13 February 2010

where were you?

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I'm in a couple thousand leagues of agony over this gig with my poppa being locked up by his wife of sixty years. He comes back to life when the people he loves are there with him... but... fuck... that's my mother for a couple hours three times a week, and my sister goes with her once every month or two... and this blitz of having me for two weeks... before I have to rip myself away and try to comb the cosmos for some way to ease some of his distress. This is a killer. He's not the kind of demented where you don't know who's who and what's what anymore. This isn't Alzheimer's. It's multi-infarct dementia. He just has a bunch of little dead zones from itty bitty strokes, has to try to talk around them, work around them, and doesn't always do a good enough job for some. He's in there. His words are scrambled and he has great trouble with his spatial orientation, but he knows his wife has locked him up and thrown away the key. He calls her his ex-wife now... when he's speaking straight. I don't blame him.

Anyway, BB2 sent me a link about Jeff Beck and his new album... and there's a video of his rendition of "Where Were You"... and it was really good, and not the Pink Floyd song, which is "Coming Back to Life", but I couldn't listen to it without thinking of Dave, thinking of poppa's distress, without wanting to leap up, get in my car, drive to the other side of the lake and go wrap my arms around my dad again.

It's just stupid how things play out, how close some things come without you even knowing it, knowing who, for decades, for millennia, and then, bam, a past you can't fly back to lights up like a roman candle, burning out your blood vessels, turning everything into flames. You just don't even want to know how many decades the soundtrack of my youth was performed by a band I didn't even know was playing that music. I didn't pay attention to such things. If I didn't have the album to hold in my hands and personally put it on to listen, I didn't know who I was hearing. I never owned a Pink Floyd album. All my friends owned them. They played on my car radio all the time. I never paid attention to who was playing. I never knew the guy at the party where I met Mick Jagger was David Gilmour. Much of the time I knew who was playing what, went to many, many concerts, knew a ridiculous lot of very famous musicians, but... I wasn't ever connecting with what I was supposed to think, or supposed to know about anyone, even rock stars. I was never curious about this stuff. I wanted the HEART.

I wanted the pulse... no... that's wrong.... I'm talking as though it was something I sought. I don't "seek" it. I don't "want" it or not want it. It IS. It is the level at which I immediately perceive everyone. I'm not out here on your surface. I have no time for it. It's unutterably boring, no matter how interesting you might be. It's the one who comes before that who has all my attention. Without even knowing it until decades later, that was Dave. That was Dave and he was right there to fall in love with, to tell about the music that was mine, and he could laugh about playing my music and me not even knowing... just as I have gone on about pieces of writing to the authors of those pieces, without even knowing I'm talking to the one who wrote them, making them laugh... that's all mixed up with my broken heart hearing guitar... it just starts squeezing and echoes of Pink Floyd start coming out around the edges of Jeff Beck and I gotta go find Dave or dive under a mattress and smother to death or jump out of my skin and GET it handled... BE the love filling the ten directions....

I yanked myself away from that party so very long ago so as not to hurt the feelings of the idiot who brought me. I want to be back at that party, knowing what I know, and able to save my poppa, save you, make what I always knew and could not speak BE now... instead of this... instead of this now.
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28 comments:

  1. Yes. I saw that on al Jazeera... on the link in the post below. I think it was a great idea and they ought to do it more.

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  2. Good morning, dear heart.... :-P

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  3. Maybe I don't know all the technical details, but here in Pa. you can't just "commit" someone to a nursing home (if that's where he is) against their will, dementia/Alzheimers or not.

    My father IS experiencing dementia. It's scary when I talk to him and he goes in and out. Most of the time, he's perfect. It's really weird. But also, I think the meds have a LOT to do with it.

    Did you check out the meds he's on?

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  4. Also, I noticed many times I think the thoughts are straight but the words come out wrong. There's some disconnect between what they're trying to say and what comes out, which makes it look worse than it is.

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  5. But one thing for sure: it's pretty bad seeing the guy you thought was "Superman" all your life, seeming like a mere mortal with many physical things in his body deteriorating permanently.

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  6. Maybe this is too personal of a conversation on the tubes of the internets, but why can't your father just still stay at the house with your mother, dementia/Alzheimer's or not? Many people are at home and not in nursing homes, especially if a great majority of the time they're thinking and talking normally. Don't take that question the wrong way, maybe I don't know enough of what's going on with your mother.

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  7. Mom won't let strangers in her house to take care of him.

    She doesn't want to worry about him anymore.

    It's fucked up... bad.

    It's NOT Alzheimer's. It is multi-infarct dementia... just like with your Dad, only sounds like it's a little worse in mine.

    My mother has power of attorney over my father.

    It's fucked up. :-(

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  8. It sounds like your mother simply does not want to take care of your father.

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  9. My father's MEAN, and my mother and sister are taking him back when his rehab at the nursing home is done. I'd have to say, not completely knowing your father, that my father would be WAAAAAAAAY more of a handful.

