Unfeathering my moldy nest

In my preparation for leaving the Love Shack, I'm unfeathering my nest in circles, the same way I feathered it, adding a wall of shelves here, a set of bookcases there, all designed to accommodate my growing collection of paper products. I've shredded almost all the paper in the place; thus, I no longer need all these homemade shelves. Taking these things off the walls has been a sweaty chore. I build to last. However, my trusty drill and I have beaten the screaming screws into submission. Only a few more to go. 

Now my living room looks like a lumberyard. Seriously, I have designated a 10 foot by 10 foot space next to my TV-watching chair (used to be Eddie's chair) as wood storage. The space is already jam-stacked with planks and sticks and unusable constructs that used to be furniture. I've become a woodchuck! Well, maybe a reverse woodchuck. All I know is all this wood is going to get chucked. Actually, woodchucks don't chuck wood, but whatever. 

I was tidying up my desk tonight when I was suddenly blindsided by a fit of sobbing. It didn't last long. Weeping makes my nose drip and clogs my throat. If I wail too long, I'll barf. I hate to cry but I hate barfing more, so that works pretty well to keep the histrionics to a minimum. It's my loss and I'll cry if I want to, but not for long. Moving on.

I picked up ashes and death certificates on Monday. Next up on the list, getting Mom's taxes done, learning about probate, and sending copies of death certificates where they need to go. Just a bunch of busywork. It's okay. I need a sense of purpose. When I get done with my tasks, I continue going through drawers and cupboards, sorting and tossing. So far, I have eight boxes ready to go to the thrift store. I hate to give them my vintage cardboard boxes. Those things came with me from California in 1997. I see labels pasted upon labels, showing me the trail of possessions I thought were too precious to leave behind. Mostly paper. What can I say, I've always loved paper. 

You know who else loves paper? Mold. 

By the time you see mold, it's too late. Spraying with bleach is a feeble remedy, a sad desperate grab at temporary relief. Within minutes the mold is growing back, like alien spores on an episode of Star Trek. The original Star Trek, I mean—that's all I get on broadcast TV. I hope I'm gone before my landlord has a chance to see the job ahead of him. He's going to have to tear the entire east side of the apartment down to the studs. That means kitchen and bathroom. I really don't want to be around when he rips down the beige speckled Formica tub surround, which bulges with whatever is growing in the walls. Alien life, here on earth. I think about it sometimes as I'm soaking in the tub.

It is good I'm leaving this place. To those of you who think I'm crazy to leave during Covid, I invite you to consider that staying here would not be healthy for anyone. Even I have my limit. I can put up with a lot of discomfort because I really don't care where I live, as long as I'm warm enough and have hot water in the tub. And internet, of course. Dust, spiders, and cat hair, who cares. Rust stains and missing porcelain in the kitchen sink, no problem. No hot water in the bathroom sink? No worries, as long as there is hot water in the tub. 

This is why I'm hopeful I will find new digs somewhere in a warmer drier place without much problem. My standards are more than reasonable—you might say they are low, compared to most white Americans. This means I have more options. And less disappointment. I recommend it. 

I'm seeking the balance between living like a woodchuck in a grubby burrow and living like an entitled melodramatic demanding whiny white American. Somewhere in the middle of America there must be a place in the sun for me. 

Waiting for the next episode

I miss her. I miss the routine, my sense of purpose, my north star. I knew this would happen, that I would be lost for a while. It’s different knowing something will happen and feeling it when it finally does. You can’t predict what it will feel like with certainty. You can say, I’ll feel sad, or I’ll feel scared, but until it happens, you don’t feel anything and when it happens, you are like, wow, this is different than what I imagined, this is murkier and ickier and I want to go back to where I was, imagining how the feelings would feel but not actually feeling them.

I've started packing stuff into boxes I've stored in a locked basement cupboard for seventeen years. No reason to keep them locked up. No reason to keep them at all, really. When I moved here to the Love Shack in 2003, moving on was my normal M.O. I don't remember now but I'm guessing I didn't expect to live here long. Then life ensued. I got a job, I got a cat, I went to graduate school, I got laid off and fell into self-employment. I peaked around 2013, I think. After that, my normal sense of confusion began to reassert itself. Regressing to the mean, as it were.

