Drifting...
I’m watching the fireflies circle lazily around the weeds in my front yard, and thinking about thoughts. I see, in my mind’s eye, little electrical impulses flowing from point to point, neurons firing off like those swirling fireflies, hazy clouds of impulses that make a mind.
My neighbor backed his car up my front yard today.
The lilies are pressed down near the mailbox - he knocked the plastic newspaper holder askew on his ascent up the slope, but it doesn’t much matter as we never used it - and there are tire tracks in the clover about halfway through the yard. He didn’t make it all the way up to the house, at least.
Swirl, swirl. Blink, blink. They’re just trying to find a friend in the dark. Just trying to make a connection.
When we got him out of the car and back across the street to his house, he told us he needed to go home. I think he’s been in that house for at least twenty years. Probably longer, really. He told us his wife and kids were waiting for him. His wife passed away two years ago and his kids are all grown.
It breaks my heart, and I don’t even know the man. Not really. We’re not particularly social neighbors. Most of our neighbors are at least thirty years older than us and are also inclined to keep to themselves - until the ambulances and firetrucks come out anyway. I know calling the police non-emergency line (and his daughter and son-in-law, though we didn’t get in touch with them until later) was the right thing to do. I do wish the authorities hadn’t come sirens a-blazing, though. It seemed a bit excessive, for a man who had settled down to nap on his couch. Even if he didn’t know it was his couch and was also unaware of his well-intentioned neighbors quietly stealing his car keys and handing them over to the police.
It makes me think of my grandmother, of course. That firefly connection is bright and strong, but then, she’s suffering from dementia too. My dad took away her car keys a few years ago now, and every time we talk she tells me she hopes he’ll give them back to her soon. It hasn’t been so long, she insists, and she feels fine. Every time. Phone conversations with her go in swooping circles; turn, turn, and here we are at one of the three memories of me she seems to be able to hold in her mind. Turn again and we’re back at the car keys - do I think I could talk to my father about it? There’s nothing to do about it. Better to just let the conversation settle where she wants and move at her pace.
But I do miss her so.
Looking out at those firefly clouds, I wonder, who are we when we’re not ourselves? My neighbor is losing himself in pieces, his context drifting away from him more and more, firefly clouds separating into singular spots of light in the dark. I don’t know much of anything about him - he’s got a little black Chevy convertible which makes a very particular vroom VROOM vroom sound when he’s fallen asleep in it in his driveway (or on our lawn), he’s a family man who’s lived in the neighborhood a long time, and he used to be in the military. I don’t know what branch of the service, even. Now he tries to mow his lawn with the snowblower and can’t remember how old his kids are.
It doesn’t seem right. I feel like I should know more, hear his stories so I can tell them back to him. If that would even help.
It doesn’t help my grandmother. She clings to her stories, because stories are the way she’s always had of relating; she told me once that Jesus made sense to her because of his parables. She’s losing them, though, even though she still knows the shape of them well enough to begin and drift a little into their middles.
She tells the same tales over and over - the time she picked me up after school when she was learning to knit and I exclaimed that she looked like such a grandmother doing it, the story about the public swimming pool, and the one about how she found me reading all day “just like that woman” (meaning my mom) and told me how I needed to do better for my father’s sake. The details are drifting, though. Was I quilting in the school office waiting to pick her up? No, that’s not right, that wouldn’t make sense. Crochet? Well, some damn thing, anyway. I can feel her frustration, see her struggling for grace under pressure as the connections she’s come to rely on just aren’t there. And I close my eyes and say “yeah, that’s right, Grandmother. I do remember that” again and again. And again.
I was with my grandfather as he died of lung cancer, right up to the end. I watched the decline of both my great-grandmothers, broken hips and nursing homes and arthritis that brought tears with the afternoon thunderstorms every day. I attended the funerals of two of my great-grandfathers before I was ten, too confused to be really sad. They were so permanent - how could they be gone? Death was dark and scary, and suffering seemed all too likely and all too real. When I was younger, I thought the worst thing that could happen to you as you got older was to become sick, to suffer.
I think now that I’m a little bit older myself, I’ve changed my mind. It seems to me now that maybe the worst thing about growing older isn’t losing health, or mobility, or even freedom. It’s losing yourself, your personal narrative broken and interrupted by a betraying mind. And everyone else losing you too.
My neighbor is back in his house tonight, dropped off by his family. I hope they took his car keys - it’s past time. I’ll call my grandmother tomorrow - she’ll be happy to hear my voice even if she doesn’t remember anything I have to say, and she’ll ask me again to talk to my dad about her car. Tonight, I’m too sad to watch fireflies any longer; those little lights in the dark seem more lonely than hopeful right now.
