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Vulnerable Adult

When I see it in writing, and in light of this afternoon’s events, it doesn’t seem nearly as amusing as it did this morning on the WhatsApp chat with my friend Susan, freshly returned to her home in South Africa after what could only be called an appalling return trip.

She had come all the way from Cape Town for my husband’s life celebration. We’d had a wonderful weekend of visiting with family and other friends, and on Monday evening, somewhere between the plane’s arrival at Heathrow and her return to her flat in London, she realized she’d lost her passport. Or it had been pickpocketed. After doing what most of us would do in that situation, freak out, she searched the American Embassy website, found the earliest appointment available, (Friday at 7:45AM). She clearly wouldn’t make the flight to Cape Town scheduled to leave on Wednesday evening.

Susan is one of the most capable women I know, and by the time she had regaled my friend Bob and me with her story, she was well on the way to solving the problem. She described it as a generational problem which a quick call to her father in Florida straightened out.

His phrase “You’re an American” ringing in her ears, she walked into the American Embassy at 8:00AM the next morning, and out at 9:07AM with her replacement passport. Made the flight that evening, and “Bob’s Your Uncle.” Thanks, Dad!

Chuckling, she described herself as what some would call a “Vulnerable Adult” – further defined as the guy who leaves his car doors open, or his front door open, or his car keys in his car with the car doors open. When she used this term, I laughed in recognition.

I didn’t know it was an actual sociological term in the UK. “A person who is 18 years of age or over, and who is or may be in need of community care services by reason of mental or other disability, age or illness and who is or may be unable to take care of him/herself, or unable to protect him/herself against significant harm or serious exploitation.”

I laughed not because I recognize the description. Lately it describes me (in need of community care) but prior to that, our son. My husband and I raised him. He’s much better now than he was at 18. But I did just have to overnight his car keys to him that had been left in a bag left behind after his Dad’s life celebration last weekend.

First, I went to the UPS store, and as we prepared the package, the clerk looked skeptically at me and asked me a question.

Does this key fob have a lithium battery in it?

Umm, I don’t know.

Then I googled it.

Yes, it does have a lithium battery.

Then we can’t ship it from here. You’ll have to take this to the main UPS office tomorrow so that it can be sent certified mail. It might bring the plane down if it explodes.

What?

It wasn’t until the next morning when I was standing in the main UPS terminal that I realized if Chris hadn’t left the keys in his jacket pocket in the toy bag on the floor of my apartment, he’d have carried them onto the plane with 300 other people carrying lithium batteries in car key fobs in their jacket pockets. After pointing this out to the clerk, I got ridiculously peeved then when she still made a phone call to make sure I could ship the keys. $69.28 later, I left the UPS store, having successfully shipped the overnight package to my vulnerable adult and very much feeling like a vulnerable adult myself.

This afternoon I returned to my apartment between shows, and was walking through the lobby when I ran into one of my neighbors, Marilyn. Marilyn and her husband, Jerry are one of the nicest couples in the building. Jerry, who walked with a pronounced limp, instantly endeared himself to me about ten years ago, when we first moved into the building. Every morning, when I would walk our dog, he would double over and fuss over Lizzie, making her tail wag madly. He and Marilyn were always together – they were poll workers together at every election. She’s an audiologist, and drove what looked like a former police cruiser, and I would frequently see them early in the morning doing a car shuffle because they only had one parking space in the building. I think Jerry’s a teacher.

In fact, today may have been the first time I’d ever seen them apart. At this year’s Christmas party, I had been greeted by the two of them heartily and Marilyn had given me a big, reassuring hug and encouraged Jerry to do so, as well. (You may recall I left that party quickly, after losing it at a kindness uttered by another neighbor.) Now I saw Marilyn walking toward me in the lobby.

You and I have something in common.

I stopped walking, chilled, because I realized instantly what she was saying.

My husband died on Thursday. (two days ago) He was at work and they called me to say he was unconscious. Then they called again to say he was at the morgue.

What is going on in the world right now? I stopped and clung to Marilyn with a ferocity she certainly didn’t want. She wanted to keep moving. Looking over her shoulder, she almost accusingly said,

You threw yourself back into your work, didn’t you?

No, Marilyn, I took some time before going back to work. Please be kind to yourself. Take a little time off before you go back.

But I was talking to her back as she moved quickly toward the garage. I heard her muttering about losing it, needing to get back to work so she wouldn’t lose it. I recognized first hand her abrupt departure, her anxious gait, her restlessness, the vacancy of her missing companion. Reminded me of the forlorn looking pigeon on my porch this afternoon, huddled in the rainy downpour. It may not be technically accurate, but the term vulnerable adult suits many of us right now.

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Wedding without the Groom

This week I’m producing a life celebration for my husband. It’s a wedding without the groom. But I know how to do this. I’ve stage managed countless other events, even memorials before.

When you lose your spouse (every time I say that phrase I think back to Lady Bracknell’s line in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest: “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”) This, in turn, makes me think of Brian Bedford as Lady Bracknell which transports me to the pre-Els portion of Jimmie’s life.

(Readers are thinking, How can she have already digressed in the first paragraph? I invite you to peer inside the mind of the recently grieved person. There is no digression too unappealing to explore. In depth.)

When you lose your spouse, precisely at your rawest, most inconsolable moment, well-meaning family and friends ask about whether there will be a funeral. I know that funerals are the norm, but I can’t imagine how people pull them together at that moment. It was only about a month after my husband died that I was able to even imagine how to commemorate his life in a ritual we’ve come to call a “Life Celebration.”

Date. Venue. Guests. Speakers. Outfit. Music. Food. Flowers. Stage Manager. Program. Hotel. Transportation. Video.

