The River

Dan Paik left this world six years ago today. 

He has not visited me in any dreams recently, but he and my mom are always with me. In the past several months my mom has had cameo roles in many dreams. 

It just so happens that this essay was published by a wonderful journal last week.

https://underthesunonline.com/wordpress/2020/the-river/

Traveling with the Dead

Traveling with my mom wasn't easy. Would her aching body endure the five and a half hour flight to Baltimore? Would she need to use the bathroom when the seatbelt sign was on? Would she ask the person seated on the other side of her a million personal questions? Would I remember all the stuff she needed? Would there be a medical crisis while we were away from home?

A couple days ago I flew to the East Coast  to see my brother and his girlfriend. Reagan Airport in D.C. was where I arrived, but I flew home from Baltimore. As soon as I stepped through the entry doors, I missed her. Isn't it  crazy how you see that lost person out of the corner of your eye, or just rounding a corner ahead of you? My mom was at my side, yet just beyond my reach.

The restaurant where we used to eat is a steak house now instead of a crab place. The table right up front where it was easy to pull up a wheel chair isn't there anymore, so I took a spot at the bar facing a window that looks out into the airport. There's a giant menu right outside, and people walked up to study it while I studied them. It was like an aquarium for people watching as they stood just a couple feet from me, reading the list of things they might possibly indulge in for lunch. In my head I heard the conversation my mom and I  might have had as we discussed one person after another.

I'm sure people watched us too when we traveled together. There were comments on our matching shoes and our silver hair.

Back at home now, I've been enchanted by the moon jellyfish in the marina. It's another world, dreamlike and ghostly.  

Believe it.

Would you believe me if I told you I was sitting in my kitchen eavesdropping on my mom having a conversation with dead people? If you're a regular reader of this blog, of course you would. You might even know that you can click on the labels in the sidebar and read other posts about my mom talking in her sleep/talking to the dead.

Would you believe that the weather app on my iPhone says it's going to be 85 in Margaritaville  tomorrow? That's okay, I don't believe it either. It won't be 85 here, a mile from the sand.

Would you believe that I'm cleaning out my garage and that in the 3 years I've lived in this house, I've amassed bags of stuff that I don't need or want and that probably no one needs or wants? Sure, you'd believe that. You could probably clean out your garage and come up with just as many bags of stuff.

Would you believe I'm falling in love? I can hardly believe it myself. But it's true.

Good Morning, wine. Is that you?

I've been hoping to drink a bit less wine. I poured a third modest glass last night and then said hey, I don't really want that. So I carried it upstairs with me since it might have been downed by my mom if I'd left it in the kitchen. This morning as I got ready to brush my teeth, I thought, hmmm. Maybe before I brush, I should have that.

This is not a plea for help. (I didn't drink it until dinner this evening.) I'm just telling it how it is for me on the island of Pillville. I'm sure many caregivers find their escape in a bottle or think about it anyway. I have narcotics in the house too, and don't think that they don't occasionally whisper my name. They do. So far I have not indulged.

I'm reading an excellent dark and funny memoir about caregiving. It's called "Bettyville." It's odd to sit on the couch after my mom has gone to bed and read what writer George Hodgeman probably wrote after his mom was in bed.

Speaking of writing, I was inspired by my mom's conversations with the dead (mostly her twin sister) to begin writing a few daily lines to the man who loved me.

Tired of death, drink and drugs?

Let's talk about dancing. I'm dancing two nights a week now. Two hours each session. Swing, Foxtrot, Rhumba. Tomorrow I'm going to buy some real dance shoes. I'm dancing with the same guy. He still goes east out of the parking lot. I still go west.

Shouting in the Dark

I love the moment at dawn when the birds begin to sing. 

My mother is shouting in her sleep as I write this. Sometimes she talks. I tip-toe to the door of her room and listen if she's speaking clearly enough to be understood. I keep waiting for some profound revelation from the beyond because she's usually speaking to dead people. Like maybe she has a message for me from my dad. Or maybe there'll be some long-held family secret revealed. Usually she's lost though. She and her twin sister are in the woods and trying to find their way back home.

My mom slept most of the day. Mitigating pain and keeping the sufferer coherent and awake is a challenge, apparently. When she was still asleep at 12:30 I called the hospice nurse, and she came over and checked on her. All her vital signs were great--probably better than mine at that point. She got up and ate toast and yogurt and coffee and juice. Then she went back to bed. I slept on the couch and we both woke up around 6 p.m. I turned last night's chicken into chicken salad. We had toast and an avocado with it and called it good. By the end of the meal, I had to keep my eyes on her because  she was dozing while lifting her glass to her lips. This is not a new thing. She does it regularly and the result is frequently a spilled drink and sometimes a broken glass. It pisses her off. I've never seen anything quite like it. She's here in the present and then she slips into some other reality, mumbling, talking, then she's gone and there's coffee or a martini in her lap.

