John Swinburn

All the sincere expressions of sympathy and messages of love and support I have received since my wife’s death have been immensely helpful and heartwarming. I plan to respond to every one—and I will—but I do not have the energy to do justice to how grateful I feel for each and every message. Comments here—responding to yesterday’s short message—along with emails, text messages, Facebook comments, etc. reinforce my sense that I am surrounded by good, loving people. But beyond that, the knowledge that my wife, a very private person who kept so much to herself, meant so much to so many emphasizes her impact on the world in which she lived.  To all who reached out and who read these words, thank you from the bottom of my heart. On day, and I hope it will be soon, I will have the strength to connect directly and express my appreciation personally.

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I spent the day yesterday inside my house. I wanted to feel the sunlight I could see from my windows and I wanted to experience the crisp air, but the idea of enjoying it for even a moment so soon after the death of my wife felt utterly wrong. The gloom of the previous day, with its thick fog and grey skies and constant drizzle, seemed more appropriate to the circumstance.

As if the weather somehow reflects our emotions. As if the texture of each day should somehow mirror the texture of our moods. As if the entire universe should somehow echo the chaos in the tiny space surrounding our brains.

We sometimes give ourselves more control and more credit than we are due. How many hundreds of billions of times has the universe proven that the world goes on without us? As important as we are to microscopic clusters of those like us in our “nanospheres” (I borrowed and adapted the term), the universe constantly and consistently disproves the butterfly effect, in spite of my multiple arguments in support of and to the contrary over the years. We’re too small and the universe is too big for any one component to have an impact on the entirety. But because we understand only the part we can conceive of, the butterfly effect is absolutely true in our experience. In my house yesterday, I controlled the weather; it was a gloomy, dreary, foggy day. I provided the rain and the mist.

I did not sleep well the night before and by mid-day the lack of sleep was getting to me. But I managed to call two of my wife’s high school friends to give them the news. I’d met both of them in years past and knew how close my wife had been to them, even though they rarely communicated any longer. Friends from church came by with food for my dinner (which I discovered later was a wonderful sausage-and-tomato-based soup). The morning telephone experiences drained me, so some time after noon I relaxed in my recliner to nap, where I slipped into a reasonably restful sleep for two or three hours.

My sister-in-law, who had come by for coffee early in the day, came by again in the afternoon. We chatted, played Words with Friends, and tried to emerge from the rain and mist I had created in the house.

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I tried to watch another episode of Mindhunter last night, but promptly fell asleep. I find the series quite interesting, but mental fatigue seems to hold sway over interest.  A half glass of wine could have contributed to my drifting off so early, but generally a half glass of wine only encourages me to finish the glass and pour more. Not last night. At 10:30, I awoke and put a half glass of wine in the refrigerator. Perhaps I’ll try wine for breakfast. Probably not, though.

Predictably, I awoke last night around 3:00 with a need to pee. Fortunately, the dream that preceded the waking did not have enough of an impact to ruin the night. My wife and I had parked in front of a small meeting venue on the waterfront. I wanted to look at the place; my wife opted to stay in the car. When I went inside, a woman asked if she could help me and I said I wanted to see the meeting rooms. She showed me two meeting rooms, both with a wall of windows on the waterside. I asked for rental prices. She pointed to five artificial trees in pots in one room and told me the cost was one hundred dollars per tree to rent the room. In the other room, there were six small trees in pots; the cost to rent the room was fifty dollars per tree, which translated to $300 for the room. I told her I would think about it. She asked for my name and contact information. I made up a name and address and spent quite some time drawing elaborate letters and numbers on a sheet of paper. I then asked to use the restroom. The room was tiny; when I tried to close the door (which was a wrap-around door), I had a hard time closing it because I had more circumference than the room. Just as I started peeing, some guy pushed his arm through the space between the door and the wall and laughed, causing me to list to the side, peeing all over the leg of my pants. Then, as I looked down, I could see that there was a hold in the floor where the toilet should have been and there was a man’s face below, looking up at me just as I let loose with a stream of pee. Somehow, I got out of there and to the car to drive away. The dream ended just as I awoke with an urgent need to pee.

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How can one’s mind mix such utterly disconnected sensations? Though the dream was not at all funny to me (I was quite worried that the men were going to try to hurt me), it was not in keeping with my mood during the day. I think our minds slip in and out of control; mostly out. We cannot corral our emotions and thoughts enough to make them acquiesce to our desires or expectations. Unless, of course, we have been trained to discipline ourselves to such a great extent that the natural expression of ourselves is bound and gagged and left to wither while the expectations of society are drummed into us.

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I should take a shower today and I probably will. But not now. This morning, I will be lazy and will not punish myself for it. I will try to relax for awhile. Later, after my possible shower, I will see about returning my wife’s borrowed wheelchair to the Village Loan Closet. I will finish my online grocery shopping. But I may do nothing of the sort. Time will tell.

There’s a hole in the universe, an empty spot that cannot be filled.

My beautiful wife, the woman whose smile was more magnificent and more genuine than any other I have ever seen, died last night.

After I got the call, I called her sister to ask if she wanted to make one last visit to see her; she did. So we drove to the hospital and went to see my wife. It was the last time I will ever see her.

I have so much to say about my wife, but I am so empty that I cannot put words down.

One day, I hope soon, I will write about her. In the meantime, I will contemplate a permanent emptiness and the incredible beauty that once filled it. And the treasure inside me that my wife created simply by loving me and allowing me to love her.

Just a matter of time. As if time were almost inconsequential; a byproduct of experience  rather than the framework within which experience is defined. It’s just a matter of time seems so dismissive, so insignificant, so brusque and crude. I prefer time will tell, though I won’t claim I have never used the harder, less sensitive phrase. Time will tell gives time its due; it inculcates time with more meaning and more power. More gravitas. The former phrase suggests predetermination. It robs circumstances of choice. But time does that, anyway, doesn’t it? Maybe I am making too much of a simple turn of phrase. But everything has meaning now.

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When I watch my wife sleep now, I have to acknowledge she’s not really asleep. She is in a coma. She cannot be wakened.  A nurse explained to me yesterday that the process of organ failure has begun. My wife’s kidneys are shutting down, her other internal organs are slowing their processes, her lungs are beginning to fill with fluids, and her extremities are cooling and changing color because her heart cannot pump sufficient blood to them. To the nurse, these processes are natural end-of-life occurrences requiring matter-of-face explanations. To me, they are excruciatingly painful reminders that it’s just a matter of time. Time will tell, indeed. No one can tell me with any accuracy how much time remains; no one wants to guess, I suspect, because a guess might trigger a response from me that neither I nor anyone else could control; an emotional breakdown uncomfortable for anyone in close proximity to witness. I cannot control my tears. I tried when my father died and when my mother died and when my sister died; I failed each time. There’s nothing wrong with tears, but their power can be shocking to people unused to seeing them shed in such volume.

I spend time writing about emotions in the hope my cold, analytical assessment will enable me to control them better when they inevitably come. But, really, I know better.

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I have so much to do at home; financial recordkeeping, filing, bills to pay, checkbooks to reconcile, etc., etc., etc. But, despite intentions that I will do that work each day when I come home from the hospital, I don’t have the energy. I received a long, thoughtful, and extremely welcome email from a church friend this morning, explaining her experiences when her daughter and her husband died. She described the same fatigue and the same assessment that, after a long day at the hospital, those important tasks no longer seemed important. That message made me feel like my lethargy, at least, is not unique and may well be natural. In my case, on some days (yesterday and today, for example), my lethargy started before I left the house; the bed remains unmade, though I might convince myself to make it before I leave this morning.

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National and domestic news is of no interest to me this morning. I feel a little like, if global thermonuclear war would break out before 8:00 a.m., that might be precisely the kind of stimulant I might need to just go back to bed. Just stop the scrapping and get to the meat of the fight.

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I had a conversation last night with a friend who is, like me, happy with her own company and the company of her spouse. I wonder what happens with such tiny units when one of the pair dies? I hate that I will find out. I am glad my wife did not have to find out, though five+ months in tiny hospital and rehab rooms probably gave her more of a taste of it than she ever would have wanted.

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I think my mind is splitting into a thousand little pieces, with nothing to connect them. More coffee may repair the rifts.

Over the years, my writing has made frequent reference to “context.” Understanding context, in my view, is absolutely crucial to interpreting experience. Without context, reality is experience seen and felt through gauze and vapor and smudges of translucent oil. That sounds suspiciously like a dream, doesn’t it?  A hazy mist revealing bits and pieces of recognizable elements against an utterly indistinct background of confusion.

Even dreams, though—their foggy images and sounds and emotions partially hidden behind layers of bewildering “meaning”—are contextual. Last night, the context of my dreams was clear to me ever time I awoke from one. In every one of them, I thought I could see my wife in the room with me or next to me, only to realize the vision was imaginary. And in every one of them the circumstances of the dream were somehow related to my wife being in hospice care. The details of the dreams, as ethereal as they were, are too complex and detailed to worry with here. My point is that the dreams emerged, in large part, from the context of the life from which they sprang.

The dreams were not extremely distressing, but neither were they comforting or reassuring. In the hindsight of wakefulness, they seemed representative of confusion and uneasy fear. God, why am I trying to interpret my dreams and their context? There is no value in that. Especially now. I should allow myself to dissolve into a flood of tears. But I am afraid if I did, I would never be able to reconstitute myself. No matter what I do, I will leave a million uncorrectable mistakes in my wake. I could spent the rest of Time trying to fix them; it would be pointless.

It is odd, I think, that I have absolutely no belief in a life beyond this brief one we have here on Earth, yet I feel an urgent need to eliminate the damage my foibles have done to her before my wife leaves this life. So that, just in case I’m wrong, my mistakes don’t stay with her after she goes. I would not have had these irrational thoughts a month ago. I am allowing myself to indulge in ridiculous ideas.

I spent part of the morning yesterday reciting/reading Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 to my wife. She could not hear me read it, I fear. The reading was more for me than for her, I am afraid. My wish was that she could hear it, so she could close a chapter with a remembrance of eternal love. The words were read at our wedding 40+ years ago. I think they always gave me more comfort than she got from them.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

I hope she heard them. I hope she remembers all the times I read them aloud to her.

