John Swinburn

The luxury of sleeping through the night is history. But I will try to avoid complaining. Lately, I have been able to nap, at least briefly, during the day; that makes up for sleepless nights. Today, though, I think I will have to forego napping; today, napping could be dangerous. It’s odd, my sleep pattern. Midnight. Two. Four. Last night, at midnight, I awoke with an awful cough, triggered by sinus congestion and drainage. The sinus congestion is not new, but the extent to which it triggered such a ferocious coughing fit is, thankfully, rare. But not unheard of.

I tried to avoid complaining. Right. And then I set about doing exactly what I said I would attempt to avoid. Frivolous grievances seem to find their way into my head and out through my fingers. I have more weighty things to complain about, if I were to choose to complain.

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Tonight’s Taco Tuesday gathering has morphed into a pizza fest, thanks to Beehive being closed for repairs. Instead of a small gathering at Beehive, we’ll have a small, masked, socially distant gathering at my house. So, I also will miss something else that I learned this morning will occur tonight. Home Plate Cafe is hosting French night tonight, including Ménage à Trois and escargot, and chateaubriand, among other  French attractions. What a surprise to learn that, in what is primarily a conservative retirement community, Ménage à Trois would be on the menu. Perhaps I live in a more adventuresome place than I thought. But ménage translates into “housework.” Ménage à Trois translates into “threesome.” So, this risqué expression may refer, in the Village, to housework for three, not an arousing, titillating experience.

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My plan for dinner last night, preparing lamb vindaloo, dissolved in a cloud of my torpor. Luckily for me, my wonderful neighbor called, offering some smoked pork tenderloin her husband had prepared for their dinner. I readily accepted and she delivered it to my door. It was outstanding. So, my lethargy remained intact. But even if I have to force myself, I will prepare lamb vindaloo tomorrow night; letting the remaining leg of lamb spoil would be a crime against man and Nature, which I will not abide. While in Little Rock, I may visit an Indian grocery to pick up some green cardamom pods; apparently I do not have any and the recipe calls for them. And the base curry sauce required for the recipe calls for ten large onions, a quarter of a head of cabbage, six tablespoons of various other Indian spices, and nine tablespoons of garlic/ginger paste. I think I will plan on a much-reduced recipe of the base curry sauce. The recipes, though relatively simple, are time-consuming. The lists of ingredients of both the vindaloo and the base curry are as long as my arm. I love the sweat-inducing heat of very spicy Indian food. Years ago, a good friend introduced me to the phrase “hurts so good” in describing Indian food. I wonder whether she remembers?

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Attempts to escape from grief induce guilt. When I think of or plan time with people in an effort to get my mind off loss, I invariably feel a sense of guilt, as if I am being unfaithful. But I know, intellectually, I need to escape from grief from time to time. And I know, intellectually, those times need to be more and more frequent and longer and longer in duration. Yet even acknowledging those facts seems like abandonment. Either way, the mental pain is difficult to live with. But in saying that to myself, I feel even more guilt in the knowledge that others, in the millions, have dealt with more deeply excruciating pain than mine, and for much longer periods. Intellect and emotion do battle with one another, neither willing to budge from their steadfast positions, nor accepting of the idea that adjustments might be possible to satisfy both. Even reading about how to deal with grief seems like a ploy to justify abandonment. Sometimes I think the overtly masculine demeanor of “just soldiering through it” may have some merit, although I suspect that method of dealing with grief can do long-lasting damaging to one’s psyche.  One way to deal with it, I think, is to just take a damn break from it.

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For months, I have spent little snippets of time off and on to remove some hideous wallpaper borders from just under the ceiling in a couple of rooms; the laundry room and the “workshop” area behind the garage. I’ve been in no rush, obviously, but I have planned to get the job done so I could patch the spots where the wallpaper peeled paper from the sheetrock. I want to paint those rooms after I smooth the damage, making the walls ready to accept paint without leaving tell-tale signs that three-inch strips of paper once covered horizontal bands along the ceiling. I’m getting there. One day soon, I will move massive amounts of crap out of the way (including a washer and dryer) so I can put down protective tape and paper on the floor in preparation for paint. And, then, I will paint. That project, when finished, will give me an enormous sense of accomplishment, despite the fact that it really amounts to, probably, only three full days of work.

At about the same time, I will begin going through stuff that has been stored behind the garage for almost seven years without being used. It’s a safe bet I will never use those things. That includes several power tools that still work, but which weigh two or three times (or more) what newer tools weigh. I have a circular saw that must weigh fifteen or twenty pounds; maybe more. A new high-power circular saw today might weigh eight or nine pounds. I’ll need a truck to take all the excess junk to the dump or to recycling. A moving van might be more like it. I’m afraid, though, that once I remove all the excess stuff from the garage (and inside the house), the building might be so light it will float away.

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I know about fostering homeless animals. But that concept worries me. How would I know, for example, whether the creature is house-trained or sufficiently well-behaved that it will not ruin the furniture or tear into foodstuff in the pantry? Those concerns, among some others, prompted me to conceive of the idea of pet-rental. Pets could be certified as house-trained, etc. so the renter would feel confident the rental experience will be positive. In some ways, the concept of pet-rental would be a little like engaging a housekeeper whose references have checked out. Like hiring a housekeeper, one need not make a long-term commitment until the chemistry is right. I’m in favor of this.

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I hope I can keep it together today. Despite the assurances from people that it’s okay and even therapeutic to let one’s emotions flow, often it’s best to keep them in check until one is alone. Isolation allows emotional meltdowns to take place unnoticed by the rest of the world, avoiding embarrassment and more.

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Donald Trump should be institutionalized. He is a power-mad narcissist whose self-interest is dragging the U.S. closer and closer to the collapse of democracy. And his enablers in Congress should be jailed. Just thought I’d mention that.

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I do need a break. I should not disable my power breaks.

For the first time in a very long time, I participated yesterday in a “live” Sunday event with the Unitarian Universalist Village Church. “Live” via Zoom. The production took considerable effort by several people to coordinate and orchestrate the program; it showed. I am not quite sure what I was expecting, but what I saw surpassed my expectations by a significant amount. It was stellar in many ways; the pre-sermon conversation, the well-organized series of presentations, and the music/video elements incorporated into the event. Perhaps the most gratifying element was the opportunity to see and hear about 80 members and friends of the church who joined by Zoom.

The theme was the “2-cookie communion,” which used ritual to encourage congregants to mentally discard the negative behaviors and circumstances from the year just ended and to commit to taking action to guide the coming year into the positive experience we are capable of molding and expressing. Though I have always disliked church ritual (as I remember it from my childhood), since getting involved with UUVC I have come to appreciate ritual as symbolic expression, not as voodoo; that’s how I perceived it in other church traditions.

Despite the artifice of ritual, though, it caused me to feel strong emotions about the loss I have just endured; I am glad, during much of the service, my image and my sound were both muted/invisible. Even now, as I think about yesterday’s emotions, they return in all their power. All in all, I was very pleased to have been a member of the audience who participated. And the minister’s guidance and his words were both inspirational and healing.

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My afternoon yesterday included a too-short Zoom conversation with my oldest brother and his wife, another brother, and my sister. Another brother cannot get his computer to cooperate with Zoom, so he cannot participate in the conversations. I did not realize how very long it had been since we’ve had a video gathering. My oldest brother’s hair is quite long, courtesy of admonitions about avoiding close proximity to strangers due to COVID-19. He and his wife are behaving intelligently, unlike too many others in their community in Mexico (and so many here). Our chat was a welcome departure from my normal Sunday afternoon routine of…doing nothing. I may invest in a Zoom paid membership so we can have longer conversations. And I may develop a pre-chat questionnaire so everyone involved can have at the ready tidbits to address for those occasions when empty air lasts a bit too long. Or I may not. It’s an idea. But it sounds a bit contrived and superficial. I’m quickly turning on myself, berating me for offering such a strange structural response to natural pauses in conversation. Hmm. Thinking through my fingers. I like that description; always have.

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Last night, I chose to microwave frozen potstickers from Trader Joe’s for dinner.  I made my own dipping sauce, using only soy sauce and Sambal Ooleek. Though the meal was not especially nutritious, I suspect, it was tasty. And I augmented it with a salad and some hummus & crackers (and chips), some of which boosted the nutritional value of the meal. While I ate, I watched Season 1, Episode 1 of The Queen’s Gambit. I started watching that with my wife the last morning she was at home, before going back into the hospital for the last time. She decided, after watching only a short while, she wanted to go back to sleep and had no real interest in watching anything; no film, no series, nothing. She had just finished watching a Christmas movie the home health aid had suggested to her; she watched that whole film and was not really ready to watch something else. Later that day, she went to the hospital. I promised her she would come back home. I did not keep that promise; she went into inpatient hospice, instead. My mind could not stay focused on The Queen’s Gambit last night; I kept returning to my wife, who will never see it. It shocks me how seemingly little things can land such powerful blows on me, as if I’m an inept boxer almost knocked unconscious by a much stronger and forceful adversary.

