It's only allergies, BUT

Dr. Phil says that when you follow a phrase with the conjunction “but,” it negates that phrase and essentially means that the words before it are bullshit. 

I know there is never a good time to be sick and that I should just shut up and not complain, BUT I’m here to complain. It is my God-given right to bitch and moan about it as much as I please, and if you want to just stop reading right now and spare yourself the agony of hearing me whine, I will certainly understand.

Last Monday was such a sparkling day in the park that Honey and I added a loop through the fitness trail to our established route under the oaks along the river. It was warm and we were sweaty when we returned home a little out of breath, happy and feeling refreshed. We had a drink of water and both flopped down on one of the navy sofas to catch our breath. I picked up my Kindle and resumed reading Fear of Flying. Honey promptly fell asleep with her head propped on a pillow. So far, so good.

It wasn't until that night that I started to cough. It really wasn't much of a cough, just a persistent tickle in my throat , a nuisance that did not in any way foreshadow how I would feel six days later. In fact, I wrote it off as an allergic reaction to the tree pollen with which the air is thick all over The Island. 

It is, after all, Spring. I don’t care that the calendar says the Equinox won't occur for four more days; it’s Spring in The Golden Isles. The bees are in a frenzy over the azaleas that are beginning to bloom, and the pansies in pots on the balcony are wilting in the warmth of the bright sun and warming air temperatures. They need to be pulled up and replaced with heat-hearty dusty miller and petunias and portulaca and lantana. 

Cliché alert:  Spring has sprung.

So, I gave little notice to the persistent irritation in my throat and upper chest, writing it off to the change of the season, which, as anyone who lives on the coast of Georgia knows, brings hacking coughs and runny noses to many of its inhabitants.

Undaunted, on Tuesday we were back out in the park, soaking up the sun and breathing in the pollen. That night, I took a Zyrtec to combat the cough and the feeling of something fuzzy sitting in my chest. 

I woke on Wednesday feeling more congested and scratchy and announced to anyone who would listen that I had “allergies.” I haven't been sick in two years, so why think I would be now? It was hay fever, for God’s sake, nothing more. 

I had my first appointment with a new therapist that afternoon, and I went, armed with a wad tissues, to try her out. She bought the “allergy” story with good grace, and in my defense, I thought I was telling the truth. The same goes for Music Night that night, where I warned everyone off kisses and hugs, just in case, saying I thought I had “allergic” bronchitis. I played the cabasa and sang, pausing occasionally, or maybe more than occasionally, to cough into the elbow of my shirt. Relishing my time of music and friendship, I gave it my all. I left before the others because The Ex-Husband was staying with Parrish so I could have the night out.

And here’s another BUT:  I realized when I got in the car to drive home that I was inordinately tired BUT gave it little thought, being worn out as I was with my “allergies.” The cough got worse during the night and I woke with severe pain in my throat and upper chest. So I took a Lortab. (I’m never without a small bottle of them for emergencies, like pain or, God forbid, a cough.) Still telling myself I wasn’t really sick, I finally got comfortable enough to go back to sleep.

On Thursday, still deluding myself that I was not sick, only “allergic” to something, I spent the day shuffling from my bed to the refrigerator for cold water and juice. I felt like I had been hit by a bus and was coughing so deeply that I thought I would spit out my toenails. I had Parrish walk Honey, keeping myself out of the pollen and telling myself that all I needed was more Zyrtec and another Lortab and some rest. I tried to write. I tried to watch a movie on TV. I tried to read. BUT, I kept falling asleep, so exhausted was I from coughing and taking drugs.

By that night, unable to sleep except in short intervals because of the chest pain and a cough that made a hack saw sound like a lullaby, I felt as though I were coming down with pneumonia. If you’ve ever had pneumonia, you know what it feels like, and I’ve had it three times. With the rising sun, though, I thought better of things and decided another day in bed would have me back to speed. After all, the  Lortab kept the cough at pay for a couple of hours.  That’s when I slept, day and night.

I should pause here for a little background that, in your eyes, may or may not excuse my ignorant behavior and cavalier attitude about something as serious as bronchitis or pneumonia. I was married to a physician for thirty-four and a half years, and as we all know, doctors’ families are never sick. We are like cobblers’ families who never need shoes. An aspirin would pretty much fix any minor health issue we might have, and believe me, all of our ailments were minor. We needed to have arterial blood spurting from a deep wound or be unconscious in order to garner any real attention from the House Doctor. The second and third times I had pneumonia, it was under the watchful care of my husband. Both times, I had to listen to my own chest and hear the rales before he would even reach for his stethoscope.  So you see, I come by this attitude honestly.

I sat in my usual spot in my writing nook and began, well, writing. I had some thoughts for my other blog and wanted to put them on paper, telling myself that if I weren’t better by Monday, I would insert myself into the health care industry and visit the walk-in clinic that is conveniently located in my neighborhood. BUT I couldn’t stop coughing and the pain got worse. So, I brushed my teeth and fluffed my hair and trundled myself over there.

My temperature was 101 and there were patches of pus in my throat. The doctor kept saying “Tsk, tsk, you sure have some congestion there, and your throat is infected.”

He pronounced that I am suffering from bacterial bronchitis and had the nurse give me a shot of Rocephen, a potent antibiotic that is supposed to act like a carpet bomb for all sorts of infections, and a shot of Decadron to help control the inflammation and swelling in my throat and breathing tubes. I fell asleep on the examining table while I waited the obligatory twenty minutes to make sure I wasn’t allergic to the antibiotic.  

