When mom died, her cabinets were full: lotions, oils, skin lighteners, moisturizers, balms, exfoliators. A lifetime of anti-aging left behind.
I received a new/another foundation in the mail today, along with a “face stick” to erase dark circles. I apply and step back from the mirror, searching out difference in the before and after.
Turning my head to the right, I see, I think, the start of a soft jowl. I place fingers on my face and pull the skin taut.
One of the most difficult elements of loving and being with people who are facing a challenging medical diagnosis is being reminded of the separateness of our experiences in life. The Monday after Christmas, my brother had to get up early to head to chemo and I happened to wake up just before he left. We said our good mornings and goodbyes and I watched him shuffle out of the apartment, so much thinner than I’m used to seeing him. I went back to my room and wept. Wept over the fact that he has to deal with this prognosis while I get to go back to my bed. Wept over the fact that there is little I can do to change what is happening or what will happen.
In a twisted way, it helps to remind myself that I, too, will have my own solitary path to walk when I get closer to the end of my time on this extraordinary planet. I mean, we are all on solitary paths all the time—we can only experience our own lives—but it feels most painfully clear when someone is on a path taking them away from the health they’ve always had and there is little to do to help them.
In spite of all that heaviness, the two of us have been having a truly terrific time together. Chatting constantly; he’s been eating the vegan food I prepare, including tofu scramble, and has been surprised at how good it is (or so he says…he is a nice guy and would never say anything rude). I’m reading a book he recommended (American Gods by Neil Gaiman) and we’ve been bingeing on television and movies. A sampling: Midnight Mass; Power of the Dog; Harriet; The Mandalorian; Dr. Strange; The Watchmen series; American Factory; The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; The Book of Boba Fett; Don’t Look Up.
We’ve been out and about walking when Gary feels up to it. On New Year’s Day, we walked around one of his favorite hiking places and strolled along for four miles. We took breaks as he needed them and people watched. Resting to people watch has become one of our favorite activities. We are making memories and I will never again think of Star Wars, saguaro cacti, Boba Fett or Grogu without thinking of my brother.
I leave in a week to return to my loves in Massachusetts. So far, and thankfully, Gary is tolerating the treatment well enough, and my time here has mostly been to lift spirits and help however I can, and to help break the news of his diagnosis to other family members. The palliative care folks at the VA are providing a lot of services, including a ride to chemo should he find he doesn’t feel comfortable driving himself; having someone come and assist around the apartment, if he wants/need it; and a life alert necklace. I’m insisting that he get the life alert necklace before I leave, though I don’t know if he’s taking me seriously. He has friends and a neighbor who check in with him regularly, so I know he has a support group, if only he would be willing to reach out to them more frequently. He doesn’t want to burden people with his situation. I’ve told him that I can come back regularly to help, and that, even though he is alone here, he is not alone at all—he has family ready to be here in a moment’s notice, or ready to take him in should he decide he doesn’t want to be so far away from them.
It’ll be hard to leave, not knowing whether things will be better, be the same, or be worse the next time I come. I’m in a reddit group for pancreatic cancer, and the number of people who lose their loved ones within months of the diagnosis is heartbreaking. But there are others who have stories of people in stage 4 who survived and are surviving. On Wednesday, Gary gets his blood drawn for a genetic test. I’m praying that it comes back positive for BRCA because having a mutation increases the options for treatment. I’m trying to stay hopeful and realistic.
I had to look up the word simultaneityto make sure it actually exists. It does and it’s much easier to say than simultaneousness, though they mean the same thing.
I have to remind myself frequently these days that we live life in simultaneity. Facing mortality with someone you love makes everything else going on seem small, insignificant, meaningless. Hearing someone bitch about minor details of a situation fills me with self-righteous anger. Who CARES? I want to scream. IT DOESN’T MATTER. Always screaming in my head. But of course it matters. Life is all of these things at once—existential dread at facing illness, agitation over bad driving, exaltation at beautiful birdsong, laughter at good television, joy at booping my dog’s nose, gratitude in a hug from my husband. It all happens at the same time. It all matters when we are living our lives.
This past weekend, I broke into sobs twice, unexpectedly, and for reasons that wouldn’t normally elicit such a response. The first was over a refund I was having trouble getting. The second was because my husband sat down with the dogs and as they were together, something happened and the dogs started fighting. Jojo had just been at the ER earlier in the week for being sick so the last thing I needed was to return there for an injury (and another bill). I blamed my husband, who hadn’t done anything wrong, really, and I started weeping at the sink where I was washing a dish. I felt so much, so much anger boil up in me. I remember this is how I used to feel as an emotionally turbulent adolescent, when I would scream and yell because I didn’t yet have the tools to mediate the emotion. I hadn’t felt such pent up emotion in a very long time. I stomped off upstairs, weeping, marched into the bedroom and wanted so badly to hit a wall, slam a door, primal scream, but I knew the people and critters around me didn’t deserve it (because I also knew that fighting situation wasn’t the real reason for the anger). Instead I grabbed one of the pillows from the bed and proceeded to beat the hell out of our mattress with it, over and over as hard as I could until I was tired. Then I sat on the bed and cried more. Eventually, sheepishly, I came downstairs and sat in one of wingback chairs in the Zen room (ha! So much for Zen!), staring out the window with tears falling. Jojo climbed on my lap and I hugged her to my chest like a stuffed animal. My husband came to the door with a small glass of sherry in his hands and looked at me. “Yeah, I’ve just decided to start drinking,” he said, which made me belly laugh. I can see how being with such a volatile person would drive one in that direction.
