Saturday, December 29, 2018

the turning: vigil / aftermath


"Your mother has taken a turn . . . "

Eyes closed shallow breathing. Words into her right ear. A hum a chorus not a groan an affirmation on each exhalation some sort of yes. The right arm rising not quite flailing. Calls and farewells held to her ear. Softly hold her hand down her right hand the nails done pink the other day by Adrianna. Holding hands. Warm yet warm blood coursing. Who the child. I had clasped her hand such that her skin so papery reddened near her ring. The right arm fitful the left arm still the rest of her stilled. Her chest slowly heaving. The pulse in her neck. 

"Turn! Turn! Turn!"

That song. The Book of Ecclesiastes.

"It is written . . . "

Circle of prayer. Our right hands raised in benediction. The aura of presence. A surrounding. An upper room on the ground floor. Us. An us.

Unable to get the words out at first my throat my heart.

Whispers into her ear.

The paperwhites, the poinsettias.

Kiss on the forehead. Kiss on the cheek.

The lamp. The vigil the night. Now turned toward us. Slower breath. Her tongue caught between her dry lips never saw that before not her custom. The morphine.

Nearing midnight my hand nearly numb let go her hand our hands let go. The blanket from Evelyn to cover her the cozy covering she so loved. Warm still warm. Her chest slowly heaving. The pulse in her neck. Slower.

"I love you. Good night." Not good bye who knows why.

Morning becomes mourning.

So cruelly rigid unmoving hollow dry so angled. 

So infinitely other than mere hours before.

Kiss on the forehead not her forehead anymore. Cold. She is gone. To somewhere there here anywhere everywhere. Other.

Can't stay in that room.

Exit.

Into the hall into the world this new old world turned.

One less leaf. 

Wednesday, December 26, 2018

The First Last Christmas


The nurse practitioner had recently assured me: this would be Mom's last Christmas, not merely because she is 102. Her heart is failing, she's not eating or drinking much, the end is near. It is the fullness of time, her time. People say, "I'm so sorry," but I choose to look on the unsorrowfulness of her having lived a full life (her past participle hovering now between present and past), her current comfort, the relief, the letting go. But I understand they don't know what else to say. So, I knew it would be the last Christmas. This did not make me dour or gloomy. Instead, it magnified my visit and vision, and slowed me down. I looked at the sidewalk and the building entrance more acutely, marking it for gratitude now and for memory later. To my surprise, I learned she had already eaten lunch at Oasis, the dining hall. I was a tad disappointed not to lunch with her, as we did on Thanksgiving, but oh well. As I walked the several hallways to her area, I saw a woman slumped over, sitting in a wheelchair in front of the nurses' station. Could that be her? Kind of unusual for her to be sitting there, not lying down in her room. It looked like her. It was. She was nodding off. I tapped her right arm. "Mom, it's me." As suggested by her aide Nicole the day before, I brought her a comfortable pillow, one with a soft and plush texture, like the blanket one daughter had given her and the other daughter had given her as a sweater. "Who's this for?" "It's for you, Mom. How do you like it? It feels nice, right?" She felt it and enthused about its softness. "Who made it?" "I got it at the store. It's for you. I got it at Marshall's." "Thank you." "You're welcome. Merry Christmas." I drew up a chair next to her and sat in it. Then I popped up and got a tissue and tried to clean some eye gunk in her left eye, though it's the right one that gets closed from gunk because she sleeps on that side. The dry tissue didn't work. I talked to two nurses or aides in the hall; they said I should talk to the nurse in the office behind the desk. She used baby lotion or something with a moist cloth or paper towel; each eye; it worked. I felt she could've been more gentle, but then maybe it wouldn't have worked if she had been. I sat a little while and then popped up again to get her cold apple juice with a straw. She loved that. I gave her the straw three or four times for sips. "What are you doing after this?" "I'm going to go for dinner at Ethan's. We're going to have turkey. There'll be six of us." "When are you going there?" "At 5:30. Maybe I'll take a nap first." (Maybe?) "How are the roads?" "They're fine." "You're going to Ethan's. That's nice. What time?" "5:30." "You're having turkey?" "Yeah. Remember, I made it many years when Beth had to work. It's not so hard. People make a big deal over it. The gravy's the thing, the hard part. You had the best gravy of anyone, Mom. The best." Her eyes brightened. "Yes, oh yeah." "One time, was it in Stamford, we didn't have any Gravy Master and you were looking all over for it. All you need is a few drops." "That Gravy Master is the secret ingredient." 

