Fall Healing Moon
Kate’s taking full advantage of the power of the waxing healing moon. She’s gained weight, had several p.t./o.t. sessions, has a brighter outlook and has begun to have visitors. I took Gertie in to see her on Sunday so she could report back to the pack that mama was still alive. It was a sweet meeting and as we pulled away toward home Gertie looked back at Brookdale, obviously expecting that Kate was coming home with us.
Fall Healing Moon
9 degrees here on Shadow Mountain with snow blowing in the air. A bit unusual since snow most often comes straight down up here, like rain. The storm has underperformed for us, but it’s here and I like it. Black Mountain is gone, disappeared by the gray blue clouds.
Without going into details that shouldn’t be in writing yet, Jon is in trouble again. To say that this is bad timing colossally understates the case. Kate’s in a delicate moment of her recovery. The stakes this time, as they were last, are very high: custody of his kids, his job, his ability to pay his mortgage and therefore to keep his house. He and the kids were up here yesterday when he got a call from the Denver Police and had to return home.
Not sure what to do, not sure there’s anything I can or should do other than support him emotionally. I’m not making any assumptions about the situation, about his “guilt” or innocence. I don’t understand it very well and it’s intricately complicated. I do know that the implications are dire.
Spoke with Kate yesterday afternoon and her heartburn/nausea from a breakfast without ativan prior to eating has passed. She and her body are trying to figure out a new way to live together, to become healthy again. Not easy after the insults of the last couple of weeks. She’s determined, stubborn and this last trait will mostly serve her well right now.
A mutual friend from CBE, Rick Levine, will bring a meal to Brookdale today at 4:30 p.m. I’m sure that’s well beyond whatever traffic difficulties the current storm will bring.
New snow tires, Blizzaks, purchased last month, sit in the garage still bound together from shipping. I mean, it’s mid-October! I’m not unhappy about that. It’s unlikely this presages the full on beginning of snow season. November, even late November, makes more sense as a time to have them installed. The reason I buy snow tires, even though good all-seasons would probably suffice in this milder winter climate, is that Kate and I are older drivers and need all the extra advantages we can get. I leave the lights on during the day for the same reason, that additional clue to others that we’re coming.
Fall Healing Moon
As I drove home yesterday from Brookdale Green Mountain Rehab, the healing moon was a sickle in the evening sky with gaseous Jupiter a planetary pendant sparkling beneath. This morning as I walked up to the loft Orion stood tall in the southern sky, guarding the entrance to winter, to the fallow time.
All this week we’ve had fog, sometimes up here on Shadow Mountain, more often after Aspen Park on the way down the hill on 285. Fog presents the mountains like a fan dancer, revealing this patch of rock and ponderosa pine, only to conceal it and reveal a gulch filled with a lower down cloud. The interplay of climate, weather and mountains. Beautiful.
A new phase of Kate’s ordeal has begun, a more upbeat one, but one that will demand a lot, too. In the first phase she had to endure, now she will have to act. Eat. Exercise. Eat. Exercise. Sleep. Repeat. She’s ready, but also tired, drained. Down to 80 pounds.
I’m putting my toe back in the water at CBE. Alan Rubin and I will visit Kate this morning at 9:30, then have some time together to plan next week’s religious school session. I feel a need to get myself out of the drive in, drive back, take care of the dogs, sleep cycle I’ve felt necessary for the past two weeks. Not all the way out, just far enough to reengage, to connect with both my commitments and folks I care about who care about Kate and me.
Don’t know how long Kate will be at Green Mountain, but I imagine it will be longer than I assumed. She looked frail, but determined when I saw her in her new spot. She’ll need that. A new cycle will probably emerge from this new living situation for her.
Fall Healing Moon
Feeling much lighter today. Kate’s headed off to Brookdale Green Mountain Rehab, probably after lunch. Bleeding stopped. Other markers like hemoglobin stabilized. Moving better, but not quite well enough to come home.
She’s also eating, having found that ativan prior to eating avoids nausea. This is big because it means she may finally be able to gain back some of her weight. More weight can mean more muscle mass, more muscle mass, less fatigue. Sjogrens has played a definite negative role all along, perhaps being the primary culprit behind her weight loss and fatigue. We might be able to fight back against at least some of it with ativan and marinol.
We both hoped that a positive from all this would be a way to attack her persistent nausea. May have found it. If we have, it will make for something upbeat other than survival. Which was, of course, the first and most necessary result.
