"Life is hard. It’s even harder when you’re stupid."
-John Wayne
Last night as I was slipping off to sleep the old brain took off at a hundred miles an hour into an acute memory of combat, and what it felt like the first time we crossed the border into Iraq in the middle of an overcast night.
Pretty soon it was like poetry, images rushing by of the terror the teenaged antiaircraft gunner felt in the same moment, the element of the unknown making it worse, the Biblical metaphor of water, the firmament, the place of chaos coming into that space with all those explosions and tracers whizzing by in the void.
"Hey, that's pretty good", I thought to myself. "I should get up and write it all down."
"Nah. It'll be there in the morning."
Except it wasn't. I can describe what the muse suggested, but I've lost the flow of it all. Maybe some other time.
And it'll need to be a fairly distant "some other time", as I'm starting to note in my own mental presence, or lack thereof, a certain density of thinking I'd never observed before.
I don't think it's early Alzheimer's, although dementia runs in my family. I just struggle to stay focused, to untangle complicated problems with the relative ease of my youth. Part of what I'm observing is an inescapable part of the aging process, but I think there's more going on here.
I was surprisingly (to me) matter of fact, even cheerful at times, in navigating the issues related to what appears to be the end of my mother's life in Texas earlier this week. I met with doctors, tried to cheer up family members who aren't taking this well, created mental stick diagrams of the decision-making variables we'd need to consider in deciding what course of action is best for her, and fair and kind to everyone else. Anyone watching would think I must be missing some emotional circuit. How could I be so rational at a moment like this?
Well, maybe I do have a screw loose. But if that's part of the picture, another part is that whatever's going on back there behind my eyes is buried at a deep subconscious level, and whatever grief and pain I'm experiencing lies in a place I can't reach.
But it does manifest itself in subtle ways. I struggle for a phrase or a word in the midst of a professional conversation. I sit and stare at the computer when I should be moving on to the next task, struck by the inconsequential nature of it all. When I finally arrive at that task, it takes me about three times longer than usual to analyze and defeat it. And I've become a little churlish with the needy folks who pay for my lifestyle and are the reason I go to work in the morning.
So, in a phrase, brusk and stupid. As it turns out, this is a recognized condition, extreme stress rendering one an ingrate.
I've wondered for a while when this year, and all that's happened, would start taking a toll at some level. The wedding venue idea seems dead, or at least on life support, as the folks who would make that a reality fall by the wayside. Cancer's taken two of our household's most beloved friends, and my parents slip away in a brutal, slow motion drama played out in a lonely room with the blinds drawn.
And those are just the stressors I can put my finger on. Last night I dreamt that Sean and I were hiking along the edge of some deep caldera, and he slipped over the side. When I peered over the edge he was ten feet down, out of my reach, clinging to a rock and crying that he was losing his grip, and please help him. Then I watched him fall several stories to the floor of the cavern, helpless to do anything to stop it or get to the bottom to tend to him.
Obviously, there's a lot rolling around in there. No wonder I've been worthless this week.
But for now I'll slog through a couple conference calls starting in a few minutes, dictate a letter or two, and then fly over to Wyldswood to check on things and drop off a check for George. I had the crazy idea at 5 a.m. that if there's no reason to hang around in Perry, I might just keep going up to Corning, which would only take another four hours. Only someone who's a little addled would consider that option, but then again I am in fact a little addled today.
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