The five fingers of death take a holiday

I have an aversion to eating anything with a face. If a creature would run from me if it could, then I do not want to make it a meal. Even if I were lost in the wilderness, I would have a hard time eating grubs (not in the desert, however, because there are no grubs in the desert, just lizards and scorpions). Maybe I would get hungry enough to gum a lizard. Maybe not. I have a hazy assumption that I would somehow manage to pick, peel, and suck on a prickly pear. Right. Have you seen those things up close? All the flora in Southern Arizona is trying to kill me. It’s like its members spot a person with disequilibrium from afar, like a tick waiting for the unsuspecting hiker to pass by, and then they lean toward me with their feathery stickery arms and quivering bony spikes, hoping to impale me as I struggle to keep my balance.

You can tell I’m feeling persecuted by the desert.

This week when I was on my second road trip to Northern Arizona, I found the perfect place to take a fall and die. Have you been to Montezuma Well? It’s a natural springs that has bubbled up in a rock basin for thousands of years. The native inhabitants of the area used to live near the Well in cliffside dwellings they built from rocks. Even today, local tribes think of the Well as a sacred place. I can see why. It really feels magical, this unexpected oasis in the arid desert.

I was the first one at the gate, that's how eager I was. Being a tourist is fun sometimes. I sat and waited, and then more magic, but of the technological wireless variety. On the dot at 8:00 am, I heard a loud beeping, and the two metal gates swung open just for me.   

Ignorant whites named it after Montezuma, mistaking it for part of the Aztec civilization. On the upside, however, the park service built a meandering staircase of 112 steps so that visitors could descend close to the water. You can’t touch it, and I’m not sure you’d want to anyway, given the pondscum on the surface and the leeches that lurk in the depths. Still, it's water in the desert, and that is always a welcome sight. If you are feeling robust, and if it is still early in the day before the heat bakes you into a husk, it’s a descent worth taking.

So I took it.

Going down wasn’t hard, you know, because of gravity, but there are no handrails, which is when I had the thought that I could fall here, just pitch right off the edge, and maybe that would not be so bad. My soul, if I have such a thing, would no doubt enjoy the dip in sacred waters, in spite of the leeches.

I didn’t fall. 

Coming back up the 112 steps, though, was a workout. I could hear the voices of the two park rangers, who were standing at an overlook at the rim a good fifty yards above me. I could see them from time to time as I paused on landings to catch my breath and wait for my heart to slow. The larger heavier ranger was teaching the younger skinnier ranger about the history of the Well. Their voices echoed in the basin. I wondered if they knew CPR. Most likely, probably it's a job requirement, not that CPR is something I would want, given what I now know, that CPR is not a thing most people survive, nor would they want to, if they knew what I know now.

Better to let me slip under the green and blue water and let the leeches suck my soul while the ducks nibble on my toes.

I didn’t fall. I didn’t have a heart attack and die. I made it to the top. After a good long moment to rest, I took a trail down to the place in the side of the hill where the outflow (the swallet) emerged through a narrow channel made by long-dead indigenous peoples. That water was used to irrigate the “three sisters”—corn, beans, and squash. This practice endured for generations, until the tribes decided to uproot themselves and move south to join some villages that I guess seemed like more fun than farming the desert.

The day before I visited the Well, I saw the other part of the park system known as Montezuma Castle, which is the cliff dwelling clinging to the side of a high cliff about eleven miles away from the Well. That was an impressive construction feat, but as a visitor, I was disappointed, not by its construction, which is amazing, but because park visitors are not allowed to go up and walk around that dark castle, I guess for obvious reasons, but still. It would have been cool. Literally, it would probably have been much cooler up there in those carved caves—at ground level, it was easily 100°F at 4:30 when I was visiting just before closing time.

Montezuma Well was more satisfying in the sense that I could imagine I was walking in the footsteps of people who used to live and work there, finding physical and spiritual sustenance on the land because of that sacred water.

To celebrate my vacation, I did two food-related things. I ate ice cream. And I ate an English muffin. I know, I know. Some of you are saying, Carol, jeez, lighten up, no wonder you are so uptight, you need to eat more ice cream. And some of you are saying, oh no, you ate two of the five fingers of death! It’s curtains for you. The five fingers of death, if you don’t remember, are the invention of the erstwhile Dr. Tony, naturopathic bully: wheat, corn, soy, sugar, and dairy.

I try to minimize my intake of these foods. I hate to give Dr. Tony any credit for saving my life, but among the many wacky things he said and did, telling me to eat good food and drink water probably deserves a thanks. It doesn't mean I don't indulge in sugar in my oatmeal and soymilk in my tea, but I always feel a twinge of guilt, like, oh, no, what is the arrogant bully going to say this time as he sucks the money from my bank account? He has since retired to the godforsaken hinterlands of Oregon, also know as Bend, where I assume he is tormenting other willing victims who haven't yet caught on to his subtle yet nefarious passive aggressive quackish homeopathic ways. Me, resentful? No, but thanks for asking.

I am curiously waiting to try cultivated meat, vat-grown chicken, what are we calling it? Chicken cells grown in a stainless steel container. The intriguing thing is, no chickens are harmed in the creation of this product, although I’m not sure I totally buy that. No chicken would voluntarily donate its cells for science, even it meant all future chickens could escape the butcher's cleaver. I mean, we like chickens for lots of reasons, right, but we give them too much credit if we imagine they understand the moral and philosophical implications of offering up cells as a ploy to save chicken lives. They default to chicken run every time if given free range.

