death

March 25, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 11 – Danny’s Song

My mother was my primary parent. She was the one I identified and spent the most time with. And it’s not like this was because my dad was a bad dad. He was a good role model and really tried. I was just a different character than him. Which is odd because we are very, very similar. I have always been a Chatty Kathy and my dad, because of his anti-psychotics, wasn’t very talkative. On top of that, I think my dad got in his head that since he never had a father he didn’t know how to be one. Whatever the reasons, my mother was the go-to parent.

I think she and I bonded moreso because my mother worked in Costa Mesa and she had found a private Christian pre-school around the corner from her office that I attended until first grade. This was about an hours drive from where we lived, so she and I spent a lot of time in the car. We would chit chat and listen to music. She would sing in her monotone soprano. My mother loved Mama Cass and Anne Murray. These were the ones I remember the most from growing up. (Especially Anne Murray’s Christmas album.) It’s strange to me that now whenever my mom gets upset, caused by her dementia, she is soothed with Patsy Cline. I have tried the other two talented ladies and she shows zero response, which truly saddens me. They are such a huge part of her memory for me.

Memory… I say it as if she’s gone. She’s not dead. She’s still alive, but the person she was doesn’t exist. That’s one of the worst parts of Alzheimer’s. It’s taken the woman I once knew and morphed her into this “bizarro mom.” One where she’s cruel, a liar, and exceedingly stubborn. The lying upsets me the most. She was never like that. Not once in my youth. She notoriously told me that there was no Santa Claus, at six years old, when I asked her point blank if he existed. For the longest time I resented her for that. I had wished she had kept up the charade a little bit longer to prolong my sense of “magic” and “wonder.” As an adult and thinking of the idea of having my own kids, I have immense respect for her. The truth is always the best. And because of her unrelenting ability to be honest, I could always rely on her.

It is such a weird experience grieving for someone who is still alive. Its even harder when you have to handle her affairs and possessions the same way. Even now as I write this I find myself deviating from my thoughts. All of this causes me so much trauma and I fucking hate it. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to see her change and I don’t want to lose her. Everything that’s happened thus far has stripped her of any dignity. It is because of this that I cannot for the life of me believe in a god.

My mother has always been deeply religious. She grew up in a devout home and spent most of her days at the church. She has lived her life as a good Christian woman, and how does this higher power reward her? Alzheimer’s. It’s a cruel fucking joke. One in which no one but this sadistic deity could find humorous.

It is because of this deeply ingrained brainwashing that, even though she had transcended her prior beliefs, has devolved to where she obsesses over the sin of me being gay. That is the one that truly hurts the most.

I know what everyone will say, “she’s not the same person” or “it’s the disease.” Yeah… I have heard it. But knowing and understanding are two very separate things. Especially when it comes to past trauma.

My mother’s and my closeness ceased to be when I told her I was gay. Well, when I told her I was “bisexual” as if that could/would soften the blow that she wasn’t going to get grandchildren. She had made her beliefs about homosexuality very clear growing up. I even distinctly remember her saying she was a “proud homophobe.” After I had outed myself she didn’t speak to me for a solid month. Then any communication after her hiatus was short and cold.

As time went on and after my husband and I lived with my parents for a year, while we got ready to buy a house, I think she saw how normal we were. We weren’t these sinful sexual deviants. We were just us. That’s it.

My mother was the one to sign our marriage license (I think I put her on the spot and she couldn’t decline or else look like a dick) and she even introduced my husband as her son-in-law. All this progress, all this change, and every ounce of it lost because of her disease.

The last couple weeks have been the worst. She is now seeing people who are not there, talking to them, and living in a constant state of fear because these delusions are calling her ugly and/or saying they’re going to harm me. She breaks down into tears because she doesn’t want to see me hurt. I hate all of this for her. This isn’t fair.

She is now on hospice care and while most always believe that the death knell is growing, this probably isn’t the case. There was a moment this last weekend where I thought she had died in my car, so I pulled over and dialed for help. When the ambulance came out and checked her vitals this bitch was in top notch health.

The only way she’s going to leave this earth is because her mind forgot how to breathe.

Now I sit and wait for the call that she’s passed.

March 17, 2022

My Bouquet of Balloons

It’s amazing how little I don’t know about my own emotions/feelings. It’s as if I hide all of them in these pretty little balloons to trick myself that they’re not there. But the strings are tied tight to my wrist.

Then when something with mildly jagged edges brushes against them they burst. They burst and I’m showered in my feelings and thin bits of rubber.

I explode. No longer can I pretend that those feelings weren’t there.

I want to know if that’s a me thing, or an everyone thing.