Until Mom got dementia. What a strange blessing. Once again my life had meaning and purpose. She needed me, I needed her. Of course, we knew that couldn't last forever. But it could have. I was prepared for her to live to one hundred. As it happened, I spent five wonderful but terrible years spinning in a tightening orbit around her. Then the cat died, then Covid, and you know the rest. Bam. Slow motion train wreck.

It's good I'm leaving this apartment. It's hard to stay warm in the winter. The heaters in the main room and kitchen have been nonfunctional for several years. The landlord attempted to replace the thermostat and almost set the place on fire. The wall around the thermostat is still singed black, a reminder that electricity can keep you warm or it can burn your house down. A small space heater works pretty well for maintaining a livable temperature around my work table. (The bedroom has heat, thank god, or I would have dragged up a long time ago.) The bathroom has never had heat, and in the winter, the room is both cold and damp. I've been doing laundry by hand at night and hanging the wet things to drip over the tub. The colder it gets outside, the longer the things take to dry. Last week I made the mistake of handwashing a small load of kitchen towels. Not a good idea. After five days of hanging on the shower rod, they are still damp, and judging by the smell, they are now starting to molder. No wonder my nose is trying to kill me.

Circumstances seem to be shoving me out the door. I'm going with the flow, hence, the packing. At some point, we will receive ashes and death certificates. All the tasks will be done. All the possessions will be distributed. All I need is a map and the open road. I'm ready to be reborn into some warmer, drier life, even if it means becoming temporarily homeless. I'm finding, though, that even though I'm happily letting go of furniture, the detritus of seventeen years is rapidly filling up all my boxes. Do I let more things go? Or do I get more boxes? The answer will depend on what kind of vehicle I find and how much it can carry. It's simple, really, just a matter of cubic feet.

Packing gives my hands something to do while my mind rummages around in a fog of shock and confusion. I have a plan, but it's in the ether. I haven't assimilated my new situation so I can't see a path clear to my next situation. I'm running on autopilot, just doing the next thing in front of me.

Last week I left four bags of her clothes at a thrift store. I donated her furniture to a second-hand shop. Today I tossed her upper denture in the trash, ew, I know. So weird. It all feels surreal. I still can't believe she's gone. Three weeks ago, in five minutes I would be bundling up to walk out to my car and drive over to the care home, wondering how much longer will this go on? I always knew this moment would come, but now that it is here, I feel no sense of peace. I have an intention, and I'm taking action, but it's like I'm a character in a movie. What will she do next? Is this a tragedy or a comedy? Or (most likely) is it the apocalyptic story of the end of the world? Stay tuned for the next episode.

Mom was home and home is gone

I decided that packing up all the clutter would make me feel better so I dug my flattened spider-infested boxes out of my basement storage cupboard and started with my books. Including the few academic books I would like to keep, I managed to fill three boxes. You might think, wow, that is a lot of books, Carol. If you think that, however, you clearly never knew me. Books were kind of like my thing. 

I don't know where I'm going. I just know that as soon as is reasonably possible with a minimum of impulsive insanity, I am leaving Portland. Home was Mom, and Mom is gone, so this is no longer home. I need a new conception of home. Maybe something with blue sky above it. 

My friend the astrologer would credit the arrangement of the planets with this upheaval that sends me on a new trajectory. I don't want to make this entirely about me. I would guess Mars is retrograding in Uranus for most of the world right now. I know I'm not the only one reeling from events. 

Sometimes radical upheaval brings blessings. It depends on how I decide to frame my experience. Lately I'm just going with it. Trying to figure things out so I can finally manage and control circumstances has never worked for me. 

For the past five years, I watched dementia constrain my mother's world into a narrowing circle. She shed interests, activities, possessions, friends, and even family, until after five years, all that was left was her couch, her clothes, and me. I learned the lesson: Nothing is permanent, everyone dies, and all I have is the present moment. Mom was the Zen master of being present—I'm nowhere near her level, but in my defense, she had the advantage of being demented and I only have my self-centered determination, which is the antithesis of being present in the moment. Well, I'm trying. 

So back to packing. 