A family down the hall had a golden retriever with them. I importuned upon them to stop by. I knew she'd love petting that dog. she did.

"Well, I'm going to go, Mom. Do you want me to take you to your room to lie down or do you want to stay out here?" "I'll stay here." I kissed her on the cheek and then again on the forehead. "I love you, Mom. Merry Christmas." "Merry Christmas. Thanks for coming, for always coming." "You're welcome. Why wouldn't I? Glad to do it." Our eyes locked. I walked down the hall, but not before waving to her and she to me, as if we were in the departure lounge at a bus station or airport. 

After the nap, I headed, solo, to Ethan's house, at 5:20. I felt but tried to ignore a low-grade hum of loneliness, sadness, and dreaded what-if-ness, not about Mom but about me and my journey thus far and today in particular. I feared a low-grade hum turning into a full-blast bass note. Approaching my son's house, I felt the evening darkness descend, the cold air blanket downward. This could be the last Christmas for any of us. Who are we to say? Who could be so cavalier or breezy to say otherwise? Sure, I'll be the oldest there, but we know what can happen in the blink of an eye, rudely disrespectful of age or station. And if a year later, we were absent, any one of us, or more, we would give the world to have this back again, pay any price, sell our souls and honor, anything, just this one time.

The shimmering snow crystals in the frozen, star-specked moonlight on the lawns to the left of the sidewalk. The town's bright holiday lights twinkling up ahead to the right. The patter of my footsteps. The strands of ice on the steps leading to the door. My hand on the railing. The barking dogs. The glass panes in the front door clouded over, frosty, from the condensation and warmth inside. 

Sunday, December 23, 2018

sign language; or, zen koans


IF THE DOORS ARE OPEN PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THEM CLOSED

IF THE DOORS ARE CLOSED PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THEM CLOSED

IF THE DOORS ARE OPEN PLEASE DO LEAVE THEM OPEN

IF THE DOORS ARE DOORS PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THEM CLOSED

IF THE DOORS ARE WINDOWS PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THEM AS DOORS

IF THE DOORS ARE WALLS PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE THEM CLOSED

IF THE DOORS ARE WALLS PLEASE OPEN THEM

IF THE WINDOWS ARE DOORS PLEASE UNLOCK AND OPEN THEM

IF THE DOORS ARE DOORS PLEASE DO LEAVE THEM OPEN

IF WALLS COULD TALK WOULD DOORS HAVE EARS

IF EARS COULD TALK WHAT LANGUAGE WOULD THEY HEAR

AND IF A TIMES B EQUALS C SQUARED WHAT IS THE COSINE OF CUPIDITY 

Friday, December 21, 2018

flash point


He sat in his car across the street. Not exactly his car. The bank's. Which is true for most people. He was in the parking lot at the corner, the Sunoco station with the convenience store. It's rare if not impossible to find a gas station that sells only fuel. This one had diverse offerings: candy, dip, cigs, flavored coffees, flavored creamers, beers, sodas, bottled waters (including those with artisanal ingredients of purity, longevity, superiority), chips, cookies, beef jerky, hot dogs, hamburgers, sandwiches, lotto and scratchies. He hadn't bought gasoline. He was about to text a reply to someone, anyone, when he looked to his left, across the street where the strip mall offered cigars, coffee, discount groceries, and ultra-cheap everyday stuff. DOLLAR TREE. Its green display light kept flashing the AR. It made him wonder if it was a personal coded message directed at him, just him, that he was the only one seeing this. He kept staring at the flashing sign. He did not stare at it before he recognized it was flashing on and off, like you see in film noir movies but it's typically a movie marquis, a hotel, or an all-night restaurant for the lonely and lost in Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" 1942 painting. And now he was hypnotized if that's the word. The blinking AR was just a distraction. Visual background noise. The flashing AR was the metronome for his trance. And his trance incessantly said DOLL TREE. That's what he saw. That's where his personal coded message was, where it had to be, in the words DOLL TREE. If it was said that money doesn't grow on trees, surely dolls didn't either. Not Barbie dolls or living, breathing beauty queens sometimes called dolls but not so much these days. What about TREE? Something to aspire to, to climb? Someone inordinately tall? Someone with great stature, fixity, and bearing? He shook his head, as if it were swatting flies. He shook his head, rousing himself from a reverie. He changed the mental channel. He went back to texting. But he forgot what he was texting, forgot to whom, and forgot why.