I want some of that protein, is all I’m saying, and I don’t want any chicken lives to be harmed in my attempt to get enough protein to stay alive, without resorting to eating bugs, grubs, and lizards.

I probably won’t live to see packages of cultivated chicken in the grocery store. I doubt I’ll live long enough to own an electric car. I probably won’t live to see a glut of affordable senior housing spring up about the land, driving rental prices down to the reach of any sad sack who needs a place to live. Too bad for me. I could be sad at the prospect of missing out on future prosperity, or I could be resentful, both really appealing and viable options. I'd like to know what happens after I’m gone, but unless there's something mystical that occurs after we die, probably once I'm gone, I'm gone, and none of this will matter, nobody will care. In a way, it's nice to know that life will go on, I just won’t be part of it anymore.

On someone else's memory lane

My new friend Bill at the trailer park called me on the phone. “I have something to show you. Come over sometime. But call first, okay, unless you want to scrub my back in the shower.”

Bill is eighty-two years old. I’ve learned when socializing with old folks, it’s best not to lollygag. They could die before you get around to showing up. Case in point, Bill’s wife Linda died in her sleep. Imagine waking up next to that. Anyway, if you promise to do something for an old person, and you are serious about it, do not delay.

On the day Bill called, I was at the housesit trailer cleaning up the place in anticipation of the return of the homeowner. I wanted to leave the place spic and span, whatever that means, you know, pack it in, pack it out, leave no trace. I don’t want them to realize I slept on my foam rubber mattress on the floor for four months because my back does not appreciate memory foam. I was quite comfortable, thanks for asking. I regret nothing. I consider my four months living out of boxes and bags and sleeping semi-rough to be good preparation for living in my car, should that moment ever come.

After the sun went down, I hauled the bike out of the back of my car and rode over to the clubhouse to mail some letters back to their senders. I’ll tell you the story of those letters some other time, if I remember. Here, I’ll just say that I finally got around to checking the mailbox at my new apartment. That box holds a lot of mail.

From the clubhouse, I called Walt and told him I was around if he wanted me to come over. “I can be there in two minutes.”

Two minutes later, I wobbled around the curve and found him waiting for me on his back porch, delighted to see me. “You look like you are riding more smoothly,” he said.

“Less wobbly,” I agreed. I propped the bike on its kickstand and followed him into the kitchen.

“I have something for you,” he said. He handed me a 5 x 7 color photo of me sitting on his wife’s bike in his driveway. Behind me is a tall block wall and beyond that are the tops of cactuses and trees. Starbucks is just out of view. I am wearing black pants, a white jacket, and my straw hat—my bike-riding uniform. I am smiling self-consciously at the camera. I always prefer to be the one taking the picture.

“Thanks, Bill,” I said with appropriate appreciation and enthusiasm. I assumed he had a photo printer stashed away in the bowels of his trailer, excuse me, mobile home. In one of our conversations, I referred to the homes in the park as trailers. “Trailers have hitches,” Bill had said. “These are mobile homes.”

Bill invited me into the living room. It looked the same as I remembered—altar for Linda’s ashes, comfy seating, baseball game on the big screen television. “Remember those shows I was telling you about? I have them on DVD.” Bill pulled an enormous black zippered disk holder from a cabinet. There must have been three hundred CDs in the thing. He flipped through the sections. “The truth about the war,” he said, meaning Viet Nam. “The truth about Watergate. The truth about the environment.” Most of the DVDs were labeled with the word “Frontline.”

Finally he found the disks he sought. I sat on the marshmallowy loveseat while he queued up a DVD. He stood in front of the big screen, a tall bony man with skinny legs, a slight pot belly, square shoulders, and no neck, pointing the remote at the DVD player, fast-forwarding until he got to the right part. “Here we go,” he said, grinning like an adolescent through his crooked overbite.

The video quality was poor. Someone had set a stationary camera on a table near the open area that served as a stage. In the background, people could be seen moving through a hallway to and from the restrooms. The audio was scratchy, and the images were pixelated, but I got the gist. It was a home movie, amateur documentation of a holiday event of the kind you hope you never have to see again. Bad enough you had to live through it once. Not for Bill. Bill clearly loved reliving his time in the limelight.

It was a holiday-themed party at the clubhouse at the trailer park. MoHo park, excuse me. The year was 2010. A huskier, more limber Bill came onto the stage, recognizable by his overbite and square no-neck shoulders. He was dressed in garish printed pajama pants and a snowman shirt. On his head was a wig made of long stringy black hair. He was joined by three other oddly dressed people. Two women wore tie-dyed t-shirts and the otherman man in the group wore a red plaid sport jacket that looked like it was made from a quilt. This guy introduced the group as the Grandpas and Grandmas. They proceed to lipsync to songs from the 50s and 60s, including Monday Monday, an homage to the Mamas and the Papas. Present-day Bill giggled as he watched his younger self performing. I did my best to be appreciative, although I kept an eye on the clock. It was growing dark outside and I still had to ride the bike back to my car.

