Diary 8/31/18

A friend suggested that I write a sit-com based on my adventures with the seniors who live here with me. There is certainly a perfect set up for an ever evolving series. I live in the Care Center section of our continuing care retirement facility, meaning there are many nurses and ‘care partners’ around who attend to feeding people, making beds and assisting nurses, and interns who set up daily activities, or make sure people get their walkers and head in the right direction for their rooms. They are some terrific characters all by themselves. Dealing with a panorama of elderly humans that are perfectly rational one day, and shouting, “I don’t live here, take me home!” the next, invariably brings out their own issues, no matter how much training they have.

Watching people around me includes observing the sobering decline of dementia in action. The aggressive demise of their minds is painful and poignant to watch. A sit-com episode might include the following exchange when I first arrived here three months ago. This white haired shaky woman half-falling sideways out of her wheelchair, greeted me at the lunch table. We did the “Hello, where are you from?” exchange and then I timidly inquired, “ I am here because I have MS. May I ask why you are here?” Thoughtfully chewing the same mouthful for many minutes, she replied, “Well, I am here because I get much better radio reception in my room than I did when I lived in a cottage.”

“Ah, of course.” Now that I know her better, I found out that she was in charge of a huge public library music research department and that she listens to non-stop opera and other music on said radio. Obviously she has a lot of compromising physical issues, but that was not what had significance for her. Sadly, she has now been put under Hospice care though she can still be rather sharp. She has subsequently shared childhood stories with me which were far from peaches and cream. Her life gives a glimpse into why she retreated early on inside of her once masterful musical mind.

Then there are the folks who live independently in cottages surrounding this large campus, and those who live in apartments attached at the opposite end of the facility from the Care Center. When people are recovering from back, knee, or other surgeries or a bad fall, or more seriously, a stroke, then they live among us in the CC briefly, waiting to be released back to their home. For the most part they have a hard time accepting their current fate and see their time here as an unfortunate episode which will quickly pass.Then they can get on with their real lives. Their emphatic denial of the aging process is also fodder for that tragic/comic edge. This one was a well-known chemistry professor, another one an Ob-Gyn, or an editor or an economist.

Others are more philosophical and freely embrace this temporary compromise as an inevitable chapter in their journey. Husbands or wives come to join them in our Care Center dining area. I see everything from pushy unaccepting spouses, “Eat this, not like that, pick up your hand, no, your other hand, use your napkin, etc.” which is silly and also hard to watch. Others are openly shaken and sad to be living alone in their homes without their partners. Wives say, “It is hard to watch the weeds grow, walk the dog, or face financial conundrums without my husband to take care of it.” Many husbands generally look lost and uncomfortable, and seem relieved when the meal is over and they can finally take charge of getting the rollator or pushing their wives back to the room in their wheelchair.

As I become more active in the community, my life is interlacing with more of the Independent Living folks. I signed up to participate in a variety show, another event to celebrate Kendal’s 25th year founding anniversary. It has since been labeled the Kendal Kabaret because a well-known former set designer resident created a splashy Cabaret style flat with a sparkly gold curtain for our entry onto the stage. To bring our disparate offerings (barbershop septet, recorder ensemble, a number of songs including a gospel written by yours truly, a Can-Can line?!, piano/violin duets, etc.) into some semblance of cohesion, a very capable women in charge bought styrofoam top hats, feather boas, feather hair clips and ribbons to create a semi-costumed Kabaret look.

To watch us all, like any gathering of performers, claim this or that boa/hat/feather combination, worry about mics, music stands, lighting, how we would physically manage to get on and off the stage at the right times (also me, again), was a delight. We do and do not take ourselves seriously to entertain our fellow residents. We seniors sure know how to have fun. This will make a great finale for the end of season one. Due to the numbers of aging Baby Boomers, it might well make it past the pilot season.*

• I am also dedicating my song to my dear friend David Moskowitz whose birthday falls on the day of the show.  He very likely will not live to see that day, but I am singing “Love What a Short Word” to him, wherever he will be.

