I've made decent progress packing the apartment. There's still a long way to go and I feel like I'm behind the curve. Moving is like that.
The experience? A range of thoughts and emotions that seem contradictory but aren't. And for the record - once again, there's nothing extraordinary going on here. Many people, at one point or another, pack up the family home. Often it happens after the death of a parent. Alzheimer's, as usual, plays with the order somewhat.
Reactions, noted without much interpretation: On the one hand, there's sudden awareness of simultaneous time. Everything that ever happened in the apartment is happening now. Here's my mother, coming home on the afternoon of the Kennedy assassination. Here's my father, climbing the stairs the night of the '65 blackout. And here he is, looming in the doorway during one of the family fights. And he's lying on the bed on a Sunday afternoon, watching football so he can keep current because he's editing four sports magazines. And there's a creak in the floorboards - my mother putting out gifts late at night on some holiday or other. And the sound of the dog's claws tapping on the linoleum. And there's my mother leaving for the last time on a gurney, and my father leaving for the last time but not realizing that's what's happening.
And on the other hand I have no connection with the place at all. I was expecting to be overwhelmed but I'm not. It seems straightforward to close an apartment. And my relationships weren't with the physical place, as it turns out. They were with the matrix of people who used to live here. They'll all gone now. An empty apartment is just an empty apartment. The fact that it's empty makes it easy to close.
Both of these things are true at once. Everything is here and nothing is here.
There's also this: My connection was with the people, not the place. But what people, when? Where was the core authentic moment that I connect to? Was it an afternoon in 1966? A morning in 1973? Dinner with my father a month ago? There isn't a single authentic point of connection. The connection is to the whole arc of the place and the people, with everything changing all the time. The arc didn't really begin, because my parents brought their own baggage with them, courtesy of their parents. And it doesn't end: My mother died almost seven years ago but the relationship goes on and I'm still in conversation with her, as things change and everything gets re-evaluated. My father is in conversation with her too, at some level, even if he can't remember who she was.
So they're gone and not gone. They're long past and still here. The apartment is a container that holds everything that ever happened here, and it's just a meaningless decrepit place full of packing boxes.
Anyone who's been through the process - and that's most of you - will know what I mean.
Tomorrow I'll head back to DC - have to be there for the first official treatment conference on Friday. Am expecting an interesting discussion. The nursing home called Tuesday when I was driving up to New York. They told me my father had seemed to be settling down, then had another massive outburst. They're beginning to wonder if he's racist - apparently he's said some things about black people. I told them that there's nothing in his history to indicate racism - he was always a committed liberal - but on the other hand, you never know. He grew up in the 20's and 30's, when nearly everyone, even the most progressive people, were acutely aware of differences, including racial differences. Who can say what his comfort level was, or what he kept masked. Or maybe it's not a matter of history or character, just a disease process and random neural firings. I told them he had good relationships with people of color among his caregivers - E/2 is black, and E is of Indian descent, from Guyana. And yes, he'd sometimes get upset at black caregivers and curse at them for being black - but sometimes, including in the next breath, he'd curse at them for being Jews. It's not easy to pin any of this down. I continue to think that he does best with people who engage with him and humor him, and worst with people who are authoritarian and inflexible, all of this regardless of race. But I'm open. With Alzheimer's there's always something you don't see coming.
One piece of good news - when I leave New York tomorrow, I'll have both of his cats in tow. My friend Adam called me at midday today and said that he and his fiancee were interested in Scooter, the psychotic cat, as well as Babe, the sweet one. It took me about 15 minutes to make the arrangements, and another 10 minutes to run out and buy an extra cat carrier. That's a big thing to resolve. Scooter had been weighing on me - he was the last of the living things that didn't have an accommodation, and I didn't want to think about his alternatives. Now, as of tomorrow night, all three of my life forms - my father, Babe and Scooter - will be situated. With luck that means that I can deal mainly with property for the rest of the month.
Except, of course, that I'll still need to deal with my father and his transition, or lack of same. More on that next time.
I can imagine the ghosts of parental and childhoods past making their way through your head as you pack up what once was the scene of another life. 18 years on, and I still hear my dad's voice in my head, and we packed up the house, say, 15 years ago.
In the end, the packing is only stuff, and you realize that while stuff is part of what provokes memories jumping back in time, you'll still remember long after the last box is sealed.
Blogger alice, uptown recently linked your blog to hers, wondering what will happen when she is called upon in your place.
Posted by: Nancy Frank | November 05, 2009 at 10:13 AM