Life as an Extreme Sport

Author: Kelly

slipping sand

Duct Tape and Prayers

I’m in Oregon.

Things got a lot worse in the time it took me to travel – I’m trying not to hold that against people, or most of all myself – I made the decision to stay until I did out of my insane sense of responsibility, after all. And in talking with my sister, I learned that really, Mom hasn’t been “here” since we saw her in August. Thinking back, I can see signs of decline even then – we all can.

That doesn’t make it easier.

Her kidneys appear to be shutting down, and there’s edema. She’s barely cognizant, period – if I’m lucky she’ll have one more period of lucidity before she dies. Hospice, this morning, said it won’t be long.

We’re going to give her permission to go tonight, when the entire family is here. It probably won’t be long after that.

I’m upstairs in my room crying right now. I had finally made it downstairs – Mom likes to have her morning getting together in private, with Tracy, plus she didn’t really sleep last night. (I’ve taken over baby monitor detail for this floor, so Dad can get some much needed sleep. I don’t sleep, so it works out well.) I just…

Yesterday she was drinking out of a straw. Today, she can’t manage that, and Tracy was giving her apple juice with a spoon. And I just lost it. And the first rule of fight club Mom dying is we don’t cry hard in front of her. A few tears seem to be okay, but we want her to be comfortable, content – we don’t want her to be sad as she dies.

Tracy was telling me this morning she was asking for my grandmother, Dad’s mom, last night. To say Grandma and Mom didn’t get along is, well, the most amazing understatement of the year, so… it was interesting, to say the least.

But right now I’m in my sister’s bedroom, which is mine for the time being, crying and, of all things, working and typing, because I need something to do with my hands. I also took half a sedative – I’m going to need to live on those for the next few days.

I am rambling. But I made the decision I was going to write about this, and everything that goes with it, because no one does. No one talks about it. People just tiptoe around and say platitudes and… my mother, my beautiful, amazing mother, deserves better than that.

under a bus

...and everything else, blog as therapy, Duct Tape and Prayers, life and living

There’s been a lot of language about not throwing people under buses, and being careful in action. I learned today just how one way that expectation can really be. While I’m trying not to be pissed off, I’m furious. I’m livid, to be honest – madder than I have been in a long time.

I spent a long time talking to someone who’s found the most adorable animated bear for “giving hugs” online, and we talked about how similar we are in hating large gestures and big compliments. I realized, when talking to him, that the big gestures are almost offensive because they seem to imply there’s something special about just doing my job. And I am many things, but I am not lazy, and I have a strong and fiercely determined work ethic – once I become involved in a project, especially emotionally, or if I at all begin to view it as mine, I will work my ass off to make it the best thing possible. Because that’s what you do – that’s what it means to have a work ethic.

I hate giant expressions of gratitude for doing, what at the very basis, is simply doing my job. S~ has compensated for this by saying things like “I know you hate compliments, but you’re the [fill in the blank].” It’s humorous and gets the point across.

But when we were talking today, we realized we’re the same in that for us, expressions of gratitude are the small things – as are expressions of empathy, friendship, etc. It’s the picking up of a latte when at Starbucks, because you know it’s what the person would want or because you’re just thinking about them. It’s about giving rides to the airport, or picking someone up. It’s insisting on taking someone out to dinner as a thank you for a specific project, or a birthday. It’s leaving a bottle of wine as a gift, unsaid, because you think it will be enjoyed.

These small things for me are the things that say “I appreciate you.” I know I’m needed – it’s not arrogance, it’s simply knowing I’m good at what I do, and that I pour my heart and soul into it, because if I’m going to do something, I’m going to be excellent at it. That’s just how I am. For me, what matters is those small gestures of appreciation and shared time. Of, for example, S~ spending the hour talking to me he didn’t really have, this afternoon, when he realized how upset I was, because he knew I was upset and that talking was just the thing that was important.

Maybe that’s it, too – about prioritizing importance. You can tell me something as much as you want, but if your action doesn’t match your words…

I don’t know. I’m tired, I’m angry, I can’t lift something as simple as an empty suitcase to pack, and didn’t have a chance to FedEx the boxes of packages – which means I do it in the morning and risk losing the important parking spot, or just figure out how to get it on the plane with me. I don’t know. I’m overwhelmed, because I had the rug pulled out from under me, and was unable to complete several long lists of things I had made and needed to do prior to leaving.

Maybe in three days I’ll laugh about this. I can only hope.

Sally’s Song

...and everything else, Duct Tape and Prayers, life and living

I have a problem. I’m being treated for it – for at least the chemical symptoms, I’m on antidepressants, which is a good thing, since it addresses the problem with my arm, as well as that other problem. The one about not handling my mother dying at all well, or with anything approaching grace or dignity or serenity or any of the things I should be.

But I can’t motivate myself to do much of anything, other than lay in bed. I realize this is exacerbated by just finishing ASBH, and being tired from that, but I have spent the last two days alternating between sleeping and crying until I decide that’s enough and sedate myself to stop crying, which often leads to falling back asleep. I’m slipping further and further behind on schoolwork, and the fact that my stomach has once again refused to keep anything down the last 12-odd hours isn’t helping. (No pain control, no sedatives, no nothing but me, raw thoughts, raw pain.)

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to get around this. The prescribed antidepressants don’t appear to be doing anything – I haven’t seen a difference, anyhow, or felt one. I’m not sleeping more, if anything I’m sleeping less. The pain is ratcheting up and out of control, and I know that’s because it’s connected to dopamine and serotonin levels in my brain, which are obviously bottoming out.

