Happy new year from the Hellish Hand-basket

It boils down to this: Do you want to be safe, or do you want to be free? I always thought this choice referred to civil rights and terrorism, but nope, it actually applies to aging maternal parental units. Who knew?

If Mom had asked me, I would have chosen safe for her. But she didn't ask me. When I asked her what she wanted, she chose freedom.

It's not a huge surprise. After the two moves over the summer (to the retirement home and six weeks later, back to the condo), she's pretty clear now that safe is nice, but free is better.

Free when you are 86 is not the same as free when you are in your 50s, 60s, or even 70s. Now that her doctor, DMV (and I) have taken away her car keys, her circle of life has narrowed to the condo complex.

She phones in her grocery orders to me. I fetch and carry. I forget things, but I don't complain to her. How can I complain when her brain has gone AWOL? What's my excuse? Just stress. I complain to my younger brother, Chuck.

Mom and Chuck are not talking. When Mom moved out of her condo, she left behind boxes of old photos, cards, letters, and memorabilia. Chuck took the stuff to his house to sort, thinking Mom had abandoned it all, and it was bound for the trash. Chuck sorted out the stuff and found many things he thought were too great to toss: Mom and Dad's wedding announcement, negatives from our childhood, postcards from around the world. Along comes Christmas and suddenly Mom wants some blank holiday cards she is certain were in one of those boxes. She demanded the boxes be returned. She complained to me when the boxes did not arrive immediately. I emailed Chuck: for the love of god, give her the damn boxes. Chuck brought her the boxes. Last time I saw her, she had sorted a bunch of old negatives and photos into the trash can.

“Mom, Chuck wanted all that stuff!” I said, trying not to sound too aghast and failing.

She frowned at me. “What?”

“Chuck spent hours sorting through all those photos,” I said. “He wanted to keep that stuff. He was going to give them to me to scan!”

“Oh.” Her expression was a mix of chagrin and belligerence. Kind of like a two-year-old caught writing on the wall with permanent marker.

I took the paper sack of stuff to the kitchen and wrote in big letters on the side: “Keep for Chuck!”

“Don't throw this away!” I admonished her.

“All right, all right.” She meant get off my back. We silently declared a truce. I hugged her and told her I loved her.

It's New Year's Eve. She had a lunch date today with a bunch of condo ladies. That's good. It's late now. I was busy doing end-of-year stuff and forgot to call her. I'll call her tomorrow. I hope when she's sitting out on her patio tonight, smoking a cigarette in 30° frosty air, that she catches a glimpse of the northern lights and feels free.

Season's greetings from the Hellish Handbasket

'Tis the season for giving. A few minutes ago, the phone rang: Planned Parenthood, calling for donations. Dream on, dude. While I was listening to the telemarketer drone on about the litany of crimes committed by the opposition, there was a persistent knock at my door: another solicitor, seeking donations for some unknown cause.

I waved the phone at her. “I'll come back later,” she promised. I might turn on the porch light: It's pitch dark out there. Then again, I might not.

Bah humbug. I'm not in a giving mood. This week, the wind has been uprooting trees. Rivers are flooding roads and yards and basements in outlying areas. Entire apartment complexes are sliding down muddy hillsides. This morning I wasn't sure it was morning; I thought my clock was wrong, it was so dark outside. I don't have any extra to give—not money, not time, not love. Grrrrrr.

Last week, the family from out of town came and went in the blink of an eye. The long-awaited family discussion to talk about what's next for Mom barely happened. It wouldn't have happened at all, I suspect, if I hadn't started the ball rolling by looking at my mother as we all sat around her condo living room and saying, “So, Mom.... what do you want for the next phase of your life?”

She seemed a bit unsettled to be on the spot, which is unlike her, but possibly the new normal now that her brain seems to be disintegrating. The extroverted woman I used to know is gone, leaving this strange pod person in her place.

“Well, uh, I, uh... I want to just stay here for now,” she said apologetically. She probably knew that wasn't what her children wanted to hear. A few days before, she had mentioned her interest in touring adult care homes in the area. I was like, Yes!

I tried to remain calm.

“I've got my friend Summer to come and clean once in a while,” Mom said. My sister and I looked at each other. The guest bathroom was a mess.

“What about food?” my sister asked.

“The condo ladies go out to lunch every Thursday,” my mother said.

Great. At least she eats on Thursdays.

