Daddy's gone...4/20 at 2258...can't write much now...heart too heavy.

Irrational

That's my mom. That should be her middle name. At a time when a family should pull together, she has to start up her same old shit (heaping abuse on her oldest daughter--moi).

My dad looked better last night when I went by to see him. Monday is such a long day for me. Work and then drive an hour to a class. Then after class, drive an hour home, so it was a little after 8 before I got back to town. By the time I got there, he was sleeping, so I just watched him sleep. He woke up briefly, held my hand, talked for a few minutes. I told him to rest and that I loved him and would see him soon. I kissed him goodnight and left.

So much has happened. We finally got him back to Madville last Friday. I called his neighbor (who happens to be a Dr.) and told him everything that had been going on. He asked me if I would like him to be Dad's admitting physician and I said would you please and he said I would be more than glad to and I am very glad you called me.

Note: Edited on 5/10

I decided to come in and edit this today...I can't bear to read it as is and probably should make a copy just because I may need to reread it some day, but none of what was happening then matters at all now...Dad is gone and nothing will bring him back.

I was the first to get to the hospital here to see him. He looked better and was much less confused. My mother didn't say much to me, but...

On Sunday, things really blew up. I got a call at 7:15 that morning from the charge nurse. She stated that my father had fallen out of bed at 2:30 that morning. He had not broken any bones, but he had some scrapes and a knot on his head. She told me she didn't want to call the family at 2:30 in the morning because he was not badly injured. I asked her that morning if she had called my mom. She said she had tried her a few times and could not get an answer. I asked her to keep trying. You see, what I know about my mother is this: she would find some way to make me look like I had done something wrong simply because someone from the hospital called me to tell me about Dad. How inane is that? I could say she's a control freak, but she's far worse than that. (next 3 paragraphs edited out)

So, sure enough, when I walked in my father's room on Sunday to see him, the first thing she did was raise up in her chair (she didn't stand), point Dad's comb at me and start telling me how I needed to keep my business at my house and not bother her or anyone who lived at her house. She wanted to know why I was called and she wasn't about my dad's fall. She said "Just who put you in charge or control...keep yourself away from us and *** Gordon Ave (where they live). I was trying to defend myself and keep my cool, but she has this way of making me feel like I am that frightened little girl again and I just get weak.

I did mange to say, "Well, let's just go to the desk and find out what's charted." Sure enough, they told her that they had tried her number three times first but didn't get an answer, so they called me. I then asked who gave them my number for a second contact #. They said that whomever was with my dad when he was admitted would have provided the number. Well, that someone was my mother. What could she do? She had been proven wrong and she doesn't take that very well. When she got back to his room, she sat in the rocker and just about broke his hair comb across her leg. Then she started rocking so fast I thought she was going to rock that chair through the door or out the window or to the floor below.


Now, if this same scene had happened to me and my husband was in the hospital, I would have been grateful that someone called one of my children. I would be grateful for any help my children were providing, but again, she's has not been grateful for one thing I've done through all of this.

I am grateful that I love my children so much--unconditionally--the way children should be loved. And I am grateful that they love me that way too, despite my flaws and the mistakes I made along the way. One thing they have never had to doubt is my love.

So, it is nearly impossible to go see my dad until after my mom leaves the hospital. She didn't say that she didn't want me in the room. What she said was: (this comment was directed to my youngest brother): "Isn't it so nice and peaceful when only you and I are here alone with Artie." My daughter and I were in the room at the time.

She also refuses to speak to my daughter now because my daughter stood up for me when my mother started in that morning. My daughter has been the only grandchild who has even attempted to bond with my mother. When my children were growing up, I never told them the things she said and did to me when I was growing up. I wanted them to formulate their own opinions of her. She never asked to keep them and rarely saw them, and I never asked her to keep them as I felt she had no interest in doing so. It was only as the two oldest children were entering their teen years that they started showing more interest in her. By then, she had calmed down a lot. I had tried to let go of a lot (and thought I had, but apparently not), and so I was somewhat more comfortable being around her. Again, only my daughter really cared to be around her. Now, my mother has sabotaged that relationship as well.