“Wait, I have one more to show you,” Bill said, switching out the DVD for another. “This one is a little longer.” I settled back on the loveseat, telling myself if there is a heaven, I’ll have something nice waiting for me there, like maybe some ten percent off coupons to IKEA.

The second event was another holiday party, in the same clubhouse room, three years later. In 2013, Bill looked about the same, wearing the same ridiculous snowman shirt. His associates this year were two women (neither of which was Bill’s wife) and and a younger man. Of course, this is a fifty-five and older mobile home park, so nobody was all that young. I can hardly believe I qualify to live in this place, but whatever.

I was interested to see Bill’s wife on the video. Linda was a short, small-boned woman with narrow hips and heavy breasts. Her gray bubble of hair did not move as she clapped and bounced to the music. She stood offstage by a piano and smiled the whole time. She looked like she had a nice personality. I noticed two things. She had no sense of rhythm, and Bill largely ignored her throughout the forty-minute show.

Bill and his group performed a pantomime to bits of songs from the decades from the 1940s to the 1980s. The audience was in good spirits and clapped and sang along, despite the fact that dinner had been delayed because no one had turned on the pilot light to heat up the lasagna.

The video operator was more creative this year, panning around the large crowded room. At least sixty people sat at long tables in the large meeting room, sipping beverages with a minimum of heckling. It’s a large space, with a piano and fireplace and shelves full of books. I’ve seen that room through the windows but never been inside. They’ve been remodeling during my sojurn at the moho park. I peered inside a couple times as I came by every few evenings to borrow and return paperback books at the book exchange boxes placed on the walkway outside the clubhouse door. During Covid and remodeling, the clubhouse was closed. Now the books are back inside on the shelves, and the outdoor book exchange is gone.

Bill was thrilled to have me as a captive audience to witness him relive his memories. He watched the show with obvious glee. “Here comes the good part,” he said several times, or “Let’s see if you recognize this song,” or “Did you see what I did there?” I did my best to be a good audience member, laughing in the right places, clapping once in a while, nodding, asking some relevant questions to show I was paying attention. I tried not to watch the clock, which was directly above the television screen.

I’ve met people like Bill, people who are desperate to be the center of attention, even if their moment of fame comes in a skit at a mobile home trailer park holiday party. He relished being the star. I got the impression he watched this DVD often. He knew all the lines. He echoed his words as he sat on the couch, chuckling, reliving his moments in the limelight, giving me the play-by-play of the show, explaining what was happening, like for example when the two women suddenly crouched down behind a barricade and started putting on vests and neckerchieves.

In fact, the group had props for all their songs. A lot of effort went into creating this production. The group dressed in cowboy hats and western gear to sing “Long Tall Texan.” The younger man “rode” a horsehead attached to a stick. During another number, they tossed armfuls of stuffed skunks into the audience as they sang “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road.”

“I was singing,” Bill told me. “I wasn’t pantomiming, I was singing. I only listened to the song three or four times to learn it.”

During the closing number, a lively Beach Boys tune, some of the audience members near the stage joined the group to dance to the music, Linda among them. She bounced on stiff knees, clapping off-beat, smiling gamely, while her husband Bill ignored her. Other than introducing her once at the start of the show, he never interacted with her, did not look at her, did not dance with her or touch her, did not stand near her when she joined the group on the stage. She might as well have been one of the props.

After the show was over, Bill motioned me to follow him toward the back of the mobile home. I followed him in sock feet along the plushly carpeted hallway as he showed me the photo gallery of Linda with the grandkids, one every Christmas until the last Christmas, when it was just the grandkids alone. Bill led me into the master bedroom, occupied by a king-sized bed and a couple dressers. I thought, if this goes sideways, I can probably take him. He’s built out of sticks. The overhead light was harsh. He pulled out some things from a dresser drawer.

“You might like to have these,” he said, holding out a navy and white machine-knitted winter scarf with tassles on both ends. “And these,” he said, holding out a plastic pack of footie socks. “And these gloves,” he said, handing me a pair of worn black wool gloves. I accepted the gifts politely, thinking oh lord, not more stuff. I put the scarf around my neck. It smelled of perfume.

Next, Bill led me into a large dressing room area. He pointed at a row of bottles and jars arrayed along a counter in front of a wall of mirrors. “Can you use any of that stuff?” I declined, claiming allergies, which is true. I do not wear cosmetics and use lotions at my peril.

Bill led me to a closet. “These?” he said, pointing to several knitted pullovers that I knew were much too small for me, even if I wore that style of clothing. I shook my head. “How about these shoes?” Bill said, pointing to a shoe caddy holding black slip-ons with low heels. I shook my head regretfully. Back in the hallway, Bill opened a cupboard. The shelves were packed with hardback books, most of which were by the psychic Sylvia Browne. Linda had been enamored with the psychic’s writing and performances. Bill offered to loan me some. I declined.

By now it was 9 pm and solid dark. I felt like I’d just missed meeting Linda, like she was just in the next room, just out of sight. I knew her clothes, I knew her smell. I did not have to ask Bill how much he missed her, even as he was jettisoning the last of her possessions. I did the same with my mother’s things before I left Portland. You can’t keep everything, and it’s better if someone else can use the stuff.

