Today and only Today

There are 4 inches of ice on the pond. We were hoping this would happen while the kids were here, after the burial. But Lilly went back to NYC on January 2nd, after being bumped from 3 flights New Years Day, and Nick drove back down to New Orleans on Friday afternoon, after stopping by to say goodbye in the cold lobby of the hospital. It's been hard to go back into work this week, walking back into the building is so strange. What is the feeling? But this is a small town, and we can't push things away, avoid pain by maintaining a physical distance from the places saturated with our sorrows. I see the nurses who treated my father in the hall; I see the ICU attending in HyVee; the grave digger is a patient. Maybe that's a good thing. I hope so. What am I going to do? Move? My mother is living in my little house. She complains about it, but she likes it. It's a good house--filled with love and images of the Blessed Virgin. It's a little shabby, but there's always been a jewel box like feel to it. My living room there is the most comfortable, nap inducing, sanctuary I can imagine. People immediately feel it's ok to say what they want, pick up a book, rifle through the music stand--it is a good place, and I know my mother, who never managed to create that in her house, feels it. She's kept the Gypsy on, and that's good. But she wasn't there Saturday, so I spent part of the day over there. We aren't fighting. I'm angry, but I love her. I made myself some canned soup, went into Lilly's old bedroom, and finished my dictations from clinic. I'm slow. No one seems annoying. Everyone seems rumpled, vulnerable, lost. I think about the thousand and one small ways I sin against my fellows--with impatience, selfishness, lack of attention. When I got back to our farm, Jay had made a bonfire on the bank of our little pond (we've had sand carted in to make a sweet little beach), and he had a boombox down on the dock playing Christmas music. We skated out into the dusk. The ice was very clear, and the obsidian pond stretched below my skates, which needed sharpening. I felt that I was suspended between two darknesses, held by this temporary firmament, on these shaky old blades. I used to be a figure skater in my youth, and I can feel the ghost of my younger body, gliding and spinning and jumping--but my physique doesn't follow. This disconnect--I suppose the gap just continues to widen over the years. But we held hands and found our way. Sat by the fire and had malibu rum laced thick hot chocolate with heavy cream. We are in a mirror darkly seen, but then face-to-face.

No Dreams

My father died. The last night was madness. Clinical, fluorescent-light-illuminated hell. On Tuesday night, I left the hospital at 930. Before I left he looked at me, as if he wanted to devour me. I have never been looked at like that. He just looked and looked, and I tried to look back, but the gaze was too much for me, too overwhelming. It was a look that came from beyond ordinary time. Then the nurse came in to perform oral care, and the moment was broken. He just wanted to know me, and to take me in, because I'm his child, and he really, really loved me. He often looked at me like that, this year, but this was more luminous. Heading out, I ran into one of my surgeons in the lobby, who was having a meltdown, but that's another story. I'd been working during this whole thing--going to his bedside during breaks and after work. I planned to head over there after my half-day clinic the next day. At about 11 am, I felt one of the worst physical feelings I've ever known--I can't explain it--like everything good had been drained from my body, like I was about die, like the world was going to end. I thought "Shit. This is it. It's really going to hell now." So, being a good little nurse, I finished my charting--as I was doing so, the pager went off. I proofed and signed my note, then answered the page. One part of me stood aside with her arms folded, shaking her head and saying, "You are one cold bitch, Haley Patton." Dr. Tso picked up. He's one of the fellows in the MICU. Asian, bespectacled, gay, deeply kind. "Haley, I think you'd better come over. His heart rate is at 40 and he's satting 64. We were going to code him, but your mom...reconsidered." Silence after this. Up until this point, my mom had insisted on keeping him a full code--despite being 96 pounds, despite having an ejection fraction of 15%, despite the fact that he can't swallow, ambulate, or control his bowels. "You just want him to die." She told me, when I tried to get palliative care involved. On Tuesday, in addition to gazing at my dad, working a full clinic, and talking my surgeon down from the ledge, I also forced my mom to sit quietly as I described, in the most unemotional way I knew, what an actual code would involve. I said, "I'm not going to argue with you, but I want you to give your full attention to me while I outline this step by step." Then I did it. I didn't embellish. Then I left. So, I guess she listened. He was spared one thing. One final brutality, at least. Christ. That's my half-hour.

Goodbye, Ilse.