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This morning, as I peered into the darkness behind my house, I thought to myself sunrise would begin before long and how it would be nice to sit and watch it with someone, someone interested in conversing about the rapidly-changing skyline and the colors arising from it. It’s not that I miss those conversations with my wife; she was rarely awake for sunrise. But I often talked to her about the sunrise and described to her what she was missing by sleeping in. She appreciated the word picture, but it was not enough to spur her to get up earlier. She liked her sleep. And I’m glad I didn’t try to change that.

The sunrise has begun, now. The southeast horizon is bright orange and pink, streaked with grey and salmon and ochre ribbons. By the time I finish this paragraph, the colors will have begun to merge into a pale watercolor tapestry. No matter what takes place in the sky, it’s beautiful this time of day.

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I have personal business to address today. I’ve never been very good at personal business. My wife took care of almost all of it, from banking to taxes to scheduling HVAC service and on and on. I am not sure whether she liked it, but she certainly tolerated it far better than I ever did. It’s time I grow up and tolerate it for myself now. I’m not sure whether I have the discipline just yet, though. Soon, I will find out.

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A few years ago, I wrote “thoughts for the day” every single day for two years running (2014-2015). Here’s one: “There is a point at which even the most even-tempered person will snap. I have no personal experience with this, though, as I am not even-tempered.”

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Yesterday was, for all intents and purposes, a washout. I woke up a bit late, after an unpleasant night. My morning coffee with my sister-in-law did not include any Words with Friends; apparently I was not sufficiently awake and alert—I overlooked the normal routine. She left a little after 9 and I decided, about 9:30, to rest in my recliner, listening to Amazon Spa music. I awakened several times to pee, but each time I returned to nap. I did not get up to finish the day until just before 2:30 pm. Five hours, more or less, of fitful napping seemed to have more or less erased my narcolepsy.

Every time I think of that word, I remember sitting in the Albuquerque airport with a couple of colleagues, one of whom was the president of the association for which I worked. The president kept nodding off as we waited for our flight. At some point, he said something to the effect that “I’ve had a terrible case of necrophilia.” My staff member and I howled with laughter for what seemed like hours. I still don’t think he quite understood what he had said, even after we explained it.

A late lunch of black-eyed peas, followed by a run to the mailbox, led to a late afternoon call to a friend, accompanied by wine, following up on a text message I had received the night before. Scanning Facebook, I learned that the place some friends and I planned to have tacos on Tuesday will be closed until Friday. Whether Taco Tuesday will take place somewhere else or another time remains to be seen.

Later, still, I opened a can of chicken and rice soup and poured some more wine. And I recalled the evening events from the previous night, when I watched an utterly absurd, ridiculously stupid film called Sharknado.  At least the moronic film caused me to laugh. Oh, and I watched an episode of Hinterland; that series is worth watching, I’ll say again.

Here I have slipped from yesterday morning and afternoon to the night before. Writers who confuse readers in that way should be horsewhipped. But not yet. Later. Much later.

So, last night, after the soup and wine, I sat in front of the television for quite a while and wished for a time before this nightmare. I did not turn the TV on; I just sat there, looking at the blank screen. I thought about the L-Pill I read and wrote about yesterday. It would resolve things for me, but would create nothing but grief and pain for others, so it’s off the table for now. Not that I have access to such a device, of course. But even if I did, it would be off the table. Following my little foray into self-pity, I turned on the TV and watched another episode of Hinterland. I rather like the fact that episodes of the series are much longer than many programs, running an hour and a half, sometimes. I think. I should have timed it last night.

One’s purpose in life, as difficult as it is to comprehend, becomes clear only after that purpose is lost. That purpose is noble and positive and it inspires happiness in the face of trouble and pain; yet it remains hidden. When it disappears into a mist that fades into oblivion, it is too late to capture it and hold it as one’s guiding principle. But that is when the purpose becomes clearest; the purpose is always outside of oneself and impossible to retrieve once it is gone. Only then does another purpose take its place, a purpose designed to replace joy with grief; that purpose cannot be abandoned, though, regardless of the pain. But the L-Pill, at the moment when all of one’s obligations have been met, might erase the purpose when the purpose has been achieved.

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Well, that was an odd trip around the psyche, wasn’t it? Indeed it was. Fortunately, Hinterland was sufficiently attractive to lure me out of a flood, just in time to escape drowning beneath a heavy metal livestock grate. (Only by watching Hinterland will that reference make any sense at all; fortunately for me, I understand exactly what I mean.)

I still weigh far too much. And I will until and unless I change my lifestyle. I need to eat less, exercise more, and pretend I will be able to look at myself in the mirror without disgust and shame if only I lose 70 pounds. I must figure out a way to place myself just beyond the edge of confusion so the changes I desire become the changes I seek. Seeking change is the active form of desiring change. Desire does not necessary trigger action. Wishing is not a motivator.

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Last night, after all my pre-sleep activities, I went to bed around 9:45, still far too early. I woke at 12:30, at 1:45, and at 2:45. In each case, I went back to sleep quickly. But at 3:30 the wakefulness lasted longer, around 45 minutes. I woke just before 5 with another set of leg cramps, though not nearly as severe as the night before. I stomped my feet and they diminished considerably; thanks for the tip, David. I drank a little tonic water before bed, but not quite enough. And today I will consume a lot of water to see if that addresses the issue.

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It’s just a shade after 5:40 now. I’ve unloaded the dishwasher and put the dishes away. I’ve almost finished a cup of coffee. There’s no Words with Friends and coffee visit with my sister-in-law on the morning agenda. I think I may indulge myself in a breakfast of bacon and eggs, though my desire for a healthier lifestyle looms over my conscience, urging me to start today, now, to improve my eating habits. I decided to check my January 3, 2014 “Thoughts for the Day,” to see if that motivational tidbit might give me any direction. It reads as follows:

Any recipe that calls for a single clove of garlic must be considered suspect; that recipe was very probably produced by someone who does not like you.  Always use a minimum of three cloves of garlic, regardless of the recipe’s measure, or you’ll have vampires running rampant in your kitchen.

Obviously, I should go forward with my plan for bacon and eggs, augmented with three cloves of garlic. There’s always tomorrow to start living a healthier lifestyle. But, as we know, there’s never a guarantee of tomorrow; certainly no guarantee there will always be a tomorrow. My wife would have tolerated my hunger for bacon this morning, but not at this hour. I would have had to be as quiet as a mouse in the kitchen. And so I shall.

Leg cramps, deep in the middle of the night, used to plague my wife on occasion. When it happened, I began to massage her legs in an attempt to quell the pain. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it exacerbated the pain and she let me know, urgently, to stop. Less frequently, I experienced the same excruciating cramps and she did the same for me. Neither of us knew what caused the pain, nor why massage sometimes helped and sometimes made it worse. I still do not know. Last night, I experienced severe leg cramps. When I woke to the pain, I attempted to get out of bed. But when I moved my legs, the pain got much worse and my legs suddenly contorted and locked in odd positions. The muscles on the outside of my lower legs seemed to freeze in position, becoming as hard as rock. I was able to overcome the paralysis, but the pain endured for a very long time, though at a much lower level. When I finally got back to sleep, it happened again, though not as bad as before. This cycle repeated itself four times—maybe five.

When I finally got up (late, for me) around 5:45, the lower-leg muscles in both legs were extremely tender. I did not sleep in; I just did not want to move my legs and risk another outbreak of pain. Finally, though, I forced myself to move. I was relieved that I did not feel an electric jolt of pain and paralysis. A hot shower helped a little, but I still feel slight remnants of raw pain. Ever since the first flare-up, sometime deep in the early morning hours, I’ve been thinking how my wife would have tried to help me, had she been by my side.

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“Mixed feelings.” That phrase has more meaning at this moment than I recall in times past. On one hand, I feel grateful that friends and family reach out to me to try to comfort me in a time of grief; knowing that people care makes me feel protected, in a way, and watched over. On the other hand, though, I want solitude and isolation, free of obligations to talk to anyone or be in the presence of anyone or otherwise participate in the human race. The tricky part of these “mixed feelings” is that they spin around me like a top, trading places with one another at lightning speed. If I were to verbalize my emotions, I can imagine saying “thank you for being here” one minute and then saying “please go” another and then “please come back” a moment later. Were I on the receiving end of my “mixed feelings,” I would quickly lose patience with me and suggest I make a decision and stick with it.