(Major edit after the above comment--hate to even leave that but I need to for a little while...it may go at some point too)

Well, that's all the emotional outpouring I can handle this morning. I just feel cheated. I feel she has commited the greatest wrong this time--keeping me from my father. I can't be in the room with her. I don't know how I am going to work this out. No one reads this blog anyway--I haven't even told anyone I have a blog (other than jz who came upon it by accident), but if anyone happens upon this and actually reads all the way through it, please light a candle, get out your smudge stick, chant, or say a prayer. For my dad's recovery and for me to find the strength to find a way to be there for him.

Exhaustion

Left town at 5 pm on 3/26 for a 4 day conference in Nashville (about 2 hours south of here). Had been there an hour when I got the call that my father had been taken to the hospital for a possible stroke.

Went to my room and repacked my bags and headed home. Got a call as I was on my way home that the hospital was life-flighting Dad to Louisville, that he had suffered an ischemic stroke, and that if he made it at all, he would most likely have brain damage.

Got home. Got my mom and youngest brother and we drove to Louisville (about 2 1/2 hours NE of here). Dad was intubated when we got there, but his vitals were stable. They took his tube out that afternoon, he was assessed by the neuro stroke team and we sat and waited and waited and waited.

By Wednesday, the NS team came to us to tell us they had no evidence that he had a stroke, that he was having (or had had) a seizure (or more than one), and that they thought a viral illness may have set off everything.

I stayed with him this past Monday while my mom and youngest brother came home to get some things. He was much improved that day and I felt much more hopeful. Mom and my brother got back that evening and have been there since.

I feel so useless here at work. They are doing more tests today. X-rays because he has some fluid in his lungs and that may be all today. Thankfully, they took the catheter out--it was irritating him so badly and now he has a bladder infection from it.

I called the Rehab Services floor here and they said they could take him as soon as the doctor there releases him. We were told by a different doctor yesterday that he has had a series of small strokes. Why can't these doctors make up their minds? The doctor said Dad would need rehab for at least a month. We all just want to get him home.

He's weak, but he's such a very strong and stubborn man. I just hope he keeps up the good fight.

I can't focus here at work. I just keep seeing his face th day I left. He finally looked more like himself. I said, "I love you, Dad" and he said, "I love you, too, Sis." He's just got to get through this. He just has to.

How does that quote go?

When you come to the edge of all that you know, you must believe one of two things: that you will be given earth to stand on or wings to fly.

Something like that. I'll keep that in mind.

Augusta

...is only 37 miles west of St. Louis (as the crow flies)--about 43 actual miles
but if miles were measured in the decades that have passed, one would say Augusta is so very near the hub of things but so many decades removed from the hustle-bustle of the city
that in some ways it feels like it's thousands of miles away from anything. It's literally like walking back in time. The population of Augusta is 300. It has 12 or so B & B's, a few restaurants, a small grocery store, 3 wineries, and some gift/antique stores. It was so quiet and idyllic and healing.

To be truthful though, as soon as I exited 64 W and got on 94 (South, I think), I started hearing
Dueling Banjos in my head and thinking about James Dickey!

All that said, it was an absolutely amazing place to visit. The 16 miles of winding road
that took me to Augusta and the B & B I was to stay in for the next 2 nights filled me with
an excitement I had not felt in some time. The road rises and falls in synch with the rolling
Missouri wine country. I kept wanting to look to the right of me, past the drop-off, over the treeline and to the river running parallel (at that point) to 94. What a view!

My project: to interview the winemaker at Mt. Pleasant winery for a paper I am writing in my Psych class. He is a dynamic man who loves what he's doing. More about Mark later.

I gotta stop right here and right now and post James Dickey's Cherrylog Road. I thought about Dickey a great deal out there in the middle of nowhere and I thought of Dante "I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost." The last line of this Dickey poem just wrecks me every time I read this poem. "Wild to be wreckage forever."