Armed with prescriptions for a potent cough syrup and another antibiotic, I went by CVS on my way home, where I have remained for forty-eight hours, in and out of bed, sleeping in two-hour cat naps and coughing.

Feel sorry for me yet? I won’t blame you if you don’t. Clearly, I am unbalanced and think I can wish away an illness that could have easily landed me in hospital. 

The birds are chirping happily now, and I’m taking my not so chirpy ass back to bed, at least for a couple of hours.

Copyright 2014 cj Schlottman

Why I Shouldn't Have a TV

Here is one of the reasons my television sits blank and mute for days at a time. I should be over at Madness Mania and Muddlement, writing my ass off and telling the story of this week with Parrish. Instead, I am all worked up over the situation in Ukraine. And it’s my fault. After playing music all day, at seven o’clock tonight, I decided to check out the news of the day, get Parrish engaged in something current, get his mind out of the past by rubbing his nose in the present.

I was standing over a pot of risotto, stirring away, when I heard a newswoman report on the situation in Crimea, a peninsula of Ukraine that sticks down in the the Black Sea. Most of the peninsula is home to the Republic of Crimea. With it’s ethnic Russian majority, it is the last holdout of opposition to Ukraine’s new political leadership.

Today, officials of the Ukrainian government accused Russia (and Vladimir Putin) of trying to take over two airports in Crimea. They said their security people prevented the takeover. Now Washington is seized up with trying to figure out what’s going on and what, if anything, the US should do about it. 

Puleeze. I have stories to write and ideas to put forth and don’t have any time for Russia to start taking over other countries. So, I turned off the tube and finished the risotto. It will be days before the I turn on the damned thing again.

The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. - Carl Sandburg

The fog won’t lift. I tried to wash it away with the salty air of the park, tried to walk it off but found myself looking at the ground moving under my feet as Honey ran around on the end of her leash. I made myself go to the marina and look out over the river and marsh but the sky was gray and there were no birds in sight. Both doors are open and there is fresh cool air blowing through the flat but I don’t feel anything except a gloomy chill even with a sweater on. And I took my medicine; I always take my medicine unless I forget.

Yesterday I washed P’s clothes so they would be fresh and sweet smelling when he gets home tomorrow. This morning I folded them carefully and tucked them into the drawers of his bureau, shorts and undershirts and socks together in neat piles. I hung his shirts in the closet in careful rows alongside his trousers and  jeans and jackets and made sure the towels are fresh and in good supply. His cashmere sweaters are in a plastic storage box to keep them fresh and safe from moths. I arranged pictures along the walls with an eye for where to hang them, took his baseball cards from the old smelly cardboard box and fitted them neatly into a plastic shoe box and put it on the bottom shelf of his night table, put Huggy Bear on his bed. I made sure the lamp has a good bulb. Then I stood in his room and wondered aloud how I would move the walnut cabinet from one corner to the other so there would be a place for his TV. I gave up wondering about and sat down to write.

Unmoved by their brilliant faces, I poured water on the pansies on the porch. There is a pile of clean towels on the other navy-blue love seat, waiting since last night for me to fluff and fold and put them away. They are glaring at me, demanding attention but here I sit at my laptop doing nothing except acknowledging their existence. They can stay there forever for all I care. 

The grill pan sits unattended where I left it last night after cooking some chicken breasts so we could have supper and Honey would have a decent breakfast this morning. I haven’t eaten today even though there are strawberries and blueberries and blackberries and Greek yogurt in the refrigerator. Coffee is all I want, coffee and cigarettes and this keyboard.

Yesterday I began rearranging the painting on the walls but I stopped and haven't gone back to them. It will make me feel better when they are all where they should be and maybe I will work on them some more today. Maybe not.

I don’t want to go back to bed because I’m afraid I will stay there all day except to make coffee and go to the bathroom. Maybe I will do that anyway. No, I won’t. I’ll get up and do something, anything to cut through the inertia, stop the stillness. It’s what I do. It’s not like it used to be when I could’t type or walk a straight line or remember a thought I had a moment before. The fog will move on, perhaps on Sandburg's little cat feet, but it will move on.

The rain started a few minutes ago. 

Copyright 2014 cj Schlottman

Sylvia Plath and Some Other Stuff

My Kindle Paperwhite came yesterday, and last night I started reading The Bell Jar. Honey got me up at seven-thirty this morning, and I started reading it again, amazed that I could read without eye strain.

After about an hour, my eyes were fine but I was wake until a little after eleven. We started on our walk, but a storm was brewing and the wind nearly blew us over before we could get into the park. Honey did her business and we hustled back inside just before the rain came. It was a hard, wind-driven rain that came into the east window, and I had to close it. Honey hunkered down with me on the sofa but it was clear to me that she would rather have been in bed.  

I was tired of being in bed and wanted to read my book here in the good light. I never read The Bell Jar before. No, it’s true. Why? I just never did. I seem to remember being in college or maybe it was after college, that  the title didn't appeal to me. I suppose now that I’ve read the book, the title was off-putting to me because of my own bell jar.  

I was already depressed by then.  It started when Parrish was born. I had postpartum depression and no none knew what the hell it was. My doctor didn’t turn a hair when I told him I was sad all the time, just suggested that I get a hobby. What the hell did that mean? I already had my hands full with a colicky baby, and even with a great deal of help from Mama, I was barely coping. I ended up teaching myself to do needlepoint but it would be years before I could enjoy the art of it. My first pieces were as sad as I was.

I was miserable and couldn’t eat and couldn’t concentrate on anything. I quickly got back into my pre-pregnancy clothes because I couldn’t swallow food. I remember what a challenge it was to cook a meal. I remember feeling guilty because I couldn’t breastfeed. Nobody showed me how and I thought it was something that just happened naturally. Boy, was I naive. I think it was about that time that I started drinking alcohol. I liked the way it made me feel - still do. 