It's Advent. I sat zazen at home early yesterday morning, but I haven't been to the zendo in a month, ever since the night I showed up at Seido's door the night of the crash. The night of my dad's admission to the hospital. Mom had sent me on a number of ridiculous errands, which I usually refuse to do, but she was upset, so I was trying to pacify her.Turning left onto the main road home, a car ran the red and totaled the Saab. Let me tell you. Saabs are good cars. The world is poorer for their absence. Jay, retrieving my things from poor crumpled Ilse (my Saab) a day later told me that if you looked only at the interior of the car, you would never have guessed a crash had happened. On the side of the road, standing resolutely under a streetlight, hands in her pockets, was my old friend Sandy. Who had witnessed the crash. She was standing there with another woman. I had been listening to Nightvale when I got hit, and it hadn't turned off, so Cecil was going on about Beautiful Carlos. I hit pause with my shaking fingers. My violin was in the front seat, together with a bottle of elderberry juice and some pre-bottled margaritas, for later, unbroken On the shoulder of the road, I opened my violin case. Dear reader...it was not only undamaged, but in-tune. I heard Sandy's friend say "What is she doing?" and Sandy, whom I haven't seen in 35 years says, without skipping a beat, "Haley plays the violin--her grandfather made that one." "Are you ok?" She asks. "I think so." I say, "but I've got a lot of adrenaline going." "So weird," she says. "I was just thinking about you this morning." I, actually had thought of her that morning as well. Let me give you some background. Sandy is the only person I ever got into trouble with in my youth. She's two years older than me, and when I was fourteen, I spent the night at her house and we got drunk on peppermint schnapps and broke into the house of a cute boy who went to our church. We were caught by his parents, who yelled at us, but never told anyone. That's how things were. Today, we'd both be in Juvie or institutionalized. Or, more likely, shot. "I was thinking about you, too." I said. "Remember when we got drunk on peppermint schnapps and broke into Wayne's house?" Her face closed. "I don't recall that at all. You're thinking of someone else." "Well, " I said lamely. "Good to see you!" I kept trying to call Jay, but kept getting voicemail. The cop took her statement, didn't give me a ticket. Ticketed the other driver. He offered me a ride. I told him my address. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but that's not in city limits. Do you know anyone closer?" Seido and the zendo were close. I had him drop me off there. The porch light was off. I banged on the door until he answered. "Haley?" He seemed confused. I explained about the crash. I had to explain several times. "Can I have a ride?" ' "No--I'm too sleepy." He said. "I just took a melatonin. Whatever. What an old lady. No wonder his wife left him. Thinking back, he probably had something stronger on board and didn't want to fess up. I Ubered home. Seido was mystified by this. "You mean, you just press on your screen and a car shows up?" "Yes. They're here. I have to go." The Uber driver, Mohammed, tried to hold forth on the difference between men and women, on the ride home. He expressed dismay over the gravel roads. "Crockett county has gravel roads," I told him, shortly. "Let's just listen to the radio, shall we?" The house was dark and Jay was snoring when I got home. Sometimes even short trips take you to very unexpected destinations. And that's my half-hour

Sat zazen early yesterday morning. I haven't been to the zendo. I thought about going to church this morning. The greens will be up, and I love my little church at Christmas. I talked to Lilly thii

Dad's back in the hospital again. Fredericka, his nurse, called me at work. "I think Mark has aspirated his oatmeal." Fredericka is my age. She's from up North--around Macon. She looks like a gypsy. She has dark hair and big eyes. She used to be over 400 pounds, but had a gastric bypass, and now is about 180. She used to work in the clinic,but started taking care of my dad in January. She's not perfect. She lost her job over some petty bit of dishonesty, but she loves my dad. As all women love my dad. She's the only one of the nurses seeing to him 24/7 who will face down my mom. , e He's failed numerous swallow studies, but has repeatedly refused a feeding tube. There has been a lot of drama around food. He desperately needs calories, but my mom feels that feeding him is too intimate and something she should do, but she doesn't. She's like an anorexic by proxy. Endless ritual accompanies the preparation of food, and meals take hours and are hours late. Battling about it, as I have done, gets him so upset he can't eat at all. So he has slowly starved. The question is--is that what he's intending to do? He's smart. Surely he knows he's killing himself. Now he's decided he wants a feeding tube. But he's too debilitated to survive the surgery to get one. So he's in the hospital. And he has aspiration pneumonia. My mom roots around his room like a mad little animal. She has a notebook and keeps a record of everyone who enters the room, and what they do and what they say. Lots of underlinings and exclamation points. She hides the book when you ask her about it. She frequently threatens to call a lawyer. Then she's appeasing and ingratiating. "I like you... you're a good nurse," she'll say. Classic splitting. I find myself filled with this constant dry heat of anger now. It feels like a dry woodstove fire. It's never gone. I can hardly say a word to her, without hearing the tone in my voice--full of contempt and weariness, and I hate myself for it. My husband, though, has proved himself a saint. He stays buoyant and kind, matter-of-fact, deals with this terrible situation. Deals with me. Has spent the night, wiping my father's ass. "We're people who love." He told me last night. He never talks like this, my Catholic school juvenile delinquent. That's my half hour.