After driving everyone out to Gresham in pouring rain in my mother's old Camry, eating a rich dinner (including dessert), and driving back to Mom's condo, none of us was in a mood to dig into a compassionate, caring conversation about how Mom wants to live out her remaining days (weeks, months, years... her aunt lived to be 100, for chrissake). My brother wasn't feeling well. He went home.

Woozy from sugar, I drove my jet-lagged sister and her sometime husband to their downtown hotel. The rain had stopped. The lights of the city sparkled. Mom came along, riding shotgun like a sprightly wizened elf.

Joke's on you, cave painters

Does it seem these days like we are all going to hell in a hand-basket? Maybe we've been in the hand-basket for a long time (like a few thousand years, maybe?). But like the proverbial frog sitting in the slowly heating pot of water, we are now too logy to do anything about escaping our imminent demise. Oh, we drop a few bombs here and there, attend a summit or two... but it's all feeling a little like, wheeeee, what's the use! Hell, here we come.

In honor of the end of 2015 (and possibly the end of Western civilization as we know it), I hereby present a compilation of some drawings I don't think I've used before. For your viewing pleasure. Enjoy. This is also in celebration of the fact that I can now drag and drop my jpegs directly into my post. (Thanks, Google. You've shown yourself a true friend, here at the end of the world. You have my gratitude. For as long as my brain holds out, which probably won't be all that much longer.)

When a year stumbles to a close, I sometimes review where I've been and think about where I'm going in the new year. I don't make resolutions anymore because it seems stupid to set intentions I have no intention of keeping. Lose weight, get more exercise, drink more water, read more literary fiction and less science fiction, sleep less, be nicer... yada, yada, yada. If the myriad dried-up pink post-it notes posted on my computer monitor and mirrors haven't convinced me that these are good ideas, then why would I imagine writing up a list of resolutions for 2016 would work any better? Deluded magical thinking. Again.

So, no, no resolutions for me. I can't even resolve to survive, considering that at any moment I could be smashed flat in an earthquake or gunned down by some stupid terrorist. Life has always been precarious, but I guess I had some hope that good could prevail, if not for me than for others. But now I'm thinking good is not a safe haven. Positive thinking is a waste of energy. Fighting for anything is futile. We're all going to hell in a hand-basket.

I used to worry my tiny head about whether I should settle for simply existing, or whether I should strive to thrive. As if I knew what thriving would actually look like. A newer car? Would that be thriving? More money in the bank? How much is more? How much is enough? I am beginning to think there is never enough of anything: love, money, safety, life. It's all impermanent. Uncertainty is the new god. Or maybe it's the old god who has been laughing at us the whole time as we tried to keep civilization together. Har har, joke's on you, cave painters!

I'm just cranky because my mother is declining into dementia and I can't earn enough money to survive. La la la, what else is new? Some people don't have mothers. Some people don't have jobs, or homes, or countries, even. Who am I to complain? But I can't help myself. I'm an American. I have a god-given right to bitch, bestowed upon my by a quirk of geographical fate. Of all the places you could be born, the gods are sending you to.... Oregon! Lucky baby! Yeah, your family is nuts, and you are going to grow up female in the 60s and 70s, but hey, it could be worse. You could have been born in Afghanistan, or Somalia, or Idaho. Stop yer belly-achin!

The holiday season is always fraught with ironies, and never more so than this year, I think. It cracks me up that Americans are rushing around trying to get the perfect gifts for their loved ones when the world is crashing. Is this a case of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? (I've always loved that image.) I don't think the human race is any more special than, say, polar bears or dolphins or honeybees. I just don't think we humans are constitutionally capable of playing well with others. Greed and self-centered fear creep into every culture, eventually. Is that true? Are there some indigenous cultures in little pockets of rain forest and desert that will survive the religious fanatics swarming the rest of the planet?

You know what else pisses me off? Chronic malcontents large and small are emerging from the woodwork, proclaiming the end of the world and running around like banshees trying to find their little slice of safety. More guns! Arm everyone! Build walls, keep out the invaders! Kill the insects, no, eat the insects, wait, what? So on top of my own little suitcase of troubles, now I have all this competition from other malcontents! What gives?

If I were Little Mary Sunshine, which I'm not, I would say, oh, pish posh, tempest in a teapot, drink some water, and recycle your plastics. Instead I will say, merry ho ho and happy Christmas from the Hellish Hand-basket. Now put down your weapons, back away slowly, and maybe you can have some pie.