TO SEE HER SUFFER

Yesterday, for the first time in nine days, I visited my 92-year-old mother. We have all had some kind of illness, and I have stayed home, first with my own illness, then with my husband's. But Mama's has been complicated with a bad case of shingles. She is in incredible pain and the medicine the doctor gave her hasn't kicked in yet. Her skin, from her breast to her spine, is mottled red and black and she cannot stand for more than the merest whisper of fabric to touch her. I went to the health store and got something called Shingles Rescue, and she finally trusted her own fingers to apply some of it. She even took some of those tiny beads from a blue bottle that specifies relief for "intercostal pain" under her tongue. She never wants any pain relief because pain reminds her that she is still alive.

She doesn't talk much now--this wonderfully alert woman who last week wrote her weekly article for the newspaper--but she said this: "When I wake up, I always say, 'Thank you, Lord, for this day, and I think I'd like another,' but now I just say, 'Your will be done.'"

Having had a much milder case of shingles, I sympathize. I am asking for relief for her. Amen.

I LOVE YOU, AL
It has been a hard lesson. At my age, it should have been easier. I have studied it, taught it, believed it, defended it. But sometimes I didn’t practice it. Now I think I will.
Al would turn 91 years old on April 1. He came into the family late, marrying my aunt Raye when they were both widowed and close to retirement. I lived hundreds of miles away for several years, and really didn’t know him very well. But when I moved closer 15 years ago, I saw what the rest of the family saw: a crotchety old fellow who talked about health foods and exercise and didn’t hear well enough to let anybody else contribute to the conversation. Signs of Alzheimer’s were appearing, and it became harder and harder to converse with him. Mostly, we just didn’t bother. Raye said he didn’t make many friends, so we just let him be. We tolerated. As someone said, “Well, he’s Raye’s husband so I won’t be rude to him…” With a stride of about 2 inches, whenever we had a family dinner, we had to wait for him to get there, then just mostly forget his presence.
I went over there a few times, but he never seemed to know who I was or that I had been there before. He was still hard to talk to, hard to understand, and he kept a loaded gun under his pillow and worried that somebody would break into his house. So I visited Raye and tolerated Al.
My sister-in-love and I told them that we needed keys to the house in case we or EMTs had to get in there to help. We made copies, but Al just kept putting his keys back in the locks on the inside, making our copies useless. We put up a key hook by the door, explained this was for their safety, and he said he understood and put the keys right back in the lock.
Raye recently had knee surgery, so I took my turn going over to help out. I stayed at the house with him during the surgery, doing some housework while he sat at the table reading tabloids and going over decade-old bank statements. At one point I passed by and saw a headline: “My Wife’s Family Is Driving Me Crazy!” I laughed and asked, “Al, did you write that?” He paused and said, “No, my wife’s family is all the family I’ve got.” I passed on by with the laundry basket and tried to forget what he had said. Later I sat down with him and urged him to tell me about his family. He said he was the last of his family left alive, seven siblings already dead. He talked about growing up in Cairo, Illinois, where his father supported his family by working in a grain elevator. Life was pretty good in Cairo.
Al also said he was afraid somebody would break into his house, but probably not, because nobody would want him. He said nobody loved him and he wished he could just go on and not be a bother to anybody. I put my arms around that frail old body and said, “Well, I love you, Al, because you’re my uncle and you love my Aunt Raye.” Still conditional.
The next day or two when I was there, he was happy to see Raye getting up and walking to the bathroom. He said, “This will give her some confidence.” Then he pretty much stayed in his room, mostly sleeping in the lounge chair by his bed. I looked at him a time or two, but he seemed to be sleeping peacefully, and I never went in to look at him more closely. I didn’t touch him.

If I had, I might have felt a fever, or noticed his shallow breathing. But later my brother went over to find him half undressed, frozen in position, and still alive but not responsive. The ambulance took him to the emergency room, where they found he had both bronchitis and pneumonia. That’s a lot for a 90-year-old man to overcome, especially when he feels useless and unloved.
I’m sorry, Al. If you make it back from this, I am going to be sure you know that you are loved. And I’m going to be sure that others who feel as you do stop feeling that way. Because I’m going to stop mouthing the words and feeling the duties, and I’m going to love you. Not because you love my Aunt, or because someone else goes to church with me, or I feel like I ought to. I’m just going to stop closing myself off to people who are troubled and thinking that I’ll get around to loving soon.
Thank you, Al. I’ve discovered that my heart breaks for you. And maybe only a broken heart can truly love.

On Boredom....

What is it like?

Not to have
dreams to dream on
plans to realize
ideas to work out
paths to follow
roads to travel

hidden things to seek
found things to treasure

funny things to laugh about
sad things to cry about
joy to sing about

It must be the foretaste
of death.

Friday was absolutely beautiful. Temperature close to 60, sunshine, blue skies, perfect day to work in the yard. Daffodils are up about 6 inches and the peach tree's buds are swelling and fuzzy. But it's still early February.

ODE TO A PEACH TREE

Fuzzy buds are swelling but
Peach tree, don't you know
The winter's hardly over--
We'll still have ice and snow.

Last year, too, you hurried
and bloomed before 'twas time.
Blackened buds, miscarried fruit,
no summer taste sublime.

Oh, please ignore the sunshine
and recognize the date--
Summer's fruits are lovely,
So, peach tree, please, please wait!

I am staring at a blank screen, well sort of blank, wondering how you start a blog. I don't have anything to gripe about, except maybe my foot hurts, and that doesn't seem interesting to anybody but my doctor and me. And my husband has been fighting cancer for nearly 9 years, but he is handling it so well and loves me so much, I feel ungrateful for complaining about that. My children live too far away, but thanks to email and telephone their busy lives still allow time to communicate with me. The house--too big for the two of us--is paid for and we are ready to sell it and move in to town where social and medical lives would be more convenient. I have thrown away most of the food I amassed after 9/11, so even with this horribly long campaigning I must have found more faith in our political system. I have quit my job because I was tired of it and felt like my 65th birthday was possibly a signal that I should do something new, or nothing. So guess what! I'm going to write. I've always known I could and have had a bit of success at it.

So if anybody responds to this, we can exchange ideas.