FALL, FALLING, FAILING

A field on the Robert Frost Trail

There is no news from here.  Not really.  Hasn't been since spring.  The seasons march on.  Now it's fall.

It’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon.  I am at the Middlebury Snow Bowl for a celebration of fall.  I will ride up the chair lift to the top to see peak foliage from the best vantage point.  Sure, there are higher mountains than Worth Mountain, but you don’t have to be on the highest peak to get a sweeping view of the mountains’ autumnal beauty.  The tree colors haven’t fully reached the Champlain Valley yet.  We are a half a planting zone below.  (Gardeners know exactly what that means.)  It’s a free afternoon for me, and I am even enjoying the long wait in the lift line, and the leisurely pace of the chairs heading up and down the mountain.

Heading up Worth Mountain at the Middlebury Snow Bowl

It’s 3 o’clock in the morning.  I hardly know where I am when I start out of sleep.  There were footsteps on the other side of the bed.  Shuffling footsteps on the rug.  If the scuffing leads to the bathroom, that’s probably all right, I think.  If they pass the bathroom door, they’ll be heading for where I’m sleeping, and that’s not so good.  It means there’s something going on in Ken’s mind, a dream perhaps, or maybe something in his imagination and he’s following it. I’ll have to wake up fully to find out, maybe locate the medication and give him some, lead him back to bed.  Good, he’s found the bathroom.  It’s lit by a nightlight, its light shining through the small windows on either side of the door, so it should be simple to locate.  Still, he sometimes doesn't find it.  If he’s in there for a long time–long, as measured in my foggy brain–I’m going to have to get up and check.  See what he’s doing.  There are a couple of possibilities, but I’m hoping for only one or two of them.  I’m not sure I could deal with anything more complicated.

 

Dark morning fog, high and low, seen from the door

It’s 8 o’clock in the morning.  I’ve been up for about two hours.  Skyler doesn’t let me oversleep, although occasionally he’ll wait to nudge me until 7 or so.   A “caregiver” (paid helper) was to have come at 9 o’clock but she just texted she’s not going to make it today.  This is the second time she’s let me down.  After a night with little sleep this is especially hard to take.  I am impatient.  I am a mess.  I take refuge in my 1,000-piece jigsaw consisting almost entirely of complex tile designs, arches and columns from a photograph of the Alcazar in Seville.  It’s utterly mindless and yet absorbing.  I am now intimately acquainted with the patterns of the tiles, patterns that barely registered when I saw them for real.  The puzzle wasn’t nearly hard enough.  I’m nearly done.  Gotta get another one.

Only 1,000 pieces

It’s 8 o’clock in the morning.  I rouse Ken from bed to give him his morning medications.  I help him shower, dress, make breakfast, get him comfortable for a morning nap.  He is trembling, and wants a hug, a big long hug.  When he does this I feel he is in the present, he is “here.”  He knows.  A couple of days ago he said, “I feel shattered.”  Another time he said, “I’ve come to the end of something.”  This morning he says simply, “I’m a mess.” 

It’s whatever o’clock.  On some days routines–medications, changing of clothes, cleaning up–don’t happen as easily as at other times.  This is understandable.  Who wants to be told what to do all the time?  Who wants someone telling you “Let me do it, it’ll be easier,” when you think you can perfectly well button your own shirt, or pull up your own pants.  I’ve turned into a bully.  I get impatient and sometimes I show it.  When there’s a mess to clean up I make noise about it.  Shit! Damn!  Sometimes I yell.  But I have to clean it up anyway so complaining is pointless and only makes things worse for both of us.  You would think I learned once and for all by raising children, but  I need to learn it all over again.  Maybe I never learned.  Maybe I was never good at this.  If I sleep well the night before, I’m much better behaved.  I feel ashamed at my impatience.  I try to be better, to be good.  How good is good?

It’s 6 o’clock.  We ate out for the last time maybe a month or so ago.  Dinner was at the Vergennes Laundry that had just begun serving dinners with an interesting menu, small creative dishes of small plates, like tapas.  Although sitting wasn’t very comfortable for Ken, he managed.  I feel like that happened very long ago, like last year.  Now colon cancer forbids him to sit through a lunch, a dinner.  He stands up several times, sits down and tries again.  Pain pills don’t seem to make this any easier.  Dinner home is quiet, without conversation.  I miss conversation.  If I get to thinking too much about all that the dinner lacks, the food turns to gravel in my mouth. 

Robert Frost poem on the trail

It’s 3 o’clock in the morning.  Something wakes me up.  It it Ken moving around in the bed?  Maybe it was only the dog stretching or licking himself.  Or coyotes howling outside.  This is when my mind starts churning.  For the hundredth time I think about how often he used to say he never wanted to live like this.  Yet every day he lives like this.  I am helpless to assuage any of it.  I solve nothing.  I understand nothing.  What is happening to his body?  To his mind?   We think we know, but we don’t understand.  What percentage of behavior is caused by medication, and what is not?  I asked this long ago but I still have no idea.  When he trembles, is it fear?  Or is it muscle spasms?  When his eyes are half-lidded, is he is here?  Or is he there?  Questions, only questions.

The labyrinth at a Spirit in Nature trail off the Goshen Road