Dinner for One: Part Twenty-Three
“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” - Zora Neale Hurston
“You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing the imperfect person perfectly.” - Sam Keen
I had a nice long chat with Bonnie last night. We talked about life, my workday, the people I can depend on, the ones I can’t and how to know the difference. I told her about everything going on in my life and about the finances. We talked, in other words, about all of the things we’ve always talked about.
Well, I talked.
I like to think she was listening. I’m a romantic like that.
My inner masochist keeps wanting to look inside my skull and pick at the imperfections. There are plenty to pick at, of course. I’m human. I have yet to meet a perfect human, though a few of them have seemed mighty close at the right time.
Having considered my mindset of few days back, I realize that I have fallen victim to my nemesis, self-pity. I loathe self-pity. I always have. Oh, we all fall victim to it, and certainly we all have good reasons (at least some of the time) but it’s really high up on my list of useless emotions. It serves absolutely no good purpose for existing. Seriously. What’s that? You fell down and got a boo boo? If your age is in the lower single digits you should be allowed a while to assess that situation and recover from it. If you are past a couple of decades in age, you should be allowed substantially less time, depending, of course, on the severity of the fall and the boo boo in question.
My life is not perfect. Then again, I can’t think of anyone whose life is. We can all of us find reasons to look around and want for more, or at least less of the burdens that weigh us down. The thing is, wanting it isn’t enough. Most times I know that and I work toward the goals I have with at least a modicum of drive. When I’m at the self-pity party (there’s always room for one more, isn’t there?) I lack more than the basic ability to crawl out of bed and wash up. And that’s not really acceptable. Not for me.
It’s a matter of perspective, I suppose. Now and then I have to remember that my woes, while substantial to my personal world, do not constitute a solid excuse for crying in my beer, especially since I don’t drink the stuff. My woes aren’t even a very tiny drop in the bucket of sorrows when it comes to what Japan is facing right now.
Yes, Bonnie is gone. I’ve known that all along. I just looked away and let myself get blindsided when I stared that particular truth in the face. It isn’t the facts that have changed, merely my perception of them. That’s to be expected, I suppose. Like I said, I’m hardly perfect. Still, I don’t like the self-pity thing and Bonnie certainly would not approve. So I’ll be working on that. Well, okay, that and trying to keep a clean house. And maybe hanging up all of my clothes, washing the dishes every day, matching up my socks, paying the bills when they come in and not necessarily on the day they’re due…you get the idea.
Perspective is an amazing thing, isn’t it? Everything seems so miserable if you let yourself focus on the negatives. Look in the mirror and what do you see? Well, for starters, I almost always see the flaws. My nose is too small for my face. I’ve got gray creeping into my beard and into my hair. Those are either laugh lines around my eyes or crow’s feet, depending entirely on my mood at the moment. Either my face is too wide, or my eyes are too close together. Still, in general there’s a certain level of symmetry to the entire thing. While, yes, I have referred to my face as an ugly mug on more than one occasion in my life, it’s not hideous. Certainly it’s familiar enough. I can say with great confidence that I’ve gotten rather used to it. And Bonnie liked it well enough.
Looking at the negatives is the easiest thing in the world if you choose to live your life that way. In all honesty, I’d rather not. My features fit my face just fine. So I’ve got some gray. I’ve still got more of the other colors (You know, red, brown and blond and all of them in a dozen different shades). As my crow’s feet are more pronounced when I’m smiling, I’ll just call them laugh lines and be done with it.
I think I have a tendency to sabotage myself sometimes. Not on purpose, but merely as a side effect of the way my mind works. I tend to fixate on one or two aspects of life to the point of distraction.
And now to completely change the subject: I’ve got another story for you. I might even have hit the highlights before, but I think in this case they bear repeating.
Did I mention previously that my mother and wife had several illnesses in common? They did. Both were diabetics. Both had eye troubles. Both had heart issues. Both had diabetic neuropathy. Oh, and both of them had complete renal failure. Once the kidneys go, it’s dialysis, transplant or death. Those are basically the options you have.
My mother suffered several of the larger indignities that can be placed upon a person by modern medicine. I’ll give you the abbreviated list. Heart attack and the consequences, COPD, renal failure, and toward the end of her life she got to add in loss of sight in one eye, two degraded vertebrae that were a source of constant agony, and a loss of voluntary motor control. Oh, and there were the amputations. Diabetes, great stuff. Because of circulation loss caused in part by the diabetes (or at least substantially expedited by same) my mother first lost half of her foot in an effort to avoid blood poisoning issues that would have killed her, and then lost her leg just above the knee. I don’t even want to imagine the sort of agony involved. My mother, who had always been a very strong woman (you might notice a trend along those lines in my life.) was forced to move around in a wheelchair. Hardly makes her unique, I know, but it added to the burdens she felt. I’ll explain that in a moment. One more addition, one that hit her hard and was possibly the worst among them for her, was a loss of certain motor functions, also brought on by diabetes.