Mom left behind her blue plaid wool blanket, a scratchy old ugly thing. I don't want it but I made the mistake of smelling it. It smelled like laundry detergent and Mom. My mother had a smell. After she stopped smoking, her smell was a combination of old lady and Tide Fresh. Not something I'd want in a bottle, but the scent of her brought me to my knees. I'll see if my brother wants that blanket. Maybe he needs a good cry.

She's gone

The day I have both dreaded and longed for arrived last Thursday. After an hour of terrible pain in her gut, my mother shuffled off the mortal coil somewhere between her care home and the hospital. By the time I got there, she was all laid out (sans dentures) under a white blanket. Luckily I have seen her sunken face when her teeth are out, so I wasn't completely horrified. If you've ever seen your mother without her teeth, you know what I mean. She was strangely still, eyes closed, mouth open a little, like she was about to sing.

Even though I've had a few days to process the experience, I don't think it has hit me yet. It happened so fast. When my cat died a year ago, I had time to say goodbye and shed my guilty tears all over his fur while the vet gave him the drugs that would take him away from me forever. I didn't see that part happen with my mother. It happened in the ambulance, I'm guessing somewhere near Glisan and 60th. I don't know. Covid prohibited me from riding with her, not that I would have, because I had my car, and who wants to get stuck in the ER for four hours without a car to bring her back to the care home in, right? That is what I was thinking. Dang, another four-hour ordeal in the ER, and me without coffee! Oh, the horror. 

In the family "waiting room" where they put the folks who are about to be blindsided with the haymaker of their lives, the nurse put her hand on my arm, probably to make sure I wouldn't launch into orbit, and said, "Your mother has passed." For a moment, I couldn't believe what I heard. She had a festively decorated head wrap and mask, I think there were colorful balloons and stars, I can't really remember. She said after the EMTs gave her fentanyl, Mom was resting comfortably, and she died peacefully. I want me some of that stuff when my turn comes. 

So how does this roll out? I wasn't in town when my father kicked off, so this is all new to me. My brother and I visited the funeral home on Friday, masked and dazed, well, I was sort of dazed, not having slept well. We figured it out, paid the money, and went our ways. Mom is probably in a cold box in a basement as she waits her turn to get trucked to Seattle for cremation (the local furnace is busted). Eventually we will get death certificates but the wheels of government are moving at a glacial pace, thanks to Covid, so the nice compassionate caring lady said expect them maybe in three weeks if we are lucky. A month or so from now, our mother will be shipped back to Portland in a box, minus hip replacement hardware. 

My sister graciously consented to write an obituary, which is a thing of beauty, although we seem to be doing a Groundhog Day dance trying to wordsmith one line:  granddaughter and two great-grandchildren. There, I think I got it, finally. I can tell my brain is not tracking. When I reread this before posting, I will be appalled at how many words I left out. It's like there are holes in my brain. They were there before Mom died, though, so I can't blame grief. 

My older brother will rise to his role as executor of the estate. We'll see how that goes. Oh boy, I think I'm getting a migraine. 

I always knew this day would come, if I lived long enough, and I wondered how it would feel and how I would respond. I'm still wondering. The mother I knew left me a long time ago. It's been a strange four years taking care of the changeling mother that dementia left in her place. I grew fond of this changeling. In one minute, I would be walking out the door to visit her. What am I going to do with all this empty space? 

I mean that metaphorically. I have less space here than ever. I've cleared most of her stuff out of the care home. You would not believe how many clothes she had. Thirty-two tops (long- and short-sleeved) in various colors and some stripes, seventeen sweatshirts (most with some sort of embroidery on the chest: my favorite: Hugs - One size fits all). Nine jackets, most pockmarked with cigarette burns. We've downsized her three times now. The last two times, the excess has ended up in my living room. There is a lot less now compared to the previous time, but the place still looks like a thrift store. I had to bag it all up again after counting because the smell of laundry detergent gave me a coughing fit. I'm okay now, thanks for asking. 

Yesterday the family had a video call. After many technological glitches and hurdles, we finally got my older brother connected via speaker phone. Tensions were high at times, but we also saw the humor in the situation. Off and on, we coalesced as a family, something we haven't done in a long time. 