We went outside. Bill got his bike out of his shed and rode with me through the warm night air back to my car. Along the way, under a street light, I saw yet another flat lizard, pulverized into the asphalt by a car tire because it paused when it should have hustled.

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.

Future cloudy, try again later

 You ever have one of those days when it seems like nothing goes quite right, and then you suddenly realize you have your shirt on backwards? Then you are like, wow, that totally explains everything. That pretty much sums up the week for me. Well, let's be honest. So far, the entire first half of 2020 has had its shirt on backwards. From January 9, the day my cat died, it's felt like two seconds to midnight. I'm sure you can relate. 

So many times this week, I thought, I need to blog about this! And now that I'm actually sitting in front of my computer, all I can think of is, I wonder if the statin I just started taking for my cholesterol will kill me before I can finally enjoy some cheese. The week is a blur so I will take this interlude to wax philosophical while I wait for memories to emerge from the fog.

At points in my life, I've stood on the edge of a chasm, staring across to the green pastures on the other side. (Metaphorically speaking, of course—I am not one of those foolish tourists who take selfies on the edge of the Grand Canyon.) I'm sure you have experienced the longing that comes from being able to imagine the paradise that lies just out of reach and wishing you had something—a glider, a parachute, a large cannon—something that could launch you out of your current misery into the bright future you know you deserve. No? Maybe it's just me. For some reason, I seem to find myself standing on metaphorical precipices quite often. I don't really like heights, but I seem compelled to find them. 

The current precipice has to do with the maternal parental unit. She's running out of money. The retirement barracks in which she is currently incarcerated has done a great job of keeping her alive, no doubt a nefarious plot to extend their ability to generate revenue. The cost of her upkeep has escalated with the increasing demands of her care. We, the family, knew this was a possibility back in 2015 when we had a family discussion about Mom's finances. Mom participated in the discussion. You've read all this before in previous blog posts. We all thought, what are the odds that Mom, a dedicated smoker with COPD and dementia, would outlast her money?

Never underestimate genetics. Or the power of quitting smoking. Now the family is revving up the hunt for a Medicaid facility, never an easy task even without a pandemic. How the hell is this going to work? That is a rhetorical question, but if you have suggestions, I'm open to feedback.

My sister has volunteered to help me qualify adult foster homes in the area. We did this back in 2016, before Mom chose the place she's in now. My sister came to town and we drove around, looking at houses, and making appointments for tours. We tiptoed gingerly on shag rug, grimaced at bad decorating choices, peered into bathrooms, and met some interesting inmates, I mean, residents. It was a lesson in what life can look like if you have money when you get old.

Now that my sister is confined to Boston, our care home search must roll out by phone and video. I have a short list of places. My next task is to plot them on a map and then scout out the locations, maybe take some surreptitious photos, like a weary gray-haired private eye. I hope no one calls the police to investigate the suspicious Ford Focus lurking in their neighborhood. Now is not the time to tangle with Portland police.

My sister and I will call each place and ask some questions. The first one will be, do you accept Medicaid after some period of private pay? If the answer is no, we will cross them off the list. I suppose the second question should be, does your facility have or has it ever had a case of Covid? One question for sure has to be, can I stand outside Mom's window and talk to her through the baby monitor? If the answer is no, I will cross them off the list. If Mom goes into a place that won't give me eyes on, I will most likely never see her again except as dust in a cardboard box. Window view is a deal breaker for me. If we could ask for the moon, it would be great if the food was a little better and she could get to keep her couch and TV. Not that she remembers how to turn it on, but still.

We have to do something. If she outlives her money, she'll end up in my bedroom, yelling for ice cream. That is not acceptable. She might graciously decide to die. If she really was thinking of our welfare, she would keel over soon, before we go through all this searching and questioning. You know how it feels when a car blocks the sidewalk where you are walking and you have to detour around the back end of the car, only to have the driver pull out into the street just as you pass their sputtering tailpipe, leaving you feeling foolish for taking unnecessary steps? Like that. If she could turn off the switch, I know she would. That's another chasm I don't care to contemplate.

I read an article about a rain forest community whose members patiently train tree roots and branches to form bridges across ravines. I wonder if I could do that—metaphorically speaking, of course. What would a metaphorical bridge look like that could lead us from here to there? And I can't help asking the question I always ask when I'm peering into the fog toward the promised land: Would there be any better than here? Where is that dang Magic 8 Ball when you need it? Future cloudy, try again later.

Almost time to roll credits

Near the end of most romantic comedies, a moment arrives that lets you know a change has occurred. The hero has been driving all night. The montage of headlights, dotted lines, and highway signs flows into a calm sunrise to represent the hero emerging from the dark night of the soul into a new day, transformed somehow, usually by grief or remorse or chagrin. The hero realizes the answer was love all along, or moving home, or apologizing, or singing outside someone's window holding a boombox. The music swells—usually violins—as the hero crests the hill or lands at the airport or whatever and sees the ocean, or the city, or the house, or the love object. When that moment comes, you know credits will soon be rolling up your screen and you can head for the bathroom.

Lately I'm hearing that music when I drive home from my mother's nursing home. I used to call it her retirement home—an unsettling euphemism for a warehouse where old people are sent to die. Now I call it the nursing home, because as she slides deeper into dementia, she's clearly way past the retirement phase of her stay there and there's no use pretending she's going to suddenly start knitting again or playing bingo with the other old ladies.

