Just Another Herd Creature

I forgot to get more OJ for the sick boy, but I did get Mother's Oatmeal cookies (his favorite) and milk.  He's not looking so sad, in fact he's looking a little better already.

The theory goes that young people are fearless because they think they are invulnerable.  I remember that time in my life.  The before time, when I couldn’t conceive of anything bad happening to me . . . to other people, sure.  I’d see it on the news all the time, but that would never be me.  There is no one moment when my identity switched from invulnerable to vulnerable.  I can trace the gradual process back to starting in my mid-thirties and becoming more solid by my mid-forties.  Even now, I have a trace of the invulnerable, but it is only a whisper.  The louder voice tells me bad things not only might happen, but WILL happen to me. 

Where once wishing parting friends or family a safe trip home was a formality, now those words carry the weight of a prayer.

Where once I had little fear of falling, knowing I’d get up with maybe a scrap, or sprain, now I fear the more serious aspect of falling and breaking a bone.  I even fear I might not be able to get up at all without help.

Where once I thought having a cell phone was just a cool toy, now I see it as a lifeline and I panic when I’ve left it at home.

Where once a cold meant a few annoying days of coughing and sneezing, now I listen intently to my body for signs of an MS flare-up. 

Where once I had little fear coming home late at night by myself, now I proceed with caution, checking the area before I get out of the car. 

Where once I only sporadically wore my seatbelt, now I use it 99.99% of the time. 

Where once I feared verbal taunts by young men on the street for being fat and female, now I fear physical violence just for being in that place at that time. 

Have I really become that much more physically weak and defenseless?  Has the world really become a much more dangerous place?  Aging accounts for some of it.  The barrage of media reports of violence has a cumulous effect, I suppose. 

My spiritual well is shallow, so thinking about death, specifically my death, does not lend itself to volumes of word.  When I was younger, my death was unthinkable.  I had always been and could not truly understand a time of not being.  Now this amorphous image of my death is taking on a greater firmness of shape.  I cannot see it, but I can smell it.  It may be years or decades away, but it has a measure of time I can comprehend.  “Tomorrow or next week” was forever as a child.  Now tomorrow too quickly becomes last month. 

April 7, 1994 my father was taken by ambulance to the hospital.  For some reason, maybe a small stroke, my father did not get out of bed for two days.  He was an alcoholic and 48 hours without a drink threw his body into delirium tremens.  When he couldn't get out of bed without falling and he was incoherent, my mother reluctantly called my sister and 911, in that order.  Later that day my sister called to say he was in the hospital and they weren't sure what was wrong yet.  That night my mother, for the first time in 38 years, slept alone in the house.  No children, no husband, not even a dog.  Worried as she must have been about my father, I wonder if this was the first time in all those years that she slept, really slept.  She didn't have to listen for the floor squeaks and the bathroom door shutting, as a child or a husband was up in the middle of the night, possibly sick, needing her help.  She didn't have to worry about my father getting up in the middle of the night to smoke a cigarette and starting a fire.  They hadn't slept in the same room since shortly after I moved out in 1981; my mom bought a new bed and moved into my old room.  

My father never returned home.  While his body healed, his mind never returned to a functional state.  He went from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility, where he died on Feb. 17, 1999.  No matter how disoriented he was when my mother visited him, she still spoke to me as if he might be coming home.  It took more than four years to convince her it was okay to sell his truck and put  the farm up for sale.  She needed the money.  She still had hope (or was it fear) that my father might yet come back to himself and he would be so angry with her.  Selling HIS truck, selling HIS farm, she was sure he would leave her.  It took four years of visiting him and seeing only deterioration before she finally agreed to put it on the market.  

I started this with the intention of writing more about how my father might have felt leaving his home under duress; instead I could only think of my mother's feelings  The brain is a tricky thing, taking me away from where I didn't want to go, even when I thought I did.

Or at least I think it's a first.  I had a very bad hypo, my bg went down to 30.  After an hour, some coke and many glucose tabs, I still was only 56.  More tabs and another 40 minutes and I finally felt sort of okay.  Just tested and now I'm high (176) and will probably go higher.  I recognized the shaky, sweaty feeling of a low, but this time it came with rapid heart beats.  I laid on the bed, neither asleep nor full conscious.  It was a strange, twilighty time.  Now I'm getting very, very sleepy.  I'm sure it's a combination of my climbing bg's and it is 4 am.  I have to be up at 6:30 am and out the door by 7:30 am for an all day meeting/retreat.  I think my co-workers will finally meet Zombie Loracs.