of sense, so I was only half paying attention.

I tried plugging it in, but the light still wouldn't illuminate. The socket was controlled by a switch, but I checked the other light plugged into the same socket and it was on; therefore the switch was turned on. 

"I wonder if the bulb is burned out. Do you have any other bulbs?"

Where not to retire

Just now I googled "best places to retire" and I got 87,900,000 results. Clearly this is a phrase that people have written about a lot.

Look at the listings, and you find travel suggestions that circle the globe. "Best cities to retire," "best states to retire," "best countries to retire." Then these choices are broken down by what exactly you are looking for: golf, beaches, health care, low cost of living, or avoiding taxes.

Mother has talked about retiring, and has asked me where I think she should move. She has clients who have moved to this place or that, ... so what would I think if she moved to this place? Or else maybe that place? She could sell the house easily enough—never mind that there are boxes in the garage that haven't been opened since she and my dad bought the place 50 years ago—and be on her way, free as a bird. 

I get it. I never thought I would live all my adult life in one place, but I more or less have. So when I lost my job last year, you heard me fantasize about traveling far away—maybe finding a job in Timbuktu, or joining the Peace Corps.

But we're all idiots. Every single one of us who fantasizes about retiring far, far away.

Mother is aging

When I started this blog, I talked about Wife. But we are separated now. Then I started talking about Father, but he's dead. And I've talked about my kids and my girlfriends. But maybe I should say a couple words about Mother.

[By the way, I realize that the parallelism in that first paragraph looks ominous, almost as if my writing about someone is a way to get him or her out of my life. But if you look closer that's not true: Marie and Debbie are very much part of my life still, and I write about them a lot. And I wish my mother a long and happy life yet.]

When I started this blog, Mother was just about the age Debbie is today, maybe a few months younger. Today she is in her eighties. She has been living on her own since Father died, which was seven years ago.

Debbie is discontent

A couple days ago I had a phone call with Debbie. She is discontent with her situation at home, and we talked about that. But over dinner that evening I made notes to try to remember what we had discussed, so I could write it up here, and I realized the conversation connects to a number of other topics I could talk about independently. So this single post here may end up spawning up to four others. Let's see how much stamina I have.

As background, remember that Debbie is currently living in a house that she bought for her daughter Mattie, along with Mattie's husband and their two sons (Debbie's grandsons). The idea is that now, while the boys are little, she can help with them as a live-in grandmother. (And wow, let me second the idea that parenthood is too much work for two people, so additional help with young children is always a blessing!) And in the future, so runs the plan, when Debbie is getting old and frail, Mattie and husband can offer her their help in return. It's clear and logical.

Only now she is having second thoughts.

Old woman

I heard from Marie a couple days ago. She had a painful rash on her face, and finally one of her friends prevailed upon her to go to the doctor and have it checked.

She has shingles.

Since it was on her face, they were concerned that it not get too near her eyes, because if the shingles virus infects the eyes it can lead to blindness. (Or I think that's what she said. I'm not a doctor and might have gotten it wrong.) So they made sure to check out her eyes.

She has cataracts.

Not badly enough to plan for surgery yet, but badly enough that the doctor said she might have trouble driving at night because she couldn't see well enough. She confirmed for me that she hates driving at night these days.

Also she has bad knees. She's considering knee replacement surgery. 

Thinking about death in the New Year

New Year's Day. Fresh start, new beginning, ... all that stuff. And it finds me kind of quiet.

Back when I was a kid, our ritual for New Year's Day was invariable. We always drove out to the house of my mother's uncle, where my grandparents and other assorted family would all gather, and we'd have a great big buffet around noon. (Why his house? I guess we always went there because we always went there.) Everyone would watch the Rose Parade on television, and then in the afternoon it would be the Rose Bowl game. Some time in the mid- to late afternoon, my parents would gather up me and my brother, and we'd drive back to our own town, heading for the house of my parents' oldest friends there. They, in turn, had their big New Year's party in the evening, so once again we'd all eat too much and the adults would sit around talking for hours afterwards. Their house was better for kids to play in, though, so all the kids of all the families there would run around until we got tired and then fall asleep anywhere it was convenient. Finally we'd get picked up and dropped in the car, and wake up at home the next morning. 

That was a long time ago. Most of those people must be dead by now: certainly my grandparents and my great-uncle are long-since dead, and the next generation of the family have mostly moved out-of-state. My dad is gone, though my mother is still alive.  As for my parents' friends -- I have no idea what's become of most of them. As for the couple that hosted the evening party -- well she died many years ago. He may still be alive -- he was, the last I heard -- but they moved out-of-state many years ago, back when she was still alive. Probably the same pattern follows the rest of that generation, though I never really knew any of the rest of them. It's likely that many of the kids I played with are still alive, but I haven't kept in touch with any of them. All we really ever had in common was that our parents were friends.

