My beloved Piers,° Slept well, rose before dawn, ate, washed, dressed to drive up to see Leggero. If I could just get out that door . . . .
° But, can’t leave the house without passing the machine, the blinking red light.
° The Call, from my brother. Doctor, Hospice, Charge Nurse, the daily attendants--all agree. Mother is dying rapidly. Inevitably.
° Phone back. Well there it is, no denying, all the animal panic of the Wolf smelling his own species’s blood and hearing the specific whimpers of terror and pain.
° No denying. Rehearsal over. Live audience.
° (How many times over the last 3 ½ years has Mother been at Death’s door? Not a rhetorical question, but I myself don’t know the answer. Emergency Room, Intensive Care, some newer and fiercer antibiotic, some gentler and less distressing psychotropic. Ever and again at Death’s door, but escaping so many times that by now, who would believe it?
° On Hospice for the last six months, but who would believe it? That flareup of being at herself last November, complete sentences, smiles of recognition--didn’t I gmail Lettye that I hoped that wasn’t what it was in her own mother’s case, in so many cases anecdotally, the last flareup?)
° Gmailed Lettye. Prepare those two hymns (you know the two I mean).
° Phoned Charlene: Prepare those two hymns.
° Went into shock, drove up to Overton, smiled more than usual, jollied folks more than usual, was just a bundle of good cheer. Even more fake than usual.
° I didn’t feel a thing. It had been for real there for a few minutes, but now it wasn’t either real or not real. It was just locked in that compartment way back.
° And I felt the whole day as if I were fixing to jump out of my skin.
° Leggero offered what he could, said what he could.
° Vic catches me up on his own situation. Takes me back to those dreadful days of athome caregiving. “O how I suffered.” (To the extent that I’d rather Nathan paint my tonsils with toadstool juice than for me dementedly to give another human that same trouble myself. If not demented, I can prevent myself giving that trouble all by myself.)
° “O how I suffered.” The violence, the stench, the overwhelmedness.
° Only, Vic, who works fulltime, has not only his mother, but a physically helpless sibling as well, and not only does he not have the help my brother and sisterinlaw gave me, he faces the more normal situation of genuine obstruction and carping from his ablebodied kin.
° So I’m just shutting up. How easy I got off, as a caregiver. Barely a couple of years, really.
° Slept soundly till the Cat clawed my ear. Six o’clock sharp.
° Love, Giac.
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