Losing

The best way to get back to sleep in those early morning insomnia hours is to lie there and feel your way into the true state.  The fear, panic, whatever unpleasantness is seeping to the surface, that's the place to go.  Everything forces you the other way.  It's too hot.  So, throw off the bed covers.  It's too cold.  Opposite.  This aches, that aches...so shift the afflicted bodily parts.  You're going to drown in your own panic....  Fear is stabbing you like an icicle....  Whatever.  Briefly turn your attention elsewhere, then back, back to the horrible feelings, and maybe you will wake up an hour or two later with a desperate need to pee.

The same, of course, should apply to the day.  Actually, the waking hours may be worse.  Distractions abound, everything in the modern world pushing us toward escape, amusement, satiation.  Perhaps it's harder to stay focused on the bad stuff, sitting in your reclining chair, knowing that beyond the blank screen lie 400 satellite channels.  Of course, the problem with the latter becomes obvious the minute you switch the 50-inch plasma on.  It's the net energy drain, a large portion of your cortex, and an uncertain amount of your soul, neatly sucked out of your body with the precision of an Electrolux.

Never mind.  One has things to do.  Among the pressing matters are the shorts.  Not just any old shorts, but the ones you are wearing these days.  The ones that fit.  Problem is, you have been wearing them a bit too much.  And since they comprise a single item of apparel, no other options available, there's no sending them out to be laundered with the weekly load.  That's why the current project in this particular morning is to give them a nice soapy go in the kitchen sink, rinse them and hang them out to dry.  So nip into the kitchen, place the stopper in the sink and....  There is no 'and' because there is no stopper.  Neither of the stoppers, the one for the garbage disposal and the one for the other sink, are in view.  Obviously, they are around.  Sink stoppers don't just walk away.  Don't walk away Renée, you won't see me following your sink....  So, a quick glance at either side of the sinks.  Nothing.  The adjoining drawers.  Nope.  How about the cupboards?  The pantry?

There comes a point when an efficient person, one with a real life, gives up on such a quest.  After all, there is also a sink in the bathroom.  One can even put the stupid shorts in a salad bowl, squirt in some soap and accomplish this task.  But, no.  The Quest takes over.  If you play it out, and torture yourself efficiently enough, you can spend a good two hours looking for the sink stoppers.  Which don't just walk away.  Although there is no available literature on the subject.  Stopper walking.  I must speak to My Sister the Choreographer regarding one of those National Science Foundation crossover grants for the arts.

The problem is that by the time one has dealt with the morning dozes and the time-wasting errands, particularly the fool's variety, there's not much to the day.  The stoppers are still missing.  Walking only in your mind.  And the day yawns like an empty dump truck.  So, why not call up a friend?

Sure enough, the friend is lunch-compatible.  So is the mate.  And now I have a life again, luncheon with those dearest and oldest friends, Clint and Phyllis.  Of the generous hearts.  Of the adventurous let's-eat-outside-at-Café-Borrone disposition.  And damned if they haven't gotten there first.  Clint waves at me from a spot near the entrance.  I haven't quite adjusted to his slowing down, the result of a series of musculoskeletal misadventures involving his leg tendons.  He uses a cane these days.  But it's no big deal.  And here's Phyllis who has found a table in the shade...except that she has her own shade...I can see it in her stricken face.  A natural earth mother, this is one of those moments when Phyllis needs the mothering.  I can tell, somehow I can tell everything, not the details of course, but the drift.  Clint has had a recent lung biopsy.

Bad news, he tells me, as my wheelchair footrests slide neatly around the patio table leg.  I turn to him.  He says it simply.  Clint has a more or less untreatable cancer.  At first, it seems I don't have enough information, then I decide the details don't matter all that much.  What matters is Clint's expression, his ambience, the vibes.  He looks frightened, even uncharacteristically diminished, vulnerable.  This takes more adjusting for me.  We hear little about the Earth Father, but Clint is the best representative I know.

Do I have any advice?  Separately, and in different ways, both Clint and Phyllis ask me for wise words.  Surely I have none.  And wouldn't it be presumptuous to advise in such a momentous time?  Isn't it better, in the inestimable California tradition, to simply say 'I hear you?'

There's an attitudinal shift of gears.  This is new for me.  I have never been a parent and don't think of myself as a leader.  Taking charge, or even holding forth, presents uncomfortable ground.  But here we are.  And we are all in various positions on the same plain.  I tell Clint and Phyllis that household help matters.  Paid or unpaid.  I speak of my own experience.  And I point out that after 40 years of hiring help in one form or another, this is natural to me.  Suggesting that it may not be so natural to them.  Advice?  Yes.  Mild and preliminary.  Perhaps later I will have more.  For now, this will do.  As for 'I hear you,' they know I do.  This is the part that does not have to be stated.  This is why they wanted to have lunch with me today.  Interestingly, neither of them is worried about overburdening me.  They seem to know I can take it.  And that I can give.

It's this latter part that I forget myself.  Which is why the afternoon, for all its sadness, has been a gift.  Our lunch is over now, and we are all heading out for the next mortal experience.  And being brought close to the specter of death is, in this instance, oddly enlivening.  I have something to offer, some life knowledge.  And I am not alone in loss.  Which is the day's best news, even though it springs from someone's sad news.  Loss and facing the end of life have no regular place in our day-to-day experience.  Which can make grief all the more isolating.  Which doesn't make sense.  At times, I even have the sense that Marlou's death has made me some sort of loser.  It's just a vague feeling.  But living in a society that is all about winning, somehow it has become a secret that we all lose.  And what we lose is everything.