I got a message last night from T in Nashville. Buck Mason wants him to model for their web catalog. He's modeled before. He said he wants me to take some pictures of him when he gets back. Have you ever looked at a Buck Mason catalog? The photography is not very imaginative. I think I could do that in my sleep. However, and it is a big "however," I also think I'd suck. I wrote back a cocky text saying, "I made better pictures of you with my phone under a street lamp." I think I did, but they sure as hell wouldn't use such an image in their catalog. Those commercial photographers have a different kind of brain than I do, and as I always told my charges, "You do best what you do most."
So I add another drop of poison to my confidence. But good for him.
I took my mother to the pain management doc yesterday morning. We were among the first appointments. We sat and waited in a little room for over an hour. But, you know, you're not walking out on the pusher man, right? They got you by the balls. Well. . . it was my mother, not me, but you get my drift. We sat looking out a third story window at the residents of the big apartment buildings across the street waking up on a pretty Saturday morning, walking dogs, going for coffee, taking the morning run. That is how most people in this metropolis live now, in big apartment complexes, the expensive ones conveniently located, the cheaper ones on big highways or overlooking the parking lot of a Walmart somewhere on the county borders. It's just "city life," I guess. Once an area of sprawling suburbs, now a city of sprawling apartments and, for the more fortunate, condos.
The New American Dream.
From where we were sitting, though, it didn't look all that bad.
When the doc finally came in, he chatted for about five minutes and wrote a prescription for 150 Percocets.
"Let me know if these aren't working," he said. "There are other things we can do."
We made an appointment for two months hence.
My mother's primary care doctor makes her pee in a cup if she is going to get any narcotics. "It is required by law," the nurse told us a few days ago. Either she is a liar or this doc is a renegade. No blood, no urine. . . nada.
My mother and I had an early lunch, then I had to bolt to get to my AARP seminar on Family Caregivers. I got there just on time. It was in a room with big round tables and one of those big white paper tablets on a stand in the front of the room.
"Oh-oh," I thought. "This is going to be like the trainings the factory made us go to all the time."
Those things were a horror. A "facilitator" would chat you up, have you introduce yourselves, and then do some dumb fucking warm up like, "Take a penny from your pocket and make a wish." Alway something inane, but there were always morons eager to participate.
"Can you tell us what you wished for?" the facilitator would ask some grinning chimp eager to please.
"I wished that we could end the global conflicts and that people could live their lives in peace!" the chimp would say looking around the room for a Nobel Prize.
Most times, the facilitator already had figured out I was not a person to ask, but once in awhile one of them would brave it.
"Well. . . I know I am supposed to end world hunger or some other suffering thing, but I wished I'd win the biggest lotto in history," I would beam. That usually set the tone I hoped for, dividing the room between titters of disapproval and those stifling appreciative laughter.
I was told to take a seat at one of the tables in the front and shown the buffet in the back. They had put out a nice spread for the attendees, but I don't take my chances with food that has been handled by untold numbers of people. As attendees came back to my table with overflowing plates, I looked slyly around and faux-whispered, "This is the AA meeting, right?"
That got the expected response.
Everyone ate and we chatted as I perused the booklet we had been given. I looked at the day's agenda. Holy shit. . . I was right. This was going to be like the torturous mandatory meetings.
Just as people were finishing up lunch, the facilitator came and tapped me on the shoulder.
"Would you mind moving back to this table," she asked. "I want to even out the numbers."
"Sure," I said with irony. "I was sick of these people anyway."
And again, the expected reactions.
I was the only white person at my new table. I looked around. The room was kind of segregated. I introduced myself to my new "team," and in a bit the session began.
All I wanted to know is where I could get some resources to help me as the sole caregiver. It seemed I was one of only two in the room who was doing it all by himself. Everyone else talked about getting help from brothers and sisters, mostly not enough, and from their friends and churches. Most of the information was about that.
But. . . I was at a good table. After the initial facilitator spiel, we were to talk amongst ourselves. Ho! That's how these things always go. My table, though, talked about all sorts of county and state programs that they had used. The "Fixit" program, for instance, had come out to one of the women's home and spent an entire Saturday fixing things around her house--her printer, some electrical wiring, fence repair.
"It was a real godsend," she said.
One woman had gotten a longterm care nurse to take care of her aunt. Medicare stops after one hundred days, but Medicaid will take over. . . after all your money runs out.
"My aunt had $17,000 in her bank account, so I spent that on her burial plot and funeral, so she had only $1,000 left. That is when Medicaid kicks in."
Clever. But it won't help me.
The one thing I got out of the day was the name of the person to call at the VA to see what my mother qualifies for because she was married to a WWII vet.
I met a bunch of nice people I will never see again and spent two and a half hours of my life I will never get back.
I went home and checked on things and took a shower.
And when I got back to my mother's house, she looked like a mad woman, greasy hair sticking straight up, crazy eyes. . . .
"I lost my mind," she said. "I had to call someone to find out if it was A.M. or P.M."
"Down and down I go, round and round I go."
This would be my Saturday evening. I made a cocktail and started the lentils and rice cooking. I'd bought a roasted chicken so I wouldn't have to cook. My mother did not have her hearing aids in, so I yelled a few things to her. I went out to sit while the lentils and rice cooked.
"Baby, you've gotta come out and see me."
Yea, yea, yea. Everyone knows I can't.
"It's just your turn."
Trouble, man.
"This I know. This I know."
I have to get away for awhile today. There are things that MUST be done at my house, maintenance that I HAVE to do. But it scares me more and more to leave my mother alone. She doesn't seem any more together this morning.
When the session was over, I told my table, "I'm not complaining. I still have t.v. and good food and liquor."
They all shook their heads at that.
"That's why I asked if this was an A.A. meeting in the beginning."
It was just what I always did in the classroom. The seemingly non-sequitur opening line of the day was brought full circle by the end of the lecture. Eyes popped in recognition. I always thought it was fairly genius.
As I was walking out, one of the people from the table I left stepped up beside me and said, "You should have stayed at our table."
I've always had a knack for knowing how to tilt a room.
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