Pelicans and Thinking Out Loud

This could be a picture of my heart. I'm soaring so much of the time these days.

But.

This morning as my friend Ellen and I were walking we talked about the death of our parents. How her mother died suddenly, still fully herself. How my father did the same. And I told her how when I dream of him or think of him, I see him just as he was in this life. And that's the most terrible thing about my mom, I said. After she dies and I see her in my dreams, I'll see her like this--the way these past few years have, day by day, reduced her and how that's what is burned into my brain. This is not the version of her I want to remember.

Report from Pillville: How my hair stood up

I wish I still had the Christmas lights on my bed.

I am listening in the dark. My mother is quiet at the moment. If I listen a little harder I can hear the click and hiss of her oxygen machine.

Earlier this evening as my friend Ellen and I sat on the couch, my mom was talking in her sleep. Not just a mumbled word, not just a line or two, but a monologue. Excuse me, I said to Ellen. I have to check out what's going on in there. I stood to the side of her partially open door and listened.

"And now they roam the house at night. Two of them. And they're not really fond of each other." My mom was speaking in a dramatic voice like she was telling a ghost story. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood up. I can't even watch TV because the commercials for scary movies terrify me. Now I'm imagining Thing One and Thing Two roaming through my house, stalking one another--stalking me.

If there ever was a night to have a friend staying over, this is it. A few months back, Ellen and I both leapt from our beds and nearly collided at the top of the stairs after my mother yelled at the top of her lungs. For a moment it sounded like my mom was arguing with someone and we thought there might be an intruder in the house.

I may have to sleep with the light on. But then again, that might make it easier for Thing One and Thing Two to find me.

Tuesday Beach Report

The ocean was choppy, the tide low. Plenty of rocks to encourage the hunt for beach glass.
I found a little.

The slope of bare sand was steep enough so that while walking along the water's edge, I couldn't see any houses. It adds to that getting-away-from-it-all feeling.

And the sand itself was firmly packed, making walking easy. That's the way I feel about things in general  these days. I don't have to struggle. Just walk forward.

Report from Pillville: Have I mentioned the harpist?

art by Sulamith Wölfing

THIS  was in today's New York Times.

And since my head has been rising higher and higher into the clouds these past several weeks, I honestly can't remember if I've blogged about the music therapy hospice has provided for my mom  Forgive me when I tell you I was skeptical at first, but when the nurse told me a harpist would be coming to play for my mom, I envisioned something hokey. Please don't let her be wearing an angel costume was the wish that kept circling through my head. I was more than a little bit relieved when a woman wearing ordinary clothes showed up at the door.

The harpist has visited us four times now. Sometimes she brings a large harp and sometimes a smaller one with a set of bells and gongs. My mom sits in her chair at the dining room table since it's usually around lunch time. I lie across the room on the couch and the harpist sits between us, a bit closer to my mom than to me. She talks to my mom between songs and my mom talks to her. I remain silent unless my mom gets confused about something she wants me to straighten out--like whether he twin sister has been dead for one year or two, or if I was already living in California when my father died. These brief conversations are far more lovely than they sound. While there is talk about the dead, there's also talk about love, and about the different places my mom has lived in her 90 plus years on this planet.

I didn't know that harp and vocal music woven into end-of-life care was actually a formal discipline called thanatology until I read the article in this morning's Times. My awe and respect for our harpist's talents is now even deeper. At some level, I think I understood the depth of the experience from the beginning because I chose to do nothing but listen from the moment that very first note was plucked. I'm not quite sure why. It would have been more like me to hover near by, quietly folding laundry or to use the presence of another person in the house as an excuse to slip upstairs to my room. But after introductions were made that first day, I fluffed up the pillows on the couch, stretched out facing the water, and closed my eyes.

The music is mostly instrumental. But twice now the harpist has played and sung that old song by the New Christy Minstrels. The first few lines are pretty good instructions for living.

Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine
I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
'Ere I forget all the joy that is mine...today