Scaffolding II

In India, when buildings were built or repaired scaffolding consisted of bamboo poles tied together with twine, jute, probably, similar to baling twine. The buildings under construction were surrounded by imperfect squares, climbed by people wearing shorts with bare feet. It was quite remarkable, really, that these scaffoldings didn't slip, or collapse altogether. But then again, perhaps they did, for all the notice I made of them. After all, such accidents were, in a sense de rigueur.  "Sister," the servant says to me while I am eating my morning mango, "Sister, today, one bus accident. All dead." "What happened?" I ask. "One bus hit the wall. Everybody dead," he replies, his hand turning, fingers spiraling as if to say "and so it goes." And indeed it did. Indeed. Everybody dead. So, perhaps those scaffoldings did fall taking people with them.

How strange that seems, because scaffolding looks like such a fundamental structure, a structure that trusts that within in its temporary boundaries an enduring structure will be built. And yet, scaffolding will, when the building is completed, disappear. So, how interesting it is that as I watch a mind and a person dissolve, I envision the return to the beginning, that temporary structure--the scaffolding.

As Tom disappears, tearing down the past brick by brick, snatching the future and ripping the present to shreds, he becomes once again, the scaffolding with which he began. All so different from the man he was.

The difficult part is that his scaffolding was faulty, not only faulty, but so essentially flawed so rotten and diseased, chewed by termites, that while it looks intact, it is, in fact, dust. Step on those beams at your peril; they collapse, crisp and dry, leaving you waving your arms in free fall.

Ahhhh yes, but that is the family he grew up with, I begin to see, as I fall into unknown regions, feeling like each day is an archeological expedition of the mind. His is a family where a question about dinner turns into quicksand, the trap of a spider whose only goal is to suck the life out of her victims leaving a web bound shell as she moves onto the next source of nourishment. And that spider was, oh, yes, and is, his mother. A spider. An empty creature, existing only to prey and suck the life out of everyone around her so that she can realize some measure of existence. But she doesn't really exist, and can't, so there is always a void to be filled, and another victim needed to fill it. And thus is the scaffolding of his life. He has become his mother.

Last week I watched a spider in my window. A fly was caught in her web, buzzing and struggling, becoming more and more entangled with each wing beat. The spider danced down toward the fly, darting at it, moving away as it kicked its legs and became more entwined. Again and again the spider danced down, and again and again the fly fought its restraints, only to find that they became more secure with struggle and complaint. But still she taunted, that spider, pushing for total entrapment so she could fill herself. I imagined her laughing, her smile wide with the prospect of the fly's demise. And so it is with Tom's mother, and so it is with him. He stalks me, as he was taught, oh so well, and dances, and cajoles, and entraps with innocent sounding comments and then, grinning like a creepy ventriloquist's dummy, heads in for the kill, for the lonely pleasure of destruction. What they want, these empty creatures, is to fill themselves, leaving trophy shells entrapped in their webs, testimony to  only their hollowness and perceived triumph.

But the thing is, I won't go. I watch carefully for those rotten beams that look so sturdy and trust none of it. He is left to his scaffolding, but I am not climbing. Bricks are coming down one by one, the once-building a pile of rubble now, and his scaffolding teeters above and around it. But I am not taking a step; that scaffolding may fall, but I won't be on it. And certainly, most certainly, scaffolding does fall, but I am not going down with that mess, and I wonder if I will even notice when it goes, or who is taken with it. Deaths are easy, and scaffolding temporary. "All dead, sister, everyone dead."
Not me, though, not me. He's not going to take me down with him, even if I have to learn to stop beating my wings for a while.

Scaffolding

Just short--There is something interesting about dealing with someone--on a daily basis--who is mentally ill. The convolutions are so inexplicit; where there appears to be reason none exists, and the pitfalls are many. When I consider this, stepping away from it, I find that what is faulty is what I refer to as the scaffolding, that inner or outer mental framework that allows the rest of the structure to be built. If that is off kilter, or placed on an unstable ground then what is built inside it or around it will be similarly skewed. But then, it all looks so stable until one takes a step...more on these thoughts later.

Progress? Accomplishment? Me?