The depression deepened when I left Lawrence, even though I was sure I was doing the right thing. My appetite dwindled to nothing and I ended up weighing less than a hundred pounds. I worked through it, though, and was able to move forward with my life

Where did that come from?  Oh yeah, The Bell Jar. It’s one of the most incredible books I’ve ever read and I want to read it again. I may just start over tomorrow. I downloaded a book of Sylvia Plath’s poems tonight and started reading them. I’ve tried to read her poems before but never got into them. Now I think they are incredible. All of a sudden, I can read them with some understanding that I suppose has to do with me reading the book. I want to read some of her short stories now. I just went to Amazon and none of the are in Kindle edition. Maybe some day.

I finished the book this afternoon. It’s unheard of for me to read an entire book, even a short one, in a day.  My eyes get too tired and my vision blurs. The Kindle allows me to crank up the font to a size that doesn’t cause the crippling eye strain I get when reading hard copy. I only put it down every now and then to do some small chore, like clean up my room since Lawrence is supposed to bring over my dock box some time this weekend, and since it’s going in the bathroom, he’ll have to go through my room with it. I made an half-ass attempt to start cleaning the kitchen from Wednesday’s dinner with Bob, but I only managed to put the dishes in the sink to soak. I didn't give a shit about anything but that book. 

Tonight I started to think about arranging P’s room. The carpet is filthy on the side of the bed where The Famous Writer sat and smoked weed and spilled the ashes on the carpet. I suppose I should be grateful he didn’t burn it, but I’m not grateful for anything about him except the fact that he is gone. I’ll call a carpet cleaner to scrub the last of him out of the room. And I need to hang pictures and buy Parrish a decent chair. I also need a room divider - a handsome screen - to wall off my office and bedroom from the great room. And I need a storage unit of some kind for the garage. I need a lot of stuff, but I don’t want to spend money right now.   

The rain didn’t last long and by mid afternoon the sun was shining, so we got in our afternoon walk, actually extended it by making a loop around by the slave cabins after we left the park. I feel stronger in my legs and today there was no pain, even when I woke up. I wish I could figure out what makes the pain so bad at times and nonexistent at others.

I called Sophie last night, and she’s not coming. She says her brother is sick. I’m terribly disappointed but I understand. I called Melvina and left a message for her to call me back but never heard from her. I can do Parrish coming home by myself if I have to but I’m not looking forward to it. 

I’m unsure about P’s dismissal. It’s supposed to happen on Monday, but my understanding is that we are to have a family meeting with the Dr. Snow and Wayne, the social worker, before he comes home, but no one has contacted me about that. I called Wayne yesterday and today, left messages to call me both times but never heard from him. What’s with that? He threatened by an involved family member with guardianship? Just sorry-ass and not concerned? I really don’t give a shit. I just want him to do his job.

Parrish is still intermittently confused, which is a worry, but he is so much clearer and present than he was a week ago, I can’t complain. Maybe he will continue to be more in the here and now as the Clozaril takes effect. God, I hope so. We could have a pretty good life together if he can stay on his meds and stay sober. Anyone with half a brain and one eye can tell I want to live alone and unbothered by another person in my flat, but this situation is what I have and I will deal with, and I can make the necessary adjustments if P continues to improve and doesn’t throw crazy and chaos all over the place.

Copyright 2014 cj Schlottman

Baby Steps

It’s a cruel day and I am cold to the core.  The air is thick with moisture and its coolness bites into me.  Walking in the park there was no heat from the sky, only darkness, and the wind whipped through my pants not sturdy enough to fight it back.  My body is tired despite eight hours of sleep.  That sleep was filled with eerie dreams that woke me wondering what it all meant and now I cannot piece them together enough to know what they were about.  

My bones are chilly in spite of heat in the apartment.  They ache in the deepest places.  I am sleepy but cannot rest because P calls and garbles into the phone, saying he has had enough, that all of his clothes are gone again and I should wire him some money.  He thinks I am in Macon.

I am not in Macon, of course.  I am here on my Island, my retreat, but even here I feel exposed, open to the bitterness of knowing P is no better.  The weather man says it will rain on us, a thing I usually relish, the rain.  I don’t want rain now.  I want it on a day that is kind to my soul, but today my soul is open and raw and vulnerable to the chill of my own thoughts, the bite in the air.

Honey seems sad and distracted, away somewhere in her puppy-dog mind.  Maybe she feels the icy energy coming from me.  I have dishes to wash but they sit crusty and ignored and unattended.  I think to clean the kitchen but am drawn instead to sit and write.  My bedroom is a jumble of clothes and things I don’t know where to put.  Six months in this flat and I just yesterday figured out where to store the linen.

My thinking is tangential, thoughts shooting in all directions, my focus on nothing except the pouring of words from my brain through my fingertips as I type.  I like this typewriter font and find it comforting, familiar in its look.  All that is missing is the pounding of keys.  It reminds me of typing papers in high school and college.  I always loved to write papers, research and organize the facts and put them together in a way that made sense.  

Can I make sense of all this crazy and uncertainty and angst by spilling words onto this keyboard?  I feel a stiff breeze flowing through my being, clouding my mind and rendering me lifeless and limp.  Am I hopeless?  Maybe at this moment I am.  I can’t be hopeless in the face of all these demons, Parrish’s and mine.  Where is my fight, my relentless pursuit of peace, my determination to meet what life has in store?  I can't find it right now.  It’s here somewhere, can’t have gone far, but it eludes me and all I want to do is climb in bed and sleep and escape.  But I learned last night that there is not escape in sleep, not now.  

