The waiting room

I’m sitting in the living room predawn dark, highway roar of heat at my back, wondering if I’ll ever find my way back.

This is March 2023:  one 17-year-old boy, distracted, college admissions decisions slowly revealing themselves over the month; one man too young to die, but dying still, immobile on a hospital bed in our back room, sleeping more and more, confused more and more; the two of us, 50-somethings, our devotion and isolation intertwined. You are spread thin over days of nothingness pierced occasionally by the deep needs of the dying. I am here, trying to help, but never feeling like it is enough, never feeling like I am on the inside.

At night, it’s the worst. How did I get here, disconnected, disillusioned? I can barely keep up friendships, have discarded long-time dissatisfying connections, made impatient and picky by my profession. Deep listening, heavy holding, not-judging have used me up. And you? Such a devoted brother, about to lose what is left of growing up, floating with only the boy and me to tether you to this world. I wonder:  are we enough?

Hours of nothingness, clients canceled, disembodied voices from the tv in the back room, cooking instructions for those who no longer eat. We’re in suspended animation, the days thick as ointment.

This is March 18, 2023, 1:30am. Your brother tries to get up in the middle of the night (“an experiment,” he tells you later), the inevitable fall, the confusion, the eventual visit by paramedics to lift his six-foot frame back into the hospital bed. No lasting injuries, just battered delusions and pride. He’s as fine as a dying man could be, asleep now, as I hope you are, too, and the boy, back in bed.

 Me? I’m here on the couch, sleeping dogs curled to either side of me.

 I want it to be over and I feel guilty about it. Whose life is it, anyway, and who are I to decide? I am here and not here, occupying the in-between, with no room for transcendence, a helpmeet for those who are used to doing it all themselves.

When I go, give me vistas, an open window, a person next to me holding my hand. Or make it like the dream I had months ago, the knowledge that I had the pills to do the job, the approval of doctors (she’s terminal) and my family (we don’t want you to suffer). I took the drugs, I watched my spark slowly dim, I touched the velvety darkness.

But hopefully that is years away. Perhaps it will never happen, at least not like that.

And so we attend and wait.

Liminal musings

I have spent the last several months sitting on the couch, occupying the chair, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’ve completed the entire output of Denise Mina, consulted a credible psychic medium who did not follow up (was it me? was it her?), and written journal entries with asides to my imagined survivors. I, along with my partner, have cajoled, encouraged, and supported the boy, life changes around the corner for all of us, some presumably more permanent than others.

 The other shoe has started its leisurely, tragic fall. My body is signaling its age (the pain that radiates at odd moments from my left shoulder—an errant shrug, an arm tossed out to avoid a potential stumble, the resulting sharp heat that takes a minute to ease). I experience troubling symptoms that are statistically unlikely to indicate cancer, but still could indicate cancer, and await the outcome of an upcoming appointment, perhaps appointments, with a specialist.

 It's not all drawn-out endings and liminal musings. Somehow, surrounded by reminders of mortality and change, I feel ok. But perhaps that will all shift next week, when I am armed with new knowledge, the possibility that I am closer to ashes and grit than I really want to be. I have people to attend to, a child on the cusp of adulthood, a family member weeks away from the grave, and a husband who needs me on this side of the veil. But I’ll deal with that knowledge when and if it arrives.

Lost

At night I mold myself around the sleeping forms of cats, Liam at my feet, Pippin at my knees. I wake to the howls of Asher, our third, half-deaf feline, hear the panicked barks from the galgo downstairs when our CSA box arrives post-9 p.m.. Too early some mornings, I pull myself out of bed. I make the oats. I put away the dishes. Hugo, greyzoi, all legs and snout, curls next to me on the coach and offers his soft, bony chest.

 The animals and I bide our time in the dark. This is a year of in-betweens, a boy finishing up childhood, a brother-in-law closing out a life. Twelve months from now, nine months from now, six months from now we will be transformed. You can’t live as if every moment is temporary, but I feel it so keenly. This, too, shall pass. Nothing will ever be the same. I am not the same as I once was, the bottles of IPA, the long dinners out, the feeling like the future was unknown and exciting.

Who was I? Who am I? Who knows. Reinvention, rediscovery, reification, the necessary illusion of solidity, of a self that persists—I miss that fantastical, emotional, me, loose, sometimes chaotic, connected inside and out.

I hope I find her.

Preparation

It’s another Sunday of triangulation, the three of us in the living room, one working because his work overflows, one studying and completing homework because his school schedule is intense, and one who should be writing but can’t really focus on much of anything but filling out mock-ups of the Common App and scraping the Reddit barrel for gleanings of college application process wisdom.

I knew this fall, the boy’s last in school, would be tough, that not only would his workload be huge (with a total of five Advanced Placement classes this semester—his choice, not ours), but that the extra work of applying to college would toss us all into a tizzy. It’s delicate writing about it here, given that I am a parental participant, a quasi-bystander. The process is the boy’s, with us as prodders and cheerleaders. Complications emerge. Stress levels rise. Sleep suffers.

I’m not sure I would believe the intensity if I weren’t living it, and I may be at a loss for how to explain how stressful it all is. Take one child, seventeen years of love, connection, and investment. Our family is like a gilded tapestry, tightly knitted, the boy our the golden thread, the flash of light, against the dusky tones of his parents. Add in our histories, a (long-ago) year of mysterious illness, pets come and gone, and mix in a mixed-bag pandemic—we are as one.

Next year at this time, he will not be in this house. OK. This I can mainly accept, knowing it will take time to adjust. I can even accept that we will not know until spring (at the earliest) where the boy will be going to school. It’s just these months of focus, grades, test scores, essays, showcasing the best of him, the most authentic of him, with a kid who hates the process. This against the anxious knowledge that change is ahead. When he is tugged loose from the family fabric, what will happen? What awaits him? How will we adapt?

But these are higher level questions. Now is nag, love, support, accept. In four months, the application process will be done. And all will be fine. He will be fine. We will be fine.

Carrying

This is my arm yesterday, Saturday, July 16, early afternoon, with Marin County in the background. The car was too hot and the air through the open window was not enough. I couldn’t take my eyes off the way the glass’s shadow marked my skin, hence this photo. It pleases me with its echoed shapes and layers, some of which were invisible to me when I snapped the shot.

Lately I’ve been angry, constantly irritated. No one listens. I am never alone or too alone. I am sure someday I will be totally alone. My work is difficult and often unappreciated. I feel burned out half of the time, deeply engaged for the rest. My friendships are dying through neglect, contempt, and hurt feelings. I question friendship, I question love, and don’t know if I have it in me to be a good anything to anyone anymore.

But the extra thing that pleases me about this photograph – or perhaps surprises me is the better way to put it – is that my arm looks just like my father’s. I had no idea I was carrying around these pieces of him. What else do I carry? Who, and what, I am connected to through fate and blood? I am a person of fragments gathered into a fractured, viable whole.