That last one caused her a few incidents that I will not get into. Let’s just leave it at they cost my mother a good deal of her dignity. That one was harder for her to deal with, I believe, than the loss of her lower leg.
My mother was a proud woman. She also did not want to be a burden to her children or her loved ones. Pretty much ever. My mother was born and raised in Germany and believed in certain standards that a lot of US citizens don’t always agree with.
There came a time, not long after her legs was amputated, that my mother had to go onto hemodialysis, same as Bonnie would later. The experience was not pleasant. Neither was the way she was treated by all of the employees at the dialysis center. I won’t go into details, but I have a long history with that center. I took Bonnie there. My mother went there briefly and my father-in-law went there for the last ten years of his life. I still drive past it regularly. I almost never look in that direction. Most of the memories are fine. A few of them stir darker feelings in me I would rather not have stirred too vigorously.
Not long after my mother started hemodialysis she had reason to go back to the hospital. There came a night when she asked all of her children to come see her and we did, without hesitation. I have four siblings who are local and one who lives a few states away. The latter did not show up, because the call was rather spontaneous and he had health issues of his own and a family to take care of besides.
Five of us were there when my mother explained to us that she was going off of dialysis and had placed DNR orders should she go into any form of medical arrest. DNR. Do Not Resuscitate.
Good genes in this batch. We all knew what it meant. Remember the earlier options? Dialysis, transplant or death.
I’m sure a few people out there are likely outraged by her decision. I’ve met a few who disagreed with the notion of taking herself off of proven medical treatment in order to stop the pain and indignities that her life had become. One of my siblings had a falling out with my mother over that decision. It caused a bit of a schism in the family that has never completely mended, but that is neither here nor there. Theologically, I suspect I could go around and around with a few people who would tell me why she had condemned herself to perdition, hell, purgatory, oblivion or a dozen other underworlds best not imagined.
As a matter of fact, a few people did attempt to have debates with me when she made her decision. Sometimes it was out of concern for her, and I appreciated the gestures. Sometimes it was for less altruistic reasons, I believe. I remained civil through the process. Sometimes just barely.
My mother loved the news. Watched it constantly when she could. On numerous occasions while I was growing up, I can remember my mother watching the news dealing with stories about murder and mayhem (Same stuff we deal with every day today) and offering comments. It’s a habit I’ve picked up from her. Probably it’s caused me a fair amount of grief, but there it is. From time to time they would run a human interest story in which somebody with severe handicaps was doing their very best to make due with the hand Fate had dealt. Sometimes it was a minor thing (relatively) and sometimes it was major. And in the more extreme cases, my mother would often shake her head and say, “They’d put a dog out of its misery. Why can’t they offer the same dignity to a human being?” Horse breaks a leg and can’t be mended; it’s a mercy to put the animal down in a lot of people’s eyes. We euthanize wounded animals regularly (and sometimes we do it just because there are too many of them) and to my mother’s way of thinking, if a person was suffering too much, they should have been afforded the same right. She was a strong proponent of Dr. Kevorkian.
As quickly as it could be arranged, my family members worked out how to spend time with my mother. I took a leave of absence from work. Bonnie did the same. For over a week, first at the hospital and then at a local hospice, we stayed with my mother as she first slid into a coma and then, peacefully, slipped into the afterlife.
I learned that everyone deals with grief differently during those days. There is no right or wrong in my eyes. Grief is a powerful thing and it has very sharp teeth. Sometimes, it likes to toy with its prey. But enough about that. It’s not the point of this story.
I watched my mother pass from the world. Bonnie passed from very similar illnesses. Both of them hated being a burden to their loved ones. I don’t mean it made them uncomfortable. I mean they hated it. Loathed it, despised the very notion.
A friend of mine recently discussed the movie “The Sea Inside” with me. The movie stars the excellent Javier Bardem in the biographical role of Ramon Sampedro, a quadriplegic Spaniard who sought the legal right to end his own life for thirty years, preferring a life of quality over a life of quantity. I recommend the movie very highly. It’s powerful and beautiful and tragic.