Today I was meant to meet a property owner to do an inspection. I called him at 9:05 to see if he was still coming. No answer. Already I could see the writing on the wall. (It’s funny how this same pattern happens specifically with multiple units.) I sat in my car, waiting, building up my rage by ranting to myself about this revision request I had received the other day. (They didn’t like the value I came up with for their rent comparables.)

At 9:25, five minutes before the end of our scheduled time, I tried him again. He answered and gave me this cock and bull story that his secretary was sick so he had to take her home… It was ridiculous. This idiot forgot about the appointment and was putting it on some other B.S. He informed me that the tenants knew I was coming and to just do it.

They tenants didn’t answer. Per usual.

I drove away ranting and raving, furious about this situation. (I loathe appraising multiple units.) My voice obviously carrying outside of the confines of my car because people down the street were literally looking at me. (I am naturally a loud person.)

It wasn’t until I had made it to the office that my real feelings sat on my shoulders. I could feel them pulling me down and now I’m just sad.

I hate the phrase, “you’re going through a lot.” It’s right up there with, “I’m sorry.” Every time I hear it I either roll my eyes, grit my teeth, or visibly cringe. I don’t want to hear it. Mainly because I don’t want to face it. My life is absolute misery. Everywhere I turn my life is literally falling down around me and I’m trying so hard to keep everything up, but no matter what I do these things are going to fall. These balloons are going to pop.

I need healthy ways to cope, but at the same time I’m worried what all of this grief is going to do to my brain. Yet on the flip side, one I refuse to view, is what is this denial going to do to my neural pathways? Everything in our life determines who and what we become. Even the tiniest of choices and reactions.

I want to just hide away today. I’m glad the tenants didn’t answer. I just don’t want to deal.

And to top all of this off… It’s made me a week behind with my year long writing goal.

February 22, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 7 – Time in a Bottle

There is something other-worldly about this song. The guitar intro trickles in like pixie dust drifting through the air. The shimmering specks land on the closed eyes of a sleeper and transports them to another place and time. It’s a bittersweet imaginary adventure where they enjoy the moment for what it is, but know that it won’t last.

It’s weird. This song takes me to a time when everything was very real, but life still felt like a dream.

My father had started to have trouble walking again. He had had this issue once before when he had been diagnosed with hydrocephalus, which is fluid on the brain. At that time, my husband and I were convinced it was because my dad was just fucked up on prescription pills. When he got out of surgery it was like someone had flipped a switch. He was walking and moving better than he had been before.

Fast forward 10 years and we were back to the same. This time it wasn’t as bad. It was basically just a stiff leg that was causing him pain. Oh, and the little thing of him repeatedly falling.

I accompanied my mother and dad on his doctor’s visit down to a specialist in the LA area. There they said they were going to do a spinal tap and test the fluid to see what was causing him this issue. They didn’t know then, but I am almost certain it was ALS related. There are just too many coincidences for me.

On the way back from that visit, I told my dad, “What do you want to listen to? Anything in the world, what would you want to hear?” He mumbled out “Jim Croce.”

I pulled up spotify and started playing the top hits, and this was the first one.

I may have heard it growing up but I don’t think I was paying attention to anything adults did. I was pretty self absorbed and really only focused on what interested me. A bluegrass/folk singer would be right at the bottom of the list.

What’s funny is I am a lot like my dad. I share with him an obsession with music and a particular habit of repeatedly playing the same song. There was a story of my father doing this with a tape while on a road-trip with my mom. He would listen through, stop it, rewind, and play it again. He drove my mother so nuts with this that she ejected the tape and threw it out the car window. I don’t know what song it was, but I just have this gut feeling it was this one.

The early Monday morning we had my mother’s appointment to confirm she was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, I noticed some big bruises and cuts on my dads arms.

“What’re those?” I had asked.

“I fell two times yesterday,” he said.

I joked and said he needed to be careful and should I buy him a helmet? “Do you need a life alert?”

He chuckled.

I should have bought him a helmet. I should have given him a life alert.

That following Thursday morning, while he was using the bathroom, my dad fell and hit his head on the edge of the counter. He made it to the bedroom and from my mother’s COUNTLESS, gruesome retellings (complete with re-enactments) he called for help and began to seize. My mother’s idea of “helping” was running outside and literally yelling “help.” Not… dialing 911. And even when the school bus driver told her do just that, she rushed inside and forgot the number.

I’m pretty sure my mother’s disease will, in the end, claim two lives.

That morning I got a call from my dad’s cellphone but instead of his voice was a stranger’s. She told me that he had been taken to the hospital. I went to work as normal and then informed my boss of what happened. I got my mother and went to the ER.

He was braindead by the time we got to see him.