Here's Dickey:

Cherrylog Road
by James L. Dickey


Off Highway 106
At Cherrylog Road I entered
The ’34 Ford without wheels,
Smothered in kudzu,
With a seat pulled out to run
Corn whiskey down from the hills,

And then from the other side
Crept into an Essex
With a rumble seat of red leather
And then out again, aboard
A blue Chevrolet, releasing
The rust from its other color,

Reared up on three building blocks.
None had the same body heat;
I changed with them inward, toward
The weedy heart of the junkyard,
For I knew that Doris Holbrook
Would escape from her father at noon

And would come from the farm
To seek parts owned by the sun
Among the abandoned chassis,
Sitting in each in turn
As I did, leaning forward
As in a wild stock-car race

In the parking lot of the dead.
Time after time, I climbed in
And out the other side, like
An envoy or movie star
Met at the station by crickets.
A radiator cap raised its head,

Become a real toad or a kingsnake
As I neared the hub of the yard,
Passing through many states,
Many lives, to reach
Some grandmother’s long Pierce-Arrow
Sending platters of blindness forth

From its nickel hubcaps
And spilling its tender upholstery
On sleepy roaches,
The glass panel in between
Lady and colored driver
Not all the way broken out,

The back-seat phone
Still on its hook.
I got in as though to exclaim,
“Let us go to the orphan asylum,
John; I have some old toys
For children who say their prayers.”

I popped with sweat as I thought
I heard Doris Holbrook scrape
Like a mouse in the southern-state sun
That was eating the paint in blisters
From a hundred car tops and hoods.
She was tapping like code,

Loosening the screws,
Carrying off headlights,
Sparkplugs, bumpers,
Cracked mirrors and gear-knobs,
Getting ready, already,
To go back with something to show

Other than her lips’ new trembling
I would hold to me soon, soon,
Where I sat in the ripped back seat
Talking over the interphone,
Praying for Doris Holbrook
To come from her father’s farm

And to get back there
With no trace of me on her face
To be seen by her red-haired father
Who would change, in the squalling barn,
Her back’s pale skin with a strop,
Then lay for me

In a bootlegger’s roasting car
With a string-triggered I2-gauge shotgun
To blast the breath from the air.
Not cut by the jagged windshields,
Through the acres of wrecks she came
With a wrench in her hand,

Through dust where the blacksnake dies
Of boredom, and the beetle knows
The compost has no more life.
Someone outside would have seen
The oldest car's door inexplicably
Close from within:

I held her and held her and held her,
Convoyed at terrific speed
By the stalled, dreaming traffic around us,
So the blacksnake, stiff
With inaction, curved back
Into life, and hunted the mouse

With deadly overexcitement,
The beetles reclaimed their field
As we clung, glued together,
With the hooks of the seat springs
Working through to catch us red-handed
Amidst the gray breathless batting

That burst from the seat at our backs.
We left by separate doors
Into the changed, other bodies
Of cars, she down Cherrylog Road
And I to my motorcycle
Parked like the soul of the junkyard

Restored, a bicycle fleshed
With power, and tore off
Up Highway 106, continually
Drunk on the wind in my mouth,
Wringing the handlebar for speed,
Wild to be wreckage forever.

James Dickey, “Cherrylog Road” from The Whole Motion: Collected Poems 1945-1992. Copyright � 1992 by James Dickey. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress.



I made so many notes, and I crossed so many rivers, and I counted so many dead animals (seems I have some fascination with that--yikes!), and I noticed so many roadside memorials, and I tasted so much great wine, and I dreamed so many crazy dreams.

One day, when I finish my classes and before I jump into grad school, I am going to write poems again. I miss writing. I miss the way writing helps you train your eyes to see things differently, to want to dig down into that place in yourself that knows the way all of us on this planet are so crazy connected to one another and so utterly distant from one another.

I miss writing. I am going to try to write some more later. Work to do.

Forsythia...
is in bloom all over this town...I just love that word...forsythia...and I love the plant. It looks so spindly and ragged all year, but come spring, it outshines every other plant that's beginning to bloom.
Forsythia, anemome, sycamore, peony, lavendar, honeysuckle...those are just words I love to speak and read and think about...what are some others? Hmmmm....caramel, tangerine, marmalade...

I really was going to write something about all the roadkill I passed on the way to class last night. Bad, bad couple of days for lots of four-legged creatures and some web-footed ones as well. On a 19 miles stretch of road, I passed 3 dead deer, 1 huge Canadian Goose, 3 skunks, a red-talied fox, so many squirrels I lost count, a duck, at least 3 oppossums, 2 raccoons, and 2 rabbits. It was just almost too much to think about.

I do have a roadkill poem running through my head, but it's going to have to wait.