When one’s thoughts seem unable to focus on anything but matters too difficult and unpleasant to accept, I think the brain reacts by pursuing the meaningless and mundane. That is the only explanation I can think of to explain why I began pondering this:

How it is that we like our coffee at 189 degrees when it’s brewed, knowing full well it will cool quickly to temperatures far lower? The same is true of casseroles, steaks, etc., etc. Some of us insist on beginning our experience with food and drink at precise temperatures, but subsequently accept previously unacceptable temperatures after initial exposure to our lips. Does coffee at 187 or 180 or 175 taste appreciably different than hotter coffee? Or is it the temperature that makes hotter coffee more appealing? If the latter, why not discard the remainder of the cup after a sip or two, replacing it with a new, perfectly hot coffee? Ditto steaks, casseroles, etc.

The more I ponder these matters, though, the more my thoughts begin to answer my own question. As I begin to sip my very hot coffee, I have to be careful not to burn my tongue. Still, I enjoy that hot liquid quite a lot. As it cools, the sips become larger and the taste fills my mouth more. But, at some point, it becomes cool enough that I realize I must hurry to finish the cup or it will be too cool to be appealing (iced coffee, of course, is another story). When it reaches that “too cool” point, I either microwave the remaining coffee in the cup (which yields a warmer but not as satisfying liquid) or replace the cup with a new one.

And with steak, as some point in the cooling process the delicious fat begins to congeal, trapping the most flavorful flavor components of the meat. Either I reheat the steak or save it for another meal in which the flavor of cold beef steak is appropriate; think a salad of some sort.

I think I went off on a tangent, as I am wont to do. Let me return to my original thought. We tend to reach out and grab anything that promises to anesthetize emotional pain. Drugs, alcohol…meaningless and mundane questions. But the problem with anesthetizing emotional pain is that it comes back after the anesthetic is withdrawn. In other words, the anesthetic masks the pain, it doesn’t eliminate it. It doesn’t excise it from the brain. But what will? What removes that pain? Some say time heals all wounds. Perhaps.  But consider a bullet wound to the abdomen; do we want to rely on time to take care of it, or would we prefer professional medical care in a sterile environment?

What might be an emotional equivalent? How about the death of a spouse or the sudden abandonment by a lifelong partner? Let time handle them? The victim of a gunshot to the gut needs immediate attention and aftercare that will help prevent infection and promote healing. What about the emotional victims? That’s the question. That. Is. The. Question.

But in all this consideration of the “survivors” of pain, both physical and emotional, do we forget the other end of the spectrum? The guy who accidentally shot his friend in the stomach? The dying spouse? The long-abused partner?  Life is complex. Simple answers work only with simple questions. Therefore, simple answers don’t work with life. I think I could write a dissertation on the complexity of human life. But it would be incomplete, because human life is far too complex to be analyzed or explained in even the most voluminous dissertation.

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Yesterday, as I was skimming Facebook, I came across what may be a bogus ad for WishDate, I think (or maybe a real one), advertising that it connects “Gorgeous young women seeking older gentlemen.” Yeah, right. Let’s make it more realistic, shall we?

“Gorgeous young women seeking older, balding, overweight, homely gentlemen.” Then, below the tagline, we could have an image of a gorgeous young woman with an air quote: “I’m so tired of men with six-pack abs and endless energy. What I’m after is a generous old fat man who can barely stand up but has boatloads of money.”

Does anyone ever fall for these ads? I am too much of a skeptic to ever entertain such obvious schemes. And I’m glad I am so skeptical.

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Overpowering guilt washes over me like a wave when I think about my pain and my sadness. I’m not the one whose pain and sadness matters. I will remain. I will continue to be able to experience the offers—or inflictions—of life. I am not the victim, though I wrote something a moment ago that suggested otherwise. Life is too complex to categorize and compartmentalize. I wonder whether our attempts to impose the logic of impossibly simple physical laws on the impossibly chaotic realities of life?

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Today, I will go to the hospital earlier than usual, in the hope of catching the attending physician on his rounds. I spoke to him late yesterday afternoon (he sought me out, which I deeply appreciated) and gave me assurances my wife would not be discharged to home hospice care. She had become nonresponsive, which I gather is one of the Medicare measures of eligibility for in-hospital hospice care. I want to be there when he examines my wife and evaluates her condition. I’ll leave within an hour or so. For now, my sister-in-law in on her way here for coffee and conversation. A very welcome respite from my internal conversations.

After experiencing a strange blend of consciousness and dreams and, I suspect, side-effects from the Shingrix injection night before last, I feel reasonably stable this morning. My back still hurts and a new sensation—that I’ve been kicked in the kidneys—is bothersome, but over all, I think I am as “well” as I deserve.

The result of the bizarre incident is that I did not get to the inpatient hospice until just before noon. My wife was asleep and responded only briefly to my gentle efforts to wake her; she accepted a couple of sips of water before falling asleep again. The nurse told me efforts to give her breakfast were futile; she was awake enough to refuse the meal. When a meal was brought in after I arrived, my wife slept through my efforts to cajole her into eating; she remained asleep all afternoon.  The nurse suggested I eat the meal if my wife would not; I finally had the lunch of green beans, penne pasta with meat sauce, sliced canned peaches, and iced tea. I left the roll and the milk.

It is hard to sit next to my wife, watching what appears to me to be her restless sleep, while a nasal canula delivers oxygen to help her breathe more comfortably. Periodically, a nurse will come in to ask how she is doing. She does not respond, but the nurse senses by watching her grimace that she is in some degree of pain. So, she takes my wife’s hand and asks her to squeeze it if she wants the nurse to give her pain medication; I watch my wife’s hand squeeze the nurse’s. The nurse leaves and comes back a few minutes later with a syringe containing a small dose of morphine. She delivers the morphine and leaves. I have mixed feelings: does the morphine rob my wife of the ability to speak to me, or on the other hand is it enough to eliminate the pain? I decide she should be given as much as necessary to be sure to eliminate the pain.

From time to time, as I gaze at my wife and see her struggle, my eyes fill with tears. I feel guilty that I do not know whether they are tears for me or tears for my wife.

The social worker came in during the afternoon to ask if I had thought about “arrangements.” I deflected. She then said she had spoken to the doctor about whether my wife is likely to continue to qualify for inpatient hospice; unless there are requirements for her comfort that can be delivered only in an inpatient setting, she would not qualify. I brought up the morphine. There are under-the-tongue medications that dissolve and accomplish what morphine does, though not as thoroughly, she replied. The decision would not be instant; I would have a couple of days to arrange things. Later, I called the company that delivered the hospital bed and Hoyer lift. I need to be at the house on Friday to let them in to take the equipment. Although I may have to do it sooner. The hospice organization will provide equipment if she is sent home.

Periodically during the afternoon, I checked the weather forecast. Talk of sleet, snow, and freezing rain beginning early in the evening convinced me I should leave before darkness fell, so I left around 4:45. The drive home was uneventful. I have not checked to see whether the forecasts were correct. I may stay the night at the hospital tonight and/or tomorrow. It depends.

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During my morning perusal of news websites, a sentence from the AP website struck me: “For the first time in history, the U.S. government has carried out more executions in a year than all states that still conduct executions…” The article, based on a report from the Death Penalty Information Center, notes that 55% of respondents to a 2020 Gallup death penalty poll support the death penalty and 43% oppose it. But Americans, the report says, “had “nuanced views” and that even many who say they support the death penalty in theory don’t like it in practice.” Personally, I oppose the death penalty, though I think I can understand the emotional and intellectual arguments of those who support it. In my view, our justice system has too many flaws that can allow innocent people to be erroneously convicted of heinous crimes and sentenced to die; those errors, once carried out, cannot be corrected. And I understand what I call the “revenge reaction” to horrible crimes in which people are brutally murdered, tortured, etc. But, still, our own Declaration of Independence clearly states:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I wonder whether the Federal government, under Trump and his henchmen, have altered the course of the arguments? I suppose we will see what we will see in the years ahead.

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I think I am withdrawing from everyone and everything. It’s a selfish reaction to emotional turmoil. For some reason, though, I think the withdrawal may outlast the turmoil; it would be different, I think, if I did not feel most of my interactions are fraught with uncomfortable formality. Formality inhibits a person’s ability to be open and unencumbered by social expectations. I think of the matter in terms like this: If I could choose between living as a member of a royal family in a spectacular castle or in a one-bedroom apartment in which I was utterly free of social expectations, which would I choose? I think I’d choose the latter. Keeping up appearances and being unable to exhibit the “casual me” would be nightmarish.

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Time for a shower and shave. If I had a hot lather machine, the shave would be more pleasant. But a hot lather machine is a luxury I do not want or need.

I spent another day at my wife’s bedside yesterday. She did not eat while I was there, from about 10:30 to just before 5. That worries me, of course, but the nurses say variations in appetite are not unusual. Relatively late in the day, she seemed to have some interest in a cooking show that her sister had been watching (the sound muted and captions activated). When I got home last night, darkness had begun to fall. I changed into my evening attire (sweats, sweatshirt, and flip-flops). I reclined on the loveseat and watched episode 3 of Mindhunters, a series based on book about the work of two FBI agents and a psychologist whose efforts transformed the agency’s behavioral science philosophies and processes. I’m enjoying it.

Yesterday morning, I took the time to get my second Shingrix vaccination. Very early this morning, I think I experienced some of the more common side effects of the vaccine: shivering, muscle pain, headache, tiredness, fever, etc. About 2:30, I woke up shivering. No matter how I piled on the blanket, I felt cold; I was shivering so much that my teeth chattered. At about the same time, I experienced rather intense pain in my lower back; the kind of pain that intensifies with any physical movement. Every time I turned over, the pain got worse; but unless I moved, the pain seemed to get amplified in one spot. The muscles in both arms felt achy and I had a headache.