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One day soon, when I can comfortably abandon any and all of my responsibilities, I may wake up one morning, put a few clothes in the car, and abruptly leave. Not for long, necessarily, but just long enough. Ideally, I would go to a house nestled in a wooded area in the middle of an enormous fenced pasture. There would be no other houses for miles in every direction and no way in except through a locked gate, for which I would hold the only key. Whether that ideal is realistic is open to debate; I would argue it is not. I might have to accept less space and unobtrusive people nearby.

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I recently read a short article about something called the L-Pill (lethal pill), which supposedly was supplied to British and American spies and other agents operating behind enemy lines during and after World War II. It was a very small capsule containing highly concentrated potassium cyanide. If an agent/spy were in danger of capture, he or she could commit suicide by biting down on the capsule, thereby avoiding torture and/or revealing secret information. It occurs to me that a pill of that sort would be valuable to carry inside a pendant hanging on a necklace. If the world were to become too much, one could quickly escape. I suspect I won’t find much support for the idea. But consider all the people who would, if they could, go to Oregon or Sweden to put an end to needless suffering…but for various reasons that just cannot do that. An L-Pill might do the trick. The very idea of an L-Pill might be extremely painful and offensive to people who have experienced the suicides of friends or loved ones. A very difficult issue, this is.

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Every time the HVAC system shuts off or comes on, a very loud noise comes from the vicinity of the return air ducts in the hallway. It sounds like metal against metal. I used to think it was just the AC filters dropping when the air flow cut off (and getting sucked up when the air flow begins). But the nature and volume of the sound seems to have changed. I may need to get someone in here to take a look. Or perhaps I should take the return-air grate off and watch to see what I can see.

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I can barely keep my eyes open again. God, I wish I could just sleep through the night and stay comfortably awake during the day. I’ll stop writing and wishing for a while.

Here we are at the first day of the first month of the two thousand twenty-first year. There it is again, the contrivance of time. “Two thousand twenty-first year,” indeed. I have no better measure of time in mind, so I’ll stick with what we have. And I bid good riddance to a year laced with pain, sadness, heartache, fear, anger, and lies. With that boot to the rear of an ugly year, I also welcome a year that holds promise and potential that can be met only if humanity collectively applies itself to correcting the errors of the past. I wish I felt more optimistic about the likelihood that the potential will be met. That having been said, I believe attitude contributes to accomplishment. Attitude alone, though, is impotent. Attitude coupled with engagement and commitment, along with a significant store of resources, is necessary. But not sufficient. Without collective will, wishes and dreams languish and shrivel. I’m rambling. It’s what I do best. I’m not at all good at writing motivational copy. 😉

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Yesterday morning, a phone call from the crematorium notified me that my wife’s ashes are available for me. I was told I could select from one of two times to arrive at the Little Rock office of the crematorium. I chose Tuesday morning. The woman with whom I spoke said the death certificates I ordered would be available at the same time. Though I did not expect a deeply solemn conversation, I think I expected a bit more dignity of the interaction; something a shade less like I was making an appointment to pick up an appliance from a repair shop. Perhaps it was just my extreme sensitivity that left me feeling dissatisfied with the conversation. The woman was perfectly pleasant and professional; I just expected a tone more like the one I heard when I was making the arrangements last Sunday.

Maybe it was the text, not the voice interaction, that unsettled me. This is the text, verbatim (including the lower case “mistake”), except for the pickup address:

This is Arkansas cremation and you have a scheduled pickup on 1/5/2021 at 10:30 am. Address

It struck me as cold. My immediate thought was whether my wife would have been treated with dignity by an organization that would send such a message. I got over it. I can never know how she was treated. I do not want to think about it. But I felt like I had to document it here, if for no other reason than to have a record of it to mull over at some time in the future when my emotions are not so freshly raw.

I do not know quite what to expect, both from the process and from myself, when I get to the crematorium. My emotions could well overflow, making for a teary, awkward encounter. I suspect teary, awkward encounters probably occur there with some regularity, so I should not be concerned. Regardless of how I react to the situation, I will get through it.

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I got a call later in the day yesterday from a friend, asking if I was interested in getting together on Tuesday afternoon. By then, my confusion had allowed me to forget the time and even the date of my Little Rock appointment, but when I checked I thought a visit that afternoon would be exactly what I needed. The call could not have come at a better time. A rather new virtual friend has suggested such things are part of a pattern of synchronicity, as if the universe is responding to circumstance. My mind attempts to argue against it, but I have to admit I do not know precisely how to interpret, nor to understand, all the laws of physics. And all the rest. So, on Tuesday afternoon I will meet friends for tacos and social lubricants, AKA alcohol. My focus on weight and health will have to wait.

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Last night, my very fine neighbors had me over for dinner and drinks and conversation in celebration of New Year’s Eve. We ate Mexican food from a local restaurant and drank some of my friends’ favorite wine, followed after dinner with ice cream and then, later, some champagne and, still later, a snifter of cognac. As I thought about all the kind and generous things my neighbors have been doing for me, I felt enormous gratitude. And then I started thinking about all the other kind and generous and compassionate things others have been and are doing for me. A sense of guilt for being so receptive to all that kindness and generosity started welling up in me, as if I should refuse such goodness. But I caught myself. All the caring things people have been doing for me should not cause me to feel guilty in the slightest; instead, I should allow myself to embrace the love and decency and humanity they are showing me. And I should allow them the opportunity to demonstrate their care and their interest in helping me get through a tough time. Even knowing this, though, I still cannot help but feel I don’t deserve so much kindness; I am not entirely sure why that is.

My neighbors urged me to play the game, Mexican Train, with them. It’s a game my wife and her sister played fairly frequently, a game I steadfastly refused to learn because I am not much into games. I relented last night, though the fact that I did so bothered me. Not long ago—I don’t recall precisely when—I promised my wife and sister-in-law that I would learn the game and play it with them when my wife came home. Because putting off learning to play it was a standing joke, I offered to put it in writing; I wrote a note saying just that. But she never came home. I came across that note yesterday. Seeing the note triggered some tears. Succumbing to my neighbors’ urging to play with them made me feel like I let my wife down by refusing to play the game with the two of them for so long. My neighbors knew nothing of my history of avoiding the game; they would not have suggested it if they had known.

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After I got home last night, intending to go to bed before the stroke of midnight, I started watching some BBC coverage of New Year’s Eve celebrations around the world. Most of the celebrations had taken place hours earlier: in Sydney and Wellington and London and Hong Kong, etc., etc. Sydney Harbor was awash in spectacular fireworks, but without crowds. Wellington, though, did not have to keep crowds at bay, thanks to Jacinda Ardern’s leadership; she led New Zealand through a response to COVID-19 that yielded spectacular results. Somehow, I missed the ball drop in an empty Times Square; I suppose I was in the midst of switching channels by then. I finally went to bed around 1:00 a.m. As usual, I woke with some regularity through the night and finally climbed out of bed at 5 this morning.

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No shave this morning; I opted only to shower. I doubt I’ll be going out today, so my almost invisible stubble won’t ruin anyone’s day.

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I went to the grocery store yesterday in search of black-eyed peas, thinking I would buy a can. There were no cans to be found, so I bought a bag of dried peas. Half the bag soaked overnight; I will cook them so that they will be ready about the same time the leg of lamb comes out of the oven.

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No matter how much I try to boost my own spirits this morning by writing silly nonsense and meaningless drivel, I think I feel sullen and grey. I am in no mood to celebrate the beginning of a new year. I hope that changes as the day wears on.

Thanks to good friends passing through, on Tuesday evening I enjoyed the spectacular taste of a beer I could not hope to find in Hot Springs (and probably not in Arkansas): Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Caramella Ale. The beer is labeled as wheatwine ale aged in bourbon barrels from Larceny Bourbon with apple, cinnamon, and natural caramel flavors. And it is, indeed, a marvelous drink. The label also claims it develops in the bottle for up to five years, but the elixir we drank was bottled in 2020; I cannot imagine it “developing” and getting better until 2025. These friends, a couple I have known since 1997 (I think that’s right), are among a relatively small cadre of people I admire for their adventurous spirits and their generous and compassionate natures; people who care.

