1.
Recently, after a couple of text exchanges with a long-distance friend, she wrote, “You sound GOOD. Like you’ve settled in.” We were wrapping up the conversation and this was her summary of how I’d come across.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
2.
This morning, on a walk around my brother’s neighborhood, I admired the variety of trees – from towering pines to fat oaks, with limbs stretched across lawns and gardens – and I took in the astounding colors of autumn. Some reds were so brilliantly red, they practically burst into flame in the filtered, eye aching light of the overcast day.
I walked and I had a conversation with myself. It’s how I process life, and it’s how I open up space to feel what I’m feeling.
When I lived alone, I’d pace the length of my home, arms gyrating, hands gesturing, fingers pointing and dancing, voice resonating across the wooden floors and off the walls. I’d walk through the rooms of the “shotgun” style layout of the 100-year-old flat: living room, kitchen, bedroom, one behind the other in a long, straight path from the front door, allowing for a buildup of momentum, until the time came to do a swift about-face and head in the opposite direction.
I miss those conversations with Self, sailing above the creaking, old hardwood floors of my own private space.
Now, I talk to me while I’m out and about, away from my family’s house.
3.
I’m surrounded by people who are quietly falling apart with a smile. My brother is the at-home patient whom we all buzz around to provide medical care and comfort. I’ve never heard a word of complaint from him and even during MS flare-ups, his mouth manages to twitch itself into a smile when he says thank you.
His wife and the visiting home health workers and me… well, there is this grace, this fine balance to keeping George going and to running the household of pets and people. I say grace because of the kindness and generosity we all exude toward one another and to outsiders who ask, “How’re things going?”
“We’re doing ok!” I hear a cheerful voice say, and that voice can belong to anyone, including me, reporting to the outside world.
Meanwhile, someone throws their back out trying to lift my brother out of his wheelchair. Another person injures their knee or twists their ankle. Yet another caregiver is crushed by a mental health crisis within their own family. And throughout it all, we take turns going into isolation, away from my brother, with Covid or a cold or flu.
“It’s not easy, but we’re managing!”
I don’t want to burden good humans with bad news. There is so much already in the world, especially recently. But I often grow tired of trying to appreciate the positive moments at home amidst the persistent troubles of a progressive disease, and I don’t know where to put that inner tangle. I can only speak for myself, of course, not for the others. How incredible it would be if one of us finally stood up and cried, “This fucking sucks!” and then returned to the daily tasks with some authenticity released into the air.
4.
By the time I rounded the bend onto Lakewood Drive near the Mokelumne River, I’d talked my way through the most pressing topics. I knew what I needed to do: undress. Be weak. Stop trying to be a balanced, goddamned superhero.
I wanted to talk to those I trust and say everything I’ve been trying to say since I moved here: That being “positive” rings hollow and inauthentic in my ears, that I’m giving it up like excess drink or too much sugar. That my heart is in England and New Mexico, but that California currently has me because of good ol’ love for my big brother and a sense of what is right. That I live with this emotional conflict on a daily basis.
And that I’m overall fumbling around and struggling in my own way here, but – …there doesn’t have to be a but. An admittance of pain or discomfort need not end with a buffer. I hold vulnerability on a platter: it’s not easy, but here is my truth and there is plenty of space for you to set down your own fatigue alongside mine.
Some reds are so brilliantly red, they give us headaches and make our eyes hurt. Stripped, bare limbs may be welcomed. At the very least, we’ll be afforded a clearer view of the sky.