My neighbor backed his car up my front yard today.
The lilies are pressed down near the mailbox - he knocked the plastic newspaper holder askew on his ascent up the slope, but it doesn’t much matter as we never used it - and there are tire tracks in the clover about halfway through the yard. He didn’t make it all the way up to the house, at least.
Swirl, swirl. Blink, blink. They’re just trying to find a friend in the dark. Just trying to make a connection.
When we got him out of the car and back across the street to his house, he told us he needed to go home. I think he’s been in that house for at least twenty years. Probably longer, really. He told us his wife and kids were waiting for him. His wife passed away two years ago and his kids are all grown.
It breaks my heart, and I don’t even know the man. Not really. We’re not particularly social neighbors. Most of our neighbors are at least thirty years older than us and are also inclined to keep to themselves - until the ambulances and firetrucks come out anyway. I know calling the police non-emergency line (and his daughter and son-in-law, though we didn’t get in touch with them until later) was the right thing to do. I do wish the authorities hadn’t come sirens a-blazing, though. It seemed a bit excessive, for a man who had settled down to nap on his couch. Even if he didn’t know it was his couch and was also unaware of his well-intentioned neighbors quietly stealing his car keys and handing them over to the police.
It makes me think of my grandmother, of course. That firefly connection is bright and strong, but then, she’s suffering from dementia too. My dad took away her car keys a few years ago now, and every time we talk she tells me she hopes he’ll give them back to her soon. It hasn’t been so long, she insists, and she feels fine. Every time. Phone conversations with her go in swooping circles; turn, turn, and here we are at one of the three memories of me she seems to be able to hold in her mind. Turn again and we’re back at the car keys - do I think I could talk to my father about it? There’s nothing to do about it. Better to just let the conversation settle where she wants and move at her pace.
But I do miss her so.
Looking out at those firefly clouds, I wonder, who are we when we’re not ourselves? My neighbor is losing himself in pieces, his context drifting away from him more and more, firefly clouds separating into singular spots of light in the dark. I don’t know much of anything about him - he’s got a little black Chevy convertible which makes a very particular vroom VROOM vroom sound when he’s fallen asleep in it in his driveway (or on our lawn), he’s a family man who’s lived in the neighborhood a long time, and he used to be in the military. I don’t know what branch of the service, even. Now he tries to mow his lawn with the snowblower and can’t remember how old his kids are.
It doesn’t seem right. I feel like I should know more, hear his stories so I can tell them back to him. If that would even help.
It doesn’t help my grandmother. She clings to her stories, because stories are the way she’s always had of relating; she told me once that Jesus made sense to her because of his parables. She’s losing them, though, even though she still knows the shape of them well enough to begin and drift a little into their middles.
She tells the same tales over and over - the time she picked me up after school when she was learning to knit and I exclaimed that she looked like such a grandmother doing it, the story about the public swimming pool, and the one about how she found me reading all day “just like that woman” (meaning my mom) and told me how I needed to do better for my father’s sake. The details are drifting, though. Was I quilting in the school office waiting to pick her up? No, that’s not right, that wouldn’t make sense. Crochet? Well, some damn thing, anyway. I can feel her frustration, see her struggling for grace under pressure as the connections she’s come to rely on just aren’t there. And I close my eyes and say “yeah, that’s right, Grandmother. I do remember that” again and again. And again.
I was with my grandfather as he died of lung cancer, right up to the end. I watched the decline of both my great-grandmothers, broken hips and nursing homes and arthritis that brought tears with the afternoon thunderstorms every day. I attended the funerals of two of my great-grandfathers before I was ten, too confused to be really sad. They were so permanent - how could they be gone? Death was dark and scary, and suffering seemed all too likely and all too real. When I was younger, I thought the worst thing that could happen to you as you got older was to become sick, to suffer.
I think now that I’m a little bit older myself, I’ve changed my mind. It seems to me now that maybe the worst thing about growing older isn’t losing health, or mobility, or even freedom. It’s losing yourself, your personal narrative broken and interrupted by a betraying mind. And everyone else losing you too.
My neighbor is back in his house tonight, dropped off by his family. I hope they took his car keys - it’s past time. I’ll call my grandmother tomorrow - she’ll be happy to hear my voice even if she doesn’t remember anything I have to say, and she’ll ask me again to talk to my dad about her car. Tonight, I’m too sad to watch fireflies any longer; those little lights in the dark seem more lonely than hopeful right now.