Things are brewing...

Things seem to be brewing up in my head.  Nope, not some good thoughts.  That would be amazing, with the fog I've been battling.  Instead, what has been brewing seems to be some pesky germs.  Raging sore throat.  Stuffed nose.  Painful ears.  Now, a fever.  I suppose I shall drag my weary bones to one of those clinics I have heard about here that are a part of the Lutheran Health Network on the morrow.  Sandra texted me the closest location, but I could not motivate myself out the door soon enough tonight to see if I might qualify for some germ fighting antibiotics.

Here is my poor, snow-and-ice-encrusted puppy from last night.  He has not learned the term "time-out," but he has learned the phrase: "No poo-poo, no Momma."  Such words strike terror in my puppy.  But...well...Amos had not yet asked to go outside last night when I was trying to get him to do his business.  I just had decided he was ready.  Clearly, he was not, given that he had already endured one time-out session.  Poor Amos.  If I had not realized his entire coat was laden with frozen material, he might not have fared as well as he did after being bundled up in warm towels and held before the fire for a long while.  He just sat in the snow, not knowing what to do, since if he did not do something, I had threatened that he would be all alone in the kitchen.  Abandoned.  Separated from his beloved Momma.

Late last night, Amos did his bark/whine/growl as his way of asking to go outside and take care of business.  The entire process took but a moment or two.  The terrible battle that took place earlier, practically killing my poor puppy was entirely unnecessary.  SIGH.

Here is my beloved puppy this afternoon, longing with his entire being to be playing with his tiny canine house guest.  He clearly does not understand how fragile she still is, that she survived is a bona fied miracle.  Amos, as he is wont to do, stretched his body enough to peer at whatever has captured his attention.  If he were to study the matter, he would realized he could easily leap over the quilt-covered baby gate.  Thankfully, my puppy is but a young pup and has not yet developed all of his critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.  Still, it is very, very hard on him that the little mite of a dog he was playing with is now off limits to him. He doesn't understand.  And she smells very good to him.

I, for one, am glad that we are on the downside of puppy trauma.  Truly the little girl was critical.  However, Amos' male bits being frozen to his belly was hard for me to see, especially how long his skin remained rather red.  [Yes, it was hard to see because of the guilt I felt over having caused it.]  Perhaps the drama that always seem to accompany trying to play host has passed and the rest of the visit will be...smooth.

We saw a movie today: Iron Lady.  Meryl Streep is truly gifted.  Gobsmakingly gifted.  However, the movie was too sad for me.  Much of me wanted to leave immediately.  Much of me wants someone to wipe the memory of the movie from my mind.  This is because the movie is not so much about Margaret Thatcher's incredible life, but a glimpse of the ravaging of cognitive decline on such a formidable mind.  The loneliness of dementia/Alzheimer's/cognitive dysfunction is harrowing to experience and harrowing to see...if you are willing to actually look at it.  It is my experience that not many people are willing to do so.  Another movie title comes to mind (not that I saw it): Eyes Wide Shut.

We look, but we do not see.  We listen, but we do not hear. My personal theory is that in listening, at least in part, what we do is try to picture ourselves in the story we are hearing.  Somehow. In some way.  Think of the parables and how man spends so much effort trying to not just figure them out, but figure out what part, what role he plays in them. I suppose because man is all about trying to figure out what we must do.  Who is my neighbor?

Robert Coles, a child psychiatrist, has this fantastic book: The Call of Stories.  Another day would be the time to plow through its illumination in full, but suffice it to say that he talks about how we process our lives through stories.  His book about this arose from the shocking revelation that he was not actually listening to his patients.  He had to learn to listen to what they were actually saying, not what he thought what they were saying.

We tell each other--we tell ourselves, for that matter--stories.  The seminal, pivotal work of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is based on this, really, when looking at grief.  She talks about how people will story their loss.  They will not always start in the same place.  The beginning of their story--even among those who share the same loss--can be as varied and idiosyncratic as there are people on this planet.  But the story of our loss--the telling of it--is how we can process and survive it.

