Not The Favourite

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Three:Two Story Life

Back the way it was. We're early in the 2nd year without Dad, and Scott still has this verbal tic. My response changes. I know, honey. It is the way it is. I do too. No response, depending on how the day's rolling. Scott is taking prozac now - I imagine he's depressed. The doctor agreed although I am the only reporting individual. She takes my word for it and writes a script. The carers report that he is more responsive (although I still don't know what to do with the one who coaches him to say praise Jesus!) I notice that Scott has stepped into life a bit more. (The fact that he can repeat praise Jesus! is one example.) This return to life shows up in making choices about his environment. He's picking up his dish from the table more often. He makes his bed. Moved his record albums into the living room from his bedroom. Decides when he's going to put on underwear instead of a diaper.

I have to be faster. He picks up his dish, but turns it upside down in the well I put the clean dishes. Then I need to rewash those. He makes his bed over wet sheets. Then the comforter is wet, too. Scott will toss underwear around until he finds the pair he wants to wear, and then I feel like he should be allowed to wear his choice, until the laundry basket is half full with wet underwear. I've had the plumber in 3 times in 60 days because Scott now wants to use toilet paper when he pees. A roll at a time. If he flushes, we're plugged. He doesn't always, so I have to be alert to what's up in the bathroom. Every time. Ten twenty times a day.

My handler with the State DHHS confirmed there's no way to timestamp this. Constant vigilance. No line item. I don't know why I brought it up with her. Looking for some affirmation that this is hard, unrewarding, depressing so that translates to a spreadsheet in the Capricorn corner of my brain.

My therapist used to instruct me to ignore stuff. Just la di da while stepping over scivvies tossed on the floor, toothpicks embedded in the carpet, twist ties strewn around the house. Back then it made some sense. Back the way it was meant arguing with Dad every week about allowing Scott his own life, his own agency, his own quirks. Now I am pushing back at that agency, a quandary for personal growth and peace.

All this stuff is just stuff. Whinging about the mundane. Because that's what it is. It is what it is.

Dad was a support on this three-legged stool of our stories. Scott spent all of his life with Dad in his story. That's a huge loss for him. Scott is finding his way in this new world order without the brain power and memory to find a way through. I question every hour if there is someone or anything that would be a comfort to him.

Dad was the person I could talk with, share his love of sports, my love of art. He was funny when he wasn't grouchy. Just like me. There are entire days when Scott and I have no direct communication; days when he's roaming the corridors of his inner life, and he does not hear me speak.

I'm mad and sorry most of the time. My freedom is curtailed - if I need to leave the house, I either have to take Scott with, or pay for support. I am not as agile, nimble, or interested as I was a year ago. Feeling isolated, I've isolated myself more. Quit the art commission. Stopped painting. Writing, creating, anything. I don't want to get dressed, shower, or rise from the bed to do neither.

I keep thinking this is the day it turns around. This is the day I reengage with life. This is the day my story will take up where it left off. And on that day I'm wrong again.

I am stuck in a groove of being unable to console myself because so many other people have it much harder than I do.

And I still can't cry.

A Three Story Life Farewell

We're burying Dad this week. He died in November, and the ashes have been at home until I passed the urn along to my big brother. In preparation for selling the house on Drummond Island, most of the offspring are on the island clearing out, tidying up. Since most are there along with Dad's ashes, my sister called the county to prepare the site. Feels rushed. The original plan was to coordinate this for later summer, early autumn.

It's always too soon, isn't it? Plans for this week changed abruptly Sunday when I heard the intent to bury Dad on Thursday, and I decided that I couldn't not be there. I don't want to wake up one morning down the road and feel bad. As if. Meanwhile, I have to prepare for making my brother share this long road to good-bye.

Our mother died in 1998. Scott won't get out of the car when we visit her grave. 20 years down the long road, he is mostly uncommunicative. I sometimes think he knows Dad has joined Mom, but there is no way to be sure. I told him Dad died. Dementia prevents him from keeping this knowledge. Some days he says it's over repeatedly. Some days he says back the way it was.

My closest friends think I'm crazy to make this trip at all, albeit with no other family in the car for 750 miles round. I have to pack mounds of incontinence supplies. Scott may or may not find closure, and even if he does, it's momentary. I protected him from the physicality of our parents leaving their bodies. That may not have been a good idea. I'm questioning everything. I pretend I can evaluate his needs. I cannot. I am wandering away from identifying my own needs.