So here it is New Year's, and I'm thinking about death.

I guess that's for another reason, too. Yesterday I got a phone call from a friend I used to know in college, and whom I lost touch with shortly after that. I'll be talking about him for a couple of posts at least, because there are a couple of different points from his phone call that I want to discuss, so I had better give him a name. Let me call him Cassius, remembering the line that William Shakespeare puts in the mouth of Julius Caesar: "Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous." My friend Cassius always looked lean and hungry, and he thought a lot -- usually in scornful and acerbic tones. So it's not a bad choice. (Cassius has shown up in only one earlier post -- this one here -- where I called him "A." He was romantically involved with Scarlett for a while.)

Anyway, Cassius telephoned me out of the blue -- as I said, we hadn't spoken in something like 37 years -- to tell me that another common friend had died. This other friend (I'll call him K because it's very unlikely I'll ever need to discuss him again) was about our age. Cassius tells me that K was very healthy; specifically, he said, "K was a lot less likely ever to have heart trouble than I am." But K had a massive heart attack in early December and died four days later.

I talked with Debbie on the phone this afternoon, and said I guess I'm starting to get to the age where I can no longer be shocked if one of my contemporaries dies. At first Debbie didn't want to hear this, because she's seven years older than I am. But I'm sixty now. When I learned that Lisa had died back in 2014 (and I learned it a year later), it really startled me. That seemed too young for anyone my age to die, unless it was in a freak accident. But then a year ago it was Fillette. Now it's K. And if someone dies in their sixties, maybe that seems a little on the young side but it's not crazy. It's not bizarre. You don't expect people in their sixties to be dropping like flies yet, but nobody will be stunned.

So what does this tell me?

It seems to me that some time ago, I settled in my mind -- without ever really consciously deciding it -- that if I ever knew I had only a short time to live I would quit my job, stop whatever other things I was doing, and write down all the ideas that have been stewing in my head for so many years. Over the last year, now that I have been thrown out of work, you have heard me mull whether this is now the time for doing exactly that -- without, let me hasten to add, any sign of actual productivity on my part. I think this answers that question. Forget my increasingly feeble attempts to land a job. Sit my ass in the chair and start writing. Maybe I can work towards that in a fragmentary way by posting bits and bobs on the Patio. We'll see.

I may regret this decision if I live to be very old and outlive all my resources. But at least I will have my ideas out of my head and into some other medium. If they all turn out to be stupid ideas, at least I will have helped them into the air. Socrates always told people he was the son of a midwife, too.

Oh ... in case I had no other reasons for thinking about death? Betty White died yesterday as well. Damn, I was starting to think she was immortal. Guess not.

       

What happened to her, anyway?

I don't know why I'm writing this now. It's late, and I'm far from sober. If I want to write a think-piece, much less an analysis of someone's personality, I should take time over it. I should have all my wits about me. Right?

Whatever.

To this day I cannot give a satisfactory answer to the question, What the hell happened to Wife? How did she morph from this into that? Honestly, it looks like magic: I don't know how else to explain it. And since magic was her whole métier, back in the day, I guess that's an appropriate explanation. Any way you look at it, it's bizarre.

Back when I met Wife, she was strong, energetic, and magical. We were both academic nerds, and of course the normal question then — even before you get as far as a pickup line — is What's your major? If you want to be really classy, you can ask, What's your research about? Her research was about the Arthurian legends and the character of Merlin. She knew, seemingly, everything there was to know about King Arthur and Merlin, and could trace both figures effortlessly back into the prehistory of Celtic mythology. She had ambitions to pursue these topics through a Ph.D. and into a tenured professorship somewhere important, and the same passion also fueled her dedication to learning real magic and her commitment to achieve a third degree as a Wiccan High Priestess. Even then she could be difficult, but she was invigorating to be around. Her conversation crackled with a tangible passion and energy.

Today? She's tired, spent, cranky, and totally self-centered. Everything wrong in her life is the result of bad luck or ill-treatment by others — none of it is ever her responsibility. (Just ask her!) Everyone picks on her, and then they abandon her. And wait, wait — let her tell you about all her physical ailments! She's got these debilitating headaches, plus of course her doctor tells her that she's permanently disabled so it's not like she could work to earn even one thin dime. Basically she's helpless, completely helpless — also miserable, but in a way that precludes her taking any steps on her own behalf, to make her own life better. Life has just been really difficult for her, you see, and it doesn't help that her ex-husband is such a heartless son of a bitch ....