Someday, after Covid, my sister and her husband will come out from Boston. We will all drive down to the Oregon coast to find the secret beach where we scattered Dad's ashes in 2005. If it all works out, we'll send Mom off over the Columbia River Bar to the Pacific Ocean. That is if we aren't occupied by China or dead from Covid. I am taking nothing for granted. 

Bon voyage, Mom. Enjoy your trip to Seattle. I'll miss you forever. 

How to train your spider

For the past couple months, I've shared my bathroom with a house spider. I told my mother about the spider, and Mom named it Esmeralda. I presume Esmeralda was a female. I say was, because, yes, my pet spider and I had to part ways this week. She crossed a line, that line being the thin silk thread by which she hovered over my head just inside the bathroom door. If I hadn't disrupted her descent when I swung the door open, she would have landed on my neck. I like all creatures but we each have our place, and I admit, humans don't usually stay where they belong, but spiders on my neck is not acceptable. 

I captured Esmeralda in a plastic tub, carried her through the house to the back door, and put her in a dirt-filled flower pot on the back porch, where I hope she will be very happy. 

I miss her. Now I really feel alone. 

It's been almost a year since my cat Eddie died. I miss him everyday. A spider is not a substitute for a cat. Still, Esmeralda was a presence. When I entered the bathroom, I always checked to see if she was there in her spot, either clinging to the wall by the shower stall or hanging a foot below the ceiling nearby. Only once or twice did she make the trek across the ceiling to hang near the doorway. (I can't actually be sure it was Esmeralda, because, you know, house spider identification is not my strong suit.) Everyday I told her, "You stay in your space, I'll stay in mine." During nocturnal visits, though, just to be sure, I waved my hands over my head when I passed through the doorway. Just in case. 

I did my best to care for her. I put a piece of mango in a dish near the window to attract flies. I'm not sure my strategy worked. I never saw any flies hovering over the mango. It wasn't fresh—it was frozen, and it thawed to a remarkable gooey consistency that I found a bit off-putting. Maybe flies did too. It's winter, anyhow, so not that many flies are around the Love Shack, just a few little ones that zoom around the light above my computer monitor. 

I'm sure Esmeralda got enough water. I take a bath nightly. The bathroom has no heat, but it gets pretty steamy in there, especially when it is cold outside. The steam rises and condenses on the ceiling. Water, water everywhere, I'm pretty sure, for a thirsty house spider. (And for a fine crop of mold, but that is a different type of pet.) I read that house spiders can live for a year or more if they get enough to eat and drink. I'm sure Esmeralda and I would have continued on as roommates, wary but amicable enough, if she hadn't crossed the line.

I wonder how she is doing. When I enter the bathroom, I look up at the spot where she used to hang out, almost hoping she perhaps has found her way back inside the house. So far, her perch is empty. I see a few flies hanging around the monitor but flies don't make good pets. That is my opinion based on many years of observation and experience. 

Tonight I visited Mom at the care home. We sat outside under the shelter, me in a mask, her wrapped in fleece blankets. It was unseasonably warm for the time of year and the time of evening. We are enjoying intermittent rainstorms courtesy of the Pineapple Express, the subtropical firehose that occasionally points directly at Oregon. 

Mom seemed inordinately sleepy tonight, for the third night in a row. I cast around for something to keep her engaged and entertained. 

"Esmeralda and I have parted ways," I said. 

"Who is Esmeralda?"

"She's the spider that used to live in my bathroom. You named her Esmeralda." 

"I did?"

"She made the mistake of hanging over the doorway into the bathroom." Mom looked confused. "I didn't want her on my neck."

"Ah." She got it. 

We looked at each other. 

"I'm tired," she said.

"Tired today or tired in general?" Leading question, I know. I dig for facts so I don't have to feel my feelings.

"Tired in general," she replied. "It's all a puzzle."

I think the caregivers keep her busy working on puzzles so she will stay awake during the day and sleep through the night. Mom is weary of puzzles, but I think it's deeper than just puzzles. She's bored with the whole thing, the showing up for life thing. She's like a fine old watch that is winding down. 

Of course, I could be reading it all wrong. Come spring, she might revive with the light and decide it's time to plant a garden. I'll be ready. Whatever comes, I'll be ready.