It is a hard road from saying, "I did my best," to believing it and letting it rest. But I think, at least for this moment, I am there. For so long Tom has been going on tirades, telling me all of the ways I failed, and failed him. For a long time I looked at him and saw how terribly unhappy he was, not knowing he had bvFTD (Behavioral Variant Frontal Temporal Dementia), thinking he was either a jerk or depressed, and wondered why, when I had tried so hard, had put so much into this marriage and into him, he chose to be unhappy. Why, I wondered with great hurt, was he not happy and so terribly unhappy? When he accused and told me all of the things I had "said" and "did not do," and "did do" I literally screamed that was not the case, screaming to assert that I do exist, that I did try, and that I was good to him. When talking is not heard screaming is the only way to hold onto some small scrap of self. But I hate it. And I should not have to do it. My children tell me I was very good to Tom, that I still am, and that I have gone far, far beyond what many, or perhaps even most people would do; that I have put up with way more than necessary and more than many others would. And yet, I couldn't find it in myself to know that. There were angles and splinters of doubt, and thus the scream, the "NO, NOT ME, THAT IS NOT WHAT I DID OR DIDN'T." The scream of self preservation. But tonight, when he started his onslaught I said I could not do this. He persisted, he pursued. I kept saying, "We have talked about this; I am sorry you feel that way; I can't do this every day; I can't let you talk to me like this," and when I could say no more I went out and sat in the car. I sat for just a few minutes, and started inside. "I will leave," he said, shaking fingers and voice at me. Admonishing--my fault again. I stood in the light on the porch, watched him drive away, then walked inside and said, "I did my best." I did. And while I feel sad, I don't feel bad. I know I did my best. I know it. This is not about me. I know that too. Know. Know it. And feel at peace. For now  anyway. Sad, but at peace. And that is progress, an accomplishment. For me.
And I know I will save myself.

Zombies and the wrong plot

There are some very funny things that happen living among the indigenous peoples here in the NEK, but an article in the local paper yesterday, front-page-above-the-fold no less, is one of the best stories I've seen in a while.

Since the Calwreck does not permit full access to articles without a subscription, yes, you heard me right there, subscription needed! I give a synopsis below. What good is an online subscription to the many of us who buy the paper for fire starting anyway?

In Sutton, a town north of me, a town that as I recall is so small that the steeple on the church does not have a light, a family buried the cremains of a relative in the wrong plot. The family, it seems, wanted to bypass the $100 charge to the sexton for burial, so they performed a do-it-themself-job. Like many such jobs, all did not go according to specs. DIY's are the reason for Home Depot and Lowes, and yes, I am aware of this, but I don't think they have a burial section in their stores, much less burial experts on hand to give advice. And so, things went wrong. The cremains, fortunately in an urn, were buried in the wrong plot.

Although the burial was in October the situation came to light just recently, and was made public at a Select Board meeting this past week during a meeting to discuss snow plows. It seems that someone casually told the sexton they were sorry they had not been able to attend the burial in October, whereupon the sexton said she was unaware of the burial. Yikes! The cat was out of the bag, or perhaps the urn.

The Select Board--erroneously? unjustifiably?-- took responsibility for rectifying the situation. And perhaps they should have, because, it seems, they have experience with burial problems in Sutton. An unspecified  time ago a casket was not buried deep enough to withstand the vagaries of frost and it surfaced. The article incorrectly says,  "there was a burial that wasn't deep enough and it was coming up through the surface." Sorry Calwreck, the burial was not buried, and the burial did not come up through the surface. Edit, puh-leese!

Nevertheless, Select Persons  (SP's) Spencer and Solinsky were concerned then that Sutton would be over run with zombies. And, so I posit, SP's Spencer and Solinsky, that perhaps, as in any good horror film or book, Sutton was over run with zombies, and continues to be so even under your watch. After all, as players in the situation you would not know. We consumers of the horror genre do know, however, and we watch, holding our breath and biting our nails, as events like the wrong plot urn burial unfold, knowing for sure that The Truth and Disaster lie ahead. Because, Sp's and other officials, you do not know who among you is a zombie. You do not even know if you are zombies.