Even my exhaustion seems less this morning. All along I’ve gotten reasonable, most times good, sleep. I’ve eaten. Trying to stay in shape for whatever Kate might need. Got back to my workout yesterday. That felt great.
There is, too, modest snow cover and the stage 1 fire ban has been lifted. Less to think about for now.
Of course, Trump’s still in office, but, hey, everything can’t be looking up.
Fall Healing Moon
Hard freeze. 23 this morning with some snow, mostly ice. A neighbor reported on Next Door Shadow Mountain that Shadow Mountain, 285 and even 470 were icy and in thick fog. Bad driving. But, poor conditions for a wildfire. That’s something.
Feeling a bit down this morning. Nothing 12 days of Kate’s hospitalization + general exhaustion doesn’t explain. We’ve both been thinking about death. She told me yesterday if things go south that her friend (and mine) Jamie Bernstein can take care of all her sewing stuff. I handled that poorly. “I don’t want to hear that. That’s not what you want is it?” “No,” she said. But she had breached that barrier and I pushed it away, out of my own fear, I suppose. Gonna rectify that today.
I’ve slept in our bed now for 12 nights without her there. She’s gone from the house and her absence is palpable, a thing in itself. She’s not on the bench in the morning. Not in her chair in the evening. Her sewing machine is back from the repair folks, but sits still in its rolling container. No hugs. No I love you’s before leaving and on return. Nothing can, in fact, be something.
Thoughts of a permanent absence, death, come easily in this situation. I don’t shove them away, I don’t embrace them. I acknowledge them as the mind running scenarios, what ifs, based on current reality. I also imagine her return, negotiating the steps, setting up the bedroom and the downstairs for her. All part of the I don’t like surprises part of the mind. A survival tool that can seem cold, unfeeling. It’s not. Just stuff that needs consideration, not rejecting.
Yamantaka teaches us that considering our own death in an unblinking way can cure our fear of it. I both believe that and believe I have reached that point in my own soul. I suppose there’s an analog here about Kate’s death. Hers is as inevitable as mine. And, considering it doesn’t make it more or less likely. It simply means that I’ve accepted an assured reality though the timing is, as always, unknown.
OK. That’s out in the open. Not an obsession. What’s happening occasionally.
Another hard part right now is odd. On Friday we’ll be at two weeks since Kate went into the E.R. Am I supposed to collect myself, get back in the groove, accept this bifurcated existence, her in medical care, me at home? I definitely have to spend time tomorrow sorting through the bills and starting to pay them. Something she does.
I’ve been cooking, doing laundry, keeping the house picked up, feeding the dogs, playing with them, driving in to see Kate, trying to keep up with the medical information. But, I’ve set aside working out. Gonna pick that back up today or tomorrow. I’ve set aside teaching in the religious school, attending mussar or the adult ed committee. I canceled the first Jewish Studies Sunday Sampler.
I’m struggling with what’s a normal response in an abnormal situation. Is it ok to just focus on the domestic, on Kate and on home? Or, do I rob myself of the emotional support I’d get from being back in the mix at CBE? What about the things I’ve agreed to do?
Or, am I too soon in thinking about any of this? How will I know? A sort of strange twilight right now, matters shrunk down to the nub, life at its most basic with questions of health, the future, even death in every moment.
Let me finish with this. I am not depressed. Even my slight down feeling I mentioned earlier has lifted somewhat as I’ve written myself into my current reality, leaving it all out there, not hiding. This is my life and unless my health changes it will be my life until clarity declares itself either toward Kate’s recovery or a continued decline, perhaps even death.
End note. I realized as I wrote that last paragraph that a key sticking point right now is uncertainty. Will Kate’s various medical issues resolve? That is, will she get well enough to leave for rehab? If so, when? If she’s in rehab, how long? How much care will she need when she comes home? I’m not wracked by any of these questions, but they illustrate the fundamental issues in play right now, with no clarity about any of them available. That’s what makes knowing how I might react so difficult right now.
Fall Healing Moon
If you’re interested and haven’t found Kate’s Caringbridge website, you can keep up more often on it.
She’s progressing, as I’ve posted there. Her attitude has brightened, she’s eaten solid foods including fish and pasta, and she passed a fitness test that qualifies her for in-hospital acute care rehab. Nausea is still an issue though Ativan seems to knock it back. Now the questions turn to recovery, to discharge. Still not clear even though this is day 11, unusual in these days of get’em outta here hospitalizations.