Mr. Reality

My father has been diagnosed with something called Multi Systems Atrophy. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. He started showing signs at Lilly's graduation. He was walking oddly, hips thrust forward, as if his body had become a stranger to itself. "What's going on?" I asked, thinking he was having a stroke. "Don't make a scene." The ancient WASP magic of ignoring the inevitable and unpleasant. From that point it took 9 months to convince him to see a neurologist. Then another 5 for him to start taking the levodopa prescribed him. Then he stopped taking it on the sly, and fell. He was immobile for 6 weeks, incontinent, lying in my parents' hoarder den on the couch. Both my parents refusing to go to the doctor. Terrible. Finally, we convinced them to move to my house in town (it's empty, and clean) and to hire a nurse. He got better and started walking with a walker. But then, one bright Sunday afternoon in March, while my mother was in the kitchen, he decided he could manage without the walker and fell, breaking his left hip. Now he's bedridden. My mother resists every bit of care. Infantilizes him. We try to get him to eat on his own--she fights with us. We encourage him to use a bedpan, rather than going in his diaper--she tells him to go ahead and poop in his diaper. She's taken his phone. She goes through his texts. This is her heaven--complete control over my wayward, squirrelly, secretive father. What she's always wanted. She emotionally tortures the nurses--one or the other is always calling me, crying, threatening to quit: "I just can't take this any longer." And the hoarding continues unabated. Every day she shows up at the house with carloads of things she has brought. I clear the hallways. I cart food out when she's not looking. She calls me 5 or 7 times a day with small complaints--the cable, the nurse gave her 'attitude'. She fills up my voicemail. She looks over at me, and her eyes are amber, pupils small. She looks like a snake. There's no love in her. I think about mental illness, and I know this is really the ugly deal. I sit zazen and it gives me about three inches of mental space--enough to keep functioning, to keep making choices that keep them safe. How does it get to this? How does it get this bad and wrong? Man, watch who you marry. Think about what the End Game will be like, because it will be all theirs to play. It's Father's Day today. I'll go over this afternoon, relieve the nurses until the night nurse shows up. I'm a good nurse. I'm efficient and nice and a little tough. I hate having to take care of him like this, though, having to engage the clinical self with the family. It's so very, very sad. One of my younger colleagues said, casually, "I'd change my dad's diapers--no problem." But does she understand what that means? Seeing a parent this debilitated and vulnerable is the most grinding, soul-wrecking thing you can imagine. And it never ends. And it never improves. It will just get worse and worse. Despite the fact that he is very clearly dying, my parents refuse to talk about hospice, refuse to talk about end-of-life issues. I have to give them some props for this crazy optimism. At least they're committed to it. It's like the Christians refusing to renounce Christ and being eaten by lions for it. They're martyrs to their beliefs, but there's strength in their dedication to delusion. But then, of course, I am the one left holding the bag. I'm the one who gets to talk to Mr. Reality. As it always has been. It's hard to be critical of someone with a terminal disease. You just don't know what you'd do. And it's a waste of effort, which, at this point needs to be focused on making his last days as decent as we can. And there are big questions. Do I sue for guardianship? It's hard to prove someone incompetent, and, crazy as it seems, you have a right to make terrible choices. If I sue and fail, do I lose all influence and contact with my father? At least I have some ability to make a difference now. It's a terrible situation. That's my half-hour.

It's been another long time. Nick moved home after college, his heart broken, but it has slowly recovered.