“I just feel like a raw and exposed nerve,” I told him. I’m so angry and so sad and things that normally wouldn’t bother me send me right off the deep end. I apologized and he, being the remarkable human he is, understands, empathizes, takes care of me, makes me laugh, helps me to continue on.
I am not an easy person to be around these days. I think I may be depressed, no longer in the mood to jump on my rowing machine each morning. No longer that interested in keeping track of the amount and quality of my vegan food, indulging in vegan sour cream and potato chips more frequently than is healthy. No longer in the mood to take showers any more frequently than necessary. (Part of that is because it’s cold here, too.) No holiday cards going out this year. Have wanted to draw but haven’t felt like pulling out the utensils to do so. Mostly I like to sit, read, stare out the window. Snuggle the dogs. Watch evening tv with my husband. Small things that make up the day.
Trying to practice patience and grace and remembering that life is lived in simultaneity.
On Monday, I sold a 25-year-old piece of myself. It wasn’t hard, really. We are moving and we are packing, and, though he was referring to writing, I’m trying to apply (supposedly) Faulkner’s exhortation to kill your darlings to my packing process. What have I been carrying around all these years that I no longer need?
More than I should, and killing your darlings is hard. When I was 19 or 20 years old, my then-boyfriend and I went to a music store in Columbus, Ohio and I bought my first acoustic guitar—a Washburn. My then-boyfriend was a phenomenal guitar player and was going to teach me how to play. I already owned an electric guitar that my mom and step-dad had bought me for Christmas five years earlier. The fact that I couldn’t play it yet, after owning it for a few years, should have been a clue to how this process was going to go.
I’ve always wanted to be naturally—preternaturally—good at something. I wanted to pick up the guitar, practice a few times and then be magnificent. Weren’t those the stories I read about Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and others? They picked up their instrument and were magical at playing it almost immediately. Of course now I understand that nothing comes that easily. Presenting it that way in their origin stories made them more mythic, but they worked at it. It may come easier to some than others, but anyone who masters a skill does so by working hard. Not by wishing it so. I took lessons from my boyfriend; I could play a few lines of various songs—Rocky Raccoon was probably my best, though I could also play a bit of Wish You Were Here.
I took the guitar to college, to my newspaper internships, to my first apartment. Then-boyfriend and I broke up. I took the guitar to my first full-time photojournalism job in South Florida. I took it with me to Illinois when my husband and I moved there. For a while, I gave it to my step-daughter and she took it a few places, too. Maybe to her college dorm? I don’t think she was any better at playing than I. I found it in my possession again and brought it to western Massachusetts for my first job in New England and then to the home we bought in Vermont. Now we are moving again. [We’ve moved five times since 2010. Twice out of rental homes and into purchased homes, and now out of a purchased home and into a purchased home. We’re ready for roots.]
I really want to downsize this time. We have boxes in the garage that we haven’t opened since we relocated here. Clearly, we can do without whatever is in those boxes. I have journals from when I was 15. I have birthday cards from when I was eight. [Okay. I’m keeping some of those.] Honestly, I don’t look at much of this stuff at all. I need to let it go.
“What about the guitar?” my spouse asked while surveying all the items from the attic he had brought down. I looked at the beat up old case that was already in used condition when the guy at the guitar shop threw it in as part of my purchase. Beatles stickers; Grateful Dead stickers, Jimi Hendrix stickers, quotes from Jack Kerouac and Hunter Thompson written on it. ”Yeah, it’s probably time to let it go,” I said
I always liked the idea behind the quote, it’s never too late to be what you might havebeen. I appreciated the sense of optimism…that age doesn’t have to dictate who you become. Then I read a blog from someone I knew in grad school who said she hated the quote because of course there comes a time when it’s too late to be what you might have been. Like if you wanted to be a gymnast, or an Olympian, or a dancer on Broadway. I would add being a Jimi-Hendrix-level guitar player. But maybe there are octogenarians proving me wrong. [I hope so. If there are, I’m sure I’ll find them on TikTok.]
A friend of mine posted photos of the guitar to Switchboard at the college where I used to work and within an hour or so, a student had reached out to buy it. We planned a time to meet and a location. I emptied out all the papers from the case, including notes and instructions in my then-boyfriend’s script. 25 years have lapsed. Astonishing.
I met the student in a common location on campus and was struck by his gentleness. Such a nice kid. Probably my age when I first bought the guitar. Do guitars get better with age? For some reason I had always thought so. Have I gotten better with age? I hope so.
He opened the case and touched the strings of the guitar. “It looks great,” he said. He Venmo’d the money to me and thanked me. “Have fun,” I said as I turned back toward my car. That simple. I had finally let go of an object that symbolized so much to me. Youth, hope, goals, dreams—a future where you can be anything. I still believe in that last part, but in a much more sedate and nuanced way than I did when I was 19 and 20.
And I kept my two clarinets, so maybe I can be more like the John Coltrane of clarinet playing! Is it too late?
The Puzzle Box 