The music isn't anything specific, usually. Usually Marketplace is on when I get into my car and turn on the radio. It's not like my drive has changed. The restaurants with their optimistic welcome back, we missed you signs look pretty much the same every day, rain or shine. A smattering of cars in their parking lots, a few aggressive drivers on the road, and the sun setting in my eyes over the mountain I live on. Same destination, nothing fancy, nothing new, just my kitchen and my computer and the bad news about the corona virus. It's more of a feeling that a change is coming. 

I visit my mother's window every evening like a hopeful peeping Tom, peering through the screen with the sun reflecting in my eyes. What I hope to see is my mother just arriving from dinner, still alert enough to visit for sixty seconds at the window before she sinks limply on the couch. Earlier this week the nurse called to say they were going to let her take her meals in the dining room. Mom wasn't into eating her meals all alone from a tray in her room. Losing weight, headed south, yada yada. The past couple days she's been more alert. If I time my visit right, I can catch her before she fades.

Yesterday I was too late and she'd already settled into the black hole. I thumbed the button on the parental baby monitor unit and said softly, "Hello Sleeping Beauty, are you awake?" 

She opened her eyes and looked at me. I moved from the screen to look through the glass and pulled my mask down so she could see my face. She gave me a childlike grin and waved. 

"Hey, Ma," I said, waving. "It's me at your window again."

She gazed at me, smiling. After a long moment, her voice came through the monitor in my hand: "There's my Carol." 

"How ya doin', Ma?" I asked, hands cupped around my eyes, trying to see through the reflection. 

"Not too bad," she said as her eyes were closing.

"Okay, I'll let you sleep," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow . . ." 

"Tomorrow, tomorrow," she sang back, and opened her eyes to give me our version of the high-five—the peace sign. I returned it and leaned over the waist-high bush to put my nose on the glass. I can't quite lean far enough to kiss it, and you know, cooties. I try not to think about all the bitty spiders that are jumping from the bush to the front of my jacket.

"Tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll love ya, tomorrow," I sang, off key of course, because I can't sing very well. Who cares, not me, I never see any other family members out there peering in their loved ones' windows doing their best to keep them alive by sheer force of willpower. I'm alone except for the occasional dive-bombing crested blue jay guarding a nest I suspect is in the gutter overhead. I wave goodbye, pull up my mask, and head back to my car.

She's pulling away, she's receding from me. It tears me up but I'm doing my best to be there for her. I read that our hearing is the last of our senses to leave us when we are dying. I hope that I'll be with my mother when she leaves. If I am, no matter who is listening, even if I'm bundled head to toe in PPE, I'll be singing the Happy Wanderer into her hearing aid as she goes over the crest of the hill. Roll credits, but not yet, not quite yet.

Exit-seeking, stage right

These days it seems as if the only words I find are platitudes: When it rains it pours. Well, it's either feast or famine. Well, you know, if it's not this, it would be something else. Sometimes you are the windshield . . . har, har, har. So far in 2020, I'm definitely not the windshield. I thought I'd melt from sadness when my cat died in January. Then along came the Covid, followed by the protests. Big stuff, hard stuff. Now guess who's back? My vertigo. And along with the vertigo, an unwelcome pest I had hoped never to hear again—the incessant ear clicking. The jack hammer in my head is going at it like flash bang grenades down at the Justice Center. I'm currently seeking the nearest exit, which right now is looking like a sharp pencil in my right ear. 

Yesterday I visited Mom as usual, lurking outside her apartment window in the azalea bush, waving at her and holding up signs. It's plenty warm enough to have the window open, but last week I got read the riot act by the Med Aide on duty. The window was open one inch but even standing at the window, Mom couldn't hear me. I pulled my mask down so she could see my lips. “Did you have some ice cream?” I called. At that moment, the Med Aide came in the room.

“No more open window!” she shouted, hustling over to my mother.

“Where are her hearing aids?” I yelled back. “She wants ice cream!”

The Med Aide looked around in confusion and found them. “Oh, the caregiver must have forgotten to put them back after her shower.” She sat Mom down on the couch and inserted the hearing aids into Mom's ears. She stood up to leave.

 I yelled, “Close the window! And get some ice cream!”

So yesterday evening, I visited Mom as usual and brought my little sketchpad of prepared signs and a felt-tipped Sharpie in case I needed to write some more. She came to the window to open it. I held up a sign explaining that we can't open the window because we are trying to keep all the old folks safe from germs. She shrugged. Who cares. She lost interest and went back to sit on the couch. Her dinner looked barely touched. I yelled, “I love you!” through the window. She gave me two peace signs, and I left.

Shortly after I got home, my phone rang in the special tone: Trouble. Oh dear, I thought. Did she fall? Did she crack her head open? Is she dead? Is this over?

“Today your mother went out the front door.” Same Med Aide.

“Uh-oh,” I said, thinking, right on, Ma.

“Yeah, she was very angry and combative. And she didn't have her walker. She made it outside but one of the staff was outside walking with another resident. She stopped your mother and brought her back inside.”

This news was a blow but not a surprise. A few nights ago, the nurse had told me, Mom was up early in the morning, making a run for the front door. Mom said she had to go home. My sister is my witness. We were video chatting when the nurse called. 

