The End is Only The Beginning in Musings

I always begin to write in you and I fall asleep and I wake up and I’m numb from the hurt.

Aging is an awful way to die… i wanna go on my terms, not because I’m old.

Alex is wonderful. I mean he’s the kinda guy you want when shit falls through the shit. He’s rough enough to wake you up and tender enough to feel comfortable.

Well, my mom is sick. She’s been in the hospital for 2 weeks, and every day it’s another complication; I mean what did I expect out of a women who smokes with emphysema and Alzheimer’s and high blood pressure.

Her Alzheimer’s in the hospital seemed to progress… she’s nasty and her anger, confusion and delirium is let down on me and my sister pretty hard.

My sister let out that she has bipolar depression and she’s unable to be our mother’s health proxy because of my mom’s belligerent temper tantrums… so everyone knows everything about my life… I have anxiety… I have clinical depression… I am in a previous domestic abuse relationship… but no one ever bothers to tell me “Hey baby bro, I have bi polar depression”

Am I that self absorbed? I want my siblings to stop protecting me from worry!!! I will always worry, it’s my nature, it’s in my DNA…

I haven’t slept for more than 15 hours for the past two weeks. My mom has undetected strokes, she had a minor heart procedure done, she has to go to physical rehab because this first emergency situation made the cookie crumble and all of the truth comes to the light.

Mom has what we know: emphysema, high blood pressure and Alzheimer’s but she also has: severe depression and was placed in suicide watch because she ripped out her IV and almost bled to death because she’s on blood thinners. She’s had strokes which is why she’s always dizzy and faints.

“I don’t like you’re lifestyle choices, but you know he’s the right one, right?”
“How do you know mom? He’s it, open your eyes, you’re such an idiot”

She also assigned me with the awful chore of preparing my siblings and family for her departure. But I think my mom knows this about me…the best way to make me less anxious, is by preparing me by preparing others, because I always practice what I preach—the act of preparing others prepares me. I know that my mom still has a life to live, but her depression is what’s going to deter that.

I hope that when I die 60-70 years from now… I go out on July 4th… fireworks and booze and gluttony and hedonism thriving on the pretenses of freedom and independence. The LAST Andy-ism, passive aggressive act… gaining true everlasting freedom and independence on the very day of American freedom and independence.... suck my balls world!

So I’m numb and I want to sleep. I want to eat. I’m just inundated with other things and I’m not taking care of me.
I am blessed to have my Alex and my best friends around me… they keep track of me, if I run out to work and haven’t eaten breakfast—I get a seamless delivery of food from Jennifer… Alex stopped by the salon and gave me a banana and a soup. The sleuth of love and support I have is overwhelming, it’s nice to know that when I’m on autopilot I have people showing me how to navigate. And even as alone and lost as I feel, at least I know that outside of my mind, outside of my numb defensive mechanism, I have people waiting for me to get back to them, who are knowing all of my intimate and intricate personality flaws— and still want me to get back to them.

What are things you do in preparation for losing your parent?
I mean a will, life insurance policies. But what about last rites? How do I acquire a priest to grant her last rites when she hasn’t been a parishioner of any church in years… what do we do with her belongings? Trinkets, memories that aren’t mine but they are hers, what do you do to celebrate her life and not think of her death as her end?
Life has given me too many surprises and I just want to know what to do in prep and what to expect during and post.

And I know I sound like an asshole… but I’ve been preparing for these days as far as I can remember… “Andy, watch me cook rice, so that when I’m gone and you don’t have a wife, at least you can take care of yourself and eat… watch how I iron cotton, look at the heat of the iron, use a little steam, this is rayon use a paper or it will get shiny with direct heat —I’m not good at tying a tie, but I know how to knot it and we’ll get it together. Listen, it’s weird I’m a woman and your mother, but you’re at that age that it may feel good to rub yourself; it’s perfectly normal, don’t think you broke it and show some restraint, there’s a time and place for everything. I always prayed to God that you would be kind, humble and compassionate and look at you, you’re better than what I asked”

The most hideous thing about Alzheimer’s is that they are stolen from you piece by piece—and you don’t know that it’s gone. You’re too close to see.

I’ve realized also that as a child of an Alzheimer’s parent that I am selfishly cramming memories of me presently like a rat race to stay in her present memory. Instead of collecting priceless fractions of her to absorb, to remain in my bank of recollections and listen to her bank of memories that have constructed my present.
“You were a prankster and comedian from since birth— remember when we use to walk in spring/summer to Columbia University and there was a bush of Gardenia’s and you would run up to them and pull one out every time and run—I have the petals of those flowers in a box; I scolded you and I beat you once, but you still did it, and we stopped walking down there.—Remember how hard you worked on perfecting your ‘A’—I have your first scribbles of writing ‘A’—I didn’t expect to have you, I was old and I didn’t have a regular period, but I needed you, I wanted you against everyone; I remember asking for you after the surgery and I was so weak, they put you in my arms and I saw you were alive and awake and i felt my throat burst from screaming, before I fainted. I couldn’t hold you, I didn’t want to drop you; the next time I saw you again you were a little lobster red ball, the last scoop of goodness that my body produced; I saved the best for last—My religion has taught me that being gay is bad, but you are a good, kind kid; if that’s the reason you go to Hell I swear on everything in my being I will trade my soul for yours if I have to, I’ll find you, don’t be afraid 5 seconds in Hell is lifetimes of suffering, but remember it’s not real”

It’s terrifying the things I remember. My mother didn’t raise me the same as my brother and sister… maybe also because she had me at 36 as opposed to her early 20’s. My brother and sister don’t embrace death as a part of the experience of life—two things in all species and beings of the universe that connect us is 1) we are all born… 2) we all die. My mom always taught me that she would die and I had to fend for myself, and she taught me a lot of survival things… the thing that amazes me the most is that my mother learned how to read and write by her own accord, talk about survival. I would hate watching tv with her because she was really into nature shows and I hated seeing zebras getting eaten by lions or seeing the after effects of people poaching rhinos, elephants etc. My mom would tell me to grow up and see the way of life… one is natural we all have to eat to live, the other was an ugly truth about how despicable humans are to living creatures, that’s why God washed the earth with fire and water and then sacrificed his son—all the Catholic stuff. Honestly, it makes sense… if you love someone, truly, you shouldn’t only love them for there good qualities, you should love them for there ugly traits too. If you can’t accept both, you don’t truly love someone.
I love my mother for all the happy memories I listed off in a stream of consciousness but I also love her ugly, awful side that I don’t really announce publicly anywhere… I love her not IN SPITE of her flaws… I love her REGARDLESS of her flaws…
maybe that’s the way that I love Alex too… it’s not that I don’t see his ugly, monstrous traits… and it’s not that I focus on all of the good he does for me… I love him regardless of his flaws.

The details are the best part.