Zombie behavior is a fairly good clue to zombie-ness, however, and the SP's are exhibiting extreme zombie behavior in regard to the wrong plot conundrum. There is a simple solution: get the family to dig up the urn--unless they want to pay the sexton this time & if the sexton does un-burials as well as burials--and bury it in the right plot. The one next door if I understand correctly. After all, it was an honest mistake. Take a ride through any suburban neighborhood in America and there are acres of houses that all look alike. Anyone could go into, and perhaps even move into, the wrong one. In such cases the wrong occupant would be informed of their error, pack up their stuff and go to the correct domicile. Clearly this is what happened in Sutton, minus the easy solution.

Instead, Sutton's SP's are investigating the correct "protocols" through the Secretary of State's office, even though protocol was not followed in the urn burial to begin with. They are waiting for answers, but, they say, they do not want to wait too long, in case the rightful occupant should require the plot. Oh, yes, zombie behavior--look for protocol when a human solution would do just fine. All that just to appear human. But how do you know, SP's that the Secretary of State is not a zombie too? Those are the things that happen.

Just dig up and rebury the urn. That's all. Think of the benefits. No need for packing, and those who missed the first burial can come to the second one. Just make sure the hole is deep enough, and do it soon so the real owner of that plot doesn't come a knockin'.

And such is life among the indigenous people (zombies?).

Wrung Out

So here it is: Whatever I say is returned as something  I didn't even think, much less say. A whole world is endlessly constructed around me like an intricate web, or scaffolding, any refutation rejected outright. And with each piece I try to tear down reconstruction begins all over again. The same conversations are played over and over and over and any alternate version denied, and I am denied because I am told what I did what I thought and what I said. No matter what I do say I am told I said something completely different. I have been told things about the past that are complete fabrications about what the experience was, effectively dismantling the past brick by brick by brick, and when the dismantling is done the past is rebuilt and recounted in a way I don't recognize. The future I expected not long ago has been taken from me, but so has the past. And so I find small, concrete things, like a child's favorite stuffed animal and try to imbue those things with a memory I can go back to and hold on to. Literally.

It is hard enough to be the sole repository of memories, but when the one person who could and once did also remember reconstructs those memories into an unrecognizable fiction the very basis of the past becomes slippery and hard, if not impossible, to hold onto. This is an exhausting process, living with someone who has literally lost their mind. He thinks he is fine, that his thoughts are intact, that it is me who needs to be helped. Through most of it he sounds rational and calm, but the pieces don't fit, and the logic is faulty. At the end of these endless conversations in which all words enter a black box and come out as something else, and are irrefutable, I feel as if I have been wrung out, rolled over, flattened and plastered to the floor.

Words, scary words, words that need to be said

INSANITY. MADNESS.

These are words that make people flinch, shy away, divert their eyes, and say "but....don't you think....everyone sometimes...lots of people..."
But these are words that need to be said. In the saying, if there is enough of it, the fear is reduced, the mystery, black and white pictures of people chained to walls, hair long and greasy, hanging in hanks, the sounds of screaming, open distorted mouths, archaic machines, cold baths. Sybil. Horror films. Places none of us want to visit. There is no colour there, just dusty shafts of light, cold concrete, and the screams, the echos, the Nurse Ratchetts, and all of those people who are flawed, and have gone wrong, so wrong that we cannot bear to even imagine it. For these are minds, after all, that have taken a wrong turn, broken. And how do we know that maybe each of us, each one of us won't fall into that pit. Ah yes, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Snake Pit. The pit of maddness, of mental labryinths that we cannot escape. What is there to save us from that fate? And so we look away, and we say, "yes, but...."
Yes, but...it may be your neighbor who is living with a person, perhaps a person they once knew and loved, who has gone, frankly, quite mad. And the problem of the mad, of the insane, is that, yes, just as we all fear, they have an amazing need to take others with them, and are quite good, particularly if they are truly insane, at doing so. So, the trick is to not go down into that pit, to not trip, to not begin to think that the world the insane person constructs, however reasonable it seems (even if distasteful or abhorrent), is real, and to not think that is a world you belong in.