    He clipped a nurse, yells at the nurses, twice he was so belligerent to me I walked out. He's OK most of the time, though. I let it go in one ear and out the other.

    I think his meanness is amplified with what he's going through. He grew up in a real tough envirnoment. 7 brothers and sisters, his mother and my grandmother was widowed after the 7th kid (my father) because of Black Lung from the coal mines my grandfather died from.

    He grew up very tough.

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  10. I think the meds have a lot to do with it, too.

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  11. Also, Karin had surgery on Friday, she had a blister on her breast and it didn't heal for 2 months, she had it removed. I am in hospitals and nursing homes every freaking day! I can't stand it!

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  12. Yep.

    She's old. He's a LOT of work. She was a good wife to him for very, very many years, almost SIXTY years, but she would NOT hear of putting two way dead bolts on the outside doors to keep him from wandering off... kept thinking I meant to lock him in here while she went off out to lunch or to Rotary, etc. She wants to be shut of him so she can have what's left of her life without encumbrance... won't admit it... makes this big deal about having to do this... when no way does she HAVE to do this. Plenty of coverage for bringing in help... plenty of money too. BUT SHE WANTS TO SPEND IT ON HER RACE HORSES. She wants him OUT of her hair.

    I thought she would lose her resolve and do the right thing after she'd spent a few days without him here, but it seems that only hardened it.

    SIXTY YEARS.

    And he's been my father for MOST of those, and I am wanting to die of having no power to help him, to get him out of there, or EVEN just to be there with him until he dies... NONE of it.

    Happy Valentine's Day.

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  13. All the nurses where my Dad is want me to come work there.

    I want to work in a nursing home where the patients get to leave in something besides a coffin....

    A nursing home for internet disorders....

    Assisted living for sentient beings.....

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  14. Sounds like the right thing to do, would be keeping him at home. That's what we would do. My mother's mother (my other grandmother) stayed with my parents for many years when she got very old and had dementia and couldn't walk. Yes, it was a lot of work. Absolutely. And she got mean towards the end and was never mean in her life.

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  15. I quit BB... yes, yes I did. I am just there for emergencies now.

    Couldn't take all the jackasses braying another minute. I vowed to save all sentient beings and not to waste time... BB has become antithetical to my vow. I want to write another book. I want to spend my time on something that has positive IMPACT.

    That immortal sniping is what is WRONG with this world, and if I cannot stop it, I at least do not have to make it easier on the jackasses.

    There are a bunch of really hatefully self-regarding idiots over there and I'll pick them up off the road in oncoming traffic, but doesn't mean I speak to them.

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  16. IS KARIN'S CANCER BACK?

    :'(

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  17. My father is the SWEETEST guy ever born. Not a mean bone in his body. ALL THE NURSES ARE CRAZY ABOUT HIM. He is a living doll. My mother is the mean one in this family.

    My father does NOT deserve this. He worked SEVEN days a week to give us a wonderful life. He NEVER came up short on his family. He has been anyone's idea of a dream husband and father. There's NO excuse to do this to him. It would be different if the insurance didn't cover hiring people to come in and help, but it DOES. That is totally an option. My mother... and my sister... won't hear of it. EVEN if I stay here to make sure nobody takes advantage.

    Both of them SELFISH INGRATES.

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  18. As a volunteer for the animal shelter Rin sees this throw-away syndrome frequently, but her cases involve pets, not life-mates!

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  19. Well, they're doing a biopsy on the skin they took off. Don't forget, she had reconstructive surgery and there's living tissue in her breasts from other parts of her body, but it's not breast tissue, therefore it can't get breast cancer. But, the skin is another matter. We'll find out when we get the results of the biopsy.

    Also, breast cancer can metastasize to other organs. It's not breast cancer, but it was originally caused by the breast cancer. Same with other cancers. You can start out with lung cancer, then get liver cancer, etc...because it metastasized to other organs.

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  20. My father is NOT the sweetest guy ever born. LOL!

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  21. Brad Blog: I thought you enjoy arguing with people. Are you getting thin skinned? Even if I don't agree with you, you make people think. Even if I don't agree with you, I think about and consider your position which always has merit.

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  22. I AM the sweetest guy ever born!!!!!!!!!!!

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  23. I'm SICK of the STUPID polemics. I'm SICK of jackasses arguing viciously about trivia. Maybe I make some think, and most take that as their cue to just be a much louder jackass. My skin isn't thin! I'm just made of MORE than skin, and too many only have skin. It's way past time for hearts and brains and morals... and that's SO not happening there. WAY so.

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  24. Dude. You may be all kine marvelous, and you are, but, I ain't just braggin' on him because he's my dad. He is DEFINITELY the sweetest. My second cousin sent me the money to come be with him because she's mad for him, loves him to bits, and wanted to help HIM. He's way cool... even all scrambled up, he's still waaaaay cool.

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