The Losses Pile Up

I lost another family member this week.

 

This is the latest in a string of losses that’s been going on for more than ten years now. It seems that almost every year there’s another death.

This week it was one of my two remaining aunts, both sisters-in-law of my mother. Aunt Rita had been ill for a while but just made it to her ninetieth birthday before she was taken.

This is my mother’s generation, the slew of aunts and uncles I grew up with and loved. My mother’s five siblings and their spouses. Now there are only two left: my mother and her youngest sister-in-law.

My mother (second from left) with her sister Rita (far left) and her sisters-in-law Rita and Virginia

Of course, for the most part these were not unexpected as they all grew older. But a few of the losses were a shock, those in my generation, the ones supposed to be too young to die. A cousin. And, several years afterward, my brother. They were both fifty-five when they passed. And neither my aunt nor my mother ever really recovered from those losses. My mother’s sister lived only a year after losing her son; my mother’s descent into dementia accelerated.

We never lived very close to my mother’s extended family. They were all in New York and New Jersey; I was born in Illinois and then moved to Rhode Island. From here we were able to see our family more often, at least once a year, sometimes more. Yet that was enough to allow me to feel close to them. I was a terribly shy adolescent and didn’t have many friends, so my cousins meant a lot to me. I looked forward to family gatherings and enjoyed the company of aunts and uncles as much as of my cousins. And I learned a lot from them all.

Rita was an outgoing, happy person. I remember her enthusiasm, especially for the arts. She loved theater and music, loved New York City, having lived in the Bronx for many years. At parties she would always ask me if I had seen any plays, if my husband and I had been to New York City recently. She would talk about plays she had seen, in the city or in local theater. She spent many happy summers going to classical concerts at Tanglewood in the Berkshires. It was always fun to hear her talk about them. My aunts and uncles, whether blood relatives or by marriage, were all intelligent, interesting, and young at heart. I’m lucky to have had such a great family.

Now I have the dilemma of how to handle this latest loss with my mother. I visited her on Sunday, the day Aunt Rita died, and deliberately didn’t say anything. I know that she doesn’t remember that all her siblings have passed away, and she wouldn’t remember this, either, after the fact.

So do I need to tell her something that will upset her in the moment but that she’ll forget a moment later? Do I have the right to keep it from her, or am I obligated to spare her? Somehow it doesn’t seem right not to say something to her, but this is no ordinary case. This is a time when I need to think like dementia, a completely different state of mind. Is it really important that she know? At this point in her life, probably not.

Thinking like dementia is what finally taught me not to keep reminding her about my brother’s death when she would ask about him, trading truth for the relief of not having to see her face crumple and hear her heartbroken question, “why?” I learned to go along, to tell her what will keep her calm and contented. When she says she has to get home to fix David’s dinner, I tell her that his wife will do that. When she asks where he is, I tell her he’s working.

This situation is really no different.

Yet I’m planning a family party for her one hundredth birthday in August. She may well ask my cousin how her mother is doing. That’s a difficult spot for my cousin to be in. And we’re heading off to a family funeral for the first time without her. That will be difficult for me.

In the end I suppose the problem is really more mine than my mother’s. It’s about how I feel to be withholding such important information from her. It’s about the awkwardness of knowing what she doesn’t know. If it’s being dishonest, then maybe the answer is just that dementia has its own sense of honesty. Just as it has its own reality, which the rest of us have to accept. Maybe there is no choice.

Versatile Blogger!

Many thanks to Mary Beth at Pleasing 2 the Eye: http://pleasing2theeye.blogspot.com/ for this award! I love it! I'm late in accepting it, but that's not because I don't appreciate the thought.  I just finally had time to get this up and fulfill (at least in part) the requirements:

In a post on your blog, nominate 15 fellow bloggers for The Versatile Blogger Award.

              In the same post, add the Versatile Blogger Award.

In the same post, thank the blogger who nominated you in a post with a link back to their blog.

In the same post, share 7 completely random pieces of information about yourself.

In the same post, include this set of rules.

Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs.

So here are seven random things.