Looks like I'm not the only one looking for a way out. Poor old Ma. My next thought: poor old me. 

We come up with remedies to cope with our problems. To remedy the Geiger counter in my ear, I'm just about ready to call the witch doctor and sacrifice a chicken. I've tried everything short of personally performing aural surgery with a sharp stick. For a few minutes, usually after eating, the clicks fade and diminish. I don't know if that means the ear infection is easing or if I'm going deaf in my right ear or if I should just keep eating and never stop. At this point, I don't care. I'd do just about anything to keep the blessed silence. 

In Mom's case, the remedies are lame, because the underlying problem is she is going to die. There's no solution to that problem. We redirect. We cajole. Well, we don't actually do anything, because we don't get to see her anymore except from outside her window, like she's a fish in a tank. The care staff at the nursing home are her family now. They know her better than I do. I see her for two minutes every evening. I don't see her in the middle of the night bolting for the front door, yelling that she has to go home.

All we can do is agree to put a Lo-Jack on her and let her go down swinging. 

Routines will not save us

I have fervent appreciation for the power of routines. Life is precarious, and precariousness is stressful. Routines hold us together. Routines give us the illusion that we are in control. These days, I find myself refining my routines, honing my tasks and plans to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness. I'm really into it. Just look at my custom-designed, color-coded calendar. Nobody can call me a slacker.

I realize now why Mom beat it back to her condo after moving to a retirement community didn't work for her. It wasn't the big impersonal place or the money or the lack of social interaction—all the reasons she gave for dragging up and moving home. I'm guessing it was the massive disruption of every single routine she had patched together over the years to maintain her life as her brain lost its ability to function.

She knew her brain was stuttering before 2014. In 2015, she moved to the retirement place. She was there a month and a half. Now I see it must have been a particular subtle form of hell. On the surface, it had seemed like a great solution to help her move into the next phase. Instead, it was as if she had voluntarily set off a neutron bomb in her life. Nobody anticipated the consequences, certainly not her. Well, how many of us have actually seen the consequences of a neutron bomb exploding in our kitchen, let's say, or in our home office?

For most of the next two years, she white-knuckled it in the condo, trying to keep it together, with increasing help from me. There were many clues, I realize now, looking back, but I didn't know what I was seeing. The dirty kitchen, the rotten food, the mice, the ants, the misfolded towels . . . all signs of her mental deterioration.

Now I realize how desperately she clung to her routines. Once the routines failed her, she had to let go and admit she couldn't maintain the facade, she couldn't manage the details of her life anymore—the preparation of food, the cleaning of kitchen counters, the washing and folding of clothes. All too much. It was as if she had been clinging to one little branch of a wizened shrub growing at the edge of an abyss. Whether the branch broke or she let go on purpose, she fell.

She came to rest in a retirement home with levels of care. Levels of care means that as long as she can pay for it, they will take care of her until the end, but of course, it will cost more as her care needs increase. She entered in 2017 at a Level 2. Now she's at the top end of Level 5. Soon she'll be a Level 6, out of seven levels.

I cling to my routines. I realize they cannot save me, but they give me comfort, a sense of false security, which helps whenever I reflect on the precarious of life, which I do daily.

As a researcher, I'm always reflecting. Given my current situation, I often reflect on life and death. Before I lose my ability to maintain my routines, I would like to plan my exit strategy. Knowing this about me, a friend gave me an information sheet about the efficacy of suicide methods. I thought that was very thoughtful. In this study, about three hundred people rated twenty-eight suicide methods used in about four thousand cases of attempted suicide according to their perceptions of lethality, time, and agony. You can look it up. I did. Just Google lethality, time, and agony, and it will pop right up. It's a 1995 study published in a journal about suicide behaviors.

If you are shopping around, the most lethal method, not surprisingly, according to this sample, is a shotgun shot to the head. According to this sample, that action would be almost one hundred percent fatal. However, about one percent of the cases would live, probably not too well after such a traumatic incident. Perhaps not even well enough to think, gosh, I wish I hadn't done that. I'm guessing. However, if you are in the lucky fatal group, you can enjoy a low amount of agony (5.5 on a 100-point scale) for fewer than two minutes. Not bad, as suffering goes. I know people who suffer a lot more than that just trying to balance their checkbooks.

If you are in a hurry, pointing the shotgun at your chest instead of your head will get you there a fraction of a minute sooner, but your odds of surviving go up a few percentage points. Darn. Not only that, it will hurt more too (16 points compared to 5.5 for the head shot).

If it's agony you want to avoid, overdosing on illegal drugs is the way to go. You can expect about 5.25 worth of agony on the 100-point scale, whatever that means. However, your time to die could be almost two hours, and you'll only succeed half the time. Which means you might live to tell your sad tale of enduring two hours of slight suffering before somebody saved you. However, keep in mind, this study was conducted way back in 1995, which means the opioid epidemic hadn't been invented yet. I'm pretty sure adding fentanyl and its ilk to the list of methods would knock shotgun to the head right out of the top five.

It's helpful to remember that the values are the respondents' perceptions about the lethality, time to die, and amount of suffering. As far as I can tell without paying to download the article, none of them had direct experience with the phenomenon.