That happy experience was followed yesterday morning by a masked visit by a writer friend who brought wonderful breakfast treats: a Keto Egg Bite and a Cheesecake Fat Bomb, along with an array of savory treats for later and a coffee mug I’ve coveted since I first saw it at her house a year or more ago. The mug is imprinted with dozens of Shakespearean insults, all styled in different fonts and colors. We had a great conversation that wandered through a maze of all sorts of subjects, the kind of conversation I enjoy immensely.

As that conversation was coming to a close, I got a call from a woman at church who asked if she could stop by to give me cookies for the church “two cookie communion,” which will take place via Zoom next Sunday. One day I will write about the “two cookie communion.” For now, though, it will suffice to say the word “communion” is not as typically religious as one might expect. At any rate, a while later I answered the door to find two women from church, bearing the two cookies and a bottle of wine. I invited them in and we had a gloriously long conversation. I knew both of them only casually beforehand, but by the time they left I felt I had developed two friends. They are funny, energetic, intelligent, and obviously caring and compassionate people.

Before my new friends left, another friend from church came by to share with me a coffee table book about Newfoundland; she had read my blog post about my desire to go there and thought it would be of interest. She was right. In addition, she brought a journal of the trip she and her late husband took in 1990 to Quebec and the Maritime Provinces. The day-by-day journal is a fascinating read; well-written and packed with information. While their trip took place thirty years ago, I suspect quite a bit of the information is still valid today. I was enthralled by many of the details she incorporated into her journal: Canada is the world’s second largest country, behind Russia; at that time, at least, Montreal had absolutely no slums and was graffiti-free; it was illegal to leave a vehicle running longer than three minutes (to minimize pollution); and much more.

In addition to the coffee table book and the journal, my friend left me with some advice on dealing with grief, based on the wisdom of experience. She suggested that, as soon as circumstances permit, I get away from Hot Springs Village for a while. By getting away, she said, I will be giving myself a break from all the daily reminders of a life no longer available to me. Whether my “get away” is a road trip to Newfoundland or a trip to visit family, getting away will at least temporarily relieve some of the pain of loss and accelerate the process of healing. She also passed on some advise someone else had given to her: make a list of the little annoyances my wife caused me (everyone has some of these). Then, use the list to tell myself “at least I don’t have to deal with [whatever] now.” I am not describing its value as well as she did; it made very good sense and sounded to me like an excellent idea.

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This morning, I got up at 4:00, after checking the clock at 2:00 and again at 3:00. I may have slept some between 2:00 and 4:00, but if I did it was brief and shallow. Waking in the middle of the night is contributing to my early-to-bed habits of late, I am sure. I prefer not to go to bed so early, but by the time 8:30 or 9:00 rolls around, I am ready to call it a day. I think I may force myself to stay up much later than usual tonight. My next door neighbors invited me for dinner tonight. We may watch television coverage of New Year’s Eve festivities around the world; I do not think I’ll try to stay up to watch the ball drop in Times Square. But maybe I will.

+++

Tomorrow, New Year’s Day, I will roast a leg of lamb. It has been thawing in the refrigerator for a few days; I hope it is (or will be) thoroughly thawed before I roast it tomorrow. I will stab the lamb as if I were a crazed murderer, frenetically plunging a knife into the meat at intervals of about one to two inches. In each murderous incision, I will place a thick sliver of garlic. I am certain most recipes that call for garlic slivers to be placed in knife wounds do not call for as much garlic as I plan to use. I love garlic in general. Garlic in leg of lamb is even more wonderful. So I go a bit overboard. I may make hasselback potatoes to go along with the lamb. And a salad or peas. And I must make sure to have black-eyed peas. My sister-in-law will join me for the feast. I assume I will have leftover lamb, perhaps enough to make lamb vindaloo, another delightful dish, within the next few days.

+++

Yesterday was trash day. I bagged the trash and put it out in the garage early in the morning, intending to take it to the curb before 10:30. I realized I had not done it only after I noticed the garbage truck pass my house. Once I get the trash ready to take to the curb, I never forget it. Until yesterday. My memory must have hit a glitch. What else have I forgotten? I haven’t necessarily forgotten to do things, I just haven’t done them. My lethargy continues to plague me. Though it may not be lethargy, it may be lack of interest and absence of discipline. I made jambalaya a couple of nights ago, which requires a significant amount of time and energy; much more than sorting and recording receipts; if I can make jambalaya, I can sort and record receipts and have energy to spare. But I continue to resist doing what must be done in favor of doing something I enjoy. I think I may have to resort to terrorizing myself if I have any hope of getting stuff done. I might threaten to crush a finger with a hammer every day I put off doing these administrative chores; I would, of course, need to clarify that I’m referring to my own fingers. Yeah. I’ll make that threat tomorrow if I get around to it.

+++

I just noticed that my fingers seem especially thick this morning. It’s not an optical illusion. I tried to slip off my wedding ring a moment ago and it would not come off easily. Yesterday afternoon I recall pulling it off and on, sort of a nervous tic. It slid on and off without resistance. This morning, though, my fingers seem to have become much thicker and heavier. I’ve never noticed that before. A quick check of Google offers sixteen possibilities, including pregnancy. That leaves fifteen possibilities; my guess is that there are more. Unless time reveals otherwise, I will assume the swelling will diminish. Then, I can decide what to do with my wedding band. I’ve worn it almost every day, except during surgeries, when I was required to remove it, for more than forty years. It would feel a bit odd to be without it. On the other hand, it seems strange to me to wear it when my wife is gone. I was pleased to read that the decision about what to do with it is purely personal; there are no “etiquette” guidelines about which one should be aware. Some people continue to wear it, some switch it to the right hand, some take it off, some put it on a chain to hang around their necks, etc. I’ll decide, one day, what to do. There is no rush. There is no time too soon or too late to worry about. So I won’t. I just hope the swelling of my fingers self-corrects very soon.

+++

I have not been to the recycling center in far too long. My recycling bins and bags are full to overflowing. I may go today. Or maybe not. Whether today or next week, I must do it soon. Otherwise, bags of recyclables will begin to fill my garage. And the time will come that I’ll have to decide what to do with my wife’s clothes, etc. There’s no rush on that, though. I will not simply discard them. Some of her clothes might well be in demand at resale shops. But maybe not now, not in the time of COVID. Do those stores get any traffic these days? Probably not much. We shall see.

+++

I just had the strangest urge. I felt like having a shot of bourbon. It’s 6:40 a.m. It is most definitely not the time to have a shot of bourbon. But that urge was strong. I’ve never had a shot of bourbon (or any other alcoholic drink) this early; except once when I caught an early flight from Chicago to Houston. It was probably about 1983; I was on the way home from a conference with several workmates. We each ordered a Bloody Mary in celebration of a successful conference. And then another. And another. Now that I’m thinking of that flight, a Blood Mary sounds even more appealing than a shot of bourbon. Neither should sound appealing this early. I think I’ll let this urge pass.

+++

Years ago, before we moved to Hot Springs Village, my wife and I talked about taking a year or so to travel. The idea was to get an RV and just go. Though we ultimately abandoned the idea, before we did we went looking. I found one I really, really wanted: a wonderfully compact Roadtrek van-based RV. I don’t recall the specific model. My wife, though, said “we wouldn’t last a week together in that.” There just wasn’t anyplace for privacy, which we both needed but she needed more. I checked the 2021 models and found one I think I would like: the 2021 Play, offered at a price of only $104,986. Hell, at that price I should just go ahead and buy two. Right. I don’t think RVing is in my future, after all.

+++

I’ve quenched my thirst for alcohol. I had some tonic water, instead. No gin at this hour. For some reason, I absolutely love the taste of tonic water, especially diet tonic water. Diet tonic is not always easy to find, though. So I occasionally buy regular tonic, usually Schweppe‘s or Canada Dry or, if at Walmart, Great Value.  But non-diet stuff has about 390 calories per bottle. I can drink a bottle at one sitting. Almost. The diet version may have various highly toxic poisons in it, but they are deeply satisfying highly toxic poisons, so I will continue to partake of them.

+++

My sister in law just texted me that she is on the way over for our morning coffee and Words with Friends fest. I have wasted a perfectly good hour or so writing when I could have showered and shaved. Oh, well. There will be time for that later. For now, I will laugh at the last day of a miserable, nasty, no-good year. And I will put black-eyed peas on my shopping list, because I do not have any…I thought I did!