My soul is cold so I sit, wrapped in a blanket, and think and write and wonder when the warmth will return.  Maybe tomorrow, maybe sooner.  No later than tomorrow, though.  I have to go out and find it before tomorrow comes.  I can’t stay mired in this bog, but it will suck me into darkness if I struggle too hard against it.  So, I lift my feet gingerly, shake off the mud, take a tentative step forward in order to stop the slide.  Cliché alert:  baby steps, baby steps.


Copyright 2014 cj Schlottman

©

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Stream of Consciousness Dining

Out for dinner on Friday night.  I came here because I haven't been out but one time (except for music night) since P tried to kill himself on the 12th of January.  I'm tired of being alone every night at dinner.  Well, there was that one night when Bob came over to eat some of the shrimp creole I cooked for two days.

I'm tired of eating cottage cheese and fruit or a bowl of cereal instead of sitting down to a hot meal. I don't count the time I grilled a salmon filet and sat on the sofa and shared it with Honey.  

Why do I need to rationalize this?  There is no need for me to make up excuses for coming out to dinner.  

Dining alone is easier for me than it was when I was young and self-conscious.  I'd still rather have a dinner partner, but this will have to do.  I wanted to sit at the bar but when I arrived, the place was already bursting at the seams, and it's as loud as a football game.  I wanted a table for one, but all the tables for one have been pushed together for a "large party at eight."  

Everyone is shouting.  I hear a word here and there but for the most part it's a cacophony of voices, deep and shrill, male and female.  There's a not unpleasant isolation in the middle of all this racket.  In a perverse way, this chaos, a thing I generally try to avoid, is soothing.  The anonymity in the middle of it is welcome.

After bringing my Scotch, the server checked back right away to see if I wanted to order my dinner.  She wanted to tell me about tonight's special, some kind if tricked up fish dish.  

"I just want to have my drink and do a little writing."

I'm every server's nightmare, an old woman alone at a table for four who has whipped out her iPad and started writing and does not appear to be in any hurry at all - on Friday night.  If some if those fuckers at the bar will either leave or take a table, I can move in there.

In the meantime, here I sit, my fingers dancing on this wonderful little touch screen, sipping McCallan and unconcerned about the seating arrangements.  I thought about writing a steam of consciousness poem about dining alone, and maybe that's what this will be in the end.

I would just love it if I could make the server think I'm a restaurant critic!  Not sure how to do that without telling an outright lie, but it would be fun to see what happened.

I've been reading poems on Tumblr by a girl (or woman) who calls herself Inkedskin.  The works are almost all stream of consciousness, and they are raw and honest and almost burn the page. She writes of cutting herself and of feeling left out and of being anxious and fearful, of her alcoholic father.  I have no idea how old she is, but she is a student.  I look forward to reading her pieces even though every one of them is disturbing.  I admire her guts and grit, her willingness to lay her soul out there for everyone to see.  I wish I had that kind of grit when I was young.

I'm also reading poems written by my wonderful friend and mentor, Rosemary Daniell.  I have all of her books and read from her work often.  She has endured the agony of living with loved ones who suffer from mental illness and the anguish it engenders.  As much as Inkedskin's poems rip into me, Rosemary's are more personal and speak to my situation in words that echo the aching in my own heart.  They tear into the very core of my own personal hell, and they inspire me to be a better writer.  Rosemary is the woman who convinced me that I can call myself a writer and a poet.  She has nurtured my talent for years and is one of the Angels in my life.

The thing with Parrish is weighing on me, and I spend a great deal of time writing about it and thinking about it.  One reason for coming out tonight was to get away from that, and here I am writing about it.  I need to stop.  I need to look around and write about some of these people, how they look, how they carry themselves, the expressions in their faces.

All I can really see from here, though, is the two fish in the tank.  They look like Jack Dempseys, but they are orange.  They float around in the tank, appear oblivious to the noise.  I feel sorry for them, but I wonder if there is any real reason to feel sorry for a couple of fish who have a clean house and get fed and are not at the mercy of a single predator.  They have no responsibilities, no problems, no worries at all, so maybe it's not such a bad life.  

I just looked up and saw a woman who looks remarkably like an unpleasant woman I knew in Macon.  It's not her, though, thank God.  How awful would it be for me to come out to escape my quotidian life and run into some bitch from Macon?  I might have to stab myself in the throat with a fork.  

I'm grateful every day of my life that I no longer live in Macon.  I never felt at home in there, never, even though I had Clint for a posse all those years.  I don't do small talk and that's all those people do, with a few exceptions, of course.  

Shut up, cj.  Shut up and eat your fried shrimp salad.

I just saw a waitress twirl her hair with her finger.  Really glad she didn't bring my food, which is very tasty. 


© 2014 cj Schlottman  

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Pity Party

I am getting so sad, can feel the energy draining from my body and soul.  Being strong for so long has not made me stronger; it has made me weaker.  I can write, thank God, and I can walk in the park with Honey twice a day, but I really don’t want to leave my apartment for any other reason.  I wait until my cupboard is bare to go to the grocery store.  

Tomorrow I have to go to the hotel and clean out P’s room and bring all of his belongings over here.  In spite of all my protestations about not letting him stay with me, I can’t deposit him back over there when he is released from Gateway.  He will surely kill himself, or in the best case, throw crazy up all over the place and be asked to leave. 

I am grieving for my freedom, my newfound independence, my new life into which I have so comfortably settled.  Even if we hire sitters to be with P at night and when I need to go out, my house will not be my own.  I will lose the solitude I so crave, the silence and peace that feeds my creativity and keeps me writing.