I called my mooch of a “step-sister” (it’s complicated) to let her know. She cried and told me to play (of all the bands my dad loved) Jim Croce for him. For a brief moment I thought she actually cared and could be a real “sister.” But then she began her grift the weeks following. Didn’t send flowers. Didn’t do anything. She was a “Hensley” in name alone.

We pulled my pop from life support and he was gone in seconds.

That following Saturday evening my husband orchestrated this little get together at a bar to celebrate my dad’s life. (This was also the first time Josh ever hung out with me and Charlie. He was uncomfortable at first, but because of the circumstances powered through.)

We hijacked the jukebox and played Jim Croce all night and drank all of my dad’s favorite spirits in his honor (peppermint schnapps and Coors.) I don’t think I have ever cried as much as I had that night. Nor do I think I have ever been as drunk. Good lord…

“Time in a Bottle” is a sad melody, but in the chorus for a brief moment there is a turn and it becomes hopeful and bright. I live for the chorus. I belt out the lyrics as hard and as loud as I can muster every time.

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go through time with

Like life, the song is mournful for the loss of time, the microscopic moment we all get to experience it. It is loss, it is pain, but there is brief moments in that sea of yearning that are hopeful. They give us enough joy to carry on to the next chorus.

February 15, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 6 – I’m Not Okay

This song is my go-to emo ballad. I scream it at the top of my lungs until every ounce of breath has left them. I’m left gasping for air but it’s well worth it. No song evokes my inner rage more than this. The sudden build up and explosion of music brings to mind a big wheel perched at the top of a steep hill. With an unexpected push, I’m launched forward. My destination is only a hope as I’m hurtling downhill. The plastic pedals and wheels spinning uncontrollably. All I can do is keep my legs elevated out as not to get my pants knotted and twisted. Or, worse, have the skin stripped from my shins. The intro perfectly encapsulates the trajectory of my life from this point.

In a roundabout way I started to tell these little stories linearly. I hadn’t intended to do that, but that’s just the magic of writing sometimes. It takes me where it wants to go. And I blindly follow.

For a very brief moment my life was good. My husband had I had worked out our relationship. I met josh. I had finally passed my real estate appraiser’s exam and received my license. And I graduated Summa Cum Laude with my AA. My outlook was nothing but clear skies. Then began the downward descent.

I was having some pain and decided to go to the doctor. They did a CT scan of my abdomen and it was there that they noticed I had an enlarged prostate. They informed me of this little fact as I was on my way to the eye doctor for what turned out to be a bad case of pink eye. All-in-all it was a lovely day.

They sent me for bloodwork and more tests. At this point I had already decided that I had prostate cancer. What else could it be? I told my husband and boyfriend that I had no desire to treat it. It could lead to erectile dysfunction and I wasn’t about to live that life. Hard pass. (That joke was for us.) Both of them protested. It is one of the most treatable cancers and if left alone could spread to other parts of the body and turn into much more deadly forms of the disease.

After a rough couple months the final diagnosis was I just have an enlarged prostate. Along with an enlarged spleen. Two things no one would ever want to be big. I guess I just have all the luck, y’know.

Crisis averted! However it absolutely opened my eyes to the fear of disease and made me hyperaware of respecting someone’s wishes.

About a year after that my mother began acting very strange. It started with her speech. She was unable to say certain words and would explain how she could see it in her mind but couldn’t verbalize it. We went and had a brain scan done and the doctor ruled it a non-issue. The nurse practitioner recommended memorizing and saying bible verses. (I rolled my eyes so hard at that suggestion.)

Then my mother took a hard left turn. She talked about the walls of the house leaning. The floor feeling wet. And she would not stop shuffling papers. The real moment of absolute horror was when my mother sat and read and re-read the same single piece of paper for 30 minutes. It occurred to me that something was very, very wrong.

We went back and did another scan and in that time she had 7% brain mass loss. An average person with Alzheimer’s is usually at 3%. The next time we saw the doctor it was conclusive. She was in the early stages of the disease. The nurse whispered it to me while my parents sat at the other end of the exam room. Why I was the only one she bothered to tell is beyond me. Don’t you want to tell the person who has it?

Since then it has been every nurse or doctor whispering shit to just me and not her. “She can’t live on her own.” Yeah? Tell her that! My mother doesn’t believe me when I tell her stuff. Of the few things she can say without any trouble is: “that’s what you say.”

I remember the night my mother’s diagnosis became undeniable. I put this song on and screamed it all the way home, crying. All I could think about was how she would have all of her memories, her words, her identity ripped from her. In the end she will basically die because her body will have forgotten how to live.

But you really need to listen to me
Because I’m telling you the truth
I mean this, I’m okay! (Trust me)