This initial list can start the average stage manager panting with anticipation of things to order and to put in order. The list unfurls its own subset of questions that are more or less easy to answer once you’ve established the date, and the venue and have the Production Manager in your communication loop.

But this grieving stage manager had some additional hurdles to overcome. First, there is the sheer entropy of grief, that warm, swaddled state of incredulity; you are actually planning such an important event without the advice and counsel of your best friend. No one to bounce ideas off of, to run things by, to giggle with about what isn’t going to plan.

We pull on experience. Back in December, I began to pull together a guest list, determining that there would be 150 people who might want to come to celebrate Jimmie’s life. By the end of the month, I’d determined the venue, with a capacity of 74. Oops.

This first hiccough added a major need to the main list – web streaming.

So here’s the FB page where the event will be web streamed.

Date: Saturday, January 26, 2019 4PM

Venue: Web-streamed and some live participants

Speakers: There will be speakers!

Music: There will be some music!

Food: There will be some promised-to-be delish food from niece Niki.

Flowers: There will be flowers!

Stage Manager: I’ve hired a former student, Jennifer, to be professional me on the day when I can’t necessarily be counted on to be professional.

Program: There is a beautiful program thanks to my colleague and graphic designer, Chris.

Outfit: I went shopping with my friend and colleague, Tina, an accomplished costume designer. I knew what I wanted – a purple duster to wear over black pants and a gray top (which I already had). We went to Koi in Pasadena, parked in the 20 minute spot in front of the store, went in, bought the purple duster (believe it or not there was one), then retired to a nearby pub for a true English breakfast, complete with sausage and a eggs and a roasted tomato and a pot of tea. Success!

Hotel: Family and friends are starting to arrive today and tomorrow. There will be many opportunities to eat and talk about life and the wonderful man we’ve been so fortunate to spend my life with.

Transportation: Van to take family from hotel to venue. Organized.

Video: Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working with my great niece-by-marriage, Alisa Bargeski, on a video to celebrate Jimmie’s life and work and family. Putting that together has probably been the most satisfactory thing about the process and very healing.

With all these elements in place, the profoundly unsettling fact remains. The groom is gone.

I sat on the couch last night and the stillness of the interior apartment settled around me, wintry wind whistling just outside the glass patio door. I wasn’t weepy, just alone and somehow finally aware of my solitude in that moment. As I said to my dear friend Susan this afternoon, after all those years of knowing that I would be alone, I never visualized exactly what that would feel or be like. Isn’t that strange? But I know I am not alone in my life, that I’m surrounded with the life force of friends and colleagues and family. And I know I’m excited to see them at the “wedding without the groom” this Saturday.

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I’d prefer a puppy, thanks.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Do not misconstrue this as a secret request for a dog. I acknowledge my luck in having many caring people in my life who would jump at providing me with a new puppy. Please do not.

Have you ever noticed this phenomenon? When you are in the market for a new vehicle, or house, or dog even, you find yourself surrounded by dozens of the brand/style/breed that you’ve been thinking about? It’s been a while since I was in the market for any of those things, but lately I’ve noticed more people around me who have experienced significant loss. I am swimming in grievers.

Obviously, being surrounded by grievers is far less appealing than swimming in eager, face-licking puppies, but no less visceral. When we choose to notice our fellow humans and the all-too human experiences we share, they mirror our own frame of reference. Naturally. Narcissistic, yes, extremely, but also it can be comforting and reassuring.

We’re not alone. There are others who are facing or have faced the exact same thing we are going through. The predecessors can provide spiritual guidance. The successors give us a sense of utility when we are floundering with what we will do next. Each of us copes in our own intensely personal way. It gets better for a while, then we hit a huge grief pothole or icy patch and spin out. No matter how good our emotional snow tires are.

Due to circumstances I’ve begun to feel a bit like a grief vampire. They say that death comes in threes, and she has circled closely to my orbit and plucked away three important people to close friends in a very short time. The rest of my constellation is surely holding their loved ones close and struggling to maintain the apogee of orbit from those of us with loss.

And yet, they’re not. I’m stunned on a daily basis by people’s thoughtfulness, and consideration of what I’m going through. Earlier this week a colleague made me a quiche and dropped it off at work. Last night I took a bath in the light from a candle given to me by a neighbor. One of these days, I will finish the 1500 piece puzzle given to me by a colleague. I will either complete it, or in a fit of pique, will attempt the magician’s tablecloth trick which will end the puzzling for the season.

When comparing notes with my close circle of Widow/er/s, I’ve discovered that it’s acceptable to have begun talking to myself. Mind you, I’m not talking to Jimmie (most of the time), but talking myself through the steps of a given task.

Yesterday, in a moment of self-care, I signed up for a new app called emeals, which was recommended to me by my office-mate, Hannah. Check it out. Despite the cozy picture of the couple cooking together and the fact that it doesn’t cater to singles, it’s amazing. You pick your menus for the week, it downloads a shopping list, and even links to Instacart or other delivery services. I got very excited, picking four things – beef barley soup (slow cooking), grits with eggs and arugula (breakfast for dinner), and a few others. The shopping list was full of arcane items like fig preserves and frozen cheese biscuits that would challenge any half-hearted shopper so I linked to Instacart for delivery between 8-9pm last night.

Then I promptly forgot, realizing at 7:50 as I sorted crew participants for the class that I teach that I needed to be home to receive delivery. I bolted from my office and when I walked into my building at 8:08 I received the shattering news that my 32 arcane-Els-you-will-never-find-this-on-your-own items had been canceled from my cart. I imagined the beleaguered Instacart shopper stomping their feet, then having to return the items to the shelves in a pique of anger.

I spent about 5-8 minutes huffing around the store, looking for someone to complain to (they were all gone) before grabbing a cart, unchecking all the items on the shopping list, and beginning to fill my cart myself. Mindful self care. I calmed myself with the task at hand (filling the empty refrigerator at 8:45PM so I could feed myself). Checking out the other people who did their shopping that late and thinking I spotted a few other grievers in the store. But it could have just been projection on my part.