The nurse made new recommendations for the meds, so we'll see if my mom Rip Van Winkels her way through tomorrow or what. The pain is pretty much gone though. When I ask her how she feels or how her pain is, she says, "Smoooth." She used our fabulous lavender microwave hot packs only once today. Before hospice the hot packs were constantly employed. The microwave blew a fuse on Sunday, and if we hadn't already had the okay to increase the pain meds, it would have been a gruesome day.

I actually sent out some writing today. Lately I've been feeling like my focus has just gone to hell, and that there's just so much rejection, and I can't apply for any fellowships, and I can't really participate in the literary scene, and I wish I were at AWP, but I'm not, and you know, whinewhinewhine. So I had some wine, and I thought, rather dejectedly, I'd see how my book was doing. It's okay. The ups and downs of book sales are completely perplexing. At least at this level. If you're on Oprah, yeah, I'm sure your sales go up. The things I'm doing to promote my book are less visible. A little like shouting in the dark.

Talking with the Dead

Charon and Psyche crossing the River Styx

Dream:

I was on the phone--a land line--sitting on the bed in a hotel room. I was talking to a friend I hadn't seen in years, and we were making arrangements to get together. She invited me to dinner. "Oh, not that night, I said, Mr. Ex will be staying with me and I don't want to bring him along." There was some awkward conversation then wherein I explained that the ex and I hadn't gotten back together and that, in fact, we weren't even friends, but he really needed a place to stay, so I had obliged. 

"Just because he's staying with you, you don't need to bring him," she said. I was about to thank her profusely for that insight, when Dan's voice came on the line. 

"Hi, baby," he said. There was a whirring noise in the background as my friend's voice receded. I could hear Dan clearly, but for a moment I was confused, thinking I'd accidentally hit the voicemail button on my cellphone and was listening to a saved voicemail. But no, this was a land line that I was talking on. I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it to be sure. "I just want you to know I'm good," he said. He sounded happy, as if he was at a party, entertained by something that was going on there. "I wish I could see you though," he said. 

About this time my conscious brain sprung to life. I'm talking to him, I'm talking to him, I'm talking to him, and I have to remember. I have to remember. The dream began to dissolve then, but I think he told me one last thing---that he loved me.

Can I tell you that I conjured this? (I'm fine. I swear.) A wave of desperation had swept over me as I got ready for bed. I have to see you. I have to talk to you, I said to the emptiness. I put on the Iris Dement CD that he gave me for my birthday last year, and sat reading the lyrics while her voice filled the room. I've listened to this album so many times since receiving it, but somehow the lyrics (in the photos below) never sank in. I'd had a couple of glasses of wine, and I wasn't sure I could believe what I was reading, but I thought maybe these songs were a clue that might lead me to him, a portal of sorts. I listened to the first two songs again, then took out that CD, and put in a CD of Dan's that was a radio interview he'd done (long before I knew him) about World T'ai Chi Day. I'd already rubbed a dab of his shaving cream into my palms and the scent lingered as I lay down on his side of his bed, listening to his voice until I fell asleep.

                                                                              ****

The friend in the dream--she was at the birth of my younger daughter, and I'd seen her very frequently during that pregnancy. So now in this dream I spoke with her on the phone while I connected with the afterlife.

And Mr. Ex, what the hell was he doing there? Oh, and I forgot, just as the phone call was wrapping up, my trusty financial guy came through the door. I hung up the phone and threw myself into his arms, crying, "I talked to Dan. I talked to Dan."

What the hell?
But hey, I talked to Dan, everybody. He said he was good.

P.S. And do you know what else? My mom talks to her dead twin sister every night. It starts as she stands in the kitchen after dessert as she's finishing her final martini, staring out at the water. She starts to doze, and the next thing you know, she's there on her feet, half asleep, talking to the dead. I usually stay up an hour or so after she goes to bed. I sit on the couch in the dark, reading and writing, and I hear her voice rising out of sleep. And even before her twin died, she talked to other dead people. My dad, her other siblings. A conversation we had about that years ago and a dream she told me about a parrot led to THIS STORY. 

Life. Stranger than fiction, right?
Right. Because in my family, we talk to the dead.

Some lyrics from an Iris Dement song

More Iris Dement lyrics