Not abandoned

I have not abandoned the blog. It has been a very long month or so, culminating, sort of, in a visit with the neurologist on Monday. In short, the PET scan confirmed the diagnosis of Frontal Temporal Dementia, and the doctor talked a bit about that. No treatment, no reversal, no slowing down, no idea of how far along this is, and no idea of what the prognosis or trajectory will be. Nice. Real definitive.
The month preceding this appointment was truly a house of mirrors, a month of shifting floors underfoot, unexpected pitfalls and traps. Very difficult, and will be described in subsequent posts. Living where another person constructs a reality for everyone around and keeps trying to draw them in with insistence and seeming logic is a mind bending experience. Keeping my own psychological ground is exhausting.
Signing off of this brief update to drive through a grey so very November day.

Life. No Insight

So, here's what I hear almost every day. "Living with you is misery. Being in this house is misery. You make me feel like a piece of shit, like crap, and it has been that way for years. You constantly berate me, and won't let me do what I want. it is just miserable being with you. I don't know why you are doing this to me."
This can come out of the blue, because I am on the computer doing some work or reading emails, because I had a "game face" not sure what that means, because I disagreed with an opinion he expressed about something on CNN (disagreement is also met with, "I do know things. I really do know what I am talking about, you always tell me I don't know what I am talking about and this is why there is no conversation."), the perception that I am upset or angry. I have tried different approaches: calm tone, no tone noncommittal responses, offering my opinion, angry tone, rebuttal...all come to the same thing. "The misery factor with you is unbelievable."
He insists I turned the children against him so that he would have to go to the Dr. There was nothing wrong, but I convinced the children there was and so he went to the Dr. and now he is diagnosed (more diagnostic stuff to come in Nov.) with frontotemporal dementia  FTD
There was something very wrong before he got a medical opinion, we just did not know what it was. The issues were clear to the whole family--everyone but him. 

House of Mirrors I

I am posting this as I write it, because there are a few posts, maybe all in this one post, maybe in different ones. But consider it a draft and a work in progres.

 How to describe the indescribable? The totally unimaginable, unfathomable world of living with an insane person? I can't fathom it and yet I am living it. I walk into a house every day and don't know what it will look like when I walk in, what it will look like from minute to minute, and what part of anything is real. It is so disorienting that I feel completely off kilter; as if the floors are slanted, or not, as if the wall ahead may not really be a wall, but instead, a mirror, a fun house mirror in which I stare at my hand, longish fingers, slender, but reach that hand out yo meet the reflection. Hand reaching out to hand, but when the fingers meet the hand I see is short and square, wavey as if under water, or a different colour, or maybe not even a hand at all, but some sort of distorted claw, the foot of a raven, perhaps, or a three toed sloth, or maybe even something that is not appendage, such as a dandelion gone to seed. And then the mind does that torque thing, the thing that feels like a rope being twisted back and forth and turned inside out, making a two dimensional object into  three dimensions, three into four. These are the mental mechanics that occur when driving up a road and a car is coming straight on, and the mind flashes through all reasonable possibilities--I am on the wrong side of the road, the road is really narrow here, making sense in the reasonable world of what is not reasonable. And so it is, reach out, look in the mirror, look in the reflection of the reflection of the mirror, get lost in the reflections, but each reflection is different, so are they reflections at all? And which one is the real one, and the mind screams to hold on to what it knows is real, to what it knows is true, screams like an animal dying in the woods at night, grasping at anything, grabbing for substance, for affirmation, but where is affirmation to come from in a house of mirrors, and what is to be believed? Each image beckons, each is seductive, enticing one to grasp onto it, to trust, but then something happens, a flash of light, an almost undetected movement and uncertainty takes hold, thankfully, because to fall into those traps is perhaps to never get out. And that is annihilation.

Strange Days

Too tired to post, too wrung out, too discombobulated. Will do so later in the week, post on living in a house of mirrors.

Strange, so strange.

Uncertainty

PET Scan Friday, Sept. 24th, follow up appointment November 16th--6 weeks. RU Kidding??? 6 weeks???

Note: I do not do well with uncertainty. Whatever there is, I like to know; I like to at least think ahead, even if things change. Thinking is doing. I don't like having what feels like a void surround me--if one can even be surrounded by a void--so the fact that the next appointment--the appointment at which information about some sort of something will be imparted--is 6 weeks away is excruciating....it is like this...
Life without boundaries is not a comfortable state.
droves of  leaves fall from trees
swirling in updrafts before giving over to the inevitability of gravity
dancers felled mid pirouette
they scatter on late year grass and gravel roads,
tribute spread before emperors.