One day at a time. One meal at a time. Using the tools and technology to ease the process of rebuilding.

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Nana on the Train

I’d boarded the train, and was seated in my roomette, Car 1433, Room 8. Though Wifi was advertised, please note that this was the suggestion of wifi, proving to be extremely spotty (hence the delay in this post). I had an idea that I’d listen to Pandora, but it quickly became clear that wouldn’t be happening. Hmmm. let’s see if I can save my drafts….

Saturday morning, I arrived early at Union Station with my new suitcase and backpack, enough time to get a cup of tea before boarding the train. When in Union Station I always feel like I’ve stepped back to the 40s, with the Deco chandeliers gleaming overhead, and the solid wooden upholstered benches corralled by brass stanchions burnished by time and heavy use.

I’m brandishing a new do, having gone to the Barber Punk’s, a loft salon that Chris turned me onto the day we walked around DTLA, and tried to take care of our own needs. I teased the Barber when I got my latest haircut that she’d cut my hair to Chris’ specs. She went in quick with the #2, before I could say, “Wait! I think I’m a #3!” As a result I look a little like “an escapee from Synanon” which was my Dad’s phrase when I did the #2 over my entire head one summer before I headed off to college. My niece, Niki, encouraged me to not ever forget my lipstick and earrings…. At Barber Punk’s, appropriate notes have been made to avoid this result next time, and since hair always grows back I’m not concerned.

The roomette was smaller than expected, based on my virtual tour of the Amtrak website, but of course, doh!, one only needs to imagine two roomettes that are the width of a train to realize what the reality would be. Spacious for one, I can imagine with two people and luggage it would be a challenge. The conductor was a little heavy on the horn, as we breezed through Simi Valley on our way north. The train was remarkably quiet, the ride smooth and soothing, the sun beaming in on the opposite seat, lighting up my bag of Christmas presents. Lighting up my anticipation of the next few days of travel and arrival.

Here’s the good news. Everything’s included in the ticket price for a Superliner roomette – all food, including dining car reservations made by the train attendant, who sported a shiny metallic Michael Kors purse when she came by to take the reservations for lunch and dinner. 12:15 and 6:30 were my choices, and I remain pleased with them. Especially in retrospect, when the full holiday capacity of the train delayed the later diners by hours. Some didn’t get fed. The dining car was behind me about six cars. Ricocheting off the walls as I walked through the cars, several of them festooned with Christmas lights, took me back to my train trips in Italy in my early twenties, and the disastrous and comic timing of our arrival in Pisa (our destination) when I was about four cars away from my luggage.

The view outside changed from urban industrial, outside Union Station, to Valley industrial (just a bit less graffiti), to the rocky outcroppings of Simi Valley, before we attained the ocean vistas near Santa Barbara. Nothing between us and the water but rolling banks of ice plants. (Forgive my horticultural inaccuracy – but it looked like ice plant to me….)

Traveling solo can be daunting. But on a train, it’s easier because you need to eat and eating is a community table activity. As they noted frequently over the loudspeaker, “if you are a party of under four you will be making a new friend.” At Day One lunch I sat with a young couple on their way to Portland for the holidays, and a woman about my age, on her way to Seattle, her son joining her on the train in San Francisco.

At the end of dessert, the awkwardness started to wear away and I introduced myself by name. Once I shared that I taught production in theatre at USC, the young man across from me, knuckles tatted and a trademark logo (R) behind his right ear, eagerly disclosed that he was a production manager for rock tours like Metallica and we discussed the complexities of the automation involved in these tours. Rather, he discussed them and I listened with interest.

Back in my roomette, with the darkness came the sense of isolation and loneliness that Elizabeth Harper Neeld addresses in her book on grieving. The emotional loneliness of missing the person you’ve shared everything with for fill-in-the-blank-years, and the societal loneliness of finding your place as a soloist in the world. as the light faded from behind the hills, I found myself dreading the trip to the dining room.

In fact, recently, I didn’t attend a party to which I had been invited and had accepted. I realized that it was the flying solo part that was too tough.

My grandfather once told us a self-deprecating story about how he’d wanted to learn how to fly and took lessons in a small single engine plane. The way I remember the story was that he was returning from his solo flight, and after landed the plane successfully, he stepped out of the cockpit, and right through the wing of the plane. That was the end of his flying career.

I didn’t want to do that at the party – step through the wing of the plane on my first solo flight. And so I didn’t go. On the train, my re-integration into the world was necessitated by my neatly planned appointments to eat. I met some fascinating people, two young animators (WB and Disney), a Metro LA employee and ferroequinologist (my word, not his). It was simple. We were defined by our destinations.

I’m getting off in Portland.

I’m going all the way to Seattle.

Our destinations precluded ever having to talk about my new status as a solo traveler, recent widow, griever, etc. No one on the train ever knew I was going through anything until I slipped with a kind woman traveling with her two sons, by mentioning I’d been reading a lot on the train, and she asked me what I was reading. Uh oh.

A book on grieving.

Fortunately, she didn’t follow up. I appreciated that.

This is where I’m at at seven weeks. Fear of the future, fear of the past, fear of facing the necessary steps to make myself whole again. Excitement about learning to fly solo.

The train trip was a chance to reflect. In between naps. After lunch Day 2, when I woke up from a nap, the rain which had earlier tear-streaked the windows outside had changed to snow, and the deep accumulation chilled the windows to my left. I felt snug inside, listening to classical music and typing furiously.