Thursday, December 20, 2018

wait let me think


I look at the face. I can't remember the name that goes with it. This is frustrating. Annoying. I study the face. Try harder. No luck. It happens more and more. Old age. Or worse. Or it happens to everybody now and then. But I know that I know the name. To rewind, I know that I know the face, from somewhere. Not just the name. At one time the name was married to the face in my consciousness. So this is not a case of prosopagnosia, which I blogged about years ago. That's when you can't recognize a familiar face, often because of brain damage. This isn't that. I'll call this nomenprosopagnosia. That's a half-witted attempt to coin a useful word for this, based solely on my knowledge of nomen, the Latin word for name. See, four years of Latin is paying off. One of the reasons this annoys me is social. I do not want the embarrassment of asking someone their name if I clearly should know it. Save me from the possibility it's someone I know extremely well, say, a relative. I understand this can happen in high-stress situations, especially at introduction time. That's normal. The fear of that very forgetfulness happening heightens the pressure and the stress -- and the likelihood of a socially fatal error. Spread the net wider and you have a name-pool of friends and colleagues or former friends and former colleagues (some intimate) stretching all the way to mere acquaintances. I am willing to bet that this last category, mere acquaintance, is the most common breeding ground for this nomenloss, this nomenfright. Call it nomenamnesia. A memory trick often works for me. It's alphabetical. A. No, it's not Andrew or Amanda. B. Nope. Not Beth or Bob or Brenda or Billy. etc. Do the same with C, D, et cetera. You might get lucky early in the game. You might say to yourself, "E. Emily! Yes, that's it!" Why does that work? Or how? Do neuroscientists know? Sometimes, though, that little trick doesn't work, not even after you've gone through the alphabet, perhaps twice. And then you're back to Square One. No-Nomenland.

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

. . . and counting


. . . years, that is. you're as young as you feel. hate that expression. or: 70 years 'young.' puhleez. but yes better than the below-ground or for that matter above-ground funereal pyre-combustion-result alternatives. okay, so officially old. i'll take it. tho' not sure what changes occur regarding my juvenile habits, wants, desires, impatience, attitudes, pretensions, fantasies, poses, memories, laments, hopes, or dreams . . .

Monday, December 17, 2018

hey, sir!


Walking to the Boulangerie bistro by the coffee shop, I was in a hungry hurry. (The name of the place begs for a spooky underwear promo every October.) "Hey, sir!" I heard but kept walking for a step and a halt. "Hey, sir!" is the perfect intro for a panhandler or evangelist. Someone asking me to sign a petition, or to sell me something. Ask for exactly $1.73 to get a bus ticket to Auburn. As if. Keep walking. I was annoyed, mildly irritated. But I stopped. I stopped and turned. Did he say it twice? Was it an undertone of sincerity blended with urgency that stopped me in my tracks? "Did you drop this?" Or was it: "Is this yours?" A young professional. White shirt and tie. Who wears a white shirt anymore? Even in my corporate life I hadn't worn one since the 1990s. When our company president wore white short-sleeved shirts with a tie, I'd mock him. "Lee, what do you think this is, NASA in the Sixties?" He never wore one again. My interlocutor was Asian American. In his twenties. Is this what they call a millennial? A white envelope sat on the just-rained-on sidewalk. I picked it up. Or he picked it up and handed it to me. I saw right away that it was a bill from St. Camillus, the long-term care facility (nursing home). For Mom. A bill that had come in that day's mail. It must have slid out of my grip holding my laptop portfolio with my other mail, nothing of consequence. If so, I'd've handled it all more carefully. "Thanks." Now I can't piece it together. Did he say this from his Mercedes (Audi? Ford? Saturn? black? white?) with the window rolled down? Or was he walking in my wake? But my thanks was real. I detected an honest civility in his act, an uncommon courtesy. What if it was something terribly important, not just a bill that would be re-sent? An atmosphere of gratitude washed over me. No, seeped out of me, from within somewhere. I could have kept walking, I could have ignored his entreaty. Likewise, he too could have ignored what he saw, something dropping from a stranger's personal effects. He didn't ignore the seemingly minor mishap. Neither did I ignore him, ultimately. My irritation, disturbance, "rude" interruption took on a different complexion and turned things in a different direction. And I hadn't even bought my hungered-for lunch yet. 