1. I am a passionate lover of art, but I have no talent.

2. I have written a fan-fiction novel, and one year I wrote a “mainstream” novel during NaNoWriMo. I’m still stuck in the middle of the second draft of the latter.

3. I love tea, hate coffee.

4. I don’t like seafood or steak.

5. I hated school all the way through high school. After graduation I took a secretarial course and worked for three years, then decided I wanted to go to college. I loved it, and I never really stopped going to school for at least twenty years thereafter.

6. At various times in my life I’ve wanted to be a writer (always), a jockey, a film critic, a historian, a photographer, an art historian, a librarian/archivist, and an editor. I accomplished the last one and am still working on the first. My ambition is to be a lifelong learner.

7. I am a city person. My favorite cities (besides my home, Providence) are Chicago, Toronto, London, and New York.

As for the nominations--this is the hard part. Not that I don't love a lot of blogs, but many of my favorites do already have this award. I've picked out nine deserving bloggers for the award and reserve the right to nominate six more bloggers to be named later, as I continue to expand my blogging experiences.

My nominations are:

My Child Is Very Advanced  http://mychildisveryadvanced.blogspot.com/

Michael’s Fishbowl  http://michaelsfishbowl.wordpress.com/

Empty House, Full Mind  http://www.emptyhousefullmind.com/?p=587

Crochet with Raymond   http://crochethealingandraymond.wordpress.com/

Alphabet Salad  http://www.alphabetsalad.com

Andrea's Andi's Book Reviews http://andisbookreviews.blogspot.com

and How to Laugh at Alzheimer's http://laughatalzheimers.blogspot.com

Passionate Pursuits: http://www.brendamoguez.com

Hearts in Fur Coats: http://www.heartsinfurcoats.com

I hope you all enjoy this award as much as I do.

The Simple Life? Do We Really Want It?

So many people talk wistfully about how they would like to be able to live “simply.” But if you think about it, what would a “simple” life really mean, and would we really like it? Did our ancestors in caves live simple lives? They had to fight and scratch just for survival; their existence centered around obtaining food, fighting others for resources, and just staying alive. Primitive societies were subject to all kinds of natural perils, diseases, and early deaths. And man soon learned that problems needed to be and could be solved, and there began the evolution of our complexity. We learned to build homes to protect us from the elements; to grow food; to form communities for mutual benefit.

I don’t believe humans were meant to live simple lives. Our complex, intricate brains suggest otherwise. We were meant to dream, to imagine, to create; to make metaphors and symphonies, algorithms and architecture; to reflect on our lives and those of others. Our brains are plastic and malleable; they grow through being challenged. Our hearts and souls grow through being challenged. We grow and develop through our intricate interactions with others.

Yes, with complexity comes stress, but a certain amount of stress is necessary to spur us on to invent, to solve problems, to see things that can be improved and improve on them. Without complexity of thought we wouldn’t have philosophy or art or literature, science or medicine.

I know there are times when we all would love to escape from all the complications of our modern world. My life over the past three years certainly has not been easy, and not a day went by that I didn’t long for something simpler, for some relief from the stress and strain of caregiving. Yet now that the burden has largely passed from me, I can see what I gained from it, in patience and compassion, in learning to stretch beyond myself to really put another’s needs first. And I learned about and became involved in the world of those with Alzheimer’s and other dementias and those who are working hard to care for these patients and to find palliative medications and eventually a cure. I intend to become more involved, doing whatever I can to help those afflicted and those who search for medical answers. Will this further complicate my life? Yes, somewhat, but it will offer rewards, and so does living in a complex world, a world in which medical “miracles” are no longer beyond reach.

Could we accomplish such things if we all sat in green fields all day watching birds fly? Certainly we need some days like that, but how much would we value it if it was all we did every day? We’d become bored and would stop growing. Maybe our cries for simplicity are actually cries for more balance in our lives. I believe that to survive and grow our species needs both--simplicity and complexity--in harmonious balance. We need to exercise our brains and nurture our spirits, not exchange one for the other.

ASH WEDNESDAY

This is not in response to any challenge. I wrote this a few years ago in memory of my brother. Still a work in progress.

David Lauble, 1952-2008

Ash Wednesday:

                the sky weeps,

and the loved one lost

recedes behind the gray.