Well, I'm off to visit Mom. If we are lucky, some reruns of the Three Stooges will be on MeTV. It's great to hear Mom laugh.

The Chronic Malcontent makes end-of-life plans

Howdy, Blogbots. How's it going? How are you doing on your end-of-life plans? Oh, you don't have any? Good for you, you eternal optimist, you. I'm sad when young people end their lives, whether or not it is on purpose, but as an older person who has lived a relatively long life, I respect our right to exit on our own terms, if we happen to be so lucky. I think a lot about how I would like the end of my life to be, especially after I visit my mother at the assisted living facility.

Last night, as usual, we sat on the couch watching reruns of M.A.S.H. I heard loud moaning coming from the hall. It sounded like what I imagine a cow being slaughtered might sound like. I ignored the din until a commercial break.

“What is that noise?” I asked.

“Oh, that's Rosy,” Mom said. “She does that.”

“What is wrong with her?”

“She's getting ready to croak.”

I was slightly taken aback at her word choice, but then I realized my mother has no illusions about what is happening there. People don't go to assisted living to recuperate, rehab, and return to their homes to live blissfully independent lives. It's a rare broken hip or leg who escapes from the nursing home. Everyone knows that these warehouses have one purpose: to make money by taking care of old people until they die.

Old people used to die at home, cared for by family members. Generations lived together under one roof. What changed? Women got jobs. Kids went to daycare. Seniors went to adult daycare. Very old seniors went into care facilities—what do we call them? Retirement homes, nursing homes, assisted living . .  euphemisms for warehouses designed to house nonproductive humans.

Mom isn't into bingo or crafts. She naps on her pastel-flowered couch between meals. The activities people, the chefs, the entertainers, the managers . . . everyone disappears by six o'clock, right after supper. The Med Aide turns the hall lights low. The staff start putting the residents to bed. By the time Mom walks me down the hall at seven, the place is a ghost town. I hear a few televisions blaring from behind closed doors. I see an occasional aide exiting a room carrying a plastic trash bag. I think I know what is in those trash bags: dirty adult diapers.

For the past week, the old woman in the last room down the hall has been having some incontinence issues. The stench emanating from her room is nauseating. My mother doesn't seem to notice. She sings our current favorite song, She'll be coming round the mountain, right to the back door. I must stop singing because I have to breathe through my mouth. It's either that or barf. This is what we have to look forward to if we are lucky enough to live long lives. Whether we age at home or in a warehouse, eventually the systems give out. Growing old is not for wimps.

I'm formulating my end-of-life plan. If I'm fortunate enough to have the mental and physical capacity to choose my end, I have some preferences. I won't share them with you; you might think I'm depressed or something. I'm not depressed. I try to live each day as it comes, stay productive, focus on being useful . . . but I have no illusions either. Like Mom, I know I will die someday. I hope it's not soon. I hope I can enjoy some warm desert air before I go. If I can, I'd like to choose the nature and timing of my demise. But nobody knows where, when, or how,  not for certain. The question, as always, is how do we want to spend our time until our time is over. Living is not for wimps, either.

It's not about me

I try not to think too much. It's my defense against cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance occurs when my body does one thing while my brain says do something else.

I was sitting in a meeting room last week, waiting for someone, anyone, to show up. I used the time alone to write in my journal, pondering the utter powerlessness I have over the end of my mother's life. I  know the outcome. I just don't how how, where, and when. I want to know so I can be ready. My body says prepare! Prepare to flee! Prepare for the end! Prepare for the worst! My brain says chill out, there's nothing you can do.

I write in cheap composition notebooks that I buy by the dozen at Target during back-to-school. I fill about one notebook per month with my resentful whining, pithy insights, and funny drawings. I have journals going back to 1995. I plan to bequeath them to my sister. She doesn't know that yet. She can recycle them after I'm gone; at that point, I presume won't care. Possibly I shouldn't care now what happens to them, but I have a vain hope that they contain stories that will someday make me rich. Or if not rich, successful. Or if not successful, published.

About 20 minutes before the end of the meeting, my quiet time was interrupted by a rotund short-haired woman wearing flowered pants and Crocs. It was Margaret, our treasurer. The group was supposed to have a business meeting to discuss how we wanted to disperse the funds accumulating in our bank account. Because only Margaret and I were in attendance, I figured why bother, save it for next month. What's the rush? My mind was definitely back in my notebook, writing about my mother.

Margaret shoved a financial report across the table at me. I ignored it. I started drawing a picture of a big-eyed nerd in my notebook (another self-portrait, as they so often are). However, Margaret was clearly vibrating with urgency. After making her wait just the right amount of time, I stopped drawing and picked up the report.

“Did we ever make that donation to . . . ?” She nailed me with a stare, as if it were my fault that some payment didn't get made. I'm not the treasurer. Jeez.

“I don't have any recollection of that,” I said, shrugging. I opened my journal and started cross-hatching some shading around the nerd's bulging eyes.

“Well, then, this is all wrong,” Margaret said, snatching the paper back. She stuffed the papers in her bag. She sat in sullen silence for about thirty seconds. I practiced deep breathing and cross-hatching.

“How's your Mom?”

“The same, slipping away bit by bit,” I replied.