My mother loved the movie “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” starring Richard Dreyfus. In the movie he plays Ken Harrison, a sculptor who breaks his neck and becomes a quadriplegic, who then sues for the right to end his own life. Aside from that basic foundation (And I have to wonder if the fictional movie and the play it was based on were inspired by Sampedro’s life) the two movies differ greatly. One is fiction. One is based on fact. Beyond that I won’t go into much detail because to do so would be to ruin the movies for others who might be interested. Both movies deal with free will, pain, suffering, quality of life and dignity. Both deal with legal systems versus moral systems versus human rights. Both are brilliant movies to me.
I think my mother would have truly enjoyed “The Sea Inside.” I know Bonnie would have enjoyed both of them, though they’d have likely made her cry (tough as nails that one, but a softy at heart.).
On several occasions my wife and I discussed my mother’s decision to go off of dialysis. I won’t say it was a regular topic at the dinner table, but it came up more than once, especially after Bonnie went on dialysis herself.
Bonnie said on a few occasions that her father was opposed to what my mother did. He also thought it was one of the bravest things he’d ever seen. He endured dialysis for ten years. Like his daughter he dealt with the pain and I know there were times he seriously considered going the same path. He chose not to for the sake of his family and for other reasons that are purely his to discuss and not mine.
I know it was a decision my mother weighed very carefully before she decided to go off of dialysis. When the time came she explained her reasoning with two words. My mother said, “I’m tired.” And I understood. So did everyone else. They might not all have agreed, but they understood.
On several occasions, usually after dialysis, Bonnie brought up my mom and her decision and a few times she broached the subject with me. Not about my mother, but about herself. There were times when she could barely walk after dialysis. I know she was in pain. I have never once doubted my wife’s strength. She never actually said to me that she was seriously considering stopping dialysis, but the words were there in sub context and in the way she made certain comments.
I told Bonnie that I missed my mother every day. I told her that part of me, the deeply selfish part, hated that she’d chosen to stop her dialysis, but that I also understood the reasons and supported them.
I also told her that I would support her, no matter what decision she made along those lines. I don’t think she was anywhere close to wanting to go off of dialysis. She was still aiming at getting on the transplant list someday. I also think that knowing I’d have backed her decision if she chose to shed the mortal coil earlier than scheduled gave her a modicum of peace.
Just my thoughts for the morning.
It is what it is.
“You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing the imperfect person perfectly.” - Sam Keen
I had a nice long chat with Bonnie last night. We talked about life, my workday, the people I can depend on, the ones I can’t and how to know the difference. I told her about everything going on in my life and about the finances. We talked, in other words, about all of the things we’ve always talked about.
Well, I talked.
I like to think she was listening. I’m a romantic like that.
My inner masochist keeps wanting to look inside my skull and pick at the imperfections. There are plenty to pick at, of course. I’m human. I have yet to meet a perfect human, though a few of them have seemed mighty close at the right time.
Having considered my mindset of few days back, I realize that I have fallen victim to my nemesis, self-pity. I loathe self-pity. I always have. Oh, we all fall victim to it, and certainly we all have good reasons (at least some of the time) but it’s really high up on my list of useless emotions. It serves absolutely no good purpose for existing. Seriously. What’s that? You fell down and got a boo boo? If your age is in the lower single digits you should be allowed a while to assess that situation and recover from it. If you are past a couple of decades in age, you should be allowed substantially less time, depending, of course, on the severity of the fall and the boo boo in question.
My life is not perfect. Then again, I can’t think of anyone whose life is. We can all of us find reasons to look around and want for more, or at least less of the burdens that weigh us down. The thing is, wanting it isn’t enough. Most times I know that and I work toward the goals I have with at least a modicum of drive. When I’m at the self-pity party (there’s always room for one more, isn’t there?) I lack more than the basic ability to crawl out of bed and wash up. And that’s not really acceptable. Not for me.
It’s a matter of perspective, I suppose. Now and then I have to remember that my woes, while substantial to my personal world, do not constitute a solid excuse for crying in my beer, especially since I don’t drink the stuff. My woes aren’t even a very tiny drop in the bucket of sorrows when it comes to what Japan is facing right now.
Yes, Bonnie is gone. I’ve known that all along. I just looked away and let myself get blindsided when I stared that particular truth in the face. It isn’t the facts that have changed, merely my perception of them. That’s to be expected, I suppose. Like I said, I’m hardly perfect. Still, I don’t like the self-pity thing and Bonnie certainly would not approve. So I’ll be working on that. Well, okay, that and trying to keep a clean house. And maybe hanging up all of my clothes, washing the dishes every day, matching up my socks, paying the bills when they come in and not necessarily on the day they’re due…you get the idea.