Annie’s been in to see Kate each day, bought stuffed animals for her, has helped with the dogs and the dishes, made it possible for me to see Kate without worrying about home stuff. Thanks, Annie.
Here’s how it is with me. I’m tired. Even though I’ve been able to extinguish anxiety, at least of a crippling sort, I’m still concerned about what’s happening to Kate, traveling with her along the emotional and physical ups and downs. When I go in to see her, it’s usually six hours plus, sometimes more, before I return home. At the hospital I see many more people than I usually do in a day, wearing for this introvert who’s happy alone most of the time.
All this drains me, of something. Not sure what, exactly, but by the time I get home, reading, do anything with intellectual nuance repels me. I suppose I could do it if I knuckled down, but that’s sort of the point, the draining part of all this takes away my will to buckle down, get more done. That’s part of what I’m allowing to be the case, part of the flow of the chi that I simply acknowledge, accept.
Interestingly, I have found physical labor soothing. On Sunday I went over to Big R and bought a 4x6x3/4 rubber horse stall mat. Kate had this idea a while back to mind the gap between our house and the garage. I mentioned it a few posts back. Got the pallets she wanted and I came up with the idea of using these mats as the surface for the pallets.
Cutting the mat proved a challenge. Getting just one was to see how difficult this was gonna be. Very. I tried a bolt cutter. I tried a hack saw and a miter saw. Then I had what was probably not one of my brightest ideas, the chain saw. It worked. But. The rubber particles produced covered the floor, my eyes (I put on goggles.), and got into the chain saw’s filter, pushing out an acrid, afternoon at the dragstrip sort of smell. Hmm. Better stop.
That was when I decided to check the internet. Oh, a box cutter. I had one, so I used it. It was a little dull and the mat’s are 3/4 inch thick. Not to mention that I’m 71. Difficult. But it worked. I got a somewhat clumsily cut mat that was 44.5 by 44.5, the width of the larger pallets. Plunked it down. These mats by the way are also heavy. “Like moving a body,” said the guy at Big R who loaded it in my Rav4. I’m pleased to say that after the snow and ice of the last two days, it maintained its grippiness and snow removal from it was easy. Two more to go.
If it gets a bit warmer and less inclement, I plan to start splitting wood.
Though when we went to the E.R. a week ago Friday this felt like a sprint, it’s obvious now it’s a marathon. For both of us. We have Beth Evergreen folks and family, other friends. So important at times like these, even for committed introverts (as we both are).
BTW: When I came home yesterday afternoon, the internet was down. I knew that meant we’d had a power outage. A transformer near Aspen Park. The point here: the generator was chugging away, keeping the lights on. Literally. Made me happy I went through all that bullshit to get it installed. Power was out for about 4 hours.
Fall New (Healing) Moon
Kate’s improved a lot. Bleeding stopped. Pain mostly gone. She’s getting some nutrition though a nasal tube and has eaten a bit. But, the nausea returned with eating. Damn. That’s so fucking disappointing. And, she’s been in bed so long that she may have to go to a rehab center after all. Not what either of us want, but if she’s too weak, then that’s what we’ll do.
After a visit to Kate last night, Jon, Ruth, Gabe, Annie and I went to G.B. Fish and Chips on Broadway, a Ruth and Gabe favorite. Family’s bond in many ways, but attending to a sick or injured member of the family is a strong one. And, it doesn’t stop with visits and care for the patient, but happens, too, in these after visit moments. G.B.’s motto is “In Cod We Trust.” Works for me.
Spent time yesterday in cyberspace, about an hour, with Paul in Maine, Bill and Mark in Minnesota, and, briefly, Tom in Santa Fe. Kate was an important part of our conversation since these guys have known her, and me, for 30 years.
There was some talk of how Zen my approach to all this has been. Thought about that. Really, wu wei. Often translated, inaccurately, as inaction. It’s a Taoist idea better expressed by Alan Watt’s book title, The Watercourse Way. Taoism and Buddhism in China created Chan Buddhism, the immediate influence on what Japanese Buddhist monks came to call Zen. Wu wei is a critical idea in that mix.
Going with the flow is not far off in understanding it, a direct link with the Watercourse Way notion. Essentially it means not trying to bend situations or force them in ways they won’t naturally go. Said positively it means following situations as they progress, trying to move with them, stay present. It does not mean there is no intervention, rather wu wei acknowledges the givenness of so much of what we encounter. Perhaps judo is a good example, where using the strength of the opponent against them is a main idea.