They remain unfinished lyrics to what was shaping up to be a country-western song. The working title, “Early in the Mourning,” emerged from my mind as I pondered how long I might feel the combination of sorrow, guilt, and myriad other emotions enveloping me. Initially, as I mused about whether this turbulent storm of emotions might ever end, the title seemed appropriate for an essay. But as I thought more about it, and slipped deeper into a depressed mood, the more it sounded to me like the shrapnel of discarded song lyrics. I find myself attracted to lyrics that tell a story, even maudlin lyrics bathed in self-pity. I think that’s the appeal of country-western music; it is story-telling to a catchy tune. The elusive catchy tune, though, can make or break an otherwise decent set of lyrics—in my opinion. There’s the rub. If my opinion amounted to anything of substance, I might be a country-western music promoter. “Promoter.” The word reeks of rotted capitalism, doesn’t it? Well, yes, I believe it does. Music promoters work to mold products around public desire. But that’s an unfair description to pin on people whose only sins relate to making a living off meeting the public’s demand for poetry accompanied by a tune.

Here is the first verse of the unfinished song:

When I woke up early in the mourning,
my eyes were salted shut.
My tears had flowed and left a solid track.
I tried and tried to dry them,
but they just kept right on flowing;
‘Cause I knew that you were never coming back.

There was more, but I decided audiences might overlook the clever wordplay. And I couldn’t stem the flow of salt. Maybe I’ll come back to this later. Maybe not. I started another piece long ago but abandoned it when I decided it was going nowhere. It was called “Bad Poetry.” It started out like this:

Bad poetry smothers empathy with a pillow of ill-formed phrases.
Bad poetry digests the imagination the way a snake eats a rat.
Bad poetry causes people to drown tires and slash kittens.

It didn’t even begin to fit into a musical pattern. There are ample reasons I am not living in Nashville, turning down recording contracts right and left.

+++

Yesterday, I attempted to reach an attorney to discuss various matters about which I thought I might need professional advice. I haven’t received a return call yet. I suspect the lack of a return call might have something to do with the fact that 85% of the American public is taking time off between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The 85% figure is a figment of my overactive imagination. But, still. I remember my years of owning a business; the only time I could get away was that one week period, when I closed the business for the duration. It was an easy decision. None of my clients were active during that week. In fact, none were reachable. I could have used the week to get caught up. Instead, I used the week to breathe. And my staff were forced to take one of their two weeks of paid vacation time during that period. I required them to breathe, as well. In hindsight, I probably should have given them two weeks of vacation in addition to the forced one-week respite. And I would have done so, if not for the demands of my clients. If I had it all to do over again, I would do things differently. Not just work, either. I would be a better person all the way around. Now that it’s too late, it’s easy to promise it all would have been different.  I have no idea why this paragraph found its way onto the screen. I think my fingers sprung a leak.

+++

Yesterday (or was it the day before?), I spoke to a woman I once considered a good friend. I had not spoken to her in a very long time. Her Chicago/Midwest accent was startling to me, despite the fact that it had not changed since I knew her. Something about it, though, was disturbing. Or maybe it wasn’t the accent as much as it was her demeanor; an air of patronizing superiority. The accent was the same, but the attitude seemed very different. I doubt she changed, though. I think, instead, I have become more attuned to how very grating it has always been. I kept hearing her say “you should…” do such and such, as if she had answers that someone of my lowly station could not possibly find on my own. Though I was polite, I could not get off the phone quickly enough. I ended the phone call with “I wish you all the best.” I hope that conveyed the message I intended to convey; that the conversation was the last one I plan to have with her.

Ach. I want to live according to this philosophy: “Everyone you meet is facing a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.” But I fail to live my wishes. Who knows what she might have been dealing with? At the time, it did not enter my mind; I simply wanted to close a chapter. It’s not enough to want to be good. If I do not behave the way I claim to want to be, I am at minimum a hypocrite.

+++

Some days, and this is shaping up to be one of them, I would like nothing better than to curl up in bed and sleep until dark. But that is not going to happen. So, I might as well continue sliding into the day.

There’s plenty to be done, but I don’t seem capable of motivating myself to do it. Finally, when I woke up this morning, I put a load of sheets in the washer, a full week after I should have done it. Whether I clean and polish the stove top remains to be seen. Ditto the kitchen counter. At least I’ve kept the bathrooms reasonably clean and sanitary.

When the sun rises, the dust on the hardwood floors will be so obvious that I might be moved to vacuum. But it was obvious yesterday and the day before. I was moved only to use the mini-vac to pick up the more intrusive bits and pieces. And these are only the normal housekeeping matters. Filing paperwork and shredding paper with identifying information remains to be done, along with dozens of other minor, easily doable chores. And the windows are in dire need of cleaning, inside and out when the weather cooperates.  I can hire someone to do that chore, if I get around to it. I’ve never been good at eliminating streaks; windows often look worse after I tackle them than they did before.

I did manage to get to the Post Office again yesterday, where I extracted a bill and several pieces of junk mail from the P.O. box. And I bought gas for the Subaru. So I’m not entirely consumed by slovenliness. A very kind friend generously took the time to scheduled the Subaru for service on my behalf. But I decided yesterday to put it off again for various indefensible reasons. I really could use an injection of energy. Sweet treats won’t do it. I’ve had more than my share of cookies and other such sugar-laden goodies.

It’s not that I’m incapable of coping in a time of sadness. I think I have that under reasonable control most of the time, so I can’t blame grief. I’m just deeply lethargic. I’m retiring early and getting more hours in bed than normal, by a fair amount. I’m not necessarily sleeping all those hours, but at least I’m resting. Now that I think of it, though, maybe I’m spending too many hours in bed. Last night, I was in bed by nine. I got up at five. I was awake between one and three, off and on, but I was in bed for eight hours, which is considerably more than normal for me. I may be thinking my way to a solution for this lazy attitude of mine. Stay awake later and get up earlier. I’ll try that.

+++

I read a few minutes ago that a strong (6.3 magnitude) earthquake struck central Croatia not long ago. A 5.2 magnitude struck yesterday. News reports say the quake was felt throughout the country and in neighboring Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina. My wife and I traveled to Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, along with Montenegro and Slovenia, last year. We spent time in Zagreb while we were in Croatia. I was sorry to read that the earthquake apparently caused widespread damage, though I’ve seen no information about deaths or injuries.

+++

In other reading this morning, I came across an Italian dish that supposedly is among the favorites in the country: cacio e pepe. It consists of three ingredients: goat’s milk cheese (Pecorino, ideally, according to BBC.com), black pepper, and pasta (including lots of starch-infused pasta water). It is said to be very difficult to perfect, but spectacular when perfected. I should avoid pasta if I want to fit in my clothes much longer. Dammit.

+++

Yesterday, while sitting at my computer doing nothing productive, I stumbled across a record of every meal and snack I ate during a nine-week period at the beginning of 2017. I recorded not only every meal and snack, but the approximate number of calories in each, based on the calories in the ingredients. My records were maintained in excruciating detail (for example, a lunch consisting of 1 can kipper snacks; 1 medium tomato; 1 zucchini; 1 jalapeño; and a glass of water, for a total of 226 calories). It appears my plan was to limit my caloric intake to 1,300 calories per day, maximum, with a target of 1,000 calories. My records reveal that I maintained my targets or, at least, my maximum almost the entire 9-week period, with a few notable exceptions when I hit a high of 4,000 calories one day and 1,600-1,700 a few others.

Though I had to prompt myself to remember that endeavor, after I started thinking about it, it all came back to me. I remember the process being interesting to me. It was not terribly difficult to stick to my plan, either. Of course, after 9 weeks I have no idea what I did; I could have started consuming multi-thousand calorie meals. I doubt that I did, but I just do not recall. I think I’ll consider doing something like that again, just to kick-start a healthier food-intake-lifestyle. I do not want to diet. I want to change the way I think about food. I want to look at eating as an attractive challenge: make meals that have the tastes and textures I love but that keep calories, carbohydrates, sugars, and processed ingredients to a minimum. I refuse to become obsessive about it, but I think a Mediterranean food lifestyle makes good sense; based on much of what I’ve read about it.

+++

My shoulders and neck seem to be slowly recovering from the strains I have felt during the past several months. I still feel like my shoulders hide steel cables beneath the skin sometimes, but the cables are loosening, bit by bit. I may yet treat myself to a massage, but not until I have a better sense of how I will need to structure my financial life; that’s a slow process. When I have a handle on that, though, I may put an N-95 mask on and visit a masseuse, assuming I can find an N-95 mask that’s not needed by healthcare workers. I may have to wait for a while.