All part of life's rich pageant. All grist for the writer's mill. In a life wherein I start writing again, this trip will be the closing scene. As it happens, the day Dad moves to his final place is the anniversary of us moving from A Three Story Life to A Two Story Life. May 26. It's also his brother and best friend's birthday. His brother died in 1998 also.

In that light on that stage, I imagine the items that might go in the grave with Dad's urn. Like ancient deceased expected to need stuff to negotiate the afterlife. I can't find my medicine bag (the collected donated items to help me kick cancer) that has the saxophone reed Dad gave me.

What I need to do is envision what I need to consign to earth. Leave whatever does not serve me on the Island when we get on the ferry. Use the mantra my lovely friend Carol taught me. All will be well.

I'm taking the golf ball.

Wish us peace.

New Orleans Jazz and Blues at Salem-South Lyon District Library

Donna Olson Introduces

"John and I go back 40 years..." RJ Spangler began. Back to Sully's Blues Bar in Dearborn, where Jimmy Lesnau brought in acts from all over the world. Blues legends. Scroll through the pictures - Duke Robillard, Terry Garland. The chance to back up great musicians and songwriters. Johnny Adams. Earl King (Come On, Baby Parts 1&2. More on that later.) Professor "Fess" Longhair, the rollicking piano man.

RJ Spangler and TBone Paxton played Sunday with Matt LoRusso on guitar, Jeff Cuny on bass. Jeff just finished his Master of Music in Jazz at WSU. Bravo!

Storytelling + music + history. Does it get any better than that? RJ is reading a book by Ned Sublette, musicologist that traces the African/Caribbean/Cuban roots of New Orleans music. New Orleans history, back to the Bourbon cousin French/Spanish colonizers.

Go Down to New Orleans. John "TBone" Paxton took the lead on this song to start us swinging. Note on Professor Fess Longhair - there's a bust of him in Tipitina's Bar. Enjoy another cover of Tipitina by Dr. John and Johnny Winter.

The 2nd song in the set Basin Street Blues, written by Spencer Williams in 1928, made famous by Louis Armstrong the same year; this video featuring Jack Teagarden on trombone. RJ mentioned Dr. Michael White, swinging clarinet player. We were treated to an experimental combination, starting as a ballad and switching it up swing. We heard it here first!

Strongly featured in the richness of New Orleans music, and as shared with us by RJ, are producers/players like Dave Bartholomew, who produced Fats Domino. His son Don B. continues the family music dynasty. The Batiste Family. Neville Brothers. Marsalis Family.

Iko Iko is a call and response Mardi Gras Indian tune. Big Chief, Flag Boy - designations of parade positions in a turf war that became a friendly costumed musical rivalry; raising money for charity and to bury the familial departed. Grateful Dead, Dr. John - even Jimmy Fallon and The Roots have covered this fine example of clave rhythm pattern.

Back now to the Come on, Baby, Let The Good Times Roll, Parts 1 and 2. The 1960 recording by Earl King, has Part 1 on the A side, Part 2 on B. Written by Shirley & Lee, their 1956 recording climbed to #20. Jimi Hendrix covered it, as did these others.

Next up was a walking ballad. Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?

RJ shared more stories: of Guitar Slim in Florida with a young musician he let run the session. Ray Charles was the man's name. Danny Barker, who played banjo and guitar in Harlem in the 20s and 30s, joined Cab Calloway's band, then went back to New Orleans, where he helped rebirth the New Orleans brass band tradition.

For those of you who need to know where the music is playing when it's out of town, Offbeat Magazine has New Orleans on the Road. April 2018 issue cover feature is the French Quarter Fest Issue.

To close the set RJ, Tbone, Jeff and Matt treated us - and we joined in - with Eh, La Bas, traditional New Orleans song. You can play here with the Creole, French, English lyrics.

Standing room only!

This program is funded in part by Michigan Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Life Goes On Minus One

Last post my father died and my brother and I were working on how we continue in an altered reality. My brother has moments of auxiliary reality that freak me. I think Dad is communicating with him, or more accurately, Scott is communicating with his father. He is one moment an afterlife zen master and another the human he is now - enmeshed in Alzheimer's disease. I am consumed with paperwork in my own alternate reality that equates the new terror in the mailbox with scenes from The Raw Shark Texts. We live in a scifi novel that hasn't been written yet. And bloody hell, I'm not writing it.