And so on.

What the hell happened?

Part of it was that she got so sick. I mean, even back when I met her, she would sometimes get sick with weird symptoms that no one could really identify. Somewhere around the year 2000 (when we had been married for 16 years, and when the boys were respectively 4 and 2) she was finally diagnosed with systemic lupus. Probably a decade before that, she had been diagnosed with depression and put on Prozac. 

Privately I suspect she suffers not simply from depression but from bipolar disorder — a diagnosis she got just once, and which was never repeated, and which she has resolutely denied. But the phenomenology of bipolar disorder includes those marvelous, manic highs as well as the deep, depressive lows; and I think those highs are exactly what made her seem so magically exciting and attractive back in the early days. In any event, she denies that she suffers from bipolar disorder but these days she is treated with mood stabilizers that are normally reserved for bipolar patients. Her excuse is that these are the only medications that work on "treatment-resistant depression." Sure, babe. Whatever.

Anyway, I think the combination of physical and mental illnesses knocked the stuffing out of her, and convinced her that she was never going to achieve any of those great things she'd always dreamed of. Certainly there were years when she achieved almost nothing. Back when Son 2 was about three years old, he drew a picture of her and then ran to show her. "See Mommy? I drew a picture of you! I drew you lying down in bed, because that's where you always are." She absorbed comments like this into her own self-image rapidly, indeed almost eagerly.

On top of her health issues, she ran into a lot of obstacles in her professional life even before she left work on permanent disability. 

• Some of these obstacles may have been health-related, like when she did unexpectedly poorly on her qualifying exams for her doctoral program, as a result of which she failed to get a second master's degree and left school forever. 
• Other obstacles resulted directly from her execrable social skills, that led her to get fired from one job after graduate school and almost fired from the next. (In the end she went out on disability because of her lupus just before her boss lost patience with her forever, so they agreed to call it "permanent disability" and avoid the ugliness of termination-for-cause.) 
• Strictly speaking, these same execrable social skills meant that she had burned all her bridges back in graduate school, so when she did (as I say) unexpectedly poorly on her qualifying exams she had exactly no leeway with the department in which to lobby for retaking them, or working for another semester and trying again, or any other reasonable accommodation. No one was willing to extend her any more than the strict letter of the law; and the letter of the law was that she failed. Too bad, so sad. Goodbye!

In case it's not obvious, these are the same execrable social skills that I described earlier this evening — the ones that have left her virtually alone for Christmas, because nobody wants to spend time with her. 

And so she gave up.

Over the years — back before I, too, gave up and decided to leave her — I spent a lot of time trying to reconcile these two different pictures of her, Before and After. Some days I settled for a simple explanation: that her anti-bipolar mood-stabilizing drugs did indeed smooth out her emotional affect, but that in the process they also eviscerated all the energy and power that had made her so attractive back in the old days. 

Other times I explored a more metaphysical explanation, that there is some correlation between (on the one hand) an openness to the gods, to divine revelation and to magical experience, and (on the other hand) an emotional fragility or instability that easily collapses into mental illness and pathology. For what it is worth, I think this principle is true: that is, I think there really is such a correlation. Think of any of the great prophets of the past: if they lived among us today, I think we'd find them emotionally fragile, and we'd probably consider them mentally ill. But, as Nietzsche pointed out, just because they are sick doesn't make them wrong. [I don't have a reference to hand, and it's too late at night for me to want to look it up. But I know he said it somewhere.] Or, as the Who once expressed the exact same idea, "Sickness will surely take the mind / Where minds can't usually go / Come on the amazing journey / And learn all you should know."

Anyway, I told myself that an openness to the gods required this mental and emotional fragility. And therefore, I went on, it was just bad luck — but totally predictable — that Wife's mind and emotions collapsed under the strain. In every generation, so I told myself, there are a few people who are able to access the divine, who can communicate with the gods more clearly and easily than any of the rest of us. But they pay dearly for this gift, and Wife's collapse was an example of what this payment looks like. [Compare also, if only for sheer preposterous grandiosity, this post here.]

I spent years telling myself these things. But were they true? Or was I just making excuses for her, the way I made excuses for her emotional abuse over decades and refused even to call it what it was? Honestly, I have no idea. 

What this means is that, to this day, I can't give you a good explanation of what the hell happened to her. I don't know how she changed from this to that. 

All I know for sure is that it was bad.    