Also, I thought I was having hallucinations last night. When I exhaled, I saw a rectangular “tube” arise from my mouth and go up, through the ceiling and into the sky. Inside the tube were barely visible earth-tone translucent shapes that I thought looked architectural in nature; those shapes were normal, I thought. But suddenly the shapes became colorful, though still barely visible, and transformed into animals, including unicorns and elephants and tigers. Then, the tube emptied. Finally, it disappeared. Somehow, the tubes were related both to my breath and to computer controls connected to my chills. As I try to remember the experience, I think the weird visions were not hallucinations but, instead, odd components of a dream that stayed with me for a few moments after I awakened; one of those strange incidents between sleep and waking that merge elements of both.

I tolerated these experiences until about 5:30, when I called my sister in law to ask whether she, if the streets were safe, would come over and look for blankets and pile them on top of me. I did not want to try to get out of bed for fear of being unable to stand up or get back in bed because of my back. She said she would do it once she could be sure the ice on the streets had begun to melt. Later, she wisely suggested the symptoms I was having might be COVID-19 or the flu and, therefore, she felt uncomfortable being in the house. She asked if I had taken my temperature; naturally, it had not occurred to me.  Later, I took my temperature with three difference thermometers: 97.5, 99.1, and 101.8.

I fell asleep shortly after the phone conversation. Finally, sometime after 8:30, I got up. My lower back still hurts; the pain feels just like the pain I’ve had before when my lower spine got out of alignment. Otherwise, except for muscle aches, I feel fine. To my knowledge, I have not been around anyone who has/had COVID-19. The fact that my nighttime “symptoms” seem to have diminished quite a lot suggests to me I am fine.

The blinds in the kitchen usually are up by the time the sun begins to rise. Not this morning, though. It was nearly 9:30 when I pulled the cord on the blinds. Immediately, I saw a box sitting at the front door. I suspect it had been sitting there all night; I just hadn’t noticed it when I got home. Once inside, I opened the box to reveal all manner of goodies; my nephew, his wife, and his mother sent us a fabulous assortment of chocolates, baked goods, canned goods, candies, and more. I was delighted when I saw that one of the packages was biltong, a dried meat product that originated in South African countries. I’ve been wanting to try it for months (maybe years), so that was a wonderful Christmas gift!

I did not expect to wake up this morning to snow, but there it was. The car sitting in the driveway was covered with the stuff. Not a lot, but there was a dusting sufficient to completely cover the front windshield. The solar lights along the driveway, capped with white smudges, offered more evidence of snow during the night. And so did the bushes on the far side of the driveway. The snow was visible only because something triggered the motion sensors that turn on the exterior porch and garage lights; the unusual brightness of those lights prompted me to raise the blinds. That’s when I saw the snow. As soon as the lights went out, all I could see was darkness. I had to walk outside, my motion setting off the lights, before the white blanket became visible again.

According to Alexa, who lately is prone to stretching the truth and randomly blurting out comments in Spanish, the temperature is 32 degrees. The app on my phone claims it’s 30 degrees. And the temperature sensor inside the screened porch registers 33 degrees. I know with certainly only one thing: it’s cold outside.

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My intention to get my second shingles shot yesterday went unfulfilled. Rain, slick roads, and cold temperatures conspired to send me directly home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. And I did not have the patience to wait for weekend opening hours yesterday morning. So, today I hope to get the second shot. We’ll see. I need to go shopping, too, but I’d rather spend time with my wife at the inpatient hospice. My sister-in-law offered to do shopping for me yesterday, but I can be rather picky about brands and the like (and slow to decide what, exactly, I want), so I declined her kind offer. I may opt to shop online again and pick up my order in the parking lot.

Shopping for groceries online is considerably easier than shopping for clothes online. To my knowledge, there are no reliable standards for clothing sizes for men. Inseams, for example, advertised as 29 inches (I have short legs) can range from 27 inches (a good length for me) to 31 inches. Waist size claims have even greater variations. And I’ve never fully understood the concept of “rise,” which seems to vary by manufacturer. So does the description of where pants should “sit,” often presented as “at the waist,” “below the waist,” “slightly below the waist,” etc. Inseams and waist sizes seem almost random. The common advice for men’s trousers is that their length should be such that there is a slight break at the shoes, but the pants should not “puddle” above the shoes. I would very much like to have pants that do not puddle, but they do not make inseams short enough (or, if they are short enough, the waist is not large enough). I suppose my girth is larger than it should be, which may account for the improper ratio of inseam to waist size, thereby causing puddling or, in some severe cases, deep pooling. I attribute part of my problems with pants sizes to my lack of a discernable butt; another part is the abundance of excess body size with respect to circumference of the waist.

But it’s not pants that I’m most interested in at the moment. Facebook reminds me, regularly, with photos of years past, that I am wearing the same shirts today that I wore ten or more years ago. Some of them, anyway. I still have a few shirts that no longer fit, probably because I used the wrong laundry detergents, causing them to shrink by a factor of 25 percent. But I wear at least four long-sleeve shirts that have maintained their sizes or, perhaps, have always been more than a little big on me. I can tell by the brand name tags sewn into their collars and the extreme similarities of pattern and style that I bought them at the same time.  I think it’s time to, if not replace, augment them with new shirts. Ideally, all of my clothes would be “bespoke.” I like that term. Custom tailored. I would not pick fabrics that require any special care. I would select durable material that does not wrinkle. That’s true of both shirts and pants. I’m getting a little tired of jeans, but that’s almost all I ever wear. I’ve been dissatisfied with other fabrics; perhaps my dissatisfaction has been more with fit than with fabric. Jeans can be forced to conform to my shape, or vice versa. Fabrics with less density and strength tend to make me look lumpy and frumpy. Or perhaps it’s me that makes the fabrics look that way.

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I want to have long conversations with my wife. I want to hear her talk about what’s on her mind; what she is thinking. But she has never been one to share her thoughts. Her thoughts are private. She defines introversion as clearly as anyone I’ve ever known. I am introverted, as well, but in a completely different way. I open up to the computer screen when no one is looking over my shoulder. She does not.

Now, though, her voice is weak and her energy is very low. She does not have the capacity to talk to me at length at the moment, even if she wants to. Much of our communication over the years has been nonverbal; we’ve known, to some extent, what was on one another’s minds. But her condition makes even that difficult for her. She sleeps much of the time. When she is awake, her thoughts often are far away, hidden in the distance of her eyes.

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I am close to no one. The isolation I’ve always coveted surrounds me like a shroud. It’s odd, I think, that I tend to express so much through my fingers and so little through real, honest, intimate conversation. I’ve always been afraid of revealing, verbally, my weakness and uncertainty; as if refraining from saying the words in favor of writing them will shield me from judgment.

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I had a brief online conversation this morning with a high school classmate, a woman I have not seen in roughly fifty years. She lives an isolated life in the desert of west Texas. Reading her words made me think of how life often is so very different from the way we imagine it to be. I think she envisioned that she would live a romantic “wild west” experience in the desert but, in fact, it seems to be more of a gritty, hardscrabble life among people whose softer sensibilities have been erased by smothering sand and inescapable poverty.

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One year ago today, I wrote about how it is almost impossible to relive, precisely, physical pain but recollections of emotional pain can be just as vivid in memory as they were in fact. My feelings on that matter have not changed. And, now, it’s time to commence the day.

My sister-in-law and I spent much of the day in my wife’s room at the inpatient hospice yesterday. Before heading to the hospital, my wife’s nurse called to give me an update; she said my wife had refused breakfast, but responded to questions with short, one-word answers or nods. She wanted to sleep, the nurse said. After we got to the hospital, my wife developed a good appetite, asking for an omelette with “everything.”  Her monstrous omelette came with ham, spinach, turkey sausage, green peppers, cheese, onions, tomatoes, and more. Though she ate only a relatively small portion of it, she enjoyed it. When she was awake and she seemed to be in good spirits, off and on. She was happy to see her sister, who had not been able to visit her since my wife went to the ER on December 6. Most of the day, my wife was asleep, though she spoke to us a bit and she wanted me to continue reading to her from where I stopped before (but my voice tends to send her into slumber, so I don’t know how much of what I read she hears). Lunch, which came only a couple of hours after the omelette, consisted of Dijon pork medallions, cole slaw, and pinto beans. The pork medallions were large and thick; my wife finished every bit of them, as well as most of the cole slaw and all of the beans. Her appetite is better than it has been in weeks. The nurse is very caring and tender; she generally is not rushed like the nurses on the regular hospital floors, though they, too, seemed to spend as much time as they needed to ensure my wife’s comfort.

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When I left my wife’s room sometime after 4:30, I felt selfish and guilty for leaving her. I had walked with her sister to the elevator when she left and, when I returned, the nurse said my wife had asked for pain medication. The pain was not site-specific; it was a generalized pain. The nurse gave her a shot with a small dose of morphine to relieve her pain. The nurse advised that it could make my wife sleepy; I thought to myself she could have been getting morphine shots all day, then. But, obviously, she had not. I could have stayed the night, but I was exhausted, even though I had done nothing to bring on the exhaustion. I returned a call from a friend from church, who has regularly called to check on my wife and who has offered to help in anything I might need. Later, I sent a message to another friend from church, another person who has made a point of checking in with regularity. Neither of them overdo it; they keep in touch enough, though, to let me know they are thinking of us and are available to help. That kind of compassionate outreach makes me glad that, after roughly fifty years of eschewing church in any form, I finally found the right one. I hope and think they know I will gladly reciprocate if ever the need were to arise. That is true for anyone as kind and thoughtful, which is true of everyone in the church who I’ve gotten to know.

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After I got home, I opened three cans—pinto beans, corn, and diced tomatoes—for dinner. With some chile powder, cumin, oregano, and pepper, the beans made enough spicy goodness for two meals. But, with two large helpings, I emptied the pan, consuming three cans of vegetables.  I followed that with a glass (or two?) of red wine as I watched the final episode of Unforgotten. I hated seeing the series end. It was early in the evening, probably 9 or so, when I decided to go to bed. I awoke several times during the night, my arthritic elbows and wrists and knees punishing me for my sedentary lifestyle.