Diary 7/28/18

Struggling. A long delayed relapse of MS symptoms has infiltrated my life. Perhaps it is a sign that I am safely home at Kendal and can let down into the ensuing affect of the days, weeks, and months of stress around Richard’s illness and death. Before that calamity, my own health issues were causing us both stress in the last few years before his cancer diagnosis. I was the one who was pulling away into a declining body unable to easily move about the world for practical or social engagements. Once it became clear Richard was now the one in dire straights, I somehow arose to the critical occasion and surprised everyone, especially myself, by handling the unraveling of our former lives.

I had enormous hands on and moral support to accomplish any of it, but still, I was turned inside out to face the world. My translucent inward facing stance surrendered to the solid gravity of my life. I was pulled firmly earthward to embrace his death and my own clear choice to live. My body seems to be the battleground for playing out my personal version of the duality of life/death. An MS lesion on my spine at T6 (nothing new, I have been working with my physical therapists for years around muscular issues at this site) is very inflamed and is causing back pain, limiting the expansion of the muscles I use to breathe deeply, and creating a general MS malaise all too familiar to me.

I landed here eager to remain outside of my cocoon and launched myself like a newly energized butterfly investigating new activities, meeting hundreds of new people within weeks and enjoying conversations with strangers at every meal. With no Richard as my back-up for quiet, existential intimacy, it has been quite a stretch. Lately, spending lots of time alone in my room has felt fine though even after the short time I have been here, people did wonder where I had gone. I am not willing to withdraw from life in the ways I did before, and this is not a place that encourages it. On the other hand, no one has bugged me behind my closed door and I am not much on the nurse’s radar because I do not receive daily medications from them. Which suits me well. As long as they see me going on my way to and from meals, what I do before or after them is not questioned.

Struggle diminishes the minute I don’t see this re-balancing of inward and outward focus as a problem. I can feel ill and remain quietly alone, replenishing my introverted well. I see now that I will spontaneously move out into my new world when I am ready. Both directions are fine, neither one better or worse than another. In fact, in moments of clarity, I don’t see much of a difference anymore. Inward or outward lose directional distinction when I embrace the underlying silence of being that I am courting and being courted by.

6/22/18

Yesterday my daughter and son-in-law closed on their new house in Lakewood, a Cleveland neighborhood not too far from the lake. Lake Erie, that is, the shallowest of the inland freshwater oceans in this part of the country. Their realtor gave them a congratulatory bouquet of flowers which they brought to me last night when we went out for dinner. Since they won’t be living comfortably either in their current apartment or in their new home for a while yet, I am the lucky recipient.

The luscious Easter and calla lilies, and fuschia zinnias are standing on the bureau in my room beneath the photo of Richard on the wall. It is the same picture we had in front of the sign-in book at his memorial, the same one of him that I use on my screensaver. Because it is his birthday coming up it feels more like the flowers are for him. The dual purpose floral arrangement is fitting as he and I helped a little to fund this house that will also become the family home for me and Marion at holiday time.

He will never turn 68 years old. My brain still has difficulty processing this obvious fact. Sunday marks his birth all those years ago, and I am unclear how to hold what used to be another appointed date for us to celebrate him. It will be day for me to do that in his absence. Against the sorrow of my personal loss and the enormous continuing loss of our country as we knew it, I do celebrate whole heartedly, the fact Emilia and Zoran have bought their first home. It was a joy for Richard to know they had been searching for a house before he died. He would have been overjoyed and right in there with suggestions for them on how to fix it up to their liking and how best to maintain it.

6/24/18

I woke up with these words this morning:

For Richard

Kendal Birthdays

This is his first not birthday

A day I never imagined

Has arrived

Not a dearth of imagination

But a surfeit of love that blinds

The inevitable as impossible

The day that mortality

Counts coup in passing through

Time and space

He no longer inhabits

I do

The bed I wake up in

Could be anywhere

But it is from here

I will continue lose him

To gain the unimaginable

Not a dearth of imagination

But a surfeit of Love

Opens my eyes

Beyond time and space

Death has no birthdays

The red wing blackbirds

Shrill by the pond

My new home