   

"Good night John-Boy, … Debbie, … Mattie …."

This week Debbie bought a new house.

She won't move for a while. The current owners don't want to have to leave till November. That's fine with Debbie because she's still waiting for her mom's house to sell so she'll have the money. (You remember that her mom died a couple months ago.)

But wait, doesn't Debbie already have a house? Doesn't she, in fact, own a house that she herself described as "the nicest place she has ever lived as an adult"? What gives?

Well, you know that her daughter Mattie lives in the next town over -- Mattie and her husband and two little boys. (That's the whole reason Debbie is living where she's living.) She regularly drives over to spend time with them, helping out in a grandmotherly way when Mattie and her husband are overburdened. You also know that Mattie and her husband don't make much money, and live very frugally. So Debbie and Mattie put their heads together and decided it would make the most sense to buy a big house where they could all live together. Debbie could help raise the boys, Mattie and her husband could stop paying rent, and when Debbie gets actually old (she's 67 this year, and clearly not yet "old" by this definition), Mattie and her husband could help her out and take care of her. 

Wait a minute -- suppose I want to come visit? How will that work? Debbie figures she'll put a sofa-bed in her bedroom along with her regular bed; then any guest "who is like family" can sleep there. For someone who is less close, she guesses they can figure something else out. I think I'm probably in the first category.

OK, OK, so if we suppose that the question of my visits has been handled, what then? It's interesting. In principle I think it is a great idea. When my father was a kid his grandmother lived with them, and he loved it. And I can personally vouch that parenthood is too big a job for two adults: having live-in help is a great idea.

But at the same time I can never imagine doing the same thing with either of my boys. And I am trying to understand why not.

• Partly, I value my own solitude too much. This will become a problem when I get old and frail and brittle, but I am assiduously not thinking about that right now. (That always works, right?)
• Partly there are two of them, … so in the event that they both start families, which one should I stay with?
• And partly I just assume that neither one of them wants to see that much of me. Didn't they get pretty well sick of me during all those years they were growing up? Sure, we get along fine now, but I assume that's just because we see each other only in small doses. 

Of course, I assume that about most people, really -- I mean, I assume that they can tolerate me best when there are strict boundaries and limited exposure. And, well, OK … I guess strictly speaking I know that Marie wants to marry me or live with me permanently, but I figure she just doesn't know her own desires well enough because she hasn't been married before: I keep telling her that after a few years the bloom will fade and she'll get sick of me. Also I know that Son 1 is living with Wife right now, but I'm pretty sure that's just because of straight-up emotional blackmail on her part. If anything, surely that experience will leave him sufficiently disgusted that there would be no prayer of his ever wanting to do it again.

It's strange that I can think this is such a good idea in the abstract, and yet it feels odd when Debbie does it and I find it unthinkable that I myself ever would. Maybe this makes me a flawed person … I mean, more flawed than we already knew I am. I just don't know.

      

Reframing

A couple days ago, I posted a long list of sour gripes that I had distilled from a daylong bad mood. One of these was a complaint that Marie wants me to move in with her. I dismissed this by saying that "the relationship comes with too much baggage" and "the extent to which she needs me is just wearing."

But there's another way to frame this. I even hint at it in a later paragraph of that same post, but not clearly enough.

As it is, my remarks make it sound like I'm talking about Marie: because of this-and-that things about her, I don't want to move in with her or make the relationship that much closer than it is now.

But maybe none of this is about her. Maybe this is all about me. 

More and more I feel like I don't have it in me to want that close a relationship any more, with anybody. Relationships like that require deep trust, and I don't have it to give. I suppose once upon a time I had a normal allotment of trust doled out to me; but it feels like I've used it all up.

Of course I could be wrong. I used to think I was long past the chance of feeling giddy romanticism after so many years with Wife, and then I fell in love with D. So maybe the possibility for being foolish is still there. Maybe when I'm 85 I will lose my head over some sweet young Nimuë; since I have no magic arts to teach, she'll doubtless have to get rid of me with something more practical like a restraining order.

Maybe I'm just an idiot. That's at least a parsimonious explanation of the data.

    

Death in the air, 2

I remarked yesterday that I've been reminded of death seemingly a lot in the last six weeks or so. So I put some of those thoughts in an email to Marie, who wrote me back today. Here are a few excerpts from what she said.

Hey, sweetness.

Some conversations work better when we can hold each other for comfort.

But I noticed in myself, last visit, a reluctance to "spoil" our short time together by having a depressing conversation.  

