I'm up at five. Set the alarm. I have to have my mother at the doc's office by 7:45. Stupid, really, getting up so early. I realized that when the alarm went off. . . but I wasn't sleeping anyway. Rough night. Rough nights. All the darkest thoughts plague me. They are not unfounded by any means. No. . . reality is a dark master. We live our lives dressing it up, disguising it, or simply running away from it. But run run run as fast as you can. . . . And so the nights are dark as winter, the blackest blacks.
Five o'clock is hardly better.
But it is. Somewhat. There are distractions at five o'clock. There are the news websites full of yesterday's news. There is coffee and the kitchen light. And there is peace for a minute. My mother sleeps. There are not so very many peaceful moments in this house anymore.
My mother's mind is going, as is mine. I am unable to sit in quietude. There is no tranquility. My mother is confused and miserable and borderline panicked. I am as well. My heart races, my blood pressure skyrockets. I tremble now and shake with nervous fatigue. Each night, as I lay dying in a small, lopsided guest bed, I panic wondering what to do. Should I tell her in the morning that we need to make arrangements for her, that I am going myself to the hospital, that I am going to take a mountain of pills? My heart pounds and I rise in the dark, stumbling, unable to find the light.
I thought I had pills enough, but I've been told I am silly.
"Do you know how many of those you would have to take to kill yourself?"
That fellow has nembutal, he says. He has fentanyl patches.
"You can't take enough oxycontin to do yourself in."
Most of my friends agree that they don't want to go through what my mother is going through. But some of them are close, and those are not the ones talking about nembutal and fentanyl. They are the ones who are hanging on for. . . well. . . "dear life." But they also have someone to take care of them. My mother would starve to death if someone didn't prepare her food. She can't open a bag of chips by herself and certainly can't open a jar or can. She has no idea what drugs she takes or when or how many or why. Today, she is about to get another one for osteoporosis. There may be more in the offing. If I were to go to the hospital, I don't know what she would do. I guess she would have to go, too. Perhaps we'd be shipped to the same place for the terminally ill and dying.
These are the bizarre thoughts the haunt me sleeping and waking.
I haven't made any plans for our houses and money and possessions. I guess everything will go to the state.
But as I say, I get no peace. My mother has risen--the scraping and rattling of the walker, the banging of doors and drawers, the moaning and complaining, the wandering and searching, the incessant rattling of the vibrating heating pad. You can't imagine. You haven't any sense of this. It is a psychological torture test.
Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.
I'm not even detailing the terrible things I have to see.
"You're lucky to have your mother still. It is a blessing."
It might be o.k. if I weren't dying, too. But I am.
It's o.k. Everyone is. My heroes have. Many were braver than I. . . guns and ropes and. . . pockets full of rocks. Can you imagine? Oh, Virginia. That is desperate. Heads in ovens. Carbon monoxide. And yes, they still had barbiturates back then.
And then there was old Dorothy Parker. She toughed it out 'til the end.
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
She died in a hotel of a heart attack. 73.
Hemingway, 61. Fitzgerald, 44. Woolf, 59. Faulkner, 64. Shakespeare, 52.
In some ways, she had a very long life.
How much money must one have to take up a residence at the Beverly Hills Hotel? Wouldn't that be something?
Bang bang bang! Thump thump thump! The scraping and the knocking and the rattling!
Carradine, Williams, Bourdaine. . . . I don't want to strangle. Don't want to drown. Couldn't pull the trigger. I just want to go to sleep. Where in the fuck do you get fentanyl patches?
It is a romantic idea, of course. I don't think I could do it. I'll just hold my breath and wonder. . . how's it going to end.
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