During the night, I had a disturbing dream in which I was about to participate in a board of directors meeting for the first association that employed me. I had forgotten to bring background materials for the board in support of my proposal to radically change the association. I was to recommend eliminating the board, replacing it with an advisory board comprised of members of the general public. In addition, I wanted to recommend the association abandon its narrow focus on corrosion control; instead, I was to recommend broadening its scope to include “everything.” I do not recall what possessed me to suggest that. Before I was to speak, though, I had to leave the huge board room in search of a bathroom. Once I left the room, I found myself in a huge convention center hallway, crowded with convention-goers from several other organizations. And, then, I could not find a bathroom, nor could I remember where the board was meeting. There was more, though I am not sure if it was part of the same dream. I followed a little girl and her mother into a big field, empty except for a single tree, tall and thin, in the distance. As we neared the tree, the mother said, “We were here yesterday. You have to watch out for the snakes. They are everywhere.” I do so wish I could electronically record dreams, both video and audio, and play them back; it’s frustrating to remember snippets of dreams that obviously were far more complex and longer.

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One of these days, I should go through the 429 posts sitting in my drafts folder and decide what to do with them: revise and post, revise and save, abandon and discard, or wait a while longer—leaving them for later, and returning to them with the same plan of action. “One of these days” is not really a plan of action, though, is it? It is procrastination, delaying a decision that, apparently, I am not ready to make. All my life, I’ve been advised to make the hardest decisions first, leaving the simpler ones for later. The rationale is that hard decisions tend to require more of one’s energies. Better to make them when one’s mental and physical energies are at or near their peaks, rather than wait until energy has been spent. Decisions made when energy is low are more apt to be sloppy. Important aspects of the decision-making process are too easy to ignore when tired, fatigued, or mentally worn.

It’s silly to place any appreciable importance on decisions about what to do with blog posts that, for one reason or another, failed to make the first cut for publishing. Blog posts are insignificant. When measured on a spectrum ranging from critically important to utterly inconsequential, they fall somewhere near to latter end of the scale. That notwithstanding, draft posts tend to command greater attention in the writer’s mind than the importance they would take on in the prospective reader’s experience. Readers, after all, usually do not even know that drafts exist; certainly, readers know nothing of their content. Only in the author’s brain do hidden drafts seem to merit consideration and procrastination.

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In a while, I will head back to the inpatient hospice in the hospital. I may leave early so I can go get my second Shingrix injection; having had a mild case of shingles even after I had the original vaccine, I feel absolutely compelled to get the follow-up injection; I got the first Shingrix shot about twelve weeks ago, I think. Yesterday I got a couple of reminders calls to get the follow-up. So, as much as I want to spend the time with my wife, I think I had better get the vaccination. It won’t be terribly long, I suppose, before I get scheduled to take the two-injection vaccine for COVID-19. I am floating between vaccinations.

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I feel like I am sitting in an idling car. I have been sitting in it for a very long time and I do not know how much longer I will need to sit there. The road where it sits is full of ruts and potholes and new, replacement roads are being constructed all around me. Busses and trucks and cars and motorcycles and bicycles are whizzing by me in all directions. When I try to put the car in Reverse, its engine sputters, so I quickly return the gear shift to Neutral. I cannot get it into Park. I cannot move the shift to Drive. I should just sit patiently, but I can’t. I try, repeatedly, to get the car off the decaying roadway. Suddenly I am at ease with my dilemma. I do not need to move the car, nor do I need to exit the vehicle. I realize that whatever happens with the car happens with me. I will stay with the car, even if the road collapses beneath us.

Sitting in her hospital room yesterday while my wife slept, I occupied myself with my smartphone, playing word games and reading snippets of the day’s news. “The news.” The words suggest factual information, but hidden within them are layer upon layer of bias. Regardless of the media outlet, reporters and writers and editors busily craft messages that cleverly convey a soft chauvinism; opinions disguised as data. I suspect most of the people who manipulate their messages are guilty only of what they consider defensible prejudice; progressive perspectives on one end of the spectrum, conservative outlooks on the other. Regardless of the relative merits of their opinions, though, they are engaged in subtle (or not-so-subtle) attempts to sway media consumers’ thinking in support of specific viewpoints. Editorial pages once were reserved for such endeavors. Today, it seems editorials and raw reportage have merged into a form of propaganda. Not “fake news,” but predigested information. I try to find information untouched by presentation bias. It’s rare. A few media outlets, like the Associated Press and, to a lesser extent, the News Hour on PBS, seem to work diligently to remove bias from their reporting of the news. Most, though, no longer even attempt to hide their bigotry.

The news media is not alone in its innate biases, the ones that arise from philosophies of life that guide beliefs and behaviors. I think medicine, too, is rife with opinions that sometimes masquerade as facts. I am more forgiving of medicine’s opinions, though, because usually they seem to be guided by carefully evaluated experiences, coupled with (almost) universally accepted facts. Still, though, doctors present patients and their families with options filtered through the lens of the physicians’ experiences. I prefer hearing doctors’ specific options as recommendations, rather than as menu items, all of equal merit. That is, I want to hear a doctor to say, “Based on the options available to you, if I were you I think I would…” The recommendations can be argued and questioned, but the doctor’s point of view is clear.

That was true yesterday when the medical director of the hospice suggested my wife be moved to inpatient hospice care, versus being discharged from the hospital for home hospice care. My gut tells me the doctor could read the fear in me, fear that I would be unable to provide the quality of care that would ensure my wife’s comfort. In recognizing my concerns, he assessed the situation as one in which a recommendation from a physician was warranted. He clearly felt inpatient hospice was preferable, given the circumstances. And he said the decision could be reversed at any time my wife and I felt it appropriate. And, of course, he and his team could determine if my wife were no longer qualified for inpatient hospice care, in which case we could opt for home hospice, palliative care, or traditional home health nursing services.

For me, the difference in bias between news organizations and physicians comes down to accountability. News organizations can retract comments or stories and can explain how changes in the external environment can influence the reliability of “facts.” Doctors, though, tend to qualify their recommendations (biases) before making them; not after the fact.

I arrived at the hospital yesterday morning around 7:30. My wife was fast asleep. An untouched tray of food sat on the overbed table. When a nurse came in a while later to administer some medications, my wife roused briefly but did not open her eyes. She expressed with a shake of her head that she did not want to take medications and that she wanted to be left alone. A couple of hours later, the tray of food was removed and, later still, another tray was brought in. My wife remained asleep. It was not until about 2:30 that she opened her eyes and communicated with me, mostly with whispered words and barely-noticeable gestures. She was thirsty and hungry. I gave her tea. She ate an entire helping of penne pasta with meat sauce and made quite a dent in a scoop of whipped potatoes. Then, she went back to sleep. It was during those hours of sleep that the doctor spoke to me and made his recommendations.

My wife was moved to inpatient hospice around 4:00 pm. Not long after she was settled in, another plate of food was brought in to her and I helped her with the chicken and potatoes.  I left for home around 5:30.  I can visit her again this morning beginning at 9. If I leave after 8 this evening, I will have to exit through the emergency room. But I can stay overnight, if I wish and my wife is agreeable, sleeping in what I know to be a beastly uncomfortable chair. I suspect I can manage it, though, with pillows. I know I need to get things done around the house, but I may opt to stay there on occasion, if for no other reason than to let my wife know I’m there.

I’ve wandered away from a topic I hoped would distract me. I tend to do that. I guess I’ve always wanted or needed to be distracted from life itself but have, so far, failed to stay the course.

The clothes in the dryer will be ready soon and my coffee cup is in need of a refill. Good time to stop.

Some hours and minutes speed by, while others have the earmarks of extraordinarily slow motion, inching along as if time were trapped in a viscous jelly. The difference between the two sensations of time is impossible for me to capture in words. Only by imagining how it might feel—to quickly empty the air from one’s lungs and then slowly fill them again with congealed air—can one get a sense of how such days unfold. The excruciating, impossibly slow moments feel like one must gasp for oxygen. When moments alternate between the fiction of warp speed and the reality of geologic time, the experience defines fatigue in physical terms.

The casual observer, watching someone else experience time in these ways, does not notice the wear and tear taking place. Everything is normal; nothing seems out of the ordinary. For that reason, I think the experience must not be real. But on the inside looking out, the experience is as real as an experience can be. Two distinct dimensions must be at play, although they intersect only in one direction.

Clearly, on reading what I have written, a description of the passing of time at radically different speeds is impossible for me to accurately record. The closest “normal” experience that mirrors it must be childhood versus old age. Seconds and minutes in childhood are equivalent to decades in old age. “Old age” sounds so ugly and used up; there is no attractive term for it, though. “Golden years” is a trite expression. “Senior” is the same. All in all, though, it’s about equivalent moments, taking place at different speeds in the same spans of time.

Speaking of time, I must use mine wisely. Time to shower and shave and get dressed. Then, off to the hospital. One of those slow experiences taking place at the speed of light.

I spent an hour or more this morning writing what I had intended to publish here online, only to decide a few minutes ago that it was too personal and too private to post. Too often, in the process of exposing myself to the world, I expose others as well. I have no business doing that. It is insensitive and selfish. Instead, I will write something else; something brief and mundane that does not infringe on others’ privacy.

My plan today is to visit my wife in the hospital. I am taking a book to read to her. Neither of us have read the book, as far as I know, though I have been intended to read it for well over a year; maybe two or three years. The title is The Unraveling of Mercy Louis by Keija Parssinen. I have no idea how far I’ll get, nor whether my wife will like it. We shall see. If she likes it, I will continue reading; if not, I will put it aside to read silently on my own.

It is possible that my wife will be released from the hospital today. Or it could be several more days. I have no strong sense of what to expect. On the chance that it might be today, I will take a bag of some of her clothes. I wish she could pick out what I am taking to her, but that’s impossible, so I will do the best I can.

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I’m having a hard time focusing on what I am writing. My eyes are drawn to dozens of birds darting between naked tree branches outside the window. Groups of tiny birds flit from branch to branch. I would call them flocks, but I don’t think that’s the proper term; there aren’t enough birds to merit the use of “flock,” so I use “group,” instead.  I wonder whether collective nouns vary across a spectrum, depending on numbers in “groups?” Among these groups of flitting birds are larger woodpeckers that seem to pay no attention to the tiny gatherings. The woodpeckers simply want to get at food buried in the trunks of trees. The little birds seem to ignore food and, instead, focus on playing games.