It doesn’t sound very Manifest Destiny, make the world free for democracy. We Americans, especially white male Americans, have this fantasy that we can bend the world to our will. Taoism is a direct counter to this, a way of revealing the fantasy nature of such impulses.
Instead with wu wei I try to follow the path of the chi, where vital energy is flowing. If Kate needs medical care now, I take her to the emergency room. If she needs diagnostic procedures or interventionary procedures, I learn what I can about them to help make decisions, to help both of us understand the implications. I interact with and try to make all of this happen as easily and effectively as possible. I’m not trying to force her medical care in a direction in which I think it should go.
A good example right now is the rehab facility decision. I want her to come home. She wants to come home. We could be obstinate, try to bend the physicians to our will, but would that serve Kate? No. We need to know what they believe is best for her healing and to act on that as quickly and fully as we can.
I don’t know whether I’m saying this clearly, and much of it is retrospective, not conscious at the time, but an attitude cultivated over many, many years. Part of the inner posture is also a product of existentialism. That is, take the world as it comes, as it is, not as you might wish it be. See clearly. Listen well. Only then can we make decisions that are human, not dogmatic or blinkered by personal bias.
What I can observe from this last week plus is that these attitudes, these ways of approaching Kate and mine’s current reality, has allowed me to sleep, not despair, not become anxious. In turn it means I’ve been able to show up in each instance where I was needed. To show up to what is actually going on, not what I wish was going on or what I think should be going on. Much, much simpler to follow the chi.
71 years have taught me somethings. This way of being, this wu wei, this following the chi has proved itself in the battle between my wilfulness and a difficult situation. And I’m grateful for that.
Fall Harvest Moon
A cool 32 degrees this morning. Some snow overnight, wintry mix. Anything to put moisture into these forests. Gray sky. Headed toward Samain. Harvest season slowing, the fallow time with bare deciduous trees is on its way. It is now, said Rudolf Steiner, that is the springtime of the soul.
Annie’s here. Glad she could come, help with her big sis. She got in yesterday morning.
Kate has been through so much since a week ago yesterday. The many tests, procedures, lines snaking in and out of her bed, her body. So much. And though the crisis seems to be over, a long recovery period will follow. The big hope we both have is that all this may have finally knocked back her persistent nausea. She needs to eat and eat routinely, not just when her stomach will allow it. As my great-aunt Mary used to say, “We need to put some meat on those bones.”
I’ll say a word again for living in the moment. It has been so helpful to me, to my own spiritual health, to stay with the worries of this day, knowing that tomorrow will bring worries of its own. That way, each day matters for its own reasons, its own occurrences, not clouded by fears or even hopes. As the paragraph above suggests, I’m allowing a little hopefulness to creep in, but I am not fooled. Whatever hope I have for tomorrow will only exist if we take action today.
And, a word for the dogs. Yes, they’ve called me home from the hospital, just as Kate has called me back to the hospital from home. Seems like a burden, having to take all four lives into account. But, no. The very act of caring for the dogs is immediate, in the moment. Their appreciation is, too. The house, with Kate’s absence, could have a hollow resonance, but it doesn’t, not with Gertie eyeballing the macaroni and cheese in the kitchen, Rigel jumping eagerly onto her couch after a long day outside, and Kep’s tail waving like a happy flag when I go to bed. Taking other lives into account is what makes us human and I’m blessed to have each of these lives nearby.
Today: grocery store, yet more gas, business meeting stuff. Tomorrow: move the grandkid’s tv into our bedroom, consider some other logistics for Kate’s homecoming.
Fall Harvest Moon
Reminded yet again of the evanescence of our human life span. As I’ve driven 285 down the hill into Englewood and back up again, some days two and three times in the last week (today is a week from Kate’s trip to the E.R.), I’ve become aware of the mountains in a new way. Always I pay attention to them, rocky outcroppings of gneiss and marble, sandstone, carved by small, powerful streams and covered with lodgepole pine, ponderosa, aspen, shrubby oak. The exposed layering, sometimes all aslant, sometimes straight up and down, and in at least one very beautiful, curious instance, curved like wooden planks bent for canoe hulls, lies open like a literal book of the ages.