Time to go get Wes from school and then get back to work and get some work done! Busy, busy time of year in this office. Summer school starts before too long, I have at least 25 students graduating from various programs, I have more folks coming in to see me to determine their eligibiity for training assistance, one of our local factories announced that they are closing and laying off over 300 hundred people so we'll be doing all we can to help them, and a new plant is going to be opening some time this summer and will be taking applications for positions in 2 weeks--so...busy, busy, busy.

Like a baby, stillborn,
like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
L. Cohen



Everyone who Reached Out for Me

When I was 12, it was Carole Sue, only
she made the first tear, really, when she
called me uppity white girl (though she was whiter
than a North Pole ice-cap and my skin was Mediterranean
golden olive or some such golden color). For two

years, we were blissfully happy in our mutual discontent.
We became best friends when she nearly lost her arm
in a tangle with my kitchen storm door. That
was long before safety glass and 911, so I grabbed
the closest piece of cloth I could find (which happened
to be momma's favorite linen table cloth that was stretched
over the line in the laundry room) and by golly, I stopped
that bleeding long enough for the ambluance to get there.

And I think we might have made it without ever a bump
in the road, but she did a stupid thing--the stupiest thing--and kissed
Matthew Hawkins, who was just a little bit more than a bump in the road
(and a whole lot less than a best friend though I didn't know that then).
So I tore into her pretty white face with my hard-clinched
little uppity fist and showed her just how mean a golden girl could be.
That' s when I decided there was something to be said for tearing
things apart without actually making a tear, without really hearing
something rip or break, without making a sound sometimes. Knowing
was enough.


Good old Carole Sue. I wonder where she is these days. I really want to do something with the whole tearing idea because, well, because it's not just an idea. It is real. It has been a pattern of mine. I feel like I always do something to sabotage a relationship. I want closeness and I fear it. I know what it is to be close and I love what I know, but there is so much fear in closeness. Fear and pain and worry and having to have faith. Faith is the most difficult, I think, but fear is what grips me most of the time. I think if I had some faith, then I wouldn't be so fearful.

Geez am I tired! Still not sleeping well. Still having to deal with my raging hormones. Still feeling somewhat bored with myself.

Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free.

Listening to Leonard Cohen on the way to work this morning. My 15 year old son and his friends that ride to school with us every day always say, "Wes's mom has the coolest music!" That is, until I put on L.C.! Give them time and they'll love the man!

I feel like that bird on a wire--more like the drunk in a midnight choir...oh, and those lines in which he says, "Like a baby, stillborn, like a beast with his horn, I have torn everyone who reached out for me."

Yep, I feel like I've done the same damned thing--torn everyone who reached out for me. We're all just trying to be free. It's a hard thing. It's hard. It's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard rain's gonna fall....circling round like I do when I listen to music.

When I was listening to Cohen, I was thinking about Buckley's version of Hallelujah, and then once I started thinking about Buckley, I started thinking about Nina Simone--Lilac Wine

I lost myself on a cool damp night
gave myself to that misty light
was hypnotized by a strange delight
under the lilac tree

I make wine from the lilac tree
put my heart in its recipe
it makes me see what I want to see
and be what I want to be

well, I think more that I outta think
do things I never should do
I drink much than I outta drink
because it brings me back you

Lilac wine is sweet and heady/like my love/lilac wine, I feel unsteady/ where's my love?

or something to that affect

And then from Nina, I go to Cat Power (she covered Wild is the Wind on her covers CD)

and then I start thinking about my daughter and wondering how she and Ville (pronounced Vil-la) are doing.

Then I start singing some of Ville's songs off the Mattoid CD "Hello"
Funeral Party
Rat Poison

Then I start thinking about the rain and I am back to Cohen and searching for the CD that has Famous Blue Raincoat on it. Then I want to be anywhere except driving my car to work. Well, no, not really anywhere. For example, I don't want to be in the Muhlenberg County Jail!

A poet from M'ville has a chapbook called "Counting Down the Days in the Muhlneberg Co. Jail". I lost my copy and don't know where to get another, and he and I are no longer in touch, so I probably won't get another, but it was a damn fine chapbook.

And so round and round go the thoughts and I can't get any work done and I am way behind!!!!