Perspective is an amazing thing, isn’t it? Everything seems so miserable if you let yourself focus on the negatives. Look in the mirror and what do you see? Well, for starters, I almost always see the flaws. My nose is too small for my face. I’ve got gray creeping into my beard and into my hair. Those are either laugh lines around my eyes or crow’s feet, depending entirely on my mood at the moment. Either my face is too wide, or my eyes are too close together. Still, in general there’s a certain level of symmetry to the entire thing. While, yes, I have referred to my face as an ugly mug on more than one occasion in my life, it’s not hideous. Certainly it’s familiar enough. I can say with great confidence that I’ve gotten rather used to it. And Bonnie liked it well enough.
Looking at the negatives is the easiest thing in the world if you choose to live your life that way. In all honesty, I’d rather not. My features fit my face just fine. So I’ve got some gray. I’ve still got more of the other colors (You know, red, brown and blond and all of them in a dozen different shades). As my crow’s feet are more pronounced when I’m smiling, I’ll just call them laugh lines and be done with it.
I think I have a tendency to sabotage myself sometimes. Not on purpose, but merely as a side effect of the way my mind works. I tend to fixate on one or two aspects of life to the point of distraction.
And now to completely change the subject: I’ve got another story for you. I might even have hit the highlights before, but I think in this case they bear repeating.
Did I mention previously that my mother and wife had several illnesses in common? They did. Both were diabetics. Both had eye troubles. Both had heart issues. Both had diabetic neuropathy. Oh, and both of them had complete renal failure. Once the kidneys go, it’s dialysis, transplant or death. Those are basically the options you have.
My mother suffered several of the larger indignities that can be placed upon a person by modern medicine. I’ll give you the abbreviated list. Heart attack and the consequences, COPD, renal failure, and toward the end of her life she got to add in loss of sight in one eye, two degraded vertebrae that were a source of constant agony, and a loss of voluntary motor control. Oh, and there were the amputations. Diabetes, great stuff. Because of circulation loss caused in part by the diabetes (or at least substantially expedited by same) my mother first lost half of her foot in an effort to avoid blood poisoning issues that would have killed her, and then lost her leg just above the knee. I don’t even want to imagine the sort of agony involved. My mother, who had always been a very strong woman (you might notice a trend along those lines in my life.) was forced to move around in a wheelchair. Hardly makes her unique, I know, but it added to the burdens she felt. I’ll explain that in a moment. One more addition, one that hit her hard and was possibly the worst among them for her, was a loss of certain motor functions, also brought on by diabetes.
That last one caused her a few incidents that I will not get into. Let’s just leave it at they cost my mother a good deal of her dignity. That one was harder for her to deal with, I believe, than the loss of her lower leg.
My mother was a proud woman. She also did not want to be a burden to her children or her loved ones. Pretty much ever. My mother was born and raised in Germany and believed in certain standards that a lot of US citizens don’t always agree with.
There came a time, not long after her legs was amputated, that my mother had to go onto hemodialysis, same as Bonnie would later. The experience was not pleasant. Neither was the way she was treated by all of the employees at the dialysis center. I won’t go into details, but I have a long history with that center. I took Bonnie there. My mother went there briefly and my father-in-law went there for the last ten years of his life. I still drive past it regularly. I almost never look in that direction. Most of the memories are fine. A few of them stir darker feelings in me I would rather not have stirred too vigorously.
Not long after my mother started hemodialysis she had reason to go back to the hospital. There came a night when she asked all of her children to come see her and we did, without hesitation. I have four siblings who are local and one who lives a few states away. The latter did not show up, because the call was rather spontaneous and he had health issues of his own and a family to take care of besides.
Five of us were there when my mother explained to us that she was going off of dialysis and had placed DNR orders should she go into any form of medical arrest. DNR. Do Not Resuscitate.
Good genes in this batch. We all knew what it meant. Remember the earlier options? Dialysis, transplant or death.
I’m sure a few people out there are likely outraged by her decision. I’ve met a few who disagreed with the notion of taking herself off of proven medical treatment in order to stop the pain and indignities that her life had become. One of my siblings had a falling out with my mother over that decision. It caused a bit of a schism in the family that has never completely mended, but that is neither here nor there. Theologically, I suspect I could go around and around with a few people who would tell me why she had condemned herself to perdition, hell, purgatory, oblivion or a dozen other underworlds best not imagined.