Lawrence is going to help me buy a decorative deck box into which to deposit all my liquor and wine.  It will look like a bench, even have a cushion on top.  I can store meds in my little lock box, but I’ll have to keep the key on a string around my neck in order to keep P from getting his hands on it.  I’ll have to lock up my car keys when I come in the house.  I won’t be able to smoke weed at bedtime to control my nighttime pain.  

Honey will suffer if P is manic.  She will revert to hiding in the bottom of my closet or behind the toilet, and she will be a nervous wreck.  Why do I have to sacrifice my best friend’s wellbeing?  

Yes, I’m feeling sorry for myself.  I deserve a pity party.  I’m sitting here drinking good Vodka and chain smoking, trying to decide if I want to ask a friend to come over for shrimp creole night.  The sauce has been cooking all day.  He's a good and steady friend, and sharing a meal with a nice man who has no designs on me, just wants to be my friend, would do me good. 

So, I'm going to call him up. 

Later - He brought the French bread!

Happy Birthday, my Darling

Happy Birthday, my Darling,

It’s easy for me to imagine you at 80 - funny and smart and generous and loving.  I would have the most wonderful party for you and invite all the family and a few select friends to help us celebrate your life.  I would cook you a pineapple upside down cake in the trusty black skillet, and we would eat it warm with ice cream.  

The music of Chicago and Herbie Mann would fill the air and love would swirl around us like a gentle cloud.  Maybe we would drag out some old photo albums and pore over them and pass them around.  Some of the pictures would make us laugh real hard and some would make us feel nostalgic.  We would be happy.

And we are happy now.  It took a long time for me to be able to celebrate your life every day instead of once a year, but I can finally revel in my sweet memories of you and our remarkable love affair that spanned 36 years and grew with every one that passed.

I will always be in love with you and will forever take comfort in your love for me.  Your children and grandchildren and great grandchildren will always adore you as they did in life.  You live on in them and you live on in me.

And I am grateful for the time we had together, the life we built and the love we shared with so many people.  I have moved on with my life but I have not moved away from you and the memories we share.  You are as much a part of me today as you were when you were living, and that will never change.

Happy Birthday, my one true love, Happy Birthday,

~Your Fat Girl

  

Wednesday Night Music

As Wednesday Night Music (and I know how lame that sounds) was winding down, I fell asleep (passed out) on Jim’s sofa.  I suppose if I were a true Southern Lady, I would be just a tiny bit embarrassed, but I’m not.  I got drunk on purpose, started drinking wine while I was writing a hasty post to “Madness, Mania and Muddlement" yesterday afternoon.  

On my way to Jim’s house, I drove to Gould’s Inlet to watch the full moon rise over the Atlantic.  Clouds were thick on the horizon and the moon was not visible, but the light and energy from it painted the seascape in tones of pink and purple and navy blue layered above the deep green of the water.  As the sun set on the other side of the island, I sat on a bench overlooking the beach and Village Creek, smoking and thanking the universe for Parrish’s survival of his latest suicide attempt.  

I carted myself, along with my newly acquired cabasa, over to Jim’s.  No, it’s not a sausage.  It's a hand percussion instrument, a large wooden spool with a handle on one end.  There are metal beads strung around the spool, and you can shake it or move the beads with your hand.  It sounds like a rattlesnake.  I got tired of being a groupie and decided to join the band, so I’m learning to play it.  If you click on the link above, you will see a demonstration by an expert and learn it can be fairly simple or very complicated to play.  I’m starting out simple.

I’ve written about Wednesday Night Music before, so if you follow this blog, you know the regulars:  Jim, Bob, Steve and Janice, Marnie and me, although if Marnie doesn’t come home soon, she’ll have to reapply for groupie status.   

We have guests drop in from time to time, and the last two sessions have been outstanding.  Last week, Don Mike came, bringing his harmonicas and his flute and his tub base.  He loaned me his cabasa, and it’s because of him that I decided to learn to play it.  

Last night, Rory and two other former members of the band, Flood, Bob and Don, came too.  Rory set up his drums and Bob played electric guitar while Don grooved on his acoustic.  They are wonderful singers.

The deal is this:  we go around the room and each person takes a turn choosing a song.  After a short consultation about the key, the musicians take off and play and sing.  Anyone who chooses to sing may do so.  It’s a perfection-free zone, so if you’re like me and occasionally forget the words or slide a little out of tune, no one cares.  Dancing is optional, and I’m the only one who does - with the refrigerator door.  Music and dancing are my therapists.  

It is one of the most creative and healing endeavors in which I have participated.  Think about it.  A room full of artists, sharing their souls with one another by way of music is a beautiful thing.  I’ve said it before.  Every week I come away energized and optimistic and healed.  Maybe Wednesday Night Music isn’t so lame.  After all, that’s what it is.

Even at 1:30 AM, nursing a headache and feeling like I was run over by a bus, my soul was refreshed and I came home and wrote for two hours.  The horror of watching Parrish shackled and handcuffed and taken away in a Sheriff’s car to the hospital in Savannah* was washed away by music.

I am indeed grateful to these caring and sharing people who are in my life.  I love them all.

© 2014 cj Schlottman

* See “Madness, Mania and Muddlement”

I Sure Am Gonna Miss You, Cuz

Happy Birthday, Mary Ellen,  

You would be 66 today and as sad as I am that Cuz is dying.  He’s only known he has cancer since August, and now he is leaving us.  He really began his journey when his doctors started him on chemo for his stage 4 small cell lung cancer in mid-October.  He never felt like himself after that.  He came to see me on October 19th, after his first treatment, and he was already having trouble eating, just had no desire for food.  The radiation he got before chemo had a lot to do with that, too.