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I can’t do this. My mind is on what I wrote before, the stuff I should not post. Maybe I will write more later. Maybe not.

Finally, yesterday morning, I put air in the tires of the Subaru—not precisely the proper inflations, but enough air to cause the tire pressure alert light to go out. I bought gas from the gas station so I would not feel guilty for using their air compressor. I wonder whether that’s the point of the air compressor situated next to the fuel pumps. That thought, I think, emerges from a skeptic’s brain.

I wrote yesterday about my “issues” with the hospital. No need to go into them again; except to say the nurse manager from two west sought me out in the ICU and offered what seemed to be a heartfelt apology. She then handed me a preprinted “we’re sorry we failed to meet your expectations, we hope this token of appreciation for sharing your experience will be meaningful” (or some such words) apology card, along with two $5 Walmart gift cards. Though I thanked her for the “gift” and for seeking me out, I felt the preprinted apology card and Walmart gift cards represented the epitome of “cheesy.” Again, the full-throated skeptic in me emerges.

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This morning’s schedule deviated dramatically from usual. Instead of getting up and having coffee, I got up and immediately showered, shaved, and got dressed. Then I took the trash to the garage in preparation for moving it to the street a bit later. And then I gazed at the budding sunrise: bright coral and salmon layers at the horizon underneath  blends of the two colors and, higher still, orange fading into blue. The sun still remained hidden, but the bright edge of the horizon announced its impending arrival. Clear blue skies and sunlight should welcome days full of gladness and cheer. They should. And then I sat at the dining table for a while, contemplating the day. I cannot visit my wife until 1 pm because she is in the ICU, where visiting hours begin at 1. Until then, I will contemplate the future and my place in it.

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Little of what I have just written—neither the tire pressure nor the hospital’s programmed behavior nor the morning’s show of colors—holds any special significance for me this morning. These events and visions do no represent good or bad, they just are. I am in a state of disturbed confusion, I think, because my wife was home from the rehab center for only two nights before going to the hospital. One of the ICU nurses told me yesterday she likely will remain there for at least several days because, as he said, “She is very, very, very sick.” Later, my wife’s attending physician, during a telephone conversation with me, verified that. I expect return calls today from my wife’s cardiologist and from the administrator of the rehab facility from which my wife was recently released. But I expected a return call from the administrator two days ago, so my expectation may again go unmet. I want to express to her my anger at the quality of the treatment my wife received at the hands of the facility. Expressing my anger may do no good; maybe all it will do is exacerbate the guilt I feel for having failed to better investigate the level of care the facility provides to its patients. I recognize, of course, that my wife’s underlying condition is at fault for the challenges she has faced and continues to face. But I cannot help but wonder why I, and some medical professionals, did not recognize symptoms earlier and help her seek treatment.

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There’s no chance my writing will do anything but ramble this morning, so I will stop for the moment. I need to write something private for myself, later, so I’ll preserve what’s left of the energy in my fingers so I can do that.

When I attempted to check in as a visitor at the hospital, I was told someone else had already signed in to visit the room. A quick check revealed someone else was in that room; not my wife. Through more checking, the screening staff discovered that my wife had been moved to ICU overnight. No one had called me. ICU visiting hours would begin at 1 pm, three hours later.

I called the ICU and talked to my wife’s nurse; low blood pressure and breathing difficulties prompted the move. She might be moved back to a regular floor if IV meds stabilize her blood pressure at acceptable levels.

I tried to call the charge nurse on the floor where my wife had been. I left a voice message. I want to register concern about the lack of notice, but also to address multiple occasions of staff attempting to take blood pressure or draw blood from her right arm, which is forbidden and is clearly noted in her records. And I want to know if my request that a doctor order tests to check for UTI has been addressed.

I am so appreciative of competent healthcare professionals, but so intolerant of sloppy or dangerous or insensitive work by others who should not be allowed in medical settings.

Only 40 minutes until I can go to the ICU to see my wife. It seems more like 40 hours.

The twists and turns of health and illness are labyrynthine.

Vague memories of my childhood and teenage years include fierce encounters with the hard surfaces of roller skating and ice skating rinks. Slamming face-first onto the concrete floor of a roller skating rink, while in the midst of an adrenaline-fueled high involving speed and freedom, taught me about the random intersections of joy and gut-wrenching pain. The thrill of a fast turn on a sheet of ice instantly turned to terror when my skates sprayed ice chips on the surface where I would land on my back, spinning, thanks to a sudden fall. Another lesson in how quickly elation can disappear, replaced by torment or misery.

Those memories, buried for decades, surfaced again yesterday. They did not arise randomly. They emerged from the fact that the emotions I felt during those experiences are so similar to the ones flooding my mind during the last few days. Watching the spikes and valleys of the rhythms on a heart monitor, I remembered the sharp differences between the joy and agony from one second to the next while I was immersed in the thrill of skating.

Experience changes so fast. Thrills become terror. Joy becomes agony. Elation becomes misery or anxiety or depression or worse. Skating, though, is a choice.

Resting on a hospital bed, leads from machines attached all over the body, with blood pressure monitors and needles restricting movement, may be a choice, but it is not a welcome choice. It is not a choice like skating. Neither is watching the monitors report low blood pressure or deviations in oxygen saturation. It is a choice akin to obligation; obligation with no alternative. It is a lonely choice, too, especially in these times of pandemic with severe limitations on hospital visits. It is a lonely choice when the watcher can only watch the patient sleep, interrupted only briefly by foggy recognition and, then, more sleep.

I remember feeling terribly fragile after tumbling on the ice skating rink, as if inside me a thin sheet of brittle material sustained a thousand cracks in the fall. I was afraid of moving for fear that the damage might get worse, causing me to shatter. Today, I am afraid of making wrong choices when only the right choices will do.

Sometimes, I feel like I am using my blog as a daily journal and little else. So be it. The blog is as good a place as any to capture experiences and thoughts and emotions that, otherwise, might disappear into the mist of a flagging memory—or become muddy and unreliable recollections.

Yesterday’s experiences will remain sharp in my memory, I think, but I will document them here just the same.

Things went haywire.

I had not expected my wife would be able to enroll in an at-home care program because we had explored hospice. I was wrong. I got a call yesterday morning from a nurse who wanted to visit to arrange for my wife’s enrollment. We set up an early afternoon meeting. The nurse who came, Katie, went through the normal enrollment process during the initial period of her visit. But when she began evaluating my wife’s medical condition, she encountered several issues that were of considerable concern to her. Ultimately, those concerns led her to recommend that my wife be taken by ambulance to the ER.

My wife’s blood oxygen saturation level was considerably below 90%, versus acceptable low normal levels of 92% and higher. The “weeping edema” in her arms, hands, legs, and feet had the linens to be soaked under those extremities. Unlike the staff at the rehab center (but like me), this nurse was highly concerned with the fact that my wife’s arms, hands, and legs were extremely swollen and filled with fluid.  We agreed that Katie’s concerns warranted her to call an ambulance, which she did. I wish Katie, or someone like her, could stay with my wife around the clock; she was so incredibly thorough and caring.

The ambulance arrived in short order and the EMTs quickly moved my wife from her hospital bed to the stretcher and into the ambulance. I followed the ambulance to the ER. No lights and siren, as the issues were not immediately life-threatening.

New procedures and protocols required my wife to be placed in isolation for a period; before I could see her, she had to be evaluated for COVID-19 symptoms and judged unlikely to have the infection. When I finally was allowed to see her, three hours after arrival at the hospital, she was in the ER, attached to a machine much like a CPAP machine to help oxygenate her blood and get fluid out of her lungs. While at the rehab center, my wife was on oxygen for the last two days, but I was not told on her release to arrange for oxygen for her; they did not tell me it was needed, nor did they even mention oxygen. The ER medical staff also gave my wife lasix by IV, with four times the lasix that she takes orally.

My wife drifted in and out of consciousness while I sat with her in the ER. Before I was allowed in, technicians had X-rayed her lungs, drawn blood, taken her vital signs, given her lasix, and hooked up the CPAP-like machine. After I arrived, other technicians came in to take arterial blood (which I did not know was any different from blood from veins, but which is somehow related to pulmonary function measurements) and perform a sonogram on her left arm. The ER nurse, Carmelita, was extraordinary; she kept me informed throughout the process while I was there. I left for home just after 7 pm.

At any rate, while I was there, my wife was admitted to the ICU, but because the hospital had run out of ICU beds, she will remain as an ICU patient, but in an ER room, until a space opens. Normal visiting hours for the ICU are 1 pm to 7 pm, but I could have stayed longer, since my wife remained in the ER, though formally was an ICU patient; I was tired, though, and she was asleep, so I thought it best to go home, eat some dinner, and rest.

I called and spoke to Carmelita just after midnight (her shift was to end at 1 pm) and she told me an ICU bed still had not opened up.

I will call after a while to learn whether my wife has been moved to an ICU bed. If so, I will not be able to visit until after 1 pm. If not, I will stop to see her after my 10 am follow-up appointment with my oncologist.

Each time I witness committed, well-trained medical professionals do their work, I become more and more impressed with them. But though doctors, like Dr. Jensen who was in charge of my wife’s care in the ER, are impressive, the people who really amaze me are the technicians and, especially, the nurses who are all business while simultaneously are incredibly compassionate. I am so very grateful that so many people view healthcare as a calling. As angry as I get at the medical bureaucracy, I am in awe of the truly exceptional medical professionals who treat patients in spite of the constraints placed upon them by bureaucrats.

Although I do not want my wife to spend a minute longer than she has to in a hospital setting, I wish I could sit and observe an ER and/or an ICU for a 24-hour period. I am certain my faith in humanity would receive an enormous boost by watching people work. But otherwise, I do not want to become too familiar with the ER and ICU.