No consolation on this day

                that begins the time of grief,

                the celebration of sorrow.

Black thumb brushes the forehead—

                we are all complicit.

The one who is lost to us,

                the one we need to find—

Black marks on foreheads

solemn procession in the nave

a low ache behind the eyes.

Fasting, abstinence—to go without:

                meat, forgiveness, love

When one you love is lost to you

                crucifixion looms,

                a black cross against gray sky.

     

     

Do Over?

Do-overs? I’m having one now, and it’s kind of a humbling experience.

My best client e-mailed me a couple of weeks ago, asking if I could edit the second edition of a book I had edited for them back in 2001. Technically it’s not really a do-over but a do-again, as the authors have made changes and added new material.

 

In professional and scholarly psychology books, references are done in what’s called the author-date style. In the reference list, authors of sources used in the book are listed as “Smith, J., & Jones, T. (2007)”. When the book author cites this source in the book text, he or she cites it as (Smith & Jones, 2007). Part of the copyeditor’s job is to make sure that all text cites match the references they refer to and that every cite in the text has a matching reference in the list at the end of the book.

In the first chapter I found eight “floating” cites—text citations without a corresponding reference. And when I went back to the published first edition, I found that they were also floating in that one.

I took a huge gulp.

Now there are three possibilities:

1. I completely missed all of these when I copyedited the first edition.

2. I marked them all for the authors to fix but they ignored my notes.

3. For some reason the cites were inserted after copyediting but before publication.

Number 3 seems the least likely, and of course I would like to believe that number 2 is correct. For one thing, I can’t believe I would have missed that many orphaned cites spread throughout a chapter. It’s sometimes easy to miss errors that are clustered within a short passage; paying attention to one can take away from your attention to the others. But over multiple pages? and the same kind of error?

Of course, there is still a fourth possibility: that is that my skills have improved over the past ten years. That’s a much more pleasant thought. After all, this client has continued to give me steady work, as well as compliments on my work. Besides, the rest of the text that I previously edited is in very good shape, so I must have done that well.

Maybe it’s a good thing that life doesn’t offer us do-overs. We might find out that things were far more complicated than we remember. Maybe the mistakes of our past should stay buried--if others don’t remember them, why should we?

Three-Word Wednesday

This is my first try at Three-Word Wednesday: http://www.threewordwednesday.com/

The words this week are angelic, foster, ruin.

I decided to try it twice. Comments are welcome.


I

Fate, the foster child of heaven,

inscrutable—

just when we may expect it

to lead us to ruin

will suddenly turn

and play an angelic chord.

II

 

No. I reject your angelic smile

and your eyes that foster trust.

I won’t be trapped by perfect love.

I’ll remain forever free.

You won’t ruin me.

Winter Walks with My Dog

On a cold bright pre-Christmas morning

the sun is irresistible.

It draws us, we walk toward it as though into it,

although it blinds us white.

A luminous milk-spill running along the sidewalk.

It entices her: she stops and sniffs at a spot of bright,

as though she could lick it up or dig herself into it.

It skips along a bare branch, she thinks she sees a squirrel,

and she yells and leaps, but it’s only the light,

the truth and the illusion.

At bedtime our walks

feel somehow less cold,

as though the darkness protects us like a wrap.

The city street is quiet as a country cornfield,

only a lighted window here or there

offering a sense of comfort in the life it holds behind it.

We are strangers in an old tale,

wandering through a wood,

hoping to come on a candle in a cottage window.

A friendly hand, a meal, a warm bed.

She and I move faster at night; there are no squirrels to distract her;

only the occasional stop to sniff at a bare patch of ground.

A subliminal hum in the air

only seems to deepen the silence. Maybe traffic on a distant road

or generators from the school building

or a transformer on an electric pole.

A blue light far in the distance, a lighted wreath hanging on a fence.

The traffic signal blinks, red, red, red.

A silhouette walks around a corner; the dog goes alert

and gives a little whine. An interloper on our serenity.

The world is deep at this hour.

We turn back for home, at peace with the night and the season.

[[All images from MorgueFile]]