The weeks of treatment that he endured stripped him of his appetite, his energy, his spirit.  While I was busy settling in on Saint Simons, he was already starting to die, if not literally, then at least figuratively.  A man of great appetites, who loves good food and old Scotch whiskey, rock-and-roll and bluegrass and “The Andy Griffith Show” stopped loving the things he loved.  No one I know loves to write more than Cuz, and I have reams of emails from over the years to prove it.  

A wonderful storyteller ran out of tales not long after I visited him in late September and we stayed up all night drinking Macallan-12 and wishing we could afford Macallan-18.  He was already weak from radiation but was still eating enough, and we passed the night listening to The Rolling Stones and The Beatles and The Eagles and Gladys Knight and Roger Miller.  It was a night of remembrance, when we recalled how we met the night before your funeral, and how Clint and I fell in love with him and he with us.

When he walked into Mary Ellen’s house that night while I was manning the phones and accepting casseroles, I said,

“You must be Cousin Don.”  

He is her husband’s first cousin.  Somehow from that meeting, we became “Cuz” to one another, and it stuck for all these years. 
   

I reminded him of how I out-fished him and Clint one time when we went fishing for trout in the flats at Shell Island Fish Camp.  He reminded me of the afternoon he went to Lowe’s and bought some lumber and came home and built me picnic table.  I thanked him again for the wonderful portraits he painted of my dogs.  We talked of the night he and Clint and I sat in the spa on our deck, smoking some Cuban cigars I smuggled in from Canada and, well, drinking.

We talked a lot about Clint.  He is so important to both of us, even now that he is gone.  I didn’t want to believe Cuz would die, but the hard evidence was sitting next to me.  I have lost too many men in my life to not throw up some sort of shield at the thought of losing another one, though.  I pretended he would stay alive a long time, beat the odds.

He said he was ready for whatever life had in store for him, assured me that he had no fear of dying, that he had a genuine curiosity about what the next life is all about.  That reminded me of an email I got from him on August 20.

“This cancer may kill me, but it is NOT going to consume the rest of my life. It will be a fact in my life, but it will not BE my life. I refuse to give it that power over me and I am not praying to be cured, but rather to have the strength to live my life with dignity and grace. I can't stand to be around complainers and I refuse to be one.” 

(He signs his emails, The Artist Formerly Known as “Prints.”  That’s how cool he is.)

And today, here I am with him at the hospice house in Valdosta, on your birthday, working with the nurses to get a morphine drip started.  The oral pain medication isn’t doing the job, even though it’s been administered almost every hour since he was admitted on New Year’s Eve.  The dose was increased last night but only after I sweetly badgered the nurse in charge.  Though he is less restless now, he still wears a painful grimace and every few minutes, he moans.  It’s almost 11 in the morning and there has been no real change since I arrived.  We were both awake almost all night, each in his own personal hell, but we were in hell together.  That’s all that matters to me now.  I can sleep when he does.

The nurse just accessed his chemo port, so the drip is in the works.

I was not surprised when Cuz didn’t feel like coming to my house for Thanksgiving.  I offered to come over here and drive him to the island and bring him back the next day, but he said he felt too bad for the ride.  His emails had prepared me for that.

When I called him on December 14, to see if he felt well enough for me to come for a visit, he was on his way to the hospital for symptom management and didn’t want me to come.  He was there for five nights, and my last email from him arrived on December 20, almost two weeks ago.  He wrote a short message and promised to write more when he felt like it.  

He never felt like it again.  Hospice started on Christmas Eve, but I didn’t know it at the time.  I began calling on Christmas and called every day for a week.  There was never an answer, so I assumed he didn’t feel like talking.

Yesterday, a bell went off in my head when I once again tried to reach my dear and precious friend, this gentle man of the arts, this genius with watercolors.  I knew in my core that he was worse, that he might be dying.  I tried to find a phone number for Jay, his son, but was unsuccessful.  I worried.  I wondered if I should pack a bag and put Honey in the car with me and drive over here.  I worried some more.  I decided to make a pound cake and prune my pansies to get my mind off things.  

At noon, I got my answer.  Mili Hunt, my friend and Cuz’ former girlfriend, emailed me from the airport in Atlanta.  She was on the way back from Dubai and had just received an email from Heather, Cuz’ daughter-in-law, saying that he had been taken to an inpatient hospice.  She told Mili that he seemed to be fading fast.

I still didn’t know where to find him.  I Googled hospice in Valdosta and found sites for several organizations, and I started punching numbers into my phone.  During the first call, I learned that this is the only inpatient facility in Valdosta, so I called the number listed.  It was answered by a machine that promised someone would call me “on the next business day,”.  That would be today.  I did not make that up.

I pruned the pansies some more and got out the butter for the cake and washed a load of clothes, even thought about giving Honey a bath.  I worried and wondered.

Mili, darling Mili, had the presence of mind to email Heather my phone number, and she called me a little after two.  Her voice was weak and broken.  Tears sprang to my eyes as I heard her tell me that Cuz stopped eating and drinking on Sunday, and that his pain is out of control and he is too weak to walk or sit or even turn in bed.  She told me where to find my friend.

I put away the cake ingredients and finished the pansies and watered all of the plants.  I fed the fish.  I got my house in good enough order to leave for a few days and took a shower.  I packed for both of us and Honey and I were on the road at 4:45.  A detour for a quick visit with Parrish delayed my actual departure from Brunswick until nearly 6:00.  