Medical Bureaucracy

I spent too much time yesterday morning battling medical bureaucrats. That’s not fair; I spent much of the morning battling medical bureaucracy. The facility from which my wife was discharged on Friday goofed and returned to the pharmacy (instead of giving to me) a medication to treat an infection. The facility claimed it could not correct the error. The pharmacy originally said it could, then said it could not, provide the medication.  I argued, was put on hold, then handed over to someone else who claimed the law prohibited them from providing me with the prescription. I argued that the rules, whether law or not, were costing my wife’s treatment and that, if they insisted on following the rules rather than finding a solution, their claims that their first priority is the patient are patently false. She promptly hung up on me. I called back and explained the situation to someone else. He said he would have to call the facility, but if the facility had returned the pills by mistake, he would fix the problem. Thanks to his efforts to find a solution, rather than an excuse, before 3:30 I had administered the  medication to my wife.

A Good Day, a Hard Night

My wife spend quite a bit of the day yesterday watching a holiday special of a British baking show on TV. She had a nice breakfast, courtesy of her sister, and during the course of the day engaged in conversation quite a bit. It was a good day, all in all, despite my run-ins with the rehab facility and the pharmacy.

Unlike the night before, last night the caregiver support person showed up as promised by 8:30. She seems to be a very competent, very nice person. She changed the bedding, washed and folded sheets, got my wife situated for the night, and otherwise did all I expected and more. When I went to bed, I was confident she would take good care of anything my wife might need during the night. And I was right; she is extremely capable and very pleasant.

All was going well until sometime before 2 a.m., when the woman woke me to tell me my wife was agitated and calling for me. The agitation lasted for quite some time and involved other odd behavioral issues. This morning, though she is better, my wife is out of sorts. I believe the behavioral evidence suggests a UTI. A nurse will be here around mid-day today to establish a home healthcare regimen; I will ask her for advice.

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If I were able to give one bit of advice to the developers of Zoom, it would be this: when someone attempts to join a Zoom meeting, the host should be alerted with an audible tone or an intrusive visual alert. The existing system does adequately alert that new participants are awaiting admission, leaving them waiting to be admitted by a host who does not even know there are people waiting to join the event.

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Prepackaged frozen one-portion or two-portion one-dish meals—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—are growing more and more appealing to me. Meal preparation can be extremely distracting when one is trying to do four things at once. Quick-prep meals that include everything in a single dish make life a little easier at such times. I believe there is an enormous market for such frozen foods. If I had the money, I would invest in such enterprises.

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I finally checked the air in the Subaru’s tires. Two tires (the rear) have 28 pounds, one (front right) has 27 pounds, and one (front left) has 17.5 pounds. The latter tire is the culprit, I am sure, that caused the “low tire pressure” light to display on the instrument panel. All of the tires are low, though. The recommended pressures are 35 in front and 33 in back.  Some day, I will drive the car to a station with an easily-accessible compressed air hose; I hope that days comes soon. Maybe today, but not likely.

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I mentioned yesterday to my sister-in-law, who is in the throes of an incredibly healthy lifestyle, that I miss chicken-fried steak. Ever since making the mistake of making that offhand comment, I have had an intense hankering for a chicken-fried steak from Mary’s Café in Strawn, Texas. Strawn is about three miles west-northwest of Mingus, which is about two miles north of Thurber. I don’t know whether Mary’s is open these days. Even if it is, it’s roughly six hours and change from my house, so the chances of me going anything soon are slim to none. Having mentioned frozen foods a few paragraphs back, though, I wonder whether I could have Mary’s (if it is open) FedEx a few large frozen (cooked) chicken-fried steaks to me? It’s worth exploring. Maybe. I doubt my wife would want to try to eat a chicken-fried stead, though. So that’s probably not really worth exploring, after all.

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Some days, my writing seems to emanate from a cheerful extrovert. Those are the days that cause me to believe in demonic possession. I have never been an extrovert. I have rarely been cheerful. So when I read words that could mistakenly be assume to come from the fingers of a cheerful extrovert, I cringe and seek out a protective crucifix. Not really, of course. But even when I feel somewhat depressed, my writing can conceal my emotional state. Perhaps that represents an attempt to shield myself from sympathy, pity, and compassion (if I were to consult a thesaurus, I could come up with even more near-synonyms).

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Birds tend to be more visible in the dead of winter because of the absence of leaves to conceal them. Yet maybe the birds I see in the dead of winter are not resident in this part of the world during summer and spring, so they would be invisible during those seasons, anyway. If I had enough interest in knowing the answer to that implied question, I would explore it further. But my interest is not sufficiently strong to warrant the effort. That’s true of so many things, though. Weak curiosity rarely leads to education or to knowledge. Weak curiosity is evidence of a lazy mind. I wonder whether there’s a term for weak curiosity? I don’t have enough interest in the answer to look it up. That reminds me of a joke I retold a few days ago:

Job interviewer: What do you think is your most significant weakness?
Job applicant: I think my honesty is my most significant weakness.
Job interviewer: I don’t think honest is a weakness.
Job applicant: I don’t care what you think.

But when I told the joke, I used vulgarity. It’s funnier that way.

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I had two eggs for breakfast. Nothing more. I have thus far been unable to convince my wife to eat anything at all. Isn’t life peachy?

This lovely bit of dance and music is, I assume, in celebration of Krampusnacht (Krampus Night). But it could be a Halloween celebration. Whatever, enjoy the video, then read what I wrote about December 5, Krampusnacht.

Wikipedia says Krampus is a horned, anthropomorphic half-goat, half-demon creature who punishes children who misbehave, in contrast to St. Nicholas, who rewards well-behaved children with gifts. I find the Central European folklore of Krampus fascinating, though developments in recent years, turning the menacing figure of Krampus cuter and less frightening, goes against the grain as far as I am concerned.

Krampusnacht is “celebrated” in various (mostly) Central European countries on December 5, the night before the Feast of St. Nicholas. I assume the dance shown in the video above was from a December 5 celebration, but that’s an unverified assumption.

Speaking, as I was, of Wikipedia, despite the fact that the resource can be hijacked by people who either mistakenly or intentionally post erroneous information, I find Wikipedia invaluable. For that reason, I donated $20.80 (the 80¢ to cover credit card processing costs) to help defray the costs of keeping the site operating.

The film, Krampus, is a Christmas horror story (I guess I’d classify it that way), produced in 2015. It is available to rent for $3.99 on Amazon Prime Video. I may splurge and watch it tonight. Anyone want to join me? My treat.

Today may mark a new experience. I spoke to my wife last night (she called me, quite unusual of late). During the conversation, she confirmed that she wants to come home. Today. So, soon after the regular workday begins for the rehabilitation center, I will contact them to learn what steps I must take to make that happen. I had plans to make changes to the physical layout of furniture in my house before my wife’s return, but I do not have the necessary time nor the required physical labor to make those changes, so they will have to wait. And, of course, I’ll need to make arrangements for assistance on an ongoing basis. Before I launch into this, though, I will double check with my wife to make sure last night’s conversation was not an aberration. So much to do. But it doesn’t all have to happen at once.

As much as I look forward to her return, I am concerned whether I will be able to care for her the way she needs to be looked after. The rehab center has no confidence it can draw blood when necessary; how will I know when to draw blood and how to get it done? Will I have to send her to the hospital in an ambulance if she needs a blood draw? How will I know if she needs medical attention? Before her most recent trip to the hospital, I had no idea she was in such danger; how can I prevent that from happening again? I don’t just feel fragile about this whole process, I feel grossly incompetent. I think I need to talk to the palliative care doctor I met during my wife’s most recent hospital visit; he may be able and willing to offer good advice.

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I read an article yesterday in the Santiago Times (a Chilean English-language newspaper) that piqued my interest. The article, originally published on November 5, covers a segment of the work of Dr. Andres Herane-Vives, a respected Chilean psychiatrist. Dr. Herane-Vives and his team have created a device that extracts ear wax and measures the levels of the hormone, cortisol. Certain aspects of measured cortisol seem to correlate with levels of depression, so accurate measurement of cortisol could be used to diagnose and help direct treatment levels for depression.

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The change in circumstances brought about by my wife’s desire to return home may bring about some additional changes in my calendar. I am scheduled for an appointment with my oncologist on Monday and an appointment in Little Rock for a 72K mile vehicle service on Tuesday. Fortunately, today’s expected telemedicine follow-up visit with my surgeon’s staff was pushed off a week because the films from the CT scan earlier this week won’t be in their hands until early next week. My plan to end my procrastination on 2021 Medicare drug coverage before the December 7 deadline, though, has been thrown into turmoil. That’s the price I pay for putting things off. Dimwit!

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When I read assessments that call China or Iran or Russia or name-your-country “the greatest threats to America,” the hair on the back of my neck stands up. No, I say to myself, Americans constitute the greatest threat to America. Our failure to recognize our own faults and to then correct them represents the greatest threat. And our attitude of always looking for an enemy and, if we can’t find it, creating one represents the greatest threat. And our refusal to attempt to build alliances with countries whose cultures differ radically from our own represents the greatest threat. It’s as if we are not as secure in our own skins as we claim to be. It’s as if we need to demonstrate our strength so we can deflect attention from our weakness.

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I should be busily preparing for my wife’s return home. Instead, I am writing and reading and drinking coffee. Despite my sense that I need to be getting so many of those things accomplished, I think my need to calm myself may outweigh the need to be productive. As usual, I did nothing to alleviate the tight muscles in my shoulders and neck. This morning, my shoulder muscles, especially, feel like braided wire stretched close to the breaking point. That’s why I need to sit and relax and enjoy my coffee and my reading and my outpouring of whatever is on my mind. That might mitigate the tightness of those wire braids. I certainly hope so.

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I wonder what caused my wife to say she wants to come home? Did my words during yesterday’s visit, spoken through tears I could not hide, prompt her to say it? I told her I really, really wanted her home. Did I give my wishes more weight than what she needs? Sometimes, she says she thinks she is getting stronger, though I see no real evidence of that. Other times, she says she is not sure or she doesn’t feel like she is. But have we given it enough time? I do not know. And I do not know how much therapy she is getting. Is it adequate and it is its frequency enough? I do not know. I know I am not equipped to ensure she gets proper therapy in the right quantity at home. But therapy may not be what she needs; she may need human contact more than she needs therapy. Ach!