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Understudy Rehearsal

Stage managers, in the course of their work, frequently have to put actors into a show when circumstances arise that prevent a regular actor from performing. Plays have understudies, who are contracted to start, usually a week or so before a play opens. This means stage management begins rehearsals during the preview week, when rehearsals for the regular show are happening during the day, and previews at night. Everyone is exhausted at this time in the production arc, but Stage Managers know that it is critical to have at least one, if not two rehearsals that week. That way, the understudy can go on “on book” – an occurrence one wouldn’t wish on anyone, but a legitimate state of performing per our Actors Equity Association rulebooks. 

This way the producers are covered if someone gets sick, or has to leave the show abruptly due to occurrences like the ones that underlie this post. And stage managers know how to rehearse actors to put them into shows. We know the blocking, we know the intent of each scene, the director’s desires. On more complicated shows, we’ll create tracking sheets for each actor, so that if we have to insert them into the show, we know how to run a pick-up rehearsal, including just those parts of the play in which our understudy will be featured.

When you get to a certain age, you’ve accumulated things. If you are fortunate, as I am, you’ve accumulated good friends, close family, a comfortable workspace with supportive colleagues. But there’s one thing I’ve only become aware recently of how many I’ve accumulated, and that’s widowed friends.  I have a plethora of the widowed in my life.

Men and women; just counting on my fingers, I have two full fists of friends who’ve lost their loved ones, their spouses, their life partners. There’s a range of loss from 35 years ago, to 18 years ago, to 8 years ago, to just a few weeks. 

With all the other widows and widowers, I have turned my face and ear to them as a sunflower turns to the sun, drawing in their experience and wisdom, their references for books, thoughts about memorials, and life ahead, about clearing clutter. Surely that will make the path through grief easier, if it can be done. Why not do your research and make it more tenable?  And I bask in every ray of their singular and collective light as it illuminates renewal, a time when the pain is less, and when I know what my new path is. Who I am alone in the world. What my purpose is.

But it is the week-old widow (WOW) who speaks loudest to me. She and I have uncannily similar situations. Both married to actors more than thirty years older than we; both theatre workers. Neither of us religious, nor afraid to tell the truth about our circumstances. Both with irreverent senses of humor. Now we share a date of grieving that I never would have wished on either of us. But now that it is a thing, it provides me, and I hope her, with some solace. The morning of Jimmie’s birthday, while I was helping some neighbors decorate our lobby’s Christmas tree, she sent me a plaintive text that her partner had passed away.

How are we ever supposed to get over this?

Boy is that the question of the month?  And with the question came the turning point. From sunflower to sun, not that I presume to know a scintilla of what my widowed friends know, but I could keep company with her, and being three weeks ahead on the learning curve, I could share what I knew. 

And so, with my WOW friend, right in the middIe of my own “production,” I had the tracking sheets, at least for the first three weeks. I knew the blocking, the intent, the emotional pitfalls that might confront her. I knew I’d be able to push her around “backstage” and help her make her entrances.

A good stage manager allows the understudy to bring themself to the part. To interpret to a certain extent the lines so that they fit them and they can inhabit them gracefully. 

There’s nothing graceful about a five week widow. Trust me. But my WOW friend is a strong woman. And we have the history that allows us to speak honestly to each other about how we are doing. That’s a huge gift. 

One of the first things I had to confess was my obituary bitterness. Granted, I didn’t know the first thing about placing an obituary in the newspaper. Apparently, it’s something that should happen that day or the next day at the latest. I waited a week, only prompted to do so by my brother. Now my very dark advice is to write your obituary now so you’re ready.

Two days after I got the text from my WOW friend that her partner had passed, I picked up the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and saw his obituary in both papers. 

But see, those are the kinds of things you can say to an understudy. Both to help them through the terror, and also to make the process as fun as possible. Believe me, putting an understudy on is fun compared with this widow’s work. And to further impress you with the strength of my WOW friend, she conducted a real understudy rehearsal about 5 days after her own loss. 

I’ve started going to the theatre again this week – first to see Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol starring Jefferson Mays at the Geffen. He’s really terrific, as are all the production values. If you can get there this week, try, because it’s the last week. My friend Jill warned me about the opening of the show, where a dark Victorian casket sits center stage, surrounded by black feathers and haze. People are very thoughtful. That wasn’t, as it turns out, a trigger for me. 

Last night I went to Come from Away at the Ahmanson Theatre, the most exuberant and life-affirming show I’ve seen in years. You’ve got longer to get yourself there. It plays until January 6th.

Last Sunday, I went for a hike with my WOW friend and another Stage Manager pal who is not on the current understudy track that we are on. Instead, we walked for five miles in Griffith Park, up and down along the North Trail, the Bee trail, admiring the morning sun and talking about life in general, and the two of our’s newly widowed status. When I got home I was sore, but felt a sense of accomplishment from the hike to remind me that I was indeed alive. Painfully so, but good pain this time. 

People are kind and considerate, calling, texting, what’s apping (sorry Mr. Strunk, I’m sure that’s not a verb)…. Life goes on. We turn our petals to the ever increasing sun and await instructions. Building our new tracking sheets to better be prepared for future performance. My WOW friend and I stand together strong in a long tradition of life and living after death.

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Jimmy Tomorrow

Today it’s been a month since Jimmie died.

Jimmie came home from the Neptune Society. I called them Monday morning, after making my chili for the Chili cook off, a festive and competitive annual event thrown by the production students. Then I called the Neptune Society and they said Jimmie was ready for me to pick him up. It’s been a strange few weeks of limbo, not really knowing where his corporeal body was. It was clear and wrenching from the moment he left that his spirit was no longer there. I’d experienced this phenomenon twice before and regardless of what I believe about the afterlife, I know that the human spirit is free of the corporeal at death.