It was raining.  I drove in rain the entire 138 miles from Brunswick and got here last night about 8:15 in spite of it. 

When Clint was dying at our house in Macon, Cuz came to see us for the weekend before Clint passed away on Monday afternoon.  On Sunday afternoon when he was getting ready to drive back to Valdosta, Cuz came into our bedroom to tell Clint good-bye and Clint looked at him with a loving smile and said,

“I'm sure am gonna to miss you, Cuz.”

When I arrived last night and he was still aware enough to know me, I planted a big kiss on his cheek, leaving a red lipstick tattoo.  He smiled weakly and said,

“I'm sure am gonna to miss you, Cuz.”

We had our moment for letting go.  I said I was going to miss him, too, and that I loved him.

The port is in place, and there will be more to tell, so I will write more later.

                               Love,

                                    cj


© 2014 cj Schlottman


See some of Cuz' work here.

  

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back. It's Slow, But It's Progress

It’s five in the morning, and I have been awake since 3:30.  I fell asleep at 11:00 and was awake with leg pain at 12:30.  I took half a Lortab and went back to bed but was awake again at 3:30, still hurting.  I didn’t have any Trazadone last night, and that may be the reason I had so much trouble with pain.  I don’t know.  It doesn’t matter.  I took some more pain medicine and now I am comfortable.   

The door to the balcony is open and as I sit here in the living room I can hear the wind rustling the oak trees.  Honey doesn’t like the wind, so I’m going to prop the door open just a little bit a try to find a comfort level for both of us.  (That didn’t work because the wind is swirling from different directions, so I had to close it.)

We just went outside for her to pee, and the feel of thunderstorms is in the air.  The weather man promised these storms yesterday afternoon but they never happened.  I walked to the oyster roast last night and only felt a few drops of rain. 

I like thunderstorms.  I liked them as a child.  There is something about the power of wind and rain that attracts me.  Maybe it’s the fact that I can enjoy unsettled weather while I am sheltered from it and still feel its effects on my soul.  The power of the universe is around us every moment of every day, and for me, the energy of storms infuses me with the knowledge of my own powers as a human being.  It also has the humbling effect of reminding me that I am at the mercy of nature.  

I think I am awake because I need to write.  Write what?  Just write.  When I go for days without spending time at this keyboard, something dies in me.  I feel incomplete, as though I have cheated myself out of one of my greatest pleasures, my most important outlet for self expession.

Yesterday I admitted to myself that I am a little depressed, and I suppose that is true.  This will help.  It will also help when later this morning I bake the cheese straws I have been planning for two days.  The butter is soft and the cheese is room temperature, and I will crank them out with a feeling of accomplishment.

Cooking is good for me.  I love the order of it all, the measuring and mixing, the resulting food that is good and that I can share with the people in my life.  I lost the love of cooking when Clint got sick, and I am just now recovering it.  It feels right.  It feels like moving on and going back at the same time.

A little as a year ago, typing was such a struggle that it wore me out, exhausted my body and my brain.  Now my fingers fly across the keyboard and the words spill off their tips as quickly as they form in my head.  It doesn't matter what I write about.  I need to write things down.

I was in a funk yesterday because I discovered that beer is missing from my pantry and my refrigerator.  Parrish drank it when he was here for Christmas, but I didn’t notice it until yesterday morning.  I was not looking for it.  I thought P was ready to spend some time with me here, but he is not.

When he called me last night, I told him I knew he drank the beer.  I said I was not mad.  I said I was sad for him and for me.  I said I was sorry for pushing him too hard, expecting too much of him so soon.  All the time, though, I was wondering what would have been worse, him spending Christmas alone in his little apartment or being here and anxious and tempted to drink.  My original idea of taking his meal to him was the right one, but I cannot undo what happened.  Neither can he, and I wish he could give himself a break.

He was not defensive but humble and respectful and expressed great shame.  He admitted something I have been telling him for years and that is that being in my house makes him tense and anxious, brings up old feelings of shame and guilt that he is unable to let go.  I pleaded with him to read Buddhist Boot Camp and try to immerse himself in the tenets of being present in the moment, learning to let go of the past.  

Night before last, after he spent a disturbing afternoon with Lawrence, I fetched him from his efficiency and brought him here for supper.  I made some salmon and sweet potatoes out of the freezer, and after we ate, we sat for a couple of hours listening to classic rock music and playing music trivia.  Between us we could name almost every band and most of the singers.  We were both a little stuck on some of the composers, but we learned a lot while Googling.  Neither one of us knew that John Fogarty wrote every one of Creedence’s top ten hits.

He did not drink that night.  We had a wonderful time together.  He kept contrasting his afternoon at the cemetery with Lawrence with sitting in my living room listening to rock and roll with me.  I kept urging him not to compare Lawrence and me, to accept the only kind of love his father can give him.

I have a theory about Lawrence and the cemetery, and I think it is a valid one.  He is incapable of showing love to the people who mean the most to him.  He goes to the cemetery every three weeks and puts flowers on his parents’ graves, trying to make up for his inability to express his love to them while they were alive.  It is very sad.

Parrish found it disturbingly morbid and was unswayed when I tried to tell him that Lawrence’s behavior is understandable, that he is who he is because of where he came from - a family that did not express love.  

Clint used to have a cassette recording of a lecture by a man named Morris Massey, a sociologist.  It is called “What You Are Is Where You Were When.”  I wish I had those tapes.  They explain how we are imprinted with our values and belief systems early in life, and that if they are not healthy, we must work to change them.  Otherwise, we are stuck.  If we never realize that we are stuck, we can never change.  