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Enough whining. I have things to do and little time to do them.

If this moment were a few weeks later, I would sing words from Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat: “It’s four in the morning, the end of December, I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better.” But it’s early December and I’m not on Clinton Street. I’m not in New York. I am alone in the woods and there is no music; just silence, interrupted by the sounds a twenty-five year old house makes under the combative influences of Mother Nature’s low temperatures and a heat pump striving to strike a comfortable balance.

The wee hours are well-suited to introspection and writing. If I were more energetic, I might take my computer and sit in front of the fireplace, letting the flames mesmerize me into writing the autobiography of fire. But I am not warm enough to be energetic. I am unwilling even to search for a sweatshirt to warm me; the search would expose me to the chilly confines of a closet. And my search would remind me that, as much as I might enjoy a fire, I have done nothing to make the flames dance. I’m not doing much writing, but I am thinking about my tiny place in the world, hidden from everyone but myself.

I like the idea of writing the autobiography of fire. The concept suits me. Fire draws us in, pulling us closer. But fire refuses to let us get too close. We cannot be close enough to safely understand the rage of combustion; we can only guess at how fire feels, what occurs at the precise moment when something solid becomes a superheated gas that disappears into smoke. Fire embodies passion. Raw, unbridled passion.

But, if I were walking on a deserted beach this cold and unforgiving early morning, I would ask the waves, “what the hell I am doing here? Why am I alone on this beach when the sky is just as empty and far more inviting, in spite of its rain and clouds? What possessed me to wander aimlessly on wet sand that captures my footprints, when I could have gone aloft in a hot air balloon that leaves no traces?”

That balloon would have let me disappear into the sky for a time before plunging me into a hungry ocean ready to consume me and my remains. Some would have us believe beaches are romantic places. The sky is desolate, but it’s full of free passion. The sky’s hunger is raw and unforgiving. The sky is like fire in that sense. Both are mysterious and attractive, yet dangerous and sinister. Yet they are pure and unmuddied; unlike the way beaches often are.

The beach pretends to be tender and caring, but it is too close to humanity to care. The sky, though desolate and awash in passion, is an enigma. The sky is love in another form. In this cold predawn darkness, I feel the sky’s tender but passionate embrace. And I feel the beach spray sand into my eyes, too. The beach and its watery witness holds us for a while, but eventually we transform into vapor. The beach is, in that way, the edge of the sky. Water, then, is kin of fire. I may one day write the autobiography of fire. Water will factor into the story. How could it not?

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Back in the real world, I curse myself for ignoring my intent to visit a chiropractor or buy an electric muscle stimulation (EMS) therapy gadget. I feel the tension in my shoulders and back pulling my muscles in directions they were not meant to be pulled. The tightness is not necessarily painful all the time, but it is most assuredly uncomfortable. I’ve been advised to use a heating pad, a cold press, and to take a hot bath. I do not take baths (unless I am provided with a hot spa in which to bathe). I’ve been told I should invest in an EMS, go to a chiropractor, or stop complaining. All good advice, I’m sure.  For the time being, though, I will gripe and moan, giving air to my grievances.

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Words with Friends kept encouraging me to play against someone (I forget his name) whose “skill level” mirrors mine. I finally relented and started a game with him. I got a message this morning saying he had declined my invitation. What the hell?! WWF tries to hook me up with someone who has no interest in playing with me? I get rejected by an unknown stranger, with no explanation. The unstated message, obviously, is this: “I don’t play with riff-raff like you. Bug off.” I feel rejected on so many levels.

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My wife’s phone was out of power when I went to visit her yesterday, so I did not get to talk to her during my visit. I did drop off additional some clothes, though, as requested by the nurse. And I asked that her phone be charged so I could call her in an hour. Which I did. But when I called, the nurses said she was sleeping very soundly, suggesting I not insist on waking her. So, I did not speak to her yesterday. Today, the nurse told me, the Nurse Practitioner will try to draw blood again. If she is unsuccessful, they will have to send her to the hospital again. Before they do that, I will speak to someone who can explain their plans for dealing with this issue in the days ahead; a trip to the hospital every time a blood draw is needed is unacceptable, in my view.

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Several days ago, I cancelled my Little Rock follow-up appointment with my surgeon’s nurse practitioner, scheduled for tomorrow morning and asked whether I could do it by phone, instead. I got a call yesterday, telling me the appointment has been rescheduled as a telemedicine visit at the same time as the original appointment. I like those kinds of appointments.

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Yesterday, I did not have breakfast because I was instructed not to eat or drink anything for two hours before my 8 a.m. CT scan. The day before, I had bran flakes cereal. This morning, I will exchange those two days of good behavior for a few strips of bacon. If I hurry, I can finish breakfast before 5:30.

And I did! But not just bacon. A full-scale breakfast sandwich.

Six years ago, I wrote the following “thought for the day” in response to my own question as to whether—if a month will be lost and forgotten under the weight of the sands of time—a month ever mattered at all.

Ten thousand years from now, if humanity still has a place in the universe, Plato and Pythagoras and Abraham Lincoln and Copernicus and Martin Luther King will be no more than footnotes to history, but they will have mattered. The world would not be the same without them. So, too, November 2014.

My question now is whether that month, or the one just ended, still matters. I suppose so, for the world would not be the same without them. The next question would be whether the absence would have a positive or a negative impact on the world. The question, of course, is rhetorical; we would have no way of knowing the effect of a missing month. Its absence would go unnoticed.

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I have nothing more to say. The absence of words goes unnoticed. We can’t miss what was never there. People are like that. I mean people who don’t exist or who were treated like they didn’t exist.

Two nights in a row. I awoke at 3:30, decided to try to get back to sleep, but failed. I finally got out of bed around 5:30. Spending two hours on two consecutive nights, thrashing about trying to get sufficiently comfortable to sleep, indicates either excessive patience or madness. I’m inclined to go with the latter, as that explanation might make me seem edgier than I am. What do I care, though, how others perceive me? I’m 67 and should no longer need to worry about my image. Actually, I suppose the fact that I’m posting about my sleeping habits and insomnia on a publicly viewable blog confirms I am not particularly concerned about my image.

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This morning, I read a riveting but terrifying article (with photos) about conflicts between wild animals and humans in parts of Indian-controlled Kashmir. This excerpt from the article summarizes the issue:

According to official data, at least 67 people have been killed and 940 others injured in the past five years in attacks by wild animals in the famed Kashmir Valley, a vast collection of alpine forests, connected wetlands and waterways known as much for its idyllic vistas as for its decades-long armed conflict between Indian troops and rebels.

Most of the attacks (around 80%) have been by Himalayan black bears. The article suggests that human incursion into the animals’ territories have had the effect of changing the bears’ habits. The bears used to hibernate in winter, but with the ready availability of food, thanks to human populations and their trash, etc., they no longer hibernate. Military camps, barbed wire, and other changes in uses of the land have changed the bears’ habitat, resulting in more interactions between humans and animals. Fascinating stuff that highlights the negative impact of population growth and changes on both humans and the creatures we are crowding out.

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Public conversation of late have called attention to the fact that the growth and success of the United States has depended, in large part, on the early enslavement of Black people, who did much of the work required to build this country. While enslavement finally ended, reliance on Black labor through unfair and inhumane practices continued. Many of the public conversations rightfully (in my opinion) call for White Americans to recognize and to apologize and to provide reparations in some fashion for those abuses.

While thinking about these matters, my mind has drifted to another set of dependencies, dependencies that are less visible but, I would argue, equally as inhumane and inexcusable: the reliance on Chinese and other Asian labor to provide too affordable products we use in our everyday lives. Though we see plenty of posturing about companies relying on cheap foreign labor (essentially equivalent to slave labor), actions seem few and far between. It is, in reality, only posturing. In the meantime, we buy cheap clothes, cheap computers, cheap food, cheap furniture, and thousand of other categories of cheap consumer goods that rely on the labor of people who may well be surviving on below-subsistence-level wages. But we’re not guilty, because we do not employ them, right? B.S. We should not get away with it that easily. We should look at the labels of every product we buy and think long and hard about who sews or assembles or manufactures it. If we were as morally indignant as we should be, we would insist on paying more for products so people around the world could live less stressful, less impoverished, and more comfortable lives. Would I insist on that, though? Would you? Or can we somehow continue to pretend that we are blameless?

I think this quote from Thomas Henry Huxley states the matter clearly:

“The practice of that which is ethically best…repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence. It demands that each man who enters into the enjoyment of the advantages of a polity shall be mindful of his debt to those who have laboriously constructed it; and shall take heed that no act of his weakens the fabric in which he has been permitted to live.”

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Morals change. That may not please some of us, but it is true. I think a quick review of history would reveal the veracity of the claim. Within the last few days, I’ve dabbled in reading about philosophy (not philosophy itself, so much, as discussions of what constitutes philosophy). I’ve come to the conclusion that philosophy is equivalent, in many respects, to mathematical equations. Yet we know that mathematics is precise and (we think) unchanging. There exist unwavering “laws” of mathematics that do not rely on context. But morality (and the philosophies that underlie morality) is not a stable, static “thing.” Take marital fidelity, for example. In our society, marital fidelity is generally viewed as a moral obligation (though belief and action differ significantly). But in other societies, marital fidelity is not seen as an obligation at all; in fact, in some societies the practice of having multiple spouses argues that marital fidelity is an irrelevant concept. It’s a matter of context. But get into a discussion of contextual ethics and sparks fly. “Murder is wrong, no matter the circumstances!” “Abortion is wrong, no matter the circumstances!” But, wait. Even those “absolutes” are contextual, aren’t they? Just like marital fidelity. If we were to take any moral “absolute” and dissect it, I think we’d find circumstances in which the ethics of a behavior is not necessarily clear. What is the rationale behind marital fidelity, for example? Aside from protections against jealousy, what purpose does it really serve? That question is valid not just for marital fidelity, but fidelity in general. Fidelity is a relatively easy subject; abortion is much more difficult, thanks to the incorporation by people on one side of the argument of yet another moral absolute: murder. That’s where mathematics and philosophy differ: in mathematics, we all agree that A + B = C. But in philosophy, we sometimes can agree that A + B = C, but B has a different definition in philosophical arguments, whereas in mathematics, B is B is B.