I inveigled my colleague, Hannah, to drive with me to Sherman Oaks, where the Neptune Society is, on Ventura Blvd. and Woodman, a hop skip and a jump away from our home of 10 years in Valley Glen. It was right around the corner where Jimmie and I bought the really comfortable 7′ long yellow couch we had for years in our bonus room, and I was reminded of how many emotional touchstone points there are in a life and in a city when you start to drive around. 

Retrieving “him” was surprisingly quick, signing some papers, and receiving Jimmie’s cremains in a plastic box in what I noted looked like a Crown Royal bag. Others who saw the picture more kindly said he was clad in theatrical drapes fabric. It was emotional being reunited with him, after 15 days of limbo, not knowing or being able to visualize where his body was.

Hannah drove back to school, Jimmie “sitting” on the floor between my work boots. I reached down occasionally to caress the strings that closed the bag. When we got back, I eschewed the chili cook off – all I wanted to do was go home and have lunch with Jimmie. I didn’t think the students would appreciate my showing up with Jimmie to the cook off. Talk about traumatizing. 

Home we went. “We” had some clam chowder, Jimmie’s favorite, (No, I didn’t put any in front of him) and he rested across the table from me  in his seat, watching me do some administrative paperwork with the death certificates I had also picked up. Now that there was at least a physical representation of him in the apartment, I felt better, more grounded. Not alone.

Later that evening, I watched TV, cradling the blue box in the crook of my elbow, chatting with Jimmie about how crazy the news has been and about the prospect of the rain that would be coming later in the week. It felt good to be reunited.

Tuesday evening, I attended the holiday party in my building. I knew it would be difficult as it was the first time I’d gone alone at that event, and though I’m on a friendly basis with many of the home owners, social chit chat is a bit fraught right now. I lasted about 45 minutes at the party before I felt a deep, gutteral grief uncapping somewhere in my solar plexis. It happened, as it is likely to, when I was talking with someone who knew Jimmie and who was expressing concern about how I was doing. I felt my face reddening, and I blurted out, “I think I have to go now,” and quickly scurried away, the emotional magma rising with urgency when I hit the outside patio. Once I was in the elevator, it came, hot and fast, and by the time I got to the apartment, I was sobbing uncontrollably. I quickly undressed, putting on the fluffy white robe that a friendly lesbian couple had given to Jimmie and me on our 30th anniversary weekend at the Langham.

As I’d been warned by so many of my widowed friends, experiencing the grief is essential and necessary. I sat on the edge of my bed, looking over at the photo of Jimmie, one taken during The Ice Man Cometh (1986) of him as Jimmy Tomorrow, which, due to the angle of the camera, allows his eyes to follow me where ever I go in the room.  Behind him sat the comforting blue box, and  in front of them both, I sobbed and tried to gain my breath. Ten minutes went by until I was spent, and then I went to look for something else to do. 

Fortunately, one of my friends had noticed that we had set up a holiday puzzle in our office to work on at lunchtime, and knowing what had transpired in my life, had thoughtfully purchased two puzzles for me to take home. I had just brought the Broadway Musical Puzzle home that evening, and so cracked it open to begin working on it. 

I’ve done winter puzzles every year for as long as I can remember. They are always intrusive to our small living space, because they take over the dining room table. This time, underscored by Broadway show tunes, it was the perfect invasion of color and the graphic comfort and familiarity of all those show posters spread out on the table like so many old friends. I made a cup of tea, and before I knew it, three hours had gone by and it was time to go to bed. And I was soothed and ready to sleep, under the watchful and protective gaze of Jimmie Tomorrow.

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The Grieving – Early Days

The second weekend was over, and behind me were  two lovely lunches with caring friends, Saturday at Fundamentals with Ellen, my neighbor and former spin friend from YAS, and Sunday, at Vespaio, with Rob, my fellow-theatre buddy which was followed by a visit to MOCA to see the exhibit, One Day at A Time, Termite Art.

This exhibit was particularly useful now. It featured the work of Artist and Cinema Professor Manny Farber, who created the term“Termite Art” to describe art that isn’t an identifiable stylistic school  focusing instead on the quotidian objects that shape our perceptions of our lives. It reminded me of the 17thcentury Memento Mori paintings, not at all stylistically, but metaphorically.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/StillLifeWithASkull.jpg/1920px-StillLifeWithASkull.jpg
Photo by Zak Kelley from the current MOCA Exhibit

Farber tips his 21st Century table tops up so they become flattened surfaces, but persists with three dimensionality in his objects. They aren’t as clear as the painting below in their meaning, but function as a visual blog of sorts, and not specifically about “live now because tomorrow we die” messages, but live now because we live now as unique and creative  individuals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori#/media/File:StillLifeWithASkull.jpg

This was an impactful and timely message for me to hear now, only a few days after the death of my husband.

“Farber championed art that was committed to observation, deep attention, and the unique temporalities of the quotidian. In his words, the production of termite art is a process of “journeying in which the artist seems to be ingesting both the material of his art and the outside world through horizontal coverage.”

https://www.moca.org/exhibition/one-day-at-a-time-manny-farber-and-termite-art

Last Monday’s “unique temporalities of the quotidien”  was the disposal of dead flowers. I had received so many beautiful floral arrangements, and they had begun to leer grotesquely at me, challenging me to disassemble them and rearrange the leftover flowers into something that will last a few more days.

Emotionally this is what I’m doing as well. Reassembling my heart and life into something that will last a few more days, weeks, months, years, decades, hopefully.

The task mundane, the smell redolent, I trimmed away the lilies, their faded flowers cascading into the sink, next the roses, buying more time with their sympathies and the beauty of their arrangements.

