Assisted Living

I drove to Anacortes where my aunt is living now in an assisted living facility. It’s like a studio apartment and her kids have brought over her furniture and pictures to “home” it up a bit.  Everyone (me too) comments on how comfortable it looks, how nice, but all of us think, I am sure,  that it isn’t home.  No matter how you dress it up, it isn’t home.  It is a waystation.

Beth and I made up the couch in the sitting area so we could lay down together and we chatted and laughed and then she took a little nap.  I love to lay in bed chatting with the people I love.  It reminds me of when I was a girl and shared a bed with sister Chris.  I did the same thing with my girls (still do, if I have the chance).

I did this with my Mom as well when she was frail.  We just cuddled up.  So comforting.  Our bodies age and whittle down but our voices, our spirits, our joy  sail above us in the air.  It doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we are together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandmotherhood

Picture this.  I am lying on the couch at Joe and Emily’s house.  Wilder is tired and a little trying.  Emily turns on a six minute clip of Elmo.  Wi stretches out on my body his little feet crossed and we watch Elmo being his silly self.

This is a most wonderful experience to have this little boy stretch out on me as if I am the best mattress he could ever have.  I almost stop breathing.  I don’t want this to ever stop.  Trust.

And then, Murphy Jean climbs on my other side wiggling her ample body close to me and breathes in my face.

I almost stop breathing.  Fish breath.

Fuck off Grim Reaper

Well, I’ve had it with this fixation on death or rather death’s fixation on the people I love.  Time to take a breath.  Time in the midst of that breath to realize that we are all living until we’re not and unless we’re in a great deal of pain, we need to live; with attitude, with love, with feeling.  Numbness is not an anodyne to loss.  Numbness is nothingness and isn’t that the very soul of death—nothingness.

As  Thomas said ” rage, rage against the dying of the light.”  Until the lights go out, I’m all in.

 

 

Here he is as a young romantic poet until he drank himself into an early grave.  So much for partying until the lights go out.  Seems like romantics have a weird thing with death—love/hate and all that.

There is nothing romantic about dying.  There is nothing interesting about drinking yourself to death.  Death neither ennobles or sanctifies.  Death is a zero sum game.  So live like hell until it’s over if you can, and if you can’t, if this death business has you by the throat, just do your best.  Honor your life as long as you can.

 

 

 

 

 

Death and other Maladies

Busy, busy, busy.  That is what I’ve been since I came home from Dint’s Memorial.  Gardening, shopping, talking, cooking.  Regular stuff-the stuff of daily life.

I am processing.  I am grinding up the hard seeds of experience and trying to digest it all and finding it indigestible.  I need a spiritual gizzard or maybe a third and fourth stomach.

I am in grief.  No I’m not.  I’m in grief avoidance.  I am trying slowly, very slowly to let the awareness of loss drift into consciousness.  Too much, I am undone.  Too little, and I am brittle to the breaking point.

I am not all here.

Why am I fighting this?  I know Beth is dying.  I know Dint has died.  I know my brother John is selling his home and moving away.  I know things end, that people die, that situations morph into other situations.  I know.  I know.

I am sad.  You can’t fix death or endings.  I lost a sister and my parents.  I’ve lost friends.  Why is it different now?  Is it because of my awareness that death is close for me.  Is this awareness a breach in the wall that keeps death out of my personal space?  Am I the next to go over the precipice?  Or could it be Robin, or one of my kids?

I am unsteady.  I am shaken(not stirred).

Do you ever want to get good at death?  What would that even look like?  I’m thinking Conversations with Morrie, Death with Dignity, “end of life” discussions.  The end of life is different for all of us.

What does it all come down to?  I will miss you.  That’s what it comes down to.   I will miss you.  I don’t want you to die.  I want you to live forever in the way you’ve always been.  I want you to be funny and warm and engaged.  I want nothing to change especially not you.

All the talk, the philosophical musings, the renaming of death, it all comes down to I will miss you.  I will miss the way we were alive together.  I will miss your intelligence, your spirit, your goofy humor, so much like my own.  I will miss being able to count on you for understanding and love.  I will miss you, who you are.

I know you think you’re going to a better place, but I don’t get to go with you.  It’s not like when you moved to Orcas, Beth.  No way you can slice it or dice it.  You’re leaving the planet.  I don’t get to go with you.

I will miss you.  I am grieving but you’re still living so I better pull myself together and be available.  More than available; open, receptive.  I want to learn from you how to be alive in a world I don’t get.

I will miss you.

 

Memory Care

I visited Beth in her new digs.  Her daughter Anne has knocked herself out finding a good place and bringing in some of Beth’s furniture and clothes and pictures for the walls.

Hospice staff came and spent some time.  I so appreciated their creating a space to discuss what made life meaningful, what made life joyful.  She suggested Beth after a discussion about returning home to die, that Beth needs to settle in.  Settle in to her diagnosis, settle in to where she finds herself now, settle in and then make some decisions.  No rush, no worry.  Just be.

I started thinking later about everything Beth has been through in three weeks.  She left her house, flew to the Hospital, was told she had a terminal cancer, sent from the Hospital to Hospice (who right from the get go told her she couldn’t stay (not terminal enough).  Who knew death was a competition for beds?  Then from Hospice to the Memory Care Unit.

Beth is used to being no sweat, accepting whatever life threw at her.  Beth as easy care; laughing through it all.  She’s still remarkably resilient and sensitive to others.  She needs, though, to stay put for a while until her path becomes clear to her.  Where and how do you want to die?

I sat there and basically listened and then added, I think, what is most sustaining, most nourishing in Beth’s life.  It’s people, it’s friends, it’s conversation.  I told them about Beth’s Cantina, the space she created on the beach in front of her house on Orcas.  Everyone come, stay awhile, laugh and talk, have a little beer, have a little warmth at my fire.

That’s Beth.

The assisted living facility didn’t have a room available in their functional unit.  Beth has a room in the memory unit which is to say the lack of memory unit.  It’s pretty depressing especially for someone as social as Beth.

On my way home, I listened to a podcast with Atul Gawande.  He was talking about end of life stuff and many of his points resonated with me after my visit with Beth:  “What makes life worth living to you?”

I was just thinking about the name Memory Care.  Why do we name units for the survivors, for the families?  Why don’t we call things as they are–ie:   lack of memory care, Gonzo Inc., Been done gone, nobody’s home.  I suppose we’d all freak out if we did.  I always feel like I’ve walked into an alternative universe where names mean the opposite, where up is down, where dark is light.  Just when I need a reality check, reality is out on it’s ear.

Bless Beth and keep her.  She said she just wants to go quietly and without pain.   I wish this for her, I pray it will be so.  Easy come, easy go.