Quotidian encounter. 

Small miracle.

Sunday, December 16, 2018

thesaurus rex regina


Now you search the books in vain for a better word for lonely . . . 



adrift unmoored broken islanded hungry stranded abridged severed cut fractured vacant zeroed parched drowned halved kenneled asunder rent null quods torn unned x'ed entrailed gutted lost jonesed moitiéd wasted only yearning  
 

Small Acts



being there

absent

being here

AWOL

cold sheets crumpled

small ax chipping

away the last word

unsaid curses

speaking volumes

splaying fingertips

smack

one needle's

kissless breath

a death

a broken branch

brakes the cliff

as two strangers

across a room

clutch hands

almost

stepping off a Manhattan curb

taxi's concussive whooosh

you twelve feet behind

14th Street Union Square

a drop of blood

an aneurysm of ecstasy

the hot spinemelt of lava pleasure

purchased in vein

no dial tone

to text

my year of living dangerously

around the corner

around the bend

of a prisoned purse

pursued and purloined

before locking the door

after praying to

the dried rose

I once gave

her

you

Friday, December 14, 2018

robo-crush


'I would take care of it and it would take care of me.' -- Old, frail-looking man in green parka on subway, "Roomba Nation," Patricia Marx, The New Yorker, November 26, 2018


Take care.

Caregiver.

Command.

Performance.

Artificial.

Intelligence.

Limbs.

Artificial.

Heart.

Emotional.

Intelligence.

Feeling.

Virtual.

Reality.

Me.

You.

It.

Take.

Care.

Give or take.

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

palimpsest people


I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.  

Joan Didion

82. He crashes his head onto my chest. The baby blanket draped over my shoulder. Will it hurt him? The rhythmic pacing and patting. The ardently sought burp. His eyes on mine. And when he cries it's full and all and now and forever. To him. I know, he doesn't know, it'll pass. Travail will not last. Baby, be my metaphor. The sobs of relief and joy into the bathroom towel before they came home. Triggered by John Lennon's Beautiful Boy.

54. The first-grader whom Mrs. Nutter called "Sunshine," memorialized in a photo lost, for now. The one who forever onward remembered "left" as the windows side in the classroom and "right" as the wall side with the entrance door; he who idolized Willie Mays but more so decades later cherished fatherly arms wrapped around him, secure, swinging at a lobbed baseball, this being the hugs and outward love signally recalled; he who played priest with a blanket over his shoulders, awed by the breathless fear of eternal hellfires and brimstoned purgatory mirrored. bookended, by pristine absolutioned after-bath crisp sheets purity. 

73. Soho. A few pounds sterling. Drunk. Another drink. A few more pounds. In for a dime in for a dollar. Another drink. More pounds. How much is that in dollars? Her name was Tanya.

77. At the altar, at a cathedral no less the velvet kneelspace of the prie-dieu not cushiony enough. Her back hurting, she in Renaissance array. Vows. Not a word of the sermon called to mind. Mom and Dad supposed to bring up the "gifts" but a foul-up, a confusion. Have and hold. For richer or for poorer. Sick or well. Unto death do they part. No incense. No asunder. No consummation, not here. The exchange of rings. Looking into the eyes. The hand places the ring on the finger. The public kiss. Not the consummation. The communion, even for Protestants. The beard, gone. The suit, not a tux. 

86. The splash of liquids, fluids, on the other side of the draped cloth. Here. It's a scissors. Here. What? Take the scissors and snip. Tough meat, that umbilical cord. Want to keep it? No, thanks. The fierce and roaring wind the night before. The nub on the bottom of her foot, subtracting from a perfect Apgar score but not hindering the strength or stamina or stretch of a soaring ballet career. Looking across the glass, at the latest crop of newborns: there, there, no, yes, there there that's her his beaming.

79b. Noon. Up the dark wooden stairs, slowly, hopefully, warily. Raise your hand. Stories. It was just stories. J. was there. Drunk in the middle of the night at a party months before on your side of town. He was not drunk now. Serene and sober. Just stories. Only an hour. The hot bath at home. New water. Lighter. Buoyant. Walking up those steps. And back down again.