While I did this task, I wondered what my “tabletop” would look like now. Scattered documents from the Neptune Society, SAG-AFTRA, MisterRodgers USPS forever stamps and thank-you-for-your-thoughtfulness cards, an appointment card for Jimmie’s podiatrist whom I haven’t yet called to give the news, my checkbook, a typed list I’ve ironically entitled “The Hereafter List”on the table, my South African ceramic mug filled with chilling tea and milk. No dead birds, a theme of Manny Farber’s table tops, but that day, I wore the hummingbird earrings thoughtfully sent to me by my stepmother last Christmas, a talisman of our shared enthusiasm.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve heard from the many widows and widowers in my life, and they may not have any idea of how greedily I’ve drunk in their words and metaphors for their journeys.

Somedays you are in the boat, and somedays you are under the boat. I’ve found that the less you resist, the quicker the wave swells pass.

I’m sure you have many people, family and friends to be with you at this difficult time. The tough time comes when they all go back to their separate lives, and you realize your best friend is gone.

I know this is inevitable. I have been on the giving side of that unintentional abandonment. I know it will suck, but her words are true and it helps to prepare for that moment.

Remember that you are alive. He is gone, but you are still alive. 

Each of them has confessed: “I still talk to _______ every day.”

I’ve been timid to speak to Jimmie, feeling foolish to hear the shaky cadence of my voice in the quietude of our once shared home. Sitting on the couch yesterday, I looked over to where Jimmie used to sit from my chaise end of the couch and said, “This sucks, you know.”

So far, it is a one-way conversation, but that’s to be expected. He too, is busy getting his bearings in the new world where he finds himself. I’m sure there are happy reunions going on there, with his dear friends Jason and Steve, his brother Jack and sister Claire. All this spoken in the confusing maelstrom of my mind where I remind myself I don’t believe in the afterlife. 

I’ve begun re-reading Joan Didion’s “The Year of MagicalThinking,” a powerful book which I finally read last year because while I had thought I’d save it until after Jimmie was gone, I went on a Joan Didion bender and got to that book and thought to myself, “Jimmie is never going to die and I really want to read this book.” In the mind of a grieving widow, this equates into “by reading Joan Didion’s book I killed my husband.” I know how irrational it sounds and I don’t at all believe it to be true but I share these inner workings because this process is not unique to me. Millions of people lose loved ones every year. According to Quora, the estimate was 6, 775 per day in the U.S. alone.

Today I returned to work. Wearing a full-fledged head cold. One of my colleagues stopped by at 9:00AM with two boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts, the holiday version, and the classic.  Not that it matters but you may be proud to know that I ate the top left one and then we cycled them down to the shop classroom where they were happily ingested. I’m not sure what the message is when you get two dozen donuts where a box of 6 would have sufficed, but the arrival of the donuts was absolutely a joyous way to start a tough day. So, thanks PGA for reminding me I’m still alive.

The work right now is riding the grief like the wild bronco it is. Arranging my new table top is work for the future, but am inspired by Manny Farber’s joyously colored chaotic and richly decorated surfaces. I am also inspired by the way we humans make our way through the headwaters of grief and resurface anew, emotions perhaps rough, but memories intact. And one makes new memories, witnessed below.

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After the Fall

Arthur Miller’s After the Fall, a production of the Lincoln Center Repertory company, directed by Elia Kazan, and produced by Robert Whitehead and Elia Kazan, opened in January 1964 at the Anta Theatre in Washington Square.

Opened in rep with “Marco Millions” and “But For Whom Charlie” then continued into next season and played in rep with “The Changeling”; “Incident at Vichy”; and ‘Tartuffe”.

Jimmie played The Clergyman in the production, which also starred Jason Robards, Barbara Loden, Faye Dunaway, Hal Holbrook and Mariclare Costello among other actor luminaries.

After the Fall has taken on new resonance, as our lives have been shaped by a single event. Our short-lived period of pain-free peace was shattered by the nocturnal victory of gravity over balance at home one night in the middle of October.

Our dear friend Susan was visiting us from South Africa, a trip booked in a previous period of medical panic, and we were basking in the final moments of her visit, the night before her departure.  We were enjoying the end of the Major League Baseball playoffs, soon to gift us with a fourth World Series title in 15 years for our Boston Red Sox. Susan’s May visit was punctuated with an ill-timed trip to the ER, and this time, I’d made Jimmie promise we wouldn’t go again while Susan was here. Little did I think I’d be tempting fate with such a promise. The final night of her October visit, Jimmie tumbled, his Lear-like cry and the resultant clatter of his walker against the mirrored closet doors roused me from the murky depths of a deeply restorative sleep.

I rushed to his side, tripping over the too-heavy-for-LA-comforter which lurks on the floor at the foot of our bed. The fall was traumatic; he was shaken, but I checked him over and finding nothing broken, returned him to bed. The next day, we went to the ER. No fractures, thankfully. This photo we took in the hallway on our way to the ER as Susan waited at the apartment for her ride to the airport.SusanJimmie10-18-18After that foray to the ER, we returned home, and spent about 10 painful days there until last Thursday when his visiting niece Martha and I realized we couldn’t manage his care at home. We called 911 and two strong EMTs came and lifted Jimmie onto the chair gurney.

Martha and I followed in the car, and I caught up with him in the third floor ER. After a CT scan, confirming no fracture, he was admitted to hospital overnight.

I never thought this day would happen. I’d always sworn that whatever happened, Jimmie would stay at home. But when your husband’s a dead weight in your arms, it’s a stark reminder that we don’t always control decisions about our circumstances, especially as we age.

Pain meds are powerful and effective. When administered regularly, they have stultifying effects which exacerbate the pain even more. Pain causes lack of hunger. The combination of lack of hunger and pain meds causes a glassy-eyed ghostly non-presence which descended quickly and in our case, irrevocably.

I watched as my normally impish and flirtatious husband become a vision of St. Therese, gazing up in beatific gape-mouthed wonder. I’ve had a lot of time to think in the past days. These are a few of the things I’ve been thinking about.