Even within a society, morals are not universally accepted. Yet we base our laws on morals, don’t we? Stealing is against the law. Situational ethics do not have a place in the law, but in passing judgment on someone caught stealing, the penalty may well rely on situational ethics.

“She is guilty of stealing, but she stole milk for her baby, so her action was understandable; she is sentenced to time served.”

“He is guilty of stealing a motorcycle. He already has three motorcycles. He is sentenced to two years in the penitentiary.”

I have no good reason for writing about morality and ethics and philosophy this morning. It’s just a set of topics I find fascinating. If I were younger, I might spend more time delving into philosophy; it’s such a fascinating subject.

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Back to the real world; the mundane, gut-wrenching real world. My coffee is cold and my elbows ache from arthritis and my neck and left shoulder are punishing me for my immoral thoughts. I must put an end to this. I feel a need to withdraw from the world for a while.

When I was in high school, I had a crush on a well-liked cheerleader, Jane. I never watched her cheer on the teams, though, because I eschewed sports. But we were in a few classes together; and had been since junior high, including one or two art classes. I found her beautiful and outgoing. And she was extremely popular. I was plain and introverted and invisible. It would have been madness to have revealed to her that I found her interesting and attractive. I was certain she would have laughed at me, had I asked her out on a date.

Many years later, I had the opportunity to meet her for coffee while I was on a business trip that took me back to my hometown on the Texas coast. I had overcome much of my shyness by then and I told her about the crush I had on her and how I had wanted to ask her out but dared not, for fear of painful rejection. She did not know of my interest, she said. But she revealed that she felt isolated and lonely during her cheerleading days.

Her comments were something like this: “Nobody asked me out. I think they felt like you did. They thought I was unapproachable. I was not as outgoing as everyone thought. I was lonely.”

My wife and I had occasion later, during a pleasure trip to South Texas, to visit with Jane. I think I introduced Jane as someone “I had a crush on in high school.” We laughed about it, but my earlier conversation with Jane was on my mind. I felt some responsibility for her loneliness forty years earlier.

Those memories surface from time to time. When they do, I wonder whether I have ever been the subject of a “crush.” I rather doubt it, but I suppose it’s possible that, like Jane, I was simply unaware of it.

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My wife seemed more alert and lively during yesterday’s visit than the day before, but she was not bubbly. She was watching a soccer game on television; the day before, she had been watching football. She has no interest in either, but I think she has trouble changing channels, so she watches what is on the screen.

I will visit her this afternoon after my scheduled blood draw and port flush at my oncologist’s office.  One of her nurses asked me to bring my wife’s compression sleeve, so I put in in the car last night, along with a couple of magazines my wife wants. I hope to have the opportunity to speak with the administrator, the director of nursing, and the director of therapy today; I want to hear about, if not see, a plan of treatment and a timeline.

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One of my brothers recently developed an interest in tasting a mixed drink he had never before had, a Sidecar. He tried it and was not impressed. I had not had the pleasure of drinking a Sidecar, either, so I decided to make one yesterday. Though the recipes call for cognac, I decided an inexpensive brandy would have to do (inasmuch as I had no cognac in the house). Whether such a brandy-based drink still is called a Sidecar, I do not know, but until I am told otherwise, I will say it is. I made the drink using the following recipe:

• 1 ounce brandy
• 1 ounce Cointreau
• 1/2 ounce lemon juice
• Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass

I liked it quite a lot! So much so, in fact, that I can imagine letting myself become attached to it, so I had best be careful.

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Yesterday, I learned that the “agreed” point at which a person becomes “elderly” is age 65. That’s according to Elizz. This morning, I decided to explore further. An article on NPR.org says this:

In the same way other words have morphed into widespread acceptability–handicapped to disabled; Oriental to Asian; retarded to mentally challenged, and even though words are in flux–elderly is becoming politically (and politely) incorrect. Certain terms apparently have term limits.

The article continues:

“Nobody likes to think of themselves as old, let alone very old,” says Michael Vuolo, co-host of Slate’s Lexicon Valley podcast. “Elderly often carries the connotation of feeble and dependent. Which is offensive if you’re not and condescendingly euphemistic if you are.”

So, I propose we begin to use these terms, as appropriate: “energetically old” and “fragilely old.” But I bet someone will object strenuously. In fact, that someone could be me. 😉

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The crick in my neck and my very sore shoulder have not departed. I must find a masseuse or one of those electric devices that shock the muscles into cheerful compliance with demands for comfort. I might call the local chiropractor for a “fix.” This is getting old fast. I do not want it to get fragilely old, either.

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My sister-in-law just texted me; she will soon deliver, courtesy of a neighbor, sausages, biscuits, and gravy. I must prepare for this feast!

I wrote some fiction last night, the first time I’ve attempted truly creative writing in a long time. I did not get much done, though, because it became clear to me early on that the characters and their experiences were much, much darker than I needed to go. Their stories arose from the intersections of their two very different childhoods; one was exceptionally fortunate in terms of material possessions and the other lived in extreme poverty. Their emotional and intellectual experiences were diametrically opposite, too; the well-off child learned to equate love with material gifts and surroundings, while the poor child learned to equate love with the tenderness and safety provided by a neighbor, in the extended work-related absence of the child’s parents. The outcome, which has yet to be written (as has moist of the actual story surrounding what I’ve just written), will be dual tragedies visited upon both of the children when they reach adulthood. I did not need to write that story, nor to think more about it. So I abandoned it in favor of a little Evan Williams over ice and some mindless channel surfing. Apparently, neither the channel surfing nor the bourbon was sufficiently engaging to keep me awake. I opened my eyes around 10:30 to view a television commercial and see an almost untouched rocks glass half filled with diluted whiskey. What a waste.

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Before my failed attempt to watch television, I spoke to two of my three brothers and to my sister by telephone, the first time I’ve spoken to them in several weeks. I intended to call my other brother and his wife, who live in Mexico, but I decided to delay that call and make it a Zoom conversation, instead, with another brother and my sister. The third brother cannot seem to get his computer to connect to Zoom. It’s interesting how vastly different the lives of the remaining five siblings have evolved since childhood. As the youngest of six children, I remember very little about my oldest siblings until I was in high school and beyond. They had gone on to college and/or other pursuits by the time I became fully conscious of how different my family seemed to be, compared to other families. The difference was, again, the absence of siblings. Most of the other kids around me in school, etc. had the full complement of family present during their formative years; I spent my formative years with one brother, the one closest in age to me at five years my senior. As I contemplate my siblings’ formative years, their formative familial experiences were much more in line with other families, whose full families remained intact until late teenage years in most cases. I believe the children of considerably older than average parents experience a very different experience than do their peers. And I think other people who have not had that experience are unlikely to understand how vastly different the experiences are. I hear stories, for example, of my father taking my older siblings hunting or playing ball with them. I did not have that experience. My memories of childhood are sketchy, at best, so I cannot clearly recall all the differences, but I’ve always felt them. One of these days, I may try to piece together recollections of my formative years and try to compare them with what I believed with more traditional experiences of my friends and older siblings. I may be all wrong; but I think not.

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There is little to say about my brief visit with my wife yesterday. She was sitting up in a wheelchair, her eyes fixed on the television most of the time. Occasionally, she turned toward us (her sister and me), responding to most questions with a nod or a weak, one-word answer. When I asked whether she would like me to call her in the evenings, she said she would rather I not.

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The sky is overcast and the current temperature is 40 degrees. Today’s high is expected to to reach 43 and tonight’s low should drop to around 30. The weather futurists expect rain to develop this morning. Sunrise should take place in about an hour. That is the extent of my understanding of today’s microclimate.

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The pain in my shoulder migrated to my neck (becoming a full-on crick in the neck) during the course of the day on Saturday, reminding me that the body is capable of taking revenge on its host for myriad transgressions. I’m not exactly sure what I mean by that, but there’s no doubt about the sincerity of the statement, even in its mysterious befuddlement. Let me try again: my body is exacting retribution for my actions and omissions that caused it to experience discomfort. The pain I feel, therefore, must be deserved. Punishment, pure and simple. A penalty for living as I do. The body knows when infractions take place, whether physical or mental, and responds accordingly. Hence my now dormant (knock on wood) Crohn’s disease, the intestinal resection, my double bypass surgery, the missing lobe of my right lung, and every other illness or damaging incident visited upon me. The body, as an educational experience, takes revenge. There, I’ve explained myself, against my will and better judgment.

Yesterday, around midday, another example took place. I was in the midst of swallowing a bit of smoked turkey (delivered to me by a very nice neighbor) when I took a sip of water. Suddenly, I was in the midst of a convulsive cough, thanks to aspirating a bit of water combined with chewed turkey. The cough triggered an intake of breath that  exacerbated the aspiration and prompting me to choke. Though I probably was in no danger of choking to death, I felt like I was. I could not control my breathing nor my coughing. I made my way to the kitchen sink, where my coughs led me to begin to expel previously swallowed turkey and water. Tears flowed from my eyes, my sinuses filled with God knows what, my nose began to spray like a torn fire hose, and I could not catch my breath. Bottom line: this experience lasted what seemed several minutes until, finally, I seemed to be reasonably close to “normal.” That is, if normal involves, when  blowing one’s nose repeatedly, releasing pint after pint of unpleasant-looking whitish goo. That’s all behind me now, though. My body pronounced judgment on me for what it considered apparently gluttonous consumption of smoked turkey.

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It’s 6:30, time to replenish my coffee and think about something to eat that will not choke me to death. Let’s see, apple sauce or bacon & eggs? I have no apple sauce, so bacon & eggs it is. Whatever happened to my passion for international breakfasts? Whatever happened to my passion in general? Passion keeps people alive. I need to ignite some passion in my life; these cooling embers are unable to provide adequate warmth. Perhaps congee flavored with harissa paste. Time will tell.