Читать книгу Hope for a Cool Pillow - Margaret Overton - Страница 8

Three

I’ve never been to Beijing but they say on bad days the smog can be suffocating, even cause you to lose your bearings. I think of dementia that way, like living in Beijing, not understanding the language or the symbols, where nothing is familiar and the very air you breathe leaves you senseless. During Mom’s last few years, I often felt it myself. Overwhelmed I guess. Or in sympathy with her condition.

One day after work I knocked on Mom’s door then let myself into the condo with my key. I planned to visit her briefly, then drive downtown for an appointment with my therapist. I needed therapy because I suffered from cognitive dissonance.iv Or at least that was the diagnosis I’d given myself. His diagnosis might have been somewhat different.

Perhaps I didn’t really need psychotherapy; perhaps I just liked having someone to talk to. Which seemed mostly consistent with a diagnosis of cognitive dissonance. Regardless, my therapist provided a constant, non-crazy person to relate to without having to worry that my problems would upset him. Or if he got upset, it was okay because I paid him. Usually, though, I tried not to upset him.

For the past several years, I had read about cognitive dispositions to respond or CDRs, which are forms of bias in medical reasoning and decision-making that can lead to wrong diagnoses. It’s a fascinating field of research that seems like it should extend broadly into many disparate areas, well outside of medicine. I knew I’d made some bad decisions over the years even though they seemed responsible, maybe even brilliant at the time. I assumed the same was true not only for other people but for institutions as well. So I’d chosen a bright, highly recommended therapist in the hopes that he might help me sift through my expert rationalizations and move beyond them.

On this visit to my mother’s, she sat in her favorite seat beneath a large picture window, in a blue upholstered chair that rocked ever so slightly, every which way. It was summertime. She had the A/C off and the temperature hovered around seventy-eight degrees. She wore jeans and a flannel shirt. Her gray hair still had a nice wave.

“How you doing, Mom?” I yelled at her.

“Hanging in there,” she said with a half-smile. That was her answer to every inquiry about her wellbeing. Hanging in there. Usually she prefaced the answer with a long “Ooh,” which sounded melodic, resigned, and vaguely upbeat all at once. “And how are you, Margaret?”

“I’m fine.” I had to yell, because she couldn’t hear much with or without the hearing-aids anymore. But when I heard her say my name I felt that a crisis had been averted, which meant an important piece of her mind remained intact. For the moment, anyway. “I just came from work,” I said.

“Oh, you came from work?" Mom’s habit of repeating my statement with a question had become increasingly familiar as her mastery of the present diminished. She tried to hide her short-term memory loss. The dementia had occurred over years though it was hard to be exact. Whose memory did that speak to? I thought back and wondered what constituted normal aging and what did not. When had this begun, exactly? Dementia seemed viral, definitely contagious. I forgot things all the time. Could I blame my mother? Sometimes I forgot to take Kleenex and wear sunscreen on my bike rides. I often forgot cilantro for the corn and mango salad I made umpteen times each summer. The signs of dementia are subtle until one knocks you flat. We had just begun having the retirement facility’s nurse visit daily to check on Mom. The nurse argued with me about everything. She wanted to lock up Mom’s medications in a suitcase. Mom threw a fit when she heard about it. I knew she’d pick the lock. I had to negotiate with both of them. We agreed to a suitcase, but kept it open. Like that made any sense.

I walked over to Mom and kissed her cheek. Age had shrunk her, bent her spine, thickened her, stiffened her. It had spared her beauty, however. Her skin still felt soft; her face held few lines. I reached over her head and flipped on the air conditioning.

“I did come from work,” I said. “What’s going on with you?"

“Oh, I’m not feeling too well today, honey." I put a hand to her head and didn’t feel a fever. She looked pale but then she hadn’t spent time in the sun in over three years.

Not feeling too well could denote any number of things. It usually signaled bowel issues. One of the problems with her memory loss was that she forgot what she should eat, what she shouldn’t eat, when she’d eaten, and what hunger or fullness felt like. So dietary indiscretion was the norm. And she refused to wear Depends. Or she didn’t remember needing them. She could be surprisingly selective about what she forgot.

“I have to use the bathroom,” she said in a rush. She pushed herself out of her chair. I helped her walk there, less than ten steps away. She didn’t make it to the toilet.

I suppose the good news is that I eventually arrived at my therapist on time and did not have to think hard to find something to talk about that day. And I can deal with it—the role reversal, I mean. I have cleaned my share of everything, can handle all manner of human fluids and waste. We are simple, common flesh.