+++

Whenever I have seen a photo of my wife the last several days, which has been frequent because I have been searching for them on my phone and my computer, I have been overwhelmed by grief. The emotion actually feels like a powerful wave is sweeping over me and I have to fight to stay vertical. I know it will not last, but I’m not sure I want the sensation to fade. Somehow it makes me feel more closely connected to  her. Sadness or grief or whatever combination it is seems both punitive and palliative. I am not sufficiently clear in my thinking or feeling to know just what takes place in my emotional center. It’s a little like a slow-motion tornado, I think; as if I know what a slow-motion tornado would be like.

+++

I want more coffee. Actually, I want a double espresso. I will settle for another cup of coffee.

Last night I awoke from a clouded memory—it was not a dream—and I wanted to ask my wife a question to help me clarify it. When I became sufficiently conscious to realize I would never again be able to ask her a question, I felt a sensation somewhere between terror and excruciating physical pain. The memory was not especially important, but the subsequent awareness of perpetual separation tormented me; it still does, several hours later. I wonder whether that sensation will ever fade?

+++

Yesterday afternoon, I invited a friend to come for a visit. During the time we sat and talked, we covered a variety of topics. Naturally, I suppose, many of the topics concerned my wife’s death and how I am dealing with it. I think I am dealing with it pretty well, though on occasion I feel an overwhelming sense of loss and grief.

I heard an interview on the radio a few days ago in which the person being interviewed spoke of grief having only, I think, two stages (not the five stages copied from Elisabeth Kübler Ross’s seven stages of dying). If I recall correctly, she said grief consists of the intense sadness and pain of loss (stage 1) and the never-ending evolution of recovery from that sadness and pain (stage 2).  I guess that answers my question.

The visit was cathartic. I think I needed, or at least wanted, to talk about the emotional turmoil that seems to surge through me in waves. Although I do not think I know any more now than before, I feel a little less compressed; as if a relief valve was turned, emptying a bit of pressure.

+++

I spent some time last night reading about Newfoundland; its climate, its cultural and social environments, and how one approaches becoming a resident. Having never been there, I suspect my interest is more of a fantasy than an actionable curiosity, but one never knows. It is most definitely an active fantasy, though. Before I would do anything rash, I would force myself to peel away the romantic images that dwell in my mind, requiring me to look at the place and its people with ample skepticism. I would insist on understanding more about it than the magical sketches I have allowed myself to paint in my mind’s eye.

My dreams of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and various other places in the Canadian Maritimes are just that: dreams. They are not new. I guess Newfoundland is not part of the Maritimes. It doesn’t matter. My dreams of the Maritimes and environs have been resting comfortably in the back of my mind for decades, along with fantasies about other places in which I imagine living a contradictory life, one of isolation in the midst of the powerful embrace of loving community. It’s a fantasy. A dream. An imaginary place that quite possibly does not exist. Somewhere in my fantasy world there exists a co-housing community that offers privacy, intimacy, community, and a passionate connection with nature. A place with rugged, rocky beaches and magnificent cliffs under constant attack by fierce waves. I envision a place where only pleasant memories are allowed; where painful recollections are kept at bay. It’s all make-believe, of course, but it’s a place I fervently seek, nonetheless.

But would I be satisfied to be alone in Newfoundland? Or anywhere else, for that matter? It’s far too early to even think about such things, but I cannot help it. Even though I’ve spent more than five months living alone in my house, while my wife was in hospital and rehab facilities, I’m not entirely used to it. And I am not sure I am suited for it for the long term, even though I love my isolation and my solitude. It’s hard for me to understand myself; how can I be so private and so comfortable with my own company, yet so susceptible to loneliness? I should not allow myself to even think this way.

+++

As I am wont to do from time to time, this morning I explored what I wrote a few years in the past. Among the words I recorded on December 29, 2017 (I did not post the day before) were these involving a character I created, Kolbjørn Landvik:

He and I share many attributes, which is natural inasmuch as we are the same person, just in different times and in different places. He and I absolutely love the taste of pickled herring. And we love feeling the salt spray on our face as we sail into the cold wind in search of good fishing spots and ourselves.

Kolbjørn Landvik and I share another attribute. We’re both enamored of the French phrase, “le jeu n’en vaut pas la chandelle,” and its English translation, “the game is not worth the candle.” Something about the phrase causes tears to well up in our eyes. Hearing or reading the phrase causes the deep sadness sleeping in our chests to rise from its slumber and overtake our consciousness. We weep, Kolbjørn and I, and we struggle to understand why it seems at times that we, alone, grieve for the world we wish for, the world that never was but should have been.

I’ve written and plagiarized myself enough to call it a morning, for now. The clock is racing toward 6:45 and my coffee cup is empty except for the gritty wash at the bottom. Time for more.

Yesterday, a friend stopped by with some little gifts and a massive amount of solace and comfort. During our masked conversation, she mentioned a friend’s description of emotions at the loss of a loved one as something like shocked disbelief. That sounds familiar. That, and endless emptiness.

But, for me, it is not like that all the time. Those unwelcome waves—sadness and loss and vacancy that continue a week into the experience—come and go. Most of the time, I am fine. Except for those grief storms that attempt to uproot my sanity and send it flying in powerful gusts of raging sadness, most of my time is relatively peaceful.

It is odd, though; those periods of peace and calm usually end with feelings of guilt that I have allowed myself a respite from the pain. I begin to think I should not permit anything but darkness to invade my mind. I understand the guilt probably is a natural but unnecessary reaction to circumstance, on the one hand, but on the other hand it seems an insufficient price to pay for an unearned sense, however long, of solace.

+++

Yesterday, I napped early after a night of inadequate sleep. But it seems the two hour nap was insufficient. Later in the day, while playing Words with Friends with my sister-in-law, I found myself nodding. A lot. Later, I think around 4, I sat in a recliner and promptly fell asleep for two more hours. When I woke, I heated leftover  minestrone soup; it was exactly what I needed to fuel me through two episodes of the English language version of Hinterland, originally a Welsh language police detective drama series. The original title of the series is Y Gwyll (Welsh for “The Dusk”). I am enjoying it immensely, though I think it would be cool to see the original Welsh version with subtitles.

After two episodes, though, I could no longer keep my eyes open. I went to bed and fell fast asleep. And then returned to my regular cycles of waking, sleeping, waking, sleeping, etc. The most recent cycle ended at 5 this morning, when I got up, folded and put away a load of clothes I had left in the dryer, added another load to the washer, made coffee, and made my way to the keyboard.

The letters have worn off several keys on my keyboard. Missing entirely are: a, s, d, o, and l. Barely visible are c and e. The left shift key, as well as the key once known as a, is badly scarred from repeated pounding by the fingernail on the little finger of my left hand. The blank l key, too, has been damaged by the nail of the finger next to the little finger on my right hand. As I tried to name that finger (instead of saying “the finger next to the little finger”), I wondered whether each finger has a unique name? We know what to call the thumb and the little finger, but are there other names? And are thumb and little finger really the best names for those digits? I suspect medicine has names, not only for the bones of those fingers, but for the fingers themselves. Even if the names are code, like L meta2 or R3, I suspect. Phalanges could be used, but if I remember correctly there are three phalanges in each finger (are toes also phalanges?), so the codes would have to incorporate all the phalanges in a given finger.  This is oddly of interest to me, but not sufficiently riveting to merit stopping what I am doing to explore and find an answer. Sometimes my interests are so shallow I would barely get wet if I immersed myself in them. But, then, even my deepest interests often summon only cursory exploration; I am the inverse of a Renaissance man. I’ll have to see if I can find an antonym for the term. Actually, I may be a Renaissance man wannabe; I’d like to have deep interest in and knowledge about an enormous array of subjects, but I don’t have the discipline or the capacity. I’ve said it before: “I know so very little about so very much.” There, now I’ve said it again.

+++

A local guy who’s much more of a Renaissance man than I could ever hope to be has made it one of his missions in life to visit the oldest bar in every state. I admire the dedication it takes to tackle such a challenging endeavor. I should identify such a goal for myself. I have no idea what it might be, though.

+++

I remember a time when I would sit outdoors, smoking a cigar and drinking from a snifter of brandy or a glass of Scotch. I very rarely smoked cigars; they were not necessarily for special occasions but for special or unusual moods, I think. I smoked cigars in celebration of life and happiness and free will and hope for the future. I doubt I would ever become addicted.

I rarely, if ever, intentionally inhaled cigar smoke. It is too harsh to comfortably take in an entire breath of smoke. But the taste in my mouth, smoky smooth vanilla and an indescribable earthiness, was delightful.

My wife loathed the smell of cigars, so I made a point of smoking them only when the smoke would not bother her. That has been years ago. I stopped smoking in 2004 and I suspect my last cigar would have been a year or two before that.