Margaret sat forward in her chair. “My mother was in a nursing home for five years, hooked to breathing machines and feeding tubes because my sister couldn't let her go.”

I tried to gauge the emotion I heard in her voice and couldn't tell if she was sad or glad that her mother had suffered for so long. All I could think of is, wow, I'm glad my sister is in France.

“Sounds terrible,” I said.

“You get along with your Mom?” Margaret asked. 

“Yeah, now that she's lost her mind, she's actually pretty fun,” I smiled.

“You want to move to the desert, right?”

I nodded. It's no secret. She's heard me mention Arizona.

“Why don't you just go? Let your brother handle your Mom. Go live your life!”

I stared at her while I tried on difference responses in my mind. I had conflicting feelings. I wanted to defend my choice—eldest daughter, obligation, payback, yada yada—but none of that felt true. Knowing Margaret, she would have argued with my rationale. She's like me in that respect. She likes to stir the pot. I know a pot-stirrer when I see one.

After a long moment, I said what came to mind. “It's not about me.”

She reeled back in surprise. I could see her mind churning: How could it not be about us? That statement calls into question the nature of the universe and the purpose and meaning of existence. Aren't we the center of everything? Argh. I used to think so, but not any more.

Countering that narrative is the reason I have twenty-four years of journals a-moldering on five shelves in my living room. All yours, Sis!

Death is the new sex

Do you think about death a lot? I do. Could be the season (tomorrow is Halloween), could be the weather, could be the events happening in the country these days. My preoccupation with death could stem from all these things, but I'm guessing it comes mostly from visiting my mother every day. She just keeps on truckin'. I am impressed by the persistence of life. Human cells don't know the word retirement: cells want to keep working, even when they can no longer spell or remember what they had for lunch. They don't give up just because we, the human mind supposedly in charge of the cells, are tired of living.

Death is a relatively recent preoccupation for me. Like many people, I used to think a lot about sex. Well, love really, but let's not quibble. Getting it, giving it, getting more of it, getting it from the “right” person, or avoiding it, life was all about sex. And I suppose food and money, but food and money are just necessary ingredients to getting sex. For some, sex is about procreation; for some, it's about recreation; for some, look out for the devil's idle hands! I wasn't unique—for or against, it seems to me, many people obsess about sex.

However, if we are over a certain age, sex might seem increasingly distant and irrelevant. I don't think I'm unique in this regard either. In fact, I suggest death is the new sex. Now that I'm officially old, I think I am qualified to make this claim.

My friends who are my age or older used to discuss their relationships with me. As they learned to live their own lives, one by one, they have become single. With a few exceptions, they don't talk about relationships anymore. Now they talk about death.

“My friend was riding her bike and got run over by a garbage truck,” said a seventy-year-old friend who rides her bike a lot.

Another friend called me on the phone to tell me a story about her friend's suicide. Even though I did not know the person, I was both appalled and curious. More curious, really—I didn't care much about this person I did not know, but I was very interested to hear how he orchestrated his own demise. I wanted to pick up a few tips.

“He invited a couple friends over for the night, but made them stay in a separate room so they couldn't be held responsible,” she said.

“Couldn't he get a doctor's help?” I asked. This is Oregon, after all—Death with Dignity, 1997. We not only have the right to self-terminate, we can also get assistance.

“He wasn't dying, he was just in terrible chronic pain,” she replied. “He couldn't eat anything without excruciating pain. He endured it for six years and decided he'd had enough.”

I don't suppose it takes that much courage to choose an end to one's own endless suffering. Clearly, the guy had given life the old college try. I was impressed, though, by his careful planning. He wanted some help from close friends, but didn't want to implicate them in the event, so he sent them to spend the night in the guest room. He made sure he was lying on a lawn chair, not the bed, to avoid messing up the mattress . . . so thoughtful. Then he took three drugs—one to slow the heart, one to combat nausea, and the final, a huge dose of Seconal, which apparently does the trick. Hmmm. Where does one get a big dose of Seconal? No doubt from a doctor's prescription, like other controlled substances. Or on the black market.

I tried to picture myself scoring sedatives on the black market. Where exactly is the black market, I wondered. Probably off Hawthorne, where old hippies still lurk. Or in the Pearl. Yeah, in the Pearl. I hear those millennials over there are magicians at locating illegally obtained controlled substances.

“He wanted to watch the stars as he was dying,” my friend said wistfully. “And apparently the clouds cleared away.” I thought that was possible but unlikely, considering, you know, Oregon. We did have a stretch of great weather, though, unusual for October, so I guess it is possible. I wondered how she knew her dying friend got a glimpse of the stars . . . was someone perhaps peeking? I didn't ask her, not wanting to ruin her mood.

I've read that breathing helium is a gentle way to exit. Make a plastic tent over your head, fill it with helium from a balloon bottle, and drift away painlessly. That seems like a lot of work to me, and who will return the helium bottle to the party store after I'm gone? Plus, I'd need some friends to make sure I didn't try to exit the tent. No, too much can go wrong. My vote would be for fentanyl. Darn, I'm back to trying to find that black market. Sigh.

Well, like most Americans, I assume I have plenty of time to obsess about my demise. If I'm out of time, it won't matter. Someone else will have the tedious task of cleaning up my earthly remains. Not to mention, the clutter in the Love Shack. My apologies, in advance.