The bad news is that after inserting every afflicted item of clothing and bath linen into the washer, I found a sponge and began to bleach the bathroom. I realized that this explosion had precedent. The evidence was old and dried and hard, but present. On the floor and on the walls. In every nook and cranny. I found poop that had splattered above eye level. I’m fairly tall. I tried to remember what principles of physics they’d taught us back in college that might apply. I’d barely passed physics, but still. Perhaps the four laws of thermodynamics pertained; perhaps those were the laws I needed to remember. Could entropy account for this? I found poop that had splashed so hard as to make two, possibly three ninety-degree turns. What were the physics of a splash? I tossed the sponge in favor of a scrub brush. All along I thought I should have paid more attention to electricity, specifically resistors. A little knowledge of electricity seems useful in life—if you want to install dimmer switches, overhead fans, change out light fixtures. You definitely want to know about fuses—I’d learned that one the hard way. But as it turned out I knew even less about physics than I’d ever suspected.

Mom rested in her chair. I felt like a janitor with post-traumatic stress disorder. She told me I was her angel. Did angels have trouble juggling conflicting thoughts and emotions? Did they obsess over the mechanics of their decision-making? I wanted to take a shower and go lie down in a womb somewhere. I wanted never to grow old. I wanted to have someone love me enough to never let it happen. But that someone didn’t exist. Not for me, not for her. And I loved her a lot.

She kissed me twice. I hugged her hard and tried not to let her see me cry. She laid her head back and rested again. I thanked God that the memory of it would be gone within minutes. It would have never happened. With someone else to clean for her, the incident would leave her mind sooner than if she’d had to clean up after herself. I thought about my sister Bonnie who frequently took Mom out to restaurants and had similar experiences in public. Bonnie is a better woman than I.

After washing the bathroom and then myself, I made certain that Mom was comfortable and had instructions for her evening meal. I had no doubt she would promptly forget what I told her, so I wrote it down. Usually she found my instructions several days later and called, asking what I had meant by ‘Bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast’. I kissed her again and sped downtown to see my therapist. He told me a horror story about his own elderly parents. They had one set of senses between the two of them. He told me he’d planned for his own old age. He’d bought a gun.

“You bought a gun?!? Are you kidding me? You’re not supposed to tell me that.” I was appalled. I counted on him to be the sane one.

He shrugged.

I stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows. I thought about the gunshot wounds I saw in the trauma patients at work; they were usually self-inflicted and often in the elderly. I didn’t tell my therapist when it happened because there was no reason to ruin his day too. I thought about Nathaniel, the patient whose dementia and prostate problems had made his daughter nearly insane with anxiety. Maybe dementia is a special kind of disease, a projectile disease, designed to particularly torture the loved ones. Who could think that up? Outside the office window, the setting sun reflected off the buildings along the Chicago River. The light had turned the sky a mystical, otherworldly deep blue, the hypnotizing color of pollution at dusk.

I left the office feeling more relaxed, if not actually better. My therapist was perfect for me. He understood cognitive dissonance because he had it himself. It’s the thinking person’s alternative to pulling the trigger.

Around this time I turned fifty. As a gift, two friends bought me a session with a famous astrologer. I naturally thought the entire idea was ludicrous. I’d spent my whole career in a scientific field—specifically medicine, sub-specifically anesthesiology—which does not lend itself to astrological interpretation or intervention. That isn’t to say those of us in medicine don’t acknowledge that more crazy stuff happens when there’s a full moon. But I’ve never been one who “believed” in astrology. I occasionally read my horoscope in the newspaper mostly because it was next to the Jumble. It never seemed to reveal anything meaningful. But I was at a low point; dementia takes its toll on family as well as on the afflicted. Besides, I figured the astrologer could make an educated guess as to whether there might be love in my future. I obviously wanted a pass on long life if it involved senility and I didn’t much care about fortune, as I knew that work suited me better than leisure. Leisure—in my case—usually meant bug bites, puffy eyes, and large credit card bills. I made particularly bad decisions when idle. I’d read articles about people who won the lottery; it ruined most of them. So I knew better than to relax and let tranquility destroy me. But who didn’t want love?

Out of curiosity I visited the astrologer—a doughy woman with thinning hair—who worked in a Chicago office south of the river near the old Carbide & Carbon building. She recorded our conversation and spoke with startling accuracy about my past. She stated that my birth circumstances were unusual and I didn’t fit the typical description for my sign. I had been born in the brief time span between a lunar and a solar eclipse. “Your life must seem fated,” she murmured, her voice deceptively bland. “As if life pushes you in a particular direction." I had not thought of my life as ‘fated’ as much as a litany of incredible coincidences. Sometimes I had an uncanny ability to see signs that strangely forecasted events, even warning of imminent danger. I typically ignored them.

“Taurus fits you better,” she said. “Read that horoscope in the paper.” Perfect. I’d been reading the wrong horoscope my whole life. No wonder it seemed useless.