I’ve worked hard all my life in my job, very often at the sacrifice of cultivating social relationships. I think it’s probably fairly common in an industry where “I can’t. I have rehearsal.” is a slogan on T-shirts. While I love the people I work with, I wouldn’t necessarily call on them to be with me at my husband’s bedside. That’s not the nature of our friendship. When the social worker said, “this is the time you need to call on your friends,”  I realized that our son is the only one I can really talk to about this.*

*Shortly after writing this, my phone rang and it was a dear colleague from school “just checking in on me.” It was so meaningful and amazing that such a brief conversation could have such a restorative impact. Since then, I have had numerous outpourings of support which have cheered us on.

No one prepares you for making tough decisions like these by yourself without your loved one’s input. An Advanced Health Care Directive and Medical Power of Attorney are critical to having control over your circumstances. After a day or two in the hospital, Jimmie wasn’t able to answer a question about what his level of pain was – how could he endorse my decision to take him home and cease medical intervention? These are conversations best entertained in the flush of good health during the early part of your life and marriage. Or the middle part. Tough talks. Gotta do it.

So many people have told me that I have to care for myself in order to care for him. Fighting away the doubt and guilt, the third night of his hospitalization, I succumbed and went home to sleep on his side of our bed, lolling drunkenly in his scent like a dog in roadkill. The next morning, Tuesday, I took time to vote before coming back to the hospital. They were right, I felt more like myself, less victimized by grief and loss of control.IVotedhospital

Now, about 20 days After the Fall, we sit patiently by his bedside, now home in the comfort of our shared world, Chris by my side, his little dog Cupid affording us all pet therapy.

The Hospital Stay Play (With apologies to actual playwrights)

Characters
Jimbo – our hero

Elsa – his wife

Lawrence – Trans Male Night Registered Nurse (Nights 1 and 2)

Emily – Sturdy Pacific Islander Certified Nursing Assistant (Nights 1 and 2 and Days 2 and 3 – they never let her leave)

Delauney – The intravenous gold that allows him to sleep in spurts of 2-3 hours

Ms. Contina – the pill that evens out the pain during the day and night.

Place: Limbo, AKA a room on the fifth floor of Good Sam Hospital

Time: Now, then, whenever, an eternity of time that easily spans hours, days, weeks

Set pieces – two medieval torture racks – one with electric controls to raise and lower the back and feet, the other, a decidedly analog roll out hospital cot. A rolling table that barely fits under the bed and rolls up to within 6″ of the patient’s chest, causes anxiety and revulsion.

Scene 1 – \Transitioning from the ER. Jimbo and Elsa enter, Jimbo on a gurney, Elsa, as usual, carrying too much for the given situation. Jimbo moans in pain. Elsa hovers, holding his hand as Lawrence and Emily get him situated. Emily takes his blood pressure. Lawrence nods. 

Lawrence: Jimbo, what is your pain level on a scale of 0-10?

Jimbo’s eyes dart left and right, pupils almost too tiny to see, his hand reaching for a hand to clutch. Elsa provides it. Minutes pass, Lawrence waiting patiently next to the bedstead, holding Delauney and a saline chaser in his hand.

Lawrence: (after several moments, giving him the benefit of the doubt) Jimbo, are you still thinking about what pain level you are at?

Jimbo: (silence. Mews in pain. Soon Delauney saunters into the bloodstream and we enter the Beckett zone. Jimbo’s head lolls back.)

(Hours pass. Elsa climbs onto the second torture rack and falls into fitful sleep. Jimbo’s passed out, sprawled on the pillows on the electrical torture rack.)

(Suddenly)

Jimbo: AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!

Els: (Springing off the rolling rack, wrenching her back) What is it?

Jimbo: Pain! (Els pushes the call button on his rack. Lawrence enters. Unawake, Elsa narrates what Lawrence is doing. Her lack of sleep and general gender confusion cause her to use the wrong pronouns and clumsily, finally, no pronouns at all.)

Elsa: She’s trying to get you positioned, Jimbo! ….helping you to be out of pain.

(once Lawrence has left the room)

Jimbo: Are we alone?

Elsa: Yes

Jimbo: Is she mad at me?

Elsa: Sorry, she is a he, and no he’s not mad at you. (a minute passes)

Jimbo: Is she mad at me?

Elsa: (firmly) No, he’s not mad at you. (a minute passes, and the hellish exchange continues three more times.

(Later)

Jimbo: (genuinely contritely) I’m sorry I can’t go to the theatre tonight with you.

Elsa: We’re not going to the theatre tonight, Jimbo.

Jimbo: Can they hear my voice on stage?

Elsa: Jimbo, we’re in the hospital. We’re not in the theatre.

Jimbo: But can they hear me on stage? Are we in the wings?

Curtain

More days have passed. In a fluke of the world showing it’s perfectly kind underbelly of good Karma, we were sent a caregiver at night who turned out to be a theatre buff, and kept saying loudly by Jimmie’s bedside, “He’s a National Treasure!”

We are still in the wings. To a transitional phase that  happened so quickly, so unexpectedly. Only two weeks ago we were back to a pain-free life together.  Treasure the moments you have. Be present. Plan ahead so you don’t ever have to plan under duress. (She said, sounding like the logistician/stage manager she is.)

 

 

 

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Before Your Last Trip to the Outhouse, I want you to know…

Jimmie and I have been dealing with health issues of late. I should say Jimmie has been dealing with the health issues and I have been following along behind trying to keep up with the details. I choose to think about these interludes as romantic getaways, because hospitals let you stay over, and provide you with a folding cot which makes your back feel the way it looks when it’s folded up during the day.IMG_8721.JPG

Four hospitalizations since August for the same man-plumbing issue have culminated in our most recent overnight stay at Good Samaritan after what is the surgery most dreaded by men. I have this on good first hand info from many of the men in my life who’ve had it and lived to tell about it. Ask any one of them what the worst word in the English language is. Starts with a c:

Catheter.