Yet, I am completely unable to picture next fall.
(a year from now, so much can happen in a year)

the first snow, first hard frost, first tentative ice in the stock tank,
even the end of the day tomorrow are unimaginable.
no, not quite. they were once certain but are now obscured, and even assurance of the inevitable is unconjurable,
as if I lost the ability to see ahead or to even know that there is something ahead.It is like reaching out to feel a muslin curtain only to have it dissolve between finger tips and blow away. dust. dust so fine it can't even be felt.
looking out through water on a windshield in a heavy rainstorm
waves and tones of grey shot through with occasional flashes of red and yellow

fall was crisp last year,
the winter all blue and white and not too cold
good snow
full of laughter that continued into spring
a reality based in thinking that things seen were things known
(a year ago, so much can happen in a year)

And so, here I am now, waiting and waiting and waiting for what? For answers, for something that will tell me or at least hint at the length of this road. I want to know how long it will take for him to dissolve entirely, and how much of him is gone. I realize that will not be given as an absolute, but something is better than this absolutely nothing.
There are plans that must be made, things put in place. That can't happen without some sort of guide as to what lies ahead. At some point he is beside the point. Where there is little to nothing that can be done, and things will progress as they will, it is more about the rest of us than about him; we can change us, we cannot change him, or affect or alter his situation. That is why I need to know something.....so, Wednesday I called the neurologist's office and asked them if they could please give some information about the scan before the visit even if just an outline. The nurse called back quickly, and the doctor the next day. I was not here for the call, but at least there is something that will come rather soon. A much better feeling than seemingly relentless unknowing.

Unmet Expectations, Step One

Friday--PET scan

So, on arrival to the hospital he wants to ask where the place is. "There's a sign," I say, and set off. There is no need to make a deal of these things, or subject them to discussion; they are already enough. Too much. On our arrival at the check-in desk the check-in person says, almost singing, "I have a cute bracelet for you," reaching across the flat surface, placing the bracelet around his wrist, which he simply extended. His passivity annoys me even more than the check-in person's comment and tone.

It is beyond me why people in hospitals so often treat patients as if they have regressed to the age of 3 or 4 and are not simply ill. God help the person who ever calls me sweetie. Moving on...when the tech person comes to get him she has a cheery look on her face, one of those supposed to make the patient feel comfortable, although I find it rather ghoulish. I refrain from comment. "So, when should I get him?" I ask, figuring on the 2-3 hours outlined in the information sheet. "I'll have him ready for you in an hour," she says, teeth with the smile. "Uh, what?" I ask, "an hour? Just an hour? Are you sure?" And her face no longer looks so cheery, the smile is folding fast and annoyance  taking over, the kind of annoyance one has for a parent who can't make the mid-day school play because she works; the kind of annoyance that lets you are not doing the so-called "right thing."

"You look disappointed," she says, as if I have ruined her party by being insufficiently grateful for the quick release. "I had things to do," I say in a trying-not-to-be-too-testy voice, "but oh well. I'll be back," and the look she gives me lets me know that probably on some sheet or computer file somewhere, wherever family members are rated, I will get a black mark. At least one. Selfish? Uncaring? Self centered? Unsupportive? All of the above? Who knows, but this is only, I know, my first step on the bad family member road. Bad wife, bad spouse (and he is such a nice man). All because I am not what was expected: big smile, "great, I'll just stay here then, wasting an hour of what is probably the last warm day until July--and July if I am lucky--in the weatherless halls and waiting rooms of the hospital." Ooops, guess that is not quite it either. I feel like she is expecting me to greet him with a tray of warm cookies and a glass of milk. More likely I'll nip out and take some of my anti-anxiety medication with my coffee if I even have time for coffee now, because I feel like I can't breathe.

These expectations, real or perceived, are very, very stressful. Chalk it up to my Episcopal (culturally so at least) upbringing, stiff upper lip, carry on and all that, but the pressure of expectations EXPECTATIONS is crushing me. It is like a boulder pressing on my lungs, pressing the life out of me. After all, I am not really a bad spouse. On this particular occasion there was no real need for me to take him to the hospital, medical or otherwise. I took him because, specifically because,it seemed like a long day and he had come home from Santa Fe late the night before.And I had planned a day for myself that I was looking forward to.