As a matter of fact, a few people did attempt to have debates with me when she made her decision. Sometimes it was out of concern for her, and I appreciated the gestures. Sometimes it was for less altruistic reasons, I believe. I remained civil through the process. Sometimes just barely.
My mother loved the news. Watched it constantly when she could. On numerous occasions while I was growing up, I can remember my mother watching the news dealing with stories about murder and mayhem (Same stuff we deal with every day today) and offering comments. It’s a habit I’ve picked up from her. Probably it’s caused me a fair amount of grief, but there it is. From time to time they would run a human interest story in which somebody with severe handicaps was doing their very best to make due with the hand Fate had dealt. Sometimes it was a minor thing (relatively) and sometimes it was major. And in the more extreme cases, my mother would often shake her head and say, “They’d put a dog out of its misery. Why can’t they offer the same dignity to a human being?” Horse breaks a leg and can’t be mended; it’s a mercy to put the animal down in a lot of people’s eyes. We euthanize wounded animals regularly (and sometimes we do it just because there are too many of them) and to my mother’s way of thinking, if a person was suffering too much, they should have been afforded the same right. She was a strong proponent of Dr. Kevorkian.
As quickly as it could be arranged, my family members worked out how to spend time with my mother. I took a leave of absence from work. Bonnie did the same. For over a week, first at the hospital and then at a local hospice, we stayed with my mother as she first slid into a coma and then, peacefully, slipped into the afterlife.
I learned that everyone deals with grief differently during those days. There is no right or wrong in my eyes. Grief is a powerful thing and it has very sharp teeth. Sometimes, it likes to toy with its prey. But enough about that. It’s not the point of this story.
I watched my mother pass from the world. Bonnie passed from very similar illnesses. Both of them hated being a burden to their loved ones. I don’t mean it made them uncomfortable. I mean they hated it. Loathed it, despised the very notion.
A friend of mine recently discussed the movie “The Sea Inside” with me. The movie stars the excellent Javier Bardem in the biographical role of Ramon Sampedro, a quadriplegic Spaniard who sought the legal right to end his own life for thirty years, preferring a life of quality over a life of quantity. I recommend the movie very highly. It’s powerful and beautiful and tragic.
My mother loved the movie “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” starring Richard Dreyfus. In the movie he plays Ken Harrison, a sculptor who breaks his neck and becomes a quadriplegic, who then sues for the right to end his own life. Aside from that basic foundation (And I have to wonder if the fictional movie and the play it was based on were inspired by Sampedro’s life) the two movies differ greatly. One is fiction. One is based on fact. Beyond that I won’t go into much detail because to do so would be to ruin the movies for others who might be interested. Both movies deal with free will, pain, suffering, quality of life and dignity. Both deal with legal systems versus moral systems versus human rights. Both are brilliant movies to me.
I think my mother would have truly enjoyed “The Sea Inside.” I know Bonnie would have enjoyed both of them, though they’d have likely made her cry (tough as nails that one, but a softy at heart.).
On several occasions my wife and I discussed my mother’s decision to go off of dialysis. I won’t say it was a regular topic at the dinner table, but it came up more than once, especially after Bonnie went on dialysis herself.
Bonnie said on a few occasions that her father was opposed to what my mother did. He also thought it was one of the bravest things he’d ever seen. He endured dialysis for ten years. Like his daughter he dealt with the pain and I know there were times he seriously considered going the same path. He chose not to for the sake of his family and for other reasons that are purely his to discuss and not mine.
I know it was a decision my mother weighed very carefully before she decided to go off of dialysis. When the time came she explained her reasoning with two words. My mother said, “I’m tired.” And I understood. So did everyone else. They might not all have agreed, but they understood.
On several occasions, usually after dialysis, Bonnie brought up my mom and her decision and a few times she broached the subject with me. Not about my mother, but about herself. There were times when she could barely walk after dialysis. I know she was in pain. I have never once doubted my wife’s strength. She never actually said to me that she was seriously considering stopping dialysis, but the words were there in sub context and in the way she made certain comments.
I told Bonnie that I missed my mother every day. I told her that part of me, the deeply selfish part, hated that she’d chosen to stop her dialysis, but that I also understood the reasons and supported them.
I also told her that I would support her, no matter what decision she made along those lines. I don’t think she was anywhere close to wanting to go off of dialysis. She was still aiming at getting on the transplant list someday. I also think that knowing I’d have backed her decision if she chose to shed the mortal coil earlier than scheduled gave her a modicum of peace.
Just my thoughts for the morning.
It is what it is.