Meanwhile. I illustrated a remarkable book last year. The author, who is a coach specializing in improving relationships and organizational behavior wrote a book that is extraordinary advice for executives and children.

Look at relationships in nature and understand who you are.

Love yourself and understand that's all you need to have a successful life.

The book is coming soon. The art preview is here.

Three Story Life: End Game

So it's come to this. Me, a fifth of Jack Honey and a black hole. I snagged the Jack because I parked in the liquor store parking lot to take my brother to the doctor to pee in a plastic cup because we need to know if he still has an infection, after dropping in the mailbox thank you notes to medical personnel who helped, books in the library pick-up bin I haven't read, after starting at the house wondering if I'd remember how to start a pushbutton car.

I didn't remember. Nor did I remember how to shut it off. Three times.

Still not sure if my brother knows our father is dead.

One piece of business done today: I called DTE to change the auto payment from my father's account to mine because I started opening his mail, which feels intrusive, but the letter was dated the day Dad went into the hospital. Halloween. My mother's birthday, begob. Of course, the letter required a 2 day turnaround in their favor. DTE transferred me to Revenue Compliance. I need to send DTE a death certificate. Who pranks someone by switching their auto billing to their own wallet?

I instigated a breakout from Providence Park Hospital for my father. More on this later, but I haven't been 13 years of my life in his care and for his care to have him die in a hospital. The Attending thwarted for ego. Somewhere in my writing future this is the evildoer.

At the end, my siblings stepped up with love. I hope everyone in the house had a moment in the 24 hours Dad was home in bed where he wanted to be.

I was stroking Dad's hands. Keeping him, in his anxiety, from tearing at his oxygen tubing. When holding his hands away wasn't enough I lay on him, my face in his neck. He calmed. Minutes passed. I'm a pain in the ass he said. Well then, I learned from the best I said.

Scott had no moment. He was in the next room, witnessing the mayhem attached to a death: Dad yelling pee and drink, and when he figured we weren't fast enough, using his strobe flashlight to get attention.

I can't escape wondering what I could have done to make this easier on my brother. He lost his grandmother in 1987. She was his best buddy, finest champion, Yahtzee partner. My mother insisted on her being at their house. Did they handle his grief well?  It took our cousin from England to open my eyes in inquiring whether we'd dealt with Scott's loss. Scott then watched his mother at home in hospice care; objected to the police in his mother's bedroom when she died. And now this. The three most important people in his life died in his presence.

When everyone had left the house, Scott and I had dinner. I didn't know what to say to him, what he'd take in, what what. Then I held his face in my hands and I said, "We lost our Dad today. I am sorry for both of us. I want you to know you are loved, we are loved, and you are not alone. Do you understand? We will be okay."

And he said. Okay.

Tonight there's just me and Jack Honey and a black hole.

In the morning there's our life as it is now. Me looking at him for guidance, him looking at me.

Keep Me Posted

I don't have any art for this, so a 1000 pieces are enough. I've been a live-in caregiver for 13 years.  I've written a blog about Three Story Life for most of that time. The art's cute. Real ain't cute.

Dark Humor.

Tonight my father is in the hospital, next stay in a month, with a partially collapsed lung. He's 90. We're in for the hospital stays until he passes because he has lovely insurance.

My brother who has Alzheimer's has Medicare, and his infection was treated today as well. I set him in the shower tonight and he came back out, said "there's somebody in there." That's a long sentence for him, and I wonder what he saw. And then wondered if I needed to call 911 for me.

My father calls with what I need to bring to the hospital. One of those things is hearing aid batteries, so I can ask when the list starts "did you call FedEx?" because 1) he never listens to me and 2) he has no working hearing aid batteries. These calls can begin as early as 7 because he hasn't slept so everyone else in the known universe is awake.

I'm happy to be joined in this we all die thing by wonderful people like Caitlin Doughty. 

And in the truly fine way to move with much loved Leonard Cohen.

And in the blooming interim there's the true weird and wonderful. This is the intersectionality I live in. Between life and death there's old age, infirmity and diminishing capability for us all.

The Three Story Life posts are going to be a play. I'm using NaNoWriMo to be well on my way, and I hope to be at Ragdale to finish. Or perhaps it won't be finished.

Keep me posted is what my family texts/says. Maybe they all need hearing aid batteries. Maybe I don't know how to ask for help.