Watch them spit it out with disdain, a churlish look of scorn tinged with not a little fear. Watch their eyes dart to the left as their lip curls. P surgery, pee surgery it’s all the same thing in this case. But at 90, a surgery under general anesthesia is enough to get you thinking about death.

After the doctor left, having delivered the news about the upcoming surgery, we huddled together, Jimmie in the 1960s-era wooden hospital guest chair with the leatherette dun-colored seat that exhales like it’s farting every time you sit on it, and me, sitting on the edge of the bed, the sanguinating catheter bag huddled to our left like a resentful pet who has been ignored too long. Our conversation turned to the inevitable, which is, of course, truly the inevitable.

“The night my father died,” said Jimmie, softly, his gaze averted, “he went out to the outhouse up at the cabin in Maine. My sister Claire was there with Mom and Dad. He came back and sat down in the chair and then fell out of the chair onto the floor. Claire said she knew instantly that he was gone.”

“What did he look like before he fell over?” I asked, scanning Jimmie’s pallid face, so depleted from the significant blood loss over the past weeks.

“He looked fine. I think it was a happy time for him. He loved being up in Maine. It was a complete surprise. I always thought that’s the way I would go,” he said. “I don’t know if my heart will stand this surgery.” The other unstated message was that the recent events haven’t been a “happy time in Maine.”

That sat between us somberly, as did the knowledge of Jimmie’s older brother Jack’s untimely death from a heart attack and similar type of collapse. I felt my cheeks becoming hot. My optimistic, fix-it-all attitude was showing some pretty severe cracks. My rational mind struggled forward. “They aren’t going to suggest a surgery that they don’t think you can survive, Jimmie. Your cardiologist will evaluate your ability to withstand the surgery. It seems to me that the real question is whether you want to continue to live.”

This may seem like a really harsh way of asking someone, and I think it was, but I had just finished reading the Dornsife Magazine, Fall 2017-Winter 2018, the theme of which was “Grave Concerns: the Mortality Issue” so I was primed for the conversation. I looked into his eyes, still not looking at me, and he said, “Not if I have to live this way,” with no hesitation at all.

“Well, before your last trip to the outhouse, I want you to know….” I sought to convey my love and gratitude to him for our magical life of thirty-five years together, while nagging behind me was my arch nemesis and evil twin, Maude Lynn.

You’re overreacting, Els, she sneered. And as usual, she proved correct.

Jimmie took my hand, bringing it to his lips, and kissed it gallantly, as we professed our love for each other. “Let’s remember there were so many good times, and not dwell on these difficult times.”

I tend to be extremely pragmatic, accept difficult circumstances for what they are and move forward. It is a primary trait among stage managers and theatre people in general. But to be frank, looking directly at the loss of Jimmie and our life together isn’t something I feel pragmatic about. I prepared for this surgery knowing that Jimmie never expected to live past eighty; we’ve talked more than once quite frankly about death. He’s been more ill recently than I’ve ever seen, and the procedures he has been going through with this recent bout have created a new Jimmie, whom I have struggled to love as unconditionally as the old one. We prefer to be around people who are healthy and pleasant and upbeat. If that isn’t the case, you are probably in the health care profession. I so respect those in the health care profession; they don’t frequently get to see the old versions of healthy people, but dwell in the land of the sickly, frightened, enraged or deflated new versions of formerly healthy people. Earlier this week as I watched the RN in the Emergency Room working on irrigating the catheter, I said “It’s kind of satisfying, right?” Without hesitation, JP, a former youth hockey player, (we’d bonded about that earlier) now RN said, “Yes it really feels good to make improvements in the health of a patient.”

We recently changed doctors. Jimmie’s GP closed his private practice to reduce his working hours as he approached retirement. Jimmie’s new GP, is kind and direct and speaks loudly – either a result of his geriatrics training, or perhaps hearing loss from also being a musician (something I overheard him say rather loudly at his office during our first visit.) He described for us the romanticized Hollywood version of aging, a gentle slope of decline as you get older. He derided that fabrication. I watched him describe, his hands chiseling the air in a series of steps, that patients are more likely to go from a steady baseline condition, to an event such as a surgery, or a heart attack, or a hospitalization, after which they drop down to a new baseline. This process repeats and he said if he got to do a TED Talk, that’s what he’d tell us. This made a lot of sense. I’d prefer to hear it in a TED Talk than see it in my spouse.

Later that first night at the ER after Jimmie was admitted and settled into his room, I stumbled out of the hospital at 11:30 PM, exhausted after seven hours in the ER. The night nurse reminded me to bring Jimmie’s Advanced Directive to the hospital when I came back. I had, of course, forgotten. It took me two days to remember to bring it back with me. I didn’t want something written almost twenty years ago and hadn’t spoken of since to define our conduct should the need arise. Thinking about these choices is hard, but with the assistance of his doctors, we arrived at the decision to move forward with the surgery which happened two days ago. With a spinal, not a general anesthesia. They rolled him out of the operating room, and his eyes were open. I said, “Hi, Jimmie.” He said, “Hi, Els.” In retrospect, I keep thinking, “what was I so worried about?”

Every day we hear from family and friends, colleagues from work and we are buoyed by their support, their virtual hugs (Jimmie may be becoming a little bruised from all the passed along hugs) and the knowledge that this too, shall pass. Now that we are home, it’s my job to teach the new visiting nurses what medications he takes, and answer their incredulous question each time I open the door to a new person:

How old are you, anyway? (While looking down at their clipboards at Jimmie’s DOB).

We went to the park today and sat in the sun. Fingers crossed. Neither of us is ready for our last trip to the outhouse yet.