The expectation that relatives of ill people will suddenly, with diagnosis or impending diagnosis, give themselves and their lives over to the fact of the illness is appalling and unreasonable. And that to not do so is more than appalling, it is akin to murder; just because one person in a family is ill does not mean that the lives of all of the other people in the family should or have to become that. Our social expectation that this is so, and that not doing so is "wrong," or "uncaring," or at least subject to disapproval is to negate non-ill family members altogether.

Why is this considered the only "good" and "right" way to care for a person in this society? Just because a person does not choose to sacrifice them self on the altar of another's illness does not mean they do not care. I do care. I am sorry my husband is ill. I am sorry for him and I am sorry for me and for my children, and sorry for everyone who cares for him. But my life cannot be about that, because then I would, most certainly, have the life pressed out of me. And I care for myself more than that.

PS--There will be more on this topic--for sure.

So here's the deal...

Okay, so I have posted a few times, but not so many (I hope) that the blog is incomprehensible. I think I can finally explain. There is something about explaining, about telling that makes things real, often even more real than they are and so this has taken a little time to be able to say.

It should be pretty clear that my life has veered off (of something, from wherever...) and become an unasked for off road event. Not that I like interstates, not that I can imagine ever using a GPS because I don't really mind being "lost," since some of the finer things in life are discovered when lost, BUT....couldn't there at least be a single sign, even one in the far distance, too far away to read even, a single colour in the landscape that I recognize, or one object on my tile floors that I know, know in my heart, and really trust I can count on to be where I left it when I reach for it? Just one, one tiny thing? Guess not.

When I started this blog, that is to say, registered it or whatever that is called, and put on a picture and prevailed upon my son to give it a name I didn't know what it would be. Not that I do now, so don't be misled. What I did know was that I had reached beyond, so far and way beyond the end of my proverbial frayed rope that I couldn't even see the strands. But, I was maintaining, and not too badly really.

At the time father-husband, as I refer to him now, was going off the rails, or so it seemed, and had been for some time. We were all exhausted, frustrated, angry and at a complete loss as to what to do. This was not all grim, mind you, there are many sort of funny parts if you have that kind of humor, and I do, and perhaps for that I should be thankful. Anyway, anyway. After all sorts of travails and adventures we got him to a dr and some testing, which revealed that he did not have a psychiatric disorder as we had thought--although the symptoms may be the same, so try to wrap your mind around that: he acts crazy but he is not--but an organic issue involving the frontal lobe, which a neurologist subsequently diagnosed as Frontal Temporal Dementia/Frontal Lobe Dementia. Not a good thing, not at all. All of the symptoms that had crept up over a series of years (me obsessing over trying to figure out when, precisely when it all started, to no avail) and finally reached a critical point now made sense. Not depression, not just being a jerk--FTD or FLD, characterized by personality changes: anger, inability to see the effect of behaviors on others, increasing detachment, lack of affect, and it goes on.

Does a diagnosis change anything? Maybe outcome and trajectory but not the immediate. No. The behaviors don't change, the effect of those behaviors on others doesn't change and so it goes.

And so goes the blog. Funny that it is "star-crossed," which, until I recently looked it up, I thought had a positive connotation, a sense of fate, and other worldly karmic meant to be-ness. But no; I found out recently that it means ill fated. That may be, but I prefer my definition, however faulty--or not. (I don't give in easily) Perhaps this "salvage," whatever it entails, will result in something. But for now, and maybe for always, since I have never seen myself as a results person, Star-crossed Salvage is a search and sort through disparate pieces, particles, shards and shreds. It is a story of an unintended off road trip, not always comfortable, and unmapped. Because it is off road it is not linear, and not consistent: a smooth area may at any moment turn into deep sand, snow, a boulder field or a ditch. As for the stars? Stars sparkle, they are distant and seductive, they swirl and are deceptive in their light when we look up at them. And we wish. If we look hard enough we will see the space where our fact resides, or so we like to believe. And we think that if we look hard enough we will discern it. I hold no such illusions, but perhaps secretly, that hope.