Would it be possible, I wonder, to get those celebratory moods back? Instead of celebrating by smoking a cigar, would smoking a cigar bring back the appreciation of life and happiness and free will and hope for the future?  I’ll have to think about that. It may be madness that it’s even entered my mind, but there you have it.

I equate cigar smoke with incense. Neither are meant to fill the lungs, only to tease the nostrils with pleasant aromas that somehow bring about a sense of comfort and peace. The other night, after dining with neighbors, the male of the pair lit a cone of incense and put it inside a German hand-carved wooden Santa Claus incense diffuser. I think that’s what made me think of cigars.

+++

It’s almost 7:30 and I haven’t showered or shaved or gotten dressed yet. But I have washed another load of clothes and finished two cups of coffee. For the umpteenth morning in a row, I have a strong hankering for a double espresso. Unfortunately, I have neither the appropriate coffee beans nor an espresso maker suited to the task. I have an espresso maker I bought when we lived in Chicago, more than thirty years ago. It never made the best espresso, but it made a pretty damn good cup when I used the coffee my Italian friend gave me. He had family in Montreal who he visited from time to time. When he did, he bought vacuum-packed bricks of super-finely-ground imported Italian coffee. Once, he brought a couple of bricks to me. That espresso was, by far, the best I ever made in my little Braun or Krups or whatever brand espresso maker. I never made cappuccino with that machine, but it has a milk steamer attachment. Once, there was a little stainless steel milk container for use with the steamer attachment, but the little container is long gone, I think. But I should try it again. And I should get back to getting showered and getting dressed. First, though, I am going to sneak out to the Post Office in my sweats and, probably, my flip flops. No one else would be at the Post Office picking up mail at this hour on a Sunday morning, would they? I’ll soon see.

Every two hours, like clockwork, I awaken. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve been going to bed early that sets the mental alarm clock: 11:30, 1:30, 3:30. By 3:30, it’s almost pointless to go back to bed, because I know I’ll be up even before the next biological alarm goes off. But I try, only to hear the “beep, beep, beep” of a garbage truck backing up about an hour later. I get up to explore what is making the sound in the middle of the night. I look out the window to see a large cargo plane being pushed, backward toward me, by a compact truck. I am confused by seeing the plane and the tarmac outside my window. The confusion is interrupted when my arm gets caught in the sheet. The sound and the plane and the tarmac were elements of a dream that had no other components. I have no explanation for that dream. So I ignore it and get up. The clock says 4:13. I am up for the duration.

+++

If I close my eyes now, I think I will fall asleep at the desk. Though I’ve been getting sleep every night for the past week, sleep has come in packets of varying length, mostly shorter than I’d like. I’ve gone through almost two cups of coffee so far, which have enabled me to stay awake long enough to read and watch BBC.com and to read a few Aljazeera pieces. I’ve read the latest on the Nashville RV bomb, despite wanting to avoid knowing what happened. It’s almost 6:00 now and I don’t think I can keep my eyes open another minute. Time for a break or a nap or a lengthy sleep.

+++

I decided to take an early morning nap. I was awakened by the telephone nearly two hours later, around 7:45; my sister-in-law called to check on me because I hadn’t responded to her text message. It’s just after 8 now, and she’s on her way over. I will have another cup of coffee and attempt to restart the day. This is a completely new experience, waking to brilliant sun.  It’s like I have wasted half the day.

I want people to know who my wife was, the brilliant woman whose intellect was far superior to mine but who sometimes concealed her superiority, to the extent she could, so I would not appear so obviously dim by comparison. I want people to know a little more about the extremely private woman who simply refused to have her inner-most thoughts dragged out of her, unlike her husband who randomly and wantonly opens up to strangers who stumbled across this blog. But I have to think long and hard about what I should or can reveal about the woman I’ve loved for so long. She valued her privacy, keeping many of her feelings and opinions and emotions and beliefs locked in a vault to which very, very few were given access. I respect her decisions to keep much of herself hidden.

The trappings of prestige meant nothing to her. Though she earned a Ph.D., she never flaunted it. It was extremely rare for her to mention she was a licensed psychologist or that she had an undergraduate degree in mathematics. Those educational credentials, in part, led her to gravitate toward research psychology, psychometrics, and statistics, areas in which she excelled. Those accomplishments did not define her; she would not let them.

Unlike so many people who define themselves by their professional roles, my wife refused to allow her value to be equated with her job. And she was not too proud to do work outside her “professional sphere” when necessary or appropriate. Years ago, not long after she was hired to do research into white collar productivity, the organization that hired her suddenly disbanded the entire department. My wife was quite particular about the kind of psychological research she wanted to do, which was quite specialized and limited in availability. So, instead of despairing of the absence of jobs locally in her field, she quickly learned a new field: geophysical mapping or coding or something like it; I could never quite understand it.  Then, a few years later, when I encouraged her to return to her first professional love, she found a job in Chicago. I followed her there when I found a job a few months later. She enjoyed that work, conducting research into correlations between measured aptitudes and job satisfaction and performance. But she readily followed me a few years later when I found a position that, after roughly a year in New York, took me back to Texas.

Later, when I formed a management company, she willingly took on the financial management role for both the company and our client organizations. The business was a team effort; it would not have survived without her dedication and long, long hours.

During all this “professional” time, though, she made a point of living a life separate from work whenever possible. We enjoyed weekend jaunts, day trips, film, theater, and cooking, among other joint endeavors. And she carved out time for herself, too. She was a voracious reader, wading through enormous volumes of books, from classics to thrillers and mysteries, especially mysteries with female protagonists. She watched television, allowing herself to get enmeshed in PBS Masterpiece Theatre series and foreign films while simultaneously watching “reality” shows that I found silly and wasteful of her intellect. She did not care a whit whether I approved of her television tastes. She was not one to be moved by the trappings of intellectual snobbery nor was she willing to be shamed by judgments based on that snobbery.  She was a real person, her own person; unmoved by the artifice of social convention.

This fiercely private woman was my foundation and my anchor for more than forty years. I cannot imagine how I will get by without her, but somehow I must. I wrote a poem, five years ago, that attempted to describe what we were together. I called it Armature.

Armature

You and I have lived this life for an eternity,
detritus of our dashed dreams serving as bricks
and the two of us as mortar, cobbling together
this fragile, monumental tower where we reside.

We have scuffed our emotions against sharp
sentimental objects so many times they have
shredded into strings like worn cotton,
as soft and ephemeral as clouds.

The scowls and snarls of daily battles
between us have become so comfortable
I know I could not live without them and
the easy fit between us they concede.

I would not last an instant without them or you,
sitting in your study behind a closed door, book in hand,
exploring fantasies and frustrations, by proxy, of writers
who know you without ever having met you.

I would crumple into the useless hulk I have always been
were you not there to inflate my emptiness into a
figure in which you somehow find substance,
a man only you, in your wisdom and courage, could love.

Life-altering decisions may be best made during periods of relative serenity. I have heard and read that suggestion many times, and not just recently. The advice is probably sound, so I will plan to heed it unless circumstances forcefully argue otherwise.  That having been said, I’ve been bouncing around, mostly alone, in a fairly large house for upward of five months. I am comfortable in the house and I love the view, but it was a lot of house for my wife and me. It’s even more house for me, alone. The idea of selling the house, though, brings up other matters that surround such a potential change. Do I want to trade in a large house for a smaller one in a blood red pocket of America where I’ve lived for almost seven years? Or might selling the house present an opportunity to look elsewhere for a place where my political and social views are not so out of step with the mainstream?

Aside from the political and social isolation (though, to acknowledge reality, I gratefully am part of an even smaller pocket of progressive thinking and friendly people in my church), I am spatially distant from my remaining family. That said, though, they are scattered all around…Mexico to California to Texas to Ohio. Perhaps I should consider an even more radical change, like heading out to our original first-choice of places to which we might have relocated: Oregon. Or another pipedream I’ve harbored for years: the northeast or, even more distant, the Canadian Maritimes. I do not know whether it would even be possible for me to move to Canada; I think the restrictions may be too great. Even more radical, but possibly doable, would be Scandinavia. The idea of living in a place where the concept of social responsibility is engrained in one’s mind is appealing.

I think I may be engaged in escapist fantasy; trying to erase or dull the reality of the present by dreaming about the future. I do not have sufficient financial resources to pursue several of the ideas rattling around in my head. And I probably do not have the courage, either. Yet is it courage that’s required to make such significant changes, or it is fear; fear that one cannot long tolerate unwelcome, externally imposed change? That question merits long, honest, and deep consideration. All these questions in my head warrant such examination.