I’ve mentioned this to the university adviser, who’s told me that maybe it’s time to just stop, step back, and take care of myself. I haven’t mentioned it to the other adviser, because I haven’t been able to get a meeting. I’m sure I could if I made it dramatic, if I said I think I’m starting to fall apart at my seams, but that feels disingenuous, even if it might be true.

It could be weeks, it could be months – hospice hasn’t told my family to start preparing, so there’s some time. But every morning I wake up thinking I don’t belong here right now, I belong there. Every day is a day wasted, a day I could be spending the precious little time left with my mother. My career is safe, my job can be done anywhere – as evidenced by the fact I do it from home more often than not. School will wait, but Mom won’t. Mom can’t.

I don’t even know where to begin. I’m so stuck, so behind, and the person I should be telling this to, who should be helping me figure this all out, just isn’t available. Not without some grand statements and gestures on my part, and that just makes it feel so false.

For whatever illogical, fuzzy reasons, right now I think I need truth more than anything else. I don’t need false pity or socially expected responses, I need truth. The truth of spending time, or listening, of caring. I need a truth that feels so fake when it is only given when demanded.

and i should edit this to note that so far, the last batch of meds have taken hold, so i will probably regret this when sober…

sometimes the hardest thing to do is practice on yourself

Academics, Bioethics, blog as therapy, Buddhism

I wrote this a few weeks ago, and in a tricksy move to make sure no one could know what I was referring to without talking to me, I held on to it to post at a later time. Ooo, tricksy.

More seriously, the number of people who read this, at least occasionally, has lead me to conclude that while I can still talk about whatever I want, with common discretion, it might not be a bad idea to blur the lines on continuity just a bit – at least in some circumstances.

Today has been a serious day for practicing loving kindness and compassion.

It’s either that, or burn bridges in a spectacular flame out that I would regret almost instantly.

The problem is, it’s easy to get stuck in circles of irritation, when I’m essentially by myself all day, and the contact I do have with other people is short/perfunctionary. A conversation I had with Stax earlier is a good example of this; by myself, I was just getting more and more irritated (and thank god I didn’t receive certain email at that time, because I swear I would have done/said something I would have regretted, rather than the more patient filing of the mail and not responding). But having to explain a more detailed and balanced picture to her returned me to a better center, where I could see the picture larger than myself and relax again.

Unfortunately, I’ve been alone with myself since then, and had plenty of time to narrow my gaze once more. I know that I’m doing this, and I am attempting to breathe and retain focus and perspective, but it can be hard. It becomes so easy to just think about our self as individual, and elevate our own issues and priorities above the rest. To always think of how you are engaged with others in the world is not an easy task – it requires a sort of self-sacrifice that opens up a vulnerability. Because to do this, you have to trust that those you are opening up to have also opted to open up, that it is not a single sided exchange, but mutual and respectful.

Which is not, of course, to say that the practice of loving kindness and compassion should only be generated to those who will give it to you in return. But there is a hardening that I haven’t yet gotten over, to practice loving kindness without self-sacrificing vulnerability. What I generate and give differs, and it is much better, more intimate and true, if I allow the vulnerability to be there. If I assume that it is returned.

But that vulnerability, tied to imperfection, can lead to taking offense when there is none, to expectations, to a host of problems where the kneejerk reaction is to lash out, push away, protect, destroy.

What does it say, I wonder, that it is such a human impulse to push and destroy rather than be intimate?

ASBH, wrapped

Academics, AMBI, ASBH 2007, Bioethics, life and living

I’m still in DC, sitting in the hotel lobby, wishing it was at all possible to simply snap my fingers, find a transporter, and end up at home, in bed, with the cats. I’d settle for a second best of in my hotel room bed, but they wanted the room so I had to check out. Bother.

I’m beyond tired, of course, although I didn’t have the as many days “on” as I was expecting. The hotel nicely arranged for me to have a good chunk – about seven hours – of Saturday off, courtesy food poisoning that afflicted everyone who drank from the creamer provided on our end of the table. Since I tend to take my coffee half cream, half milk, it was… unpleasant, to say the least. And of course, I did come back out as soon as I could, and went back to working. Because I am either ambitious or dumb like that – most likely some from column A, some from column B.

But it was a good conference, my glow cubes were an unmitigated success, and it was gratifying to hear, over and over, “oh hey, you’re Kelly….”

started up again almost 12 hours later, at home, as I am lectured by two upset cats
As I was writing, I got a variation of the “hey, you’re Kelly” and was joined in the lobby by an undergraduate student who “belongs” to a friend of mine. I ended up spending the next five-ish hours talking to her; we were joined, at one point, by a doctoral student up in Montreal I had met earlier in the day. The two have similar interests, so I played the networking game.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading and thinking since I started the above, and I’m not really sure what I think at the moment. I mean, I am – the conference was a success, I don’t think I screwed up badly in any political sense, and so forth. It’s just, as I was telling Michael when we spoke briefly earlier, that post-conference is a lot like post-teaching, in that the adrenaline drops out of your body and you realize how much of yourself you spent. It’s post-teaching blues magnified beyond belief. Only it’s also got an element of post-acting in it, too. When you’re in a production, you’re thrilled and delighted, and spend every second of the day with a small group of people – and the minute you close curtain and strike the set that final night, and walk out of the after party, how much you loathe every single person you just spent the last 6 weeks of your life with. Every quirk is an annoyance, every personality quirk a flaw. You hate them all, all the people you see and spend hours with daily, and never want to see them again – for about a week.

😉

The rest is still a jumble, I think, of things I need to process. It has been hard to not reflect on the last year of life, and the differences – it’s such a clear way to mark both time and change.