So I mentioned that you seemed to have developed sleep apnea since my last visit, but I didn't mention how it worried me.  Particularly in conjunction with other changes I noticed.  Did you talk to your doctor?  And is he knowledgeable about that condition?  Because sleep apnea can lead to metabolic syndrome and heart problems, and you're already at fairly high risk for that.  It worries me, how tired you've been.  Might be just depression, which would be bad enough; but it might be something worse.

I am frankly more frightened that you might suffer a heart attack, my beloved, than I am that you'll freeze to death next winter.  Or even fall again and injure yourself badly, though I was terrified for you when that happened.

Other changes--your tiredness, I've mentioned.  Your weight increase.  Your e.d.--you had no trouble satisfying me, God knows, so I had no complaints there, but knowing you're otherwise at risk makes it seem a sinister sign.

Even how we ate and drank, down there; we were sort of en fete every day, and I didn't know how much that represented a departure from how you have been feeding yourself.  I know that the loneliness and stress of the pandemic led me to comfort myself with food, as is my wont.  And so I have gained back 12 pounds of the 46 I had lost.  But even so, it was noticeable to me that we were eating more rich food, and fewer vegetables and fruits, than I do on my own.  I didn't know how much of that reflected the holidays, and wanting to treat me, and eating up the cheeses and wines you had been given for Christmas, and how much it reflected your normal diet.  The DASH heart-healthy diet recommended by the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Health, for example, recommends 4-5 servings daily of vegetables, and as many of fruit.  I usually easily make that for veggies, and barely make that for fruit.  Of course it's much harder to eat fresh if one only goes shopping every two weeks, so the pandemic has hurt that as well.

Back to your letter proper.

Regarding the other deaths you spoke of... yeah, it's weird to reflect that we're at an age where we have to start expecting people in our cohort to die.  Already it's an exception for my peers to have both parents; I think I have only one friend my age who does.  And those who do still have parents, those parents are fragile.  I guess I personally see that most with Schmidt's mom, since I have known her for forty years now, but seen her only sporadically in that time.  

And I've noticed for a while now the decreased resilience of my own body; so have you.... 

But yeah, it's sobering and frightening to reflect that people our age are starting to die of ordinary diseases, not just of extraordinary circumstances.  As well as saddening, when it's someone we like and value, like Fillette.  

I do love Son 1's comment; how nice he acknowledges that if you died right now, you'd leave an intellectual legacy to be managed, even if he firmly declines to be the one to manage it!  And yeah, I would, but I would much rather talk to you about your writing, than arrange to publish it as a posthumous tribute.

So take care of yourself, my dearest.  Eh?

Loving you always,

Marie

Death in the air

It seems like I'm being reminded of death a lot lately.

First there was Fillette.

Then I got the latest issue of my high school alumni magazine, and the In memoriam section listed six boys (well, men now) who had been there when I was: three I remembered well, and three were names that I felt I ought to remember but for whom I couldn't quite call up a face this many years later. But clearly they were all within a couple years of my age, one side or the other. And now they are all dead.

And then today was the funeral for the 20-year-old son of one of my coworkers. Yes, he was way too young. Apparently he died in an accident of some kind, though I never heard if it was, say, automotive or sporting. Either way, though, his parents buried him instead of the other way around. 

You can tell me that it's a First World Problem to assume that children will outlive their parents, that in places without peace and plenty, clean water and good health care, child mortality isn't all that uncommon. Sure. Fine. It was still sad.

The reassuring part, if you want to look at it this way, is that (unless you believe in a punitive afterlife) death shouldn't be a tragedy for the one who dies. His (or her) troubles are over. But of course it is a problem for those of us left behind. 

I really don't have anything intelligent to say about this, do I? It's just strange to be so reminded of it, so frequently, all within just a few weeks. Death is normally kept a lot less visible than that, even when the world is in a pandemic. 

Maybe it's just a reminder that the Real World is still out there, however much we pretend to have domesticated it. And the Real World is a lot stronger than we are.

Once I move to Sticksville, I had probably better make sure all my affairs are in order before the next winter rolls around (I mean the winter of 2021-2022), so that if the weather does kill me, it won't be a nuisance for the boys. A year or two ago, Son 1 explicitly told me "I'm not gonna Christopher-Tolkien your ass when you die," * but fortunately Marie has already volunteered to do that instead. If only I can get myself organized, huh?

* (Actually that's an interesting thing for him to say, because I honestly don't remember ever talking to the boys about having anything to write -- I'm thinking of the kind of thing I publish on the Patio, or even some of this maundering if only it were organized and tightened up. Of course, children often know their parents better than the parents know themselves.)

Maybe I should have dinner and go to bed.