+++

I just watched a video I recorded in July 2011, announcing the decision my wife and I made to “at least temporarily” shutter our business. I attempted to be funny in the announcement but I think I failed. I made some statements in the video about our plans that never came to fruition (growing enormous vegetable gardens, taking many long road trips, etc.).  The image of  me in that video seems, now, to be a much younger man. And I guess I was; about nine years younger. I think, perhaps, I should pay heed to that video and attempt to follow the plan I laid out.

+++

I just watched another video, this one about the world’s first happiness museum. An analyst with the Happiness Research Institute defines happiness as having three components: life evaluation (how satisfied is one with the course of her life); daily emotional experience, also known as affective happiness; and life meaning, our our sense of purpose.  Another reason to consider Copenhagen and environs as my next home.

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Yesterday, I was visited by a woman from church, who brought me a jar full of soup ingredients (along with instructions for making the soup), a table of contents for a church member/friend soup recipe book, and some other goodies. That sort of thing, the genuine goodness of such people who plan and execute such programs, gives me reason to look at where I am as a safe harbor. A neighbor also came by with a bag full of goodies. I spent about fifteen minutes on the phone with the minister of the church, a truly good and caring man who helps make the church the appealing entity it is. And I spoke to a friend by phone last night; he offered to travel to any Flying Saucer I choose, after the pandemic, to attend my “plate” party (I’ll write about this again one day, to explain). Good people abound.

As I went about my usual Wednesday morning routine—showering, shaving, preparing trash to take to the curb for pickup, making my first cup of coffee, etc., etc.—it occurred to me that this Wednesday is no different that most Wednesdays. Except my wife is no longer here. Yet that has been true for most Wednesdays, most days of every week, since July 15. I adjusted my routines to account for my wife’s hospitalizations and her times in rehab facilities. During the times I was able to visit, my routine included a trip to visit with her. When she was in isolation due to COVID-19, I spoke to her by phone, or tried to, and/or visited through a window when I could.

So this Wednesday is very different from past Wednesdays. And the past five months were radical departures from virtually all the months that preceded them. Every day going forward will be dramatically different; my life has changed in ways beyond my comprehension. My wife’s death last Saturday launched the remainder of my life in a direction I do not yet understand and do not want to. But I have no choice. At some point, I will have to come to grips with my new reality. That point is not here yet, though. I am unable to think of the future. It has been only three days. Three of the longest days, I think, I have ever experienced.

Several times each day, I catch myself wanting to tell my wife something. It’s natural; it’s to be expected. I can no longer make a mental note to mention something to my wife; at least I can no longer act on that mental note. I know that. And I know that desire to say something to her will diminish over time. Though I’ve never before lost a spouse, I’ve lost a sibling; I recall the experience. This, though, is different. And I know that, too. I just don’t yet know how the differences will affect me.

My ruminations sound so clinical, as if they are devoid of emotion. They are not. I am just thinking about how my life has changed. The most important person in my life, the irreplaceable anchor and guide, is gone. Millions, billions, of people have experienced what I am experiencing, but this experience is unique to me. I’m rambling. I’ll stop.

+++

Friends and neighbors continue to express their condolences and their concern in many ways. Notes, messages, telephone conversations, and properly distanced and masked doorway visits have shown me the compassion that resides in so many people. A friend from church delivered a marvelous, comforting, and nutritious dinner last night, with enough for another meal as well. A neighbor I know only in passing, a woman who used to play cards with my wife, brought a dish of sliced cinnamon cake. Oh, I failed to mention before that I have two nice servings of lasagna in my freezer, courtesy of another friend who, day before yesterday, also brought cheese cookies. I am in no danger of starving.

+++

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. My family’s tradition has always been to enjoy tamales and chile con queso on Christmas Eve. The best tamales, in my memory, are those made in the kitchens of Mexican and Mexican-American families. The tamale-making process is overseen by little old Mexican grandmothers (who, now, are probably considerably younger than I am). They teach the proper ways to make the masa, prepare the corn husks, slowly cook and shred the spiced meat (pork is best, in my view). Then, they demonstrate the proper techniques for smearing the masa onto the corn husks, ladling and spreading the meat filling, and folding the tamales. Sadly, I did not go out in search of homemade tamales. I could buy manufactured tamales, I suppose, but they are not the same as crafted tamales. Tamales made with love and skill and a deep appreciation of the culture from which they emerged.

Oh, well. I have some of the makings of tamales. All I have to do is buy the rest. And make my own. Maybe another time. I’m not in the mood right now. But maybe I’ll stop at the sign on Highway 7; the sign that offers tamales for sale for $20 a dozen (extremely expensive, in my opinion). Or maybe I’ll delay. Who knows? I don’t.

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice. The shortest day of arguably the longest year. This year has been a monstrous beast, intent on testing humanity’s resolve to survive. I thought 2019 was a bit tough, beginning as it did with my chemo and radiation treatment following my November 2018 lung cancer surgery. But that year improved as time crept by; in hindsight, time sped by like a bullet, but it felt slow and laborious for awhile. This year, though, started slow and ugly and seemed to get worse with every passing moment. My wife’s weakness got worse and worse and, finally, her fall in mid-July triggered an awful degradation. This longest year is ending with a sense of crushing defeat and ruin. I know it will get better, with time.

I’ve contemplated time so many times on this blog. Even recently, I’ve mused about the seemingly molasses-like speed of time in youth and the blazing speed of time in latter years. But time has both crept and sped by this year, in fits and starts. Now, I wish I could accelerate time so it could hasten the softening of the pain of loss.

+++

It took almost all day, but around 4 pm I finally showered and shaved, just in time to don my evening apparel of sweatshirt and sweats. I spent my time until darkness fell sitting outside on the deck, sipping a Dogfish Head 90, a first-rate imperial IPA. I thank my sister-in-law for giving me the beer.

Bleached orange and brown streaks, accented by pale pink and white wisps of clouds against a darkening sky made for a peaceful sunset. While I love arrays of brilliant orange and red and purple and blue and black—swirling and stretching in stunning layers—yesterday’s more placid display better suited my mood. I watched until all the light in the sky disappeared, replaced by darkness. Some days, light from the setting sun seems to last for a very long time. Yesterday, though, it disappeared quickly, as if an opaque curtain hid the dim glow of the sun below the horizon.

I had eaten more for lunch than normal and snacked on cheese cookies a friend dropped off (and who gave me a much-needed hug), so I opted to snack for dinner. Almost an entire bag of corn chips and a jar of Pace Picante Sauce disappeared while I was watching the final episode of Mindhunters. That last episode was a disappointment in some respects; but it disappointed not in execution but in the reality reflected by the events upon which the series was based.

Someone I knew from my business in Dallas called and later stopped by with muffins and a couple of books, one of which she had written. The books are based on Christian philosophies. I was grateful for the thoughts that prompted her and her husband, who I also knew from my business, to stop by to offer condolences and support.

Another friend stopped by to give me some goodies and a much-appreciated hug. I haven’t had many hugs during the past five months. I appreciate them, both getting and giving. That’s such an enormous change in me. Until just a few short years ago, hugging and being hugged felt awkward to me. Now, I thrive on them. People change, long after change is expected.

Yesterday’s errands included returning a borrowed wheelchair to the Village Loan Closet and going to the post office to mail a check to the crematorium. I could have handled the crematorium matters online, including credit card payment, but my wife would have been disappointed in me if I had agreed to pay a $28 “convenience fee” for the privilege of paying by credit card. I asked whether they would accept a check; the response was that credit cards were the preferred method of payment, but they would accept a check. So I paid by check; my wife would have been proud of my principled frugality.

After the post office, I sat in line at the car wash. When I had finally gone through the high-pressure spray and soap-soaked brushes, the exterior of the car was moderately cleaner, though the back window needed, and still needs, to receive special care.

+++

As I read what I’ve just written, I realize I am thinking and writing in something like circular reverse order. I suppose that is how my mind is functioning at the moment. I told my wife’s sister this morning that my wife would have been proud of something else I did, aside from refuse to pay the credit card “convenience fee,” but I don’t recall what it was that would have made her proud. I need to write those things down so I will not forget them. The idea that I could possibly forget anything about her or about us is upsetting.

+++

My family and friends, both face-to-face and virtual, are scattered around North America and, indeed, the world. I am so grateful for their expressions of condolence and support. I hope I will say it enough, at the right times, and to the right people, so that they all really understand how important their words are to me.

+++

I just got a notice that my groceries are ready for pickup. So, off I go.

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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?

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.