Lawrence is stuck.  He was an unplanned addition to his family.  His mother spent much of his childhood in a sanatorium for patients with tuberculosis, and he was not allowed in her presence for over five years.  He essentially had no mother figure and because his father’s job kept him away from home most of the time, he was raised by his older brother, a good man but also a product of parents who did not know how to love, to express love.  

I want Parrish to understand something it took me years to internalize, and that is that Lawrence can no more help who he is than he can help being 71 years old.  Parrish wants more; he has always wanted more.  I want him to learn to accept his father, his strengths and his weaknesses.  Will it happen?  It can happen, but will P ever get beyond his father’s emotional unavailability?  

That P and I could have a talk about these things is a major step in our developing a relationship that will work for us.  He must not drink alcohol if we are to move forward.  When he is drunk, he is a man I don’t know.  He was not drunk on Christmas, thank God, but he did drink.  He is stuck just as surely as his father is.  P cannot accept his father back in his life without questioning whether or not he loves him.  It is very difficult for both of them.

And I am in the middle, an unenviable position.  I finally accept Lawrence for who he is but it took 40 years for me come to this point.  Do Lawrence and Parrish have enough time for them to reach this place?  It will take work.  Lawrence does not know how to do the work.  Will Parrish learn?

I cannot fix this.  I cannot guide where it goes.  I can only set my own limits and love both Parrish and Lawrence for who they are today, not for who they might be or for who they were in the past.

© 2013 cj Schlottman

Dignity and Grace

The old me would be whining and moaning about this, asking myself and The Universe, “Why me?  Why do I have to do this again?”  

I was to spend today visiting with Cuz, my dear friend, in Valdosta.  He called early last night and said he  was going into the hospital.  Tears sprang to my eyes but I forced them back as I heard his painfully weak voice telling me that he was weak and constipated and in terrible pain. 

I knew things were not going well with his chemotherapy for stage four lung cancer because I had an email from him on Wednesday, saying he was in the infusion center for 8 hours that day for his “three hour” chemo treatment.  He is anemic and was held over for a transfusion, and was to return for another on Thursday morning.

When I read the email, I knew I had to go and see him.  I haven’t been back since my visit in late September, and he didn't feel good enough to come for Thanksgiving, even though I offered to drive over and pick him up. 

We talked briefly, agreeing that he would be in touch with me when he felt good enough to talk or email.  He did not want me to come to Valdosta now.  I could hear it in his voice, and I understood.  I will see him when he is home.

At a cerebral level, when Cuz was diagnosed with stage four cancer back in the summer, I knew that his life would be shortened, that without a miracle, he probably wouldn’t live another year.  I have lived through loved ones being diagnosed with cancer and dying.  Mary Ellen, another dear friend, lived only two months after her diagnosis of lung cancer.  My brother John made it for a remarkable six years with renal cell carcinoma, four and a half of those years coming after his first metastatic lesions were found.  I know this road, and at first I resented having to travel it again, so I dove under the cover of denial, telling myself that Cuz would defy all the odds.

Resentment will not make this easier.  It will only make me sick and less capable of being supportive and a positive force in what life Cuz has left.  Statistically, his life expectancy from the time of diagnosis was eight months.  He found the metastatic tumor on his forearm in mid August, four months ago. 

Does that mean he will die while I am in Paris this spring?  The possibility is real, but it never entered my mind while I was making my plans for the trip.  

When Mary Ellen was dying, I could not allow myself the luxury of denial.  By the time she was diagnosed, she had huge tumors in her bones.  I knew she would not live long.  

When John was sick, I actually believed that if I wanted him to live bad enough, he wouldn't die.  I thought I could will him to live.  On the morning of his death, I still had not allowed myself to acknowledge that he was dying.  That strong denial was what kept me from losing my mind at the thought of not having my baby brother in my life.  I could not have borne the burden of mourning for him before he was gone.

Though he did not die of cancer, I did not release my denial about my husband Clint’s terminal illness until five days before he passed away.  Living with his illness and caring for him did not allow any room for the reality of his approaching death.  It would have been too overwhelming, would have paralyzed me.  Again, denial saved me from losing my mind.  As it was, I became so depressed while he was sick that I was hospitalized for major depression eight months before he died.

So, when Cuz got sick, I once more adopted the mantel of denial, believing at my core that he would somehow defy the odds and live a long time.  Last night’s phone call from him stripped it away, and now I am faced with the real truth.  He is going to die and maybe it will happen before he sees another summer.

I haven’t cried yet, not really.  My psychiatrist would advise me to watch a sad movie and let the tears flow, and she would be wise to do so.  I need to cry about this and I need to cry a lot.  But if I do, the reality of this horror will be undeniable.  There.  See?  I’m still clinging to denial, attempting to save myself from the crippling pain of completely acknowledging the inevitable.  If I hang to it, will I be better able to withstand the months to come?  Or, will I be stronger going into this one with my eyes wide open, be a more positive force in Cuz’s life?

I don’t know.  I just don’t know.  I need to give myself permission to “not know” for as long as I need to.

This is so hard.  No matter how many times I have to watch a dear one die, it will never be okay.  It will always be horrid, no matter how I decide to process it.

Cuz is handling this better than I am.  Here is a quote from an email he sent me in August:

“This cancer may kill me, but it is NOT going to consume the rest of my life. It will be a fact in my life, but it will not BE my life.  I refuse to give it that power over me and I am not praying to be cured, but rather to have the strength to live my life with dignity and grace. I can't stand to be around complainers and I refuse to be one.”

Dignity and grace, words that describe my friend so well.  I will do all I can to live up to the standard he has set.