So that is the deal, so to speak, and here is the blog. Star-crossed Salvage. I am looking around but I don't know what I will find, and thus, not what I will write or will be read. I love off roading, but not so sure about this trip. Usually there is a plan, a destination of sorts, but not this time, and that was not my choice. Nevertheless, here I am and as I said, those stars are deceptive; they promise insight, but there is no telling what they will deliver.

Box Canyon

There is no way out of this box canyon.

Someone put a lid on it and the mouth is filling with water. I am not sure  how quickly, but most assuredly the water will come right up to and beyond where I stand. On reddish sand that crunches beneath my boots, next to a cactus with long spines & a greyish green plant with feathery dry leaves and brown stems.

Frozen in an attitude of movement.

The plant grows. Swept up against a rock and across it, brown trunk contoured to the planes of those grey hard surfaces, leaves splayed away from the direction of the water that once flowed over it under it and around it, leaving memories of eddies and whirlpools. Small violences.  Needled foliage like so many small outstretched fingers splays beyond the roots.

And I fathom the plant's near drowning.

Trying--in the wake of that liquid onslaught--to hold on. To the world it once inhabited & find a stability other than sand and roots and a reach for the sky.

There is no way out of this box canyon.

But the walls are warm and textured, and the sun filaments dusty pink flowers stretching into the breeze.

Measuring Life

Deaths, I would have told you, measured my life. Was it before C died, or around that time? Wasn't that the year R died? And indeed, deaths have punctuated my life like irregularly spaced holes in a belt. Friends, most of them, the first died when I was six and so was she. One for every decade. Good friends, five decades, five friends.

But yesterday, walking the dogs across a grey and cool fall field, I thought that perhaps it is in fact dogs that have measured my life, provided those intervals for memory, tick marks of passage. There have pretty much always been dogs, and they have always given comfort and do now. When needed most a dog will lie still and allow a tearwet face to bury itself in  her neck, will look worried and lick a face, and will allow a person to lie beside them, face to face, breathing the same air. They always know, dogs, they always know and they are always compassionate.

Silky, the lab pye dog we got in Calcutta (I arrived home from school to have a servant say, "Baba, mummy brought one e-small dog. Black." and I ran upstairs and running around the table was Silky, her curly tail wagging.) When my parents were unfair, or so I thought, I would take her to my room, "Come on, Silky," I would say, putting my arm around her and we would lie together on the bed, me feeling as if she were my only friend.

When my father died there was Kali, a daschund, the second, Lizette had joined Silky in our Calcutta house. Kali liked to have her head on the pillow, and she was small, but could sit in laps and lick faces in times of need. She was there for an extended period of need, and never failed those who sought her out for comfort.

Toto, a Chesapeake, was there when my friend R died. Not a characteristically demonstrative dog, she let me bury my face in her neck fur and cry all I could cry. Her compatriot, Chloe, was good for the same, and so they absorbed some of the pain of that loss until I could not stand to feel that pain any more.

And so now, as I feel so sad, so very sad, and as all of those past losses roll together like a slow wave with this newest and so very present loss three dogs are there for me. Wiggles with his worried face; his sweet brown eyes look into mine begging me not to feel so sad, and he licks my face, watching me all the time. One evening this summer I took him out to the pond to swim, but instead he ran around, kept getting back into the car and out again, coming over to lick my face as I cried by the edge of the water. Hot Scotch, the newer Chesapeake, lets me hug her and rub her back, and she twists and turns with infectious happiness, and gratefulness that she was rescued and she is loved. She then jumps up, her golden eyes looking into mine and runs off. Who could not feel better after that?

And then there is Georgey, the bull mastiff who acts like a toddler usually, but when tears are present he lies still beside me, and I put my arm over him, and he is warm, and his nose breathes onto my face, and we breathe together, and fall asleep, often sharing a blanket on the sofa, and we sleep, and we are at peace. He for giving it, me for receiving it.

And so, I see my life measured in dogs. Better dogs than deaths, most certainly, and such certainty brings them into the present, all those dogs, here and gone. And that is a happy thought: A life measured out in dogs. The dogs would want it so.

