Swedish

When the phone rings, I pick up and an odd pause ensues, there is every sensible reason to hang up.  It's clear what's happening.  Some pitchman is working the phones, seated in some cubicle in some boiler room operation somewhere, and my number has just been hit by a computerized auto-dialer.  And I am about to be hit also.  Although, hope springing eternal, something in me cannot quite give up believing that it's actually a friend calling, someone having dialed the number and gotten lost in a sneeze, a crying child, a heart attack.  And so I answer, and so it goes, something like this.

"Hello, this is Margaret from Nuance Software, producer of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  How are you today?  I hope Dragon is working well for you."

What Margaret does not know is that I am actually listening.  I am not only attentive to the data stream emanating from her mouth, but to the nuance, the subtle tonality for which her company is named.  Which makes it impossible to avoid the fact that she has left no conversational space for me to explain how I am today, nor has the absence of this information fazed her in the least.  Which makes me hurtle on to her last utterance, to which I respond instantly and in detail.

"I am getting repeated error messages from Dragon."

Oh, Margaret says.  That is the sum total of her response from the value-adding position she holds within the firm producing the software that is producing the error messages.  Oh.  I ignore this also, asking if I should get a screenshot of the error message and send it to her.  Oh.  She gives me, instead, the number (not toll-free) of the Nuance Software technical support line, which if I was foolish enough to dial it, would provide entrée to another set of charges, hourly ones, for help in solving my "problem," which by any sane standard is not my problem, but theirs.  It is only 9:30 AM, and I'm 63 years old and thinking that if Margaret persists, I may hit 73 by noon.

I observe that the number of Technical Support is available on the Nuance website.  I pause.  A telephonic silence reverberates across the nation, Nuance being in Massachusetts, me in California.  Actually, this pause may even extend longer and farther, considering that Margaret may not work for Nuance, let alone be in Massachusetts.  Good money says that at home Margaret answers to Chaya, frequently downs a vindaloo curry and reads the online Times of India, while I am fast asleep.  But never mind.  For now, there is a silence, an uncomfortable one for any person attentive to nuance which, despite her employer's namesake, Margaret isn't.

"We have some wonderful deals on scanning and character recognition, up to 80% off," Margaret says.

"So this is a sales call," I say, doing my best to sound surprised.

"No, it's not a sales call.  I'm just telling you about some opportunities.  You might want to know."

"Oh," I say.  Another silence ensues, opening a long staticy space on the phone line.  I can't recall if Margaret actually hung up on me, or muttered goodbye first.  It doesn't matter.  What matters is that I got my curmudgeonly rocks off, as it were.  I am not in the best of moods.

With the anniversary of Marlou's death looming, anger dominates my days.  For me, it's not the prettiest of emotions to feel about someone's passing, but it's there.  Authentically there.  Perhaps a response to critical mass, me schlepping about a half-dead body while forced to watch my wife turn into a complete one.  Too much to feel at the time, perhaps.  Something that had to get put on hold.  And remains too wildly contradictory to grasp.

I am irritated, not only with Margaret, but with much of what goes on around me.  This is now a chronic condition, one that has spanned the entire year since Marlou's passing, lets up only occasionally and must be accepted.  Why?  What is it?  In its better dimension, an insistence on the genuine, the substantive.  At its worst, it's just plain anger and irritability.  In this and in other ways, proximity to death transforms us, I am convinced.

And who wants to be transformed?  I am having enough trouble with my wheelchair.  The new one, Swedish, with front wheel drive.  I'm too old for this.  When wheels drive a vehicle from the front, each turn makes the rear wheels swing out.  No wonder I can barely get through a doorway with this thing.  Most doorways lead into a room.  And rooms are not infinite in their dimensions.  Upon entering a room, most rooms that are not Westminster Abbey, one turns.  And with this wheelchair you'd better start turning as you're entering, because otherwise the rear of your wheelchair will get jammed against the doorway.  It's maddening, and since I tend to blame myself for every maddening thing that happens, the whole Swedish wheelchair switch has become emotionally exhausting.  Which is why I jump in the Swedish model to visit Clint.

It's distracting.  I need something else to worry about on the way to visiting Clint in his afternoon chemotherapy salon, which happens to be that of my deceased wife, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation.  So I set off in the Swedish vehicle, heading straight down Live Oak Avenue, ever lifeless and oakless, my wheelchair fishtailing merrily along.  And I even get to the Caltrain station on time.  The train is on time.  Everything is on time.  Except that everything is not as it should be, there being two wheelchairs waiting for two wheelchair spaces on the train, one already occupied.  Requiring a game of musical wheelchairs, were it not for the conductor, who has the decency and imagination to handcrank my chair aboard the bicycle car.  

Things are fierce inside the bike carriage.  Everyone is standing up, holding their bicycles for immediate evacuation at the next stop, Palo Alto, less than one mile away.  And, yes, this is a rather silly trip to be taking by train, but as I said, distraction is good, and I relish another trip to the chemotherapy department as much as I do to the neighborhood mortuary.

Never mind, for within minutes, the bicyclists have hurtled off at Palo Alto station, with me right behind, and I am rolling toward Clint.  He's more or less where I had expected, but it seemed a preposterous fantasy to actually find him in the same chemotherapy chair Marlou occupied only 18 months ago.  Yet there he is, beaming and simultaneously phoning and laptop computing.  Overhearing his conversation with Phyllis, I learn that the chemotherapy has been working, noticeable improvement on several bodily fronts.  What the hell.  What's not improving is my recollection of Marlou being here, the passage of one year, but also, what the hell.  A few midday tears, some jokes with Clint, my general admiration for his spirit and courage, and I am off to lunch.  The day is only half over, and I am exhausted.

But things are moving, moving as they should.  There's going to be a one-year observance of Marlou's death, Friday, 2 April, at Keddem Congregation, Palo Alto.  And how I'm going to get out word via e-mail, such address lists long forgotten and out of date anyway...well, it's anyone's guess.  But how I've gotten through the last year is anyone's guess too...unless one considers the obvious.  I have had a lot of help.  And I am grateful.