“There’s something highly significant about your chart, an unusual division of the elements. You have four planets in air signs—it gives you an uncanny ability to communicate, and extreme curiosity. You’re mentally young for your age. Quality or modes—five are in fixed signs—that’s a sign of tenacity, not an Arian quality. The downside of tenacity is that you don’t know when to let go. You need to learn to trust your intuition. Even if intuition goes against what you’ve been told.” I agreed with her that I didn’t know when to let go. But my intuition was better than I thought? What if my intuition told me not to trust my intuition?

“You have lots of planets in work. Innovation, creativity, research. You like finding things out and putting a different spin on it,” she said.

“Between now and April 9, 2013, there’s a new development level. Then a static period. Until the new moon in 2016. You’ll want to lay the groundwork for any creative work before 2013. There will be a lot of wasted time and energy during those three years. You’ll feel guided by others. Use it to do inner work. Maybe go to an ashram. You’ll want to have flowers, perhaps buy some property.”

I had to ask. “What about love?”

“I don’t see much happening with your Venus. Have you tried Internet dating? That might work for you.”

I had tried Internet dating. It did not work for me. I was actually writing a book about how it did not work for me, among other things.

One other thing the astrologer mentioned—I should prepare for my mother’s demise.

Each time I visited Mom, I stopped at the grocery store first. I would call from the car and she would give me a list of things to buy. Then I went to the Jewel and bought half the things she needed. Later I went back to the store to get the things she’d forgotten. I did this every week not because her memory deteriorated, although it did, but because I kept hoping that the deterioration was temporary. After Vicki moved in, I only had to make one trip because Vicki would give me a complete list. Usually the list included a box of Depends. Only Vicki could get Mom to wear Depends.

I liked going to suburban grocery stores. Or rather I liked going to a single suburban grocery store. In the city of Chicago sales tax is higher, parking is a nightmare, and getting groceries into my building requires more steps than launching the space shuttle. On the other hand, suburban grocery stores tend to grow freakishly large. They carry every food item made except the ones I usually buy in the city. While shopping for my mother I typically spent an hour walking in circles looking for the same items I bought the week before. This was due to an organizational layout that defied comprehension or memorization. A pharmacy had been attached to the grocery store, further confusing the issue, and the products that I used to know where to find in the grocery section ended up being sold in the pharmacy. Like liquor. Why would wine be located in the pharmacy? It’s not like it’s good for you. Maybe it’s because booze makes you feel better in a way similar to calamine lotion or witch hazel. Sympathy cards are placed next to batteries. Think about it.

It did not bother me to buy Depends at the grocery store. I bought them for my aunt when she was alive, then for my mother, and I’m sure I’ll buy them for my sisters and for myself when the time comes. They are just large sanitary napkins with bad branding.

One sunny spring day I was in the checkout line with lactose-free milk, a box of Raisin Bran, a loaf of multi-grain bread, some boiled ham, Mom’s favorite cheese, and a box of Depends. The adult diapers were the last item to be rung up.

The cashier looked to be about my age. About fifty. We could’ve easily gone to school together and been part of the same stoner crowd which I’d thankfully survived and left behind. She passed the Depends over the bar code reader, then leaned across the conveyer belt and placed a warm hand gently on my arm. She looked me squarely in the eye. I saw deep compassion in her lined face and not a trace of humor.

“Would you like me to put these in a brown paper bag for you?” she asked, nodding slightly, girl-to-girl, stoner-to-stoner, eyes never leaving mine.

I realized in that split second that she had decided the Depends were for me. They were mine. I was the leaker. I was fifty and leaking; it showed plainly on my face. In that moment, I knew there was nothing I could say or do to convince this woman of my actual continence—she wouldn’t believe me anyway—and so I simply showed my appreciation for her empathic treatment of my problem. I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. “That would be great.” I laughed all the way to the car.

My mom’s dementia taught me to open my heart again—nothing breeds humility like helplessness. Her helplessness made me humble. Or maybe it was the other way around. But I learned to let people be nice to me. Even if it means they think I’m incontinent. I’m sure one day I will be. So it helps to laugh about it. In fact, laugh whenever possible. As for the gun issue, I’ll get to that later.

For some reason, I returned to the astrologer shortly after my fifty-first birthday. Once again, I heard good things about my career. Always about my career. I heard about making connections, about my healing abilities. When I was born, Saturn was in a good place, career-wise. This would be life-long. The astrologer told me there was nothing happening with my Venus. Like I didn’t know that. Nor did she see it happening in the foreseeable future. And this woman looked very far into the future. She mentioned things that were going to happen in 2017. She said there would be unpleasantness around the 23rd of September, 2010. That turned out to be the day after Mom died. Not the 22nd of September. So the astrologer was off by a day. No wonder I never believed in that stuff.