I have wondered, at times, if this really is at the heart of why couples who lose children often break up, why marriages dissolve.  Both have different stories to tell even though they shared the same experience.  There has to be a sort of betrayal in that, the terrible realization that the very one who should understand does not really understand, does not wholly understand, because that person has a different story to tell. No matter how much we wish it were so, no one ever really shares the same grief, for no one ever really shares the same life, not even the person lying beside you for the past 65 years.

We tell the story because we need others to hear it, we need others to listen. Kubler Ross teaches the importance of listening to all the times we tell the story, that if you listen for a while, but are no longer willing to listen that 10th, 17th, or even 36th time the one grieving needed to tell the story, you have actually negated the help, the value really, of the other times you listened.  But listening repeatedly, especially when we do not understand the necessity of the repetition or the amount of repetition, is hard.

Again, it is merely my admittedly biased opinion, but I believe we are not always willing to listen to those stories of grief or loss or pain or illness because we do not really want to be in them.  And it is difficult to continue to deny that natural tendency to insert ourselves into a story of which we want no part.

The story I wished not to listen to today is a story too close to mine, too harrowing for it made real the fears I have, the things I cannot seem to have anyone else hear.  Except the person who watched me do so dismally on the cognitive assessment a year ago and the one who has spent the past year professionally listening to me and notices particularly the repetition of the questions I ask and how hard it is for me to grasp the things she is trying to teach me.  Not because I am not trying.  Not because I do not want to do so.  But because of the neurological disease in my body, in my mind.

And it was harrowing because of it is about a disease I fear is yet to come to me, yet to be added to the list of things wrong with my body.

My father can no longer feed himself; he does not know what to do with the food before him.  The fine mind that had him working on the first space shuttle program is no longer functioning even at a basic cognitive level.  Its autonomic processes are continuing, but the thinking, the processing, the connecting is gone.  I thought his mother was young when her mind fell victim to Alzheimer's in her late 80s.  My father is just into his seventh decade.  The leaving of his mind, however, has been a long time coming.  He was/is young for this.

Many years ago, we went to Wal-Mart on one of our $5.50 DVD hunting trips.  We always hung out at the $5.50 bin, but I would also check the $7.50 ones just in case there was a good find worth the extra money.  This meant moving among the racks set up around the bin.  That day, I had stepped away without my father noticing.  I would like to say that I will never forget the abject fear on his face, the terror in his voice as he cried out for me.  But I will.  [At least it is here, in my external memory, for me to hold.]  My father was lost and alone and disoriented.  But this is not what haunts me.  What I struggle to bear is the look on his face after he found me, realized where he was and what he was doing and becoming oriented once more.  He knew what was had happened, what was happening to him.  I suppose the blessing of Alzheimer's is when the patient moves beyond the knowing, when the patient forgets for all time that she is lost.

In psychological terms, what I receive when I try to tell the story of this particular loss is a Yes-But.  [And, yes, I know I am well versed in that response myself.] Yes, but you are still so smart.  Yes, but you are doing so well.  Yes, but you look so good.  To me, that is a denial, a rejection, and a dismissal of this very real, very harrowing battle that I am facing, a battle that is really but a small part of a larger war.  A war I know I will inevitably, inexorably lose.  Too young.

To me, there is an exquisite beauty in Streep's performance.  It was a honor to see her wield the gift our Creator bestowed upon her.  Her eyes, her hands.  Micro movements and micro expressions.  Harrowing ones, if you are willing to look.  I wonder just how many will only look in passing, walking out of the theatre remembering the life Thatcher lived, rather than the life she is living right now.

Still, I would have rather I had been a bit smarter about seeing that movie.  I wish that I had avoided it the way I have avoided the movie Momento.  I was not ready for it.  I am not ready for what is happening even now...especially because the wind is the only one listening to my story.

It should be a comfort for me that when I no longer remember that I am a child of Christ, He will remember for me.  It is not.  Not yet at least...I hope.  I hope one day, before I am lost for all time, that I find comfort in that knowledge.  For, now, I am still harrowed by the knowledge that if my cognitive function continues to decline in the manner in which I have experienced thus far, one day I will no longer even have that knowledge, that connection within my grasp.  


I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!