Constancy

Ahhh, so if you look over there, right there on the floor--and be careful of the dust, it will shred your soles--under the scrap of green silk, under the scratches on the table where R and I drank Ouzo and danced in high heels, yes, just there, on the Calcutta marble, that is Baby Cousins.
Baby Cousins is my oldest and most faithful friend. I don't remember the day I got him, or the day I named him; he has always been there and he has always been mine, and I his. He was and is always the perfect size. In fact, he is perfect in every way. His tiny sock body was held close to my heart, and under my chin through heart wrenching childhood moves, parental slights and the meanness of brothers and girls. He went on all of my trips, I think, traveling with me across several continents, the softness and smoothness of his little self always in my pocket waiting for my clutch. A well educated fellow, he went to college and grad school.
Baby Cousins has been there for every death, his small self absorbing tears and sobs, and kisses. And he is with me now. He has always fit perfectly in my hand, although I have been told that as a very young child I carried him in my mouth.
He has suffered too, my beloved Baby Cousins. A dog chewed off one leg and both arms, and his nose is but a pit, much like the leper on Chowringhee Boulevard in Calcutta. Whenever we drove past that man my mother would say, "Oh, look at that over there," pointing out of the window opposite the noseless beggar. That was, of course, our signal to look at him, hoping to see what, just exactly what, was inside that dark hole where his nose had left a vacancy.

But Baby Cousins, like all things loved, is perfect. He still fits in my hand, and can be squeezed to my heart and under my chin, and he will, just as he always has, absorb endless quantities of tears and remind me that there are some things that really are always there, even if they look a little different. Maybe it is those treasured things that remind us, if we let them, that things will be okay again even as life lies in splinters. And that is what we hold on to, for knowing that fits just perfectly into a palm, can be pressed against a heart and perhaps even fill it.

Wishing for an Ordinary Day

My wish is for an ordinary day. Just that. An ordinary day. One of those days that goes by without comment, and without remark. A day that does not begin with a strange sense of not wanting to push toward awakening, followed-- before it can be redirected--by the ambush of realization that there is something terribly wrong, that life has taken a really, really bad turn. Oh, yes. My life feels empty. It feels so empty and I am so sad and so angry and to say it all hurts is to diminish what overwhelms. After all, how does one deal with a husband who has been diagnosed with dementia, a terrible type of dementia, no less. All that is "new" here is the diagnosis, the words of the neurologist, who said, "frontal lobe" and "dementia" in the same phrase. Three small words, words that don't change the reality of the past, oh, three to five years of living with a person who slowly withdrew, who got angry more frequently, and more angry with more frequency. The person who once laughed often laughed less and less until I realized he did not laugh any more. When was that last laugh and why do such things always pass without notice: the last time a baby breastfeeds, the last day that same child or another is toothless, the last time a puppy smells like a puppy, the last day of all green leaves before the first one turns in the autumn. These things happen without notice, and yet they are the monumental things of life. Really. These are the things on my tile floors covered with debris that remain intact, small and beautiful and perfect, only I can't find them, no matter how hard I look. No, those three words do not fill the infinite emptiness of my life that is lived alone, and do not restore the hopes and wishes and expectations I had for what my life would be, or who I would be right here, right now. I would give the proverbial "anything" for an ordinary day. A day where nothing happened, but everything did, and the entirety of it passed without notice.  A day like that would be a gift so wondrous that when one comes my way sometime again, I will take note. But I doubt that I will notice the last not ordinary day, and this time will pass, its passing unremarked upon, and sink below the horizon.

Tile Floors

Here: it is, my life. In shards and pieces and scraps. Some the size of two cupped palms, others atomic dust, scattered all across the horizonless floor. Look. The floor will change as you survey the wreckage.  It is the grey and white marble veranda floor in Calcutta, the beige kitchen tile in Belmont, my red Mexican tiles in Vermont, high gloss granite in O'Hare, the clear glass of an elevator...all the hard floors I have ever walked. Hard floors where things that fall shatter and scatter and splinter and turn to dust. Always the dust. And then comes the wind, or the sometimes someone who scoops up some of the pieces, places them on a blanket, gives them a toss and leaves them to fall back down in different places. So then I have to check and check again to see what is where, if what was intact still is. And that is exhausting.

There is no direction in this vertigious, ruined landscape. And so I am lost in a tale of what has gone before, but even that is subject to the faults of lone memory; memory as untrustworthy as thin ice covered by snow. What looks smooth and inviting will take you down and trap you and you will suffocate. All in an unnoticed instant.