The new part of my experience is this, motion and upheaval. Mountains are stolid, perhaps they define stolid in a way most earthly features do not. They stay there, the same each day, Black Mountain’s peak still in the same place as it has been since we moved here four years ago. But there is that spot, just before Hwy 470, where 285 slices between the hogbacks*, then the mountains are gone, receding in the mirror as I drive on east at the very end of the Midwest, the last hurrah of the great plains.
It is there, right there. Between 80 and 85 million years ago the Laramide orogeny found tectonic plates crushing against each other in that slowest of slow dances, continental formation and reformation. The result here at the hogbacks and all along the long collection of peaks and valleys we know as the Rocky Mountains shoved formerly settled layers of the earth’s crust into the air, up from the subsurface. The power and violence of the orogeny ripples past me, past all of us on 285, especially at the cut just before it dips under 470.
Apparently immobile now, the hogbacks steeply upthrust layers show the direction of its unearthing, no longer laid down below an ancient ocean’s floor, but blinking slowly like a lithic lizard gazing at the unexpected sun. I have no trouble seeing it slowly emerge, pushed up, up, up as forces way beyond human imagining tore it out of its dark home. 80 million years ago.
And here we are, tiny creatures in small metal containers passing back and forth through it, living our 70 or 80 or 90 years, then disappearing from existence. Let’s say 80 years for ease of calculation. At 80 million years ago that’s 1,000,000 human lifetimes. I would have to live and die 1,000,000 times to know the earth like those hogbacks.
Four years ago I wrote about the consolation of Deer Creek Canyon during my episode of prostate cancer. It was a similar feeling and I’m calling this the Laramide Consolation. Our days are precious, our lives unique, our presence in the universe irreplaceable. Just like the hogbacks. We, all features of cosmic evolution, wink in and out of existence, even the Laramide Orogeny being a mayfly moment compared to the creation of our planet and its creation a blink compared to the creation of the solar system and so on back in infinite regress until that thunderous blaze of first light.
The consolation here, at least for me, is to know that our life and death expresses what the Hindus call Shiva, the ongoing destructive and creative forces that underlie all. Death is not, in other words, a cruel punctuation, but a delicate force that refreshes and renews. Our consciousness of it, of course, colors our experience but in no way changes its necessity and its pervasiveness. There will never, never be anything like true immortality, nor, if we are sane creatures, should we reach for it.
*In geology and geomorphology, a hogback or hog’s back is a long, narrow ridge or a series of hills with a narrow crest and steep slopes of nearly equal inclination on both flanks.
Fall Harvest Moon
Clouds have begun to creep down Black Mountain while sunlight bathes its slopes facing us, lighting up the golden patches of aspen. Another of Black Mountain’s infinite looks. She’s a lady who dresses for the season and often appears mysterious, as she does right now.
Kate had an abdominal x-ray, an ultrasound of her arm, and began to receive nutrition through a mid-line. I’m glad because she’s had no food, except one clear liquid meal, since last Thursday. Her hemoglobin was up yesterday though some bleeding was ongoing. Contradictory (at least to me), so not sure what to make of it.
Learned yesterday that she’ll not be coming straight home from the hospital but will go to a subacute (whatever that means) rehab center, probably one in Littleton. Again, not sure why, though I imagine it’s because she’s been in bed so long and will need some physical therapy.
I’m cautiously optimistic though so far it seems to be forward and backward with her. We’re still not sure why she bled or from where. The nausea, which has been a cruel insult given her past six months or so, seems to be from her bowels not functioning.
The surgeon ordered a sort of lidocaine bath for the surgery site, surrounding the bowels in this non-opiod pain reliever. She’d been getting dilaudid, but any opium derived pain reliever tends to impede bowel function. Complicated and tricky caring for her.
And, yes, I’m pretty weary. Annie, sister-in-law, will be here tomorrow. She will be able to manage the dogs so I’m not feeling I should be home when I’m at the hospital and at the hospital when I’m home. I have been eating well, sleeping as much as I can, trying to create a regular routine so the dogs have a semblance of normal. But, that’s all I’ve been doing. At some point I have to pay bills, exercise, do grocery shopping. I have done some laundry.
One really big plus this time around is that we have a functioning dishwasher. When Kate went in for shoulder surgery in April, our dishwasher had just died and it took almost her entire recovery period to replace it. Having dirty dishes in the sink was a drag on the heart.
That’s the Shadow Mountain report for yesterday, October 3rd.