97. Kentucky Derby. Waiting. Timing contractions. Chinese takeout from Seymour Street. Her walking, her nausea, her vomiting. What? She had taught childbirth. What was this? Walk halls with her, the IV tubes trailing. Sleeping in the room. Sunday morning. Here we go. Is this possible. This is physically possible. The slow miracle. The shrill cries. Hold her. New. She's okay. Newer. They're okay. Newest. We're okay. More. Even more. She. Her.

95. Let's try this again. A chapel we never returned to. Warm and windy for November 11. Veterans, we joked, of previous wars. Was the priest drunk? What did he forget? There was talk. The kids said we came back, driving in a November blizzard, peppy. Was that their word? Peppy. 

79a. Out there, the life of the party. They were all laughing. The Rolling Stones' song about the Puerto Rican girls. Miss You. Carrying on as if it were a dance floor. What a time we were having. We were all laughing. Shitfaced. Almost falling down. In the bathroom, in there, staring into the mirror and proclaiming and praying: You can't do this anymore. You can't. It's gonna kill you. You can't keep doing this. You... What am I gonna do? Back out there, the life of the party, the ringleader, manic. What a carnival. A circus. Closing time.

Sunday, December 02, 2018

The Clementine Chronicles


The morning rite: one seedless succulent clementine on the tabletop, on the wood portion, near the slate. Sit in high-backed chair. Steaming black tea, half and half, no sugar. Heidelberg Cracked Wheat, toasted, three slices. All three with butter. One with Bonne Maman Red Raspberry Preserves, French. Clementine, Algerian. The Clementine Challenge: peel it uninterrupted, unimpeded in one fell swoop, one unbroken peel. Has yet to happen. Its taste less acidic than the typical, larger orange; its size, small; its nine morsels edible. (Nine edible portions? Sometimes, for example, ten. And if nine, here's a mathematical conundrum: when I break the sphere in half, 50 percent, how do I get two equal halves [4.5?] without splitting one morsel in half, squirtiness and all?  The peeling: paper towel underneath in case of juice release. Aren't polishes for wood citrus-y? The first challenge is the start. To puncture, to break through its skin without squirt or puddle. Skinny dipping. Take a fingernail to break the barrier. Pierce it. Then curl, roll, peel, delicately. Okay, so the disrobing is interrupted. Breakage. It won't be one exciting unpeeling with a presto! ending. Nevertheless, when all is said and done, what, six segments of peeled skin which, if fitted together, comprise a fruitful Rorschach gestalt structure. Four or five on an exceptionally good skin-spin cycle. Is one perfect Pauline peel possible? Who can say? Then, a reversal: the inability to puncture, to get things started. Is it because of closely clipped fingernails? A difference in the batch of clementines? Temperature or humidity? Try a small cut with a knife. Bleeding of clementine juice (not blood orange's). Droplets on the tabletop's wood, the paper towel yellowed, urine-colored yet still brightly and refreshingly citric. The worse wound: the whole peeling venture has run amok! Portions cleaved with skin intact. Take the fruitflesh to mouth and peel that way. So unaesthetic. So sloppy, drippy, and skill-less. Such anarchy. What happened? Who knows. But the next morning, after the words up to this point, a refreshed peeling venture. Softly, with pressure, pick at the outer layer of the outer layer. As if performing a patient surficial scraping. Indentation. Breach. And then, ah, the most exquisite peel-curl yet: inches long, liberated from the sphere, fragrancing the morning air. Five peeled-skin segments but really four if the crumb-sized bit is not counted; three if the large-crumb-sized bit is discounted. Mostly one, an elongated scroll, a clementined unfurling in all its clement mercy. Maybe it was the switch to Smuckers. Most likely the recast attention afforded from the previous draft, the one that had ended with "What happened?" And did anyone perchance mention the pruriently pleasing uncleaving of the crescent sections of edible fruit, a secret, quiet, and delicate undertaking requiring the dexterity of a surgeon, a lover's tender patience? 

Words, and Then Some

Too many fled Spillways mouths Oceans swill May flies Swamped Too many words Enough   Said it all Spoke too much Tongue tied Talons claws sy...