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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Poet who wrote (15295)	6/23/2002 6:37:03 PM
From: Ish	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

<<then recounting the distant past. have you, or anyone else here, had experience with this? It's new to me. I adore my mother-in-law, >> December 6, 1993 my father died. I stayed with my mother through the 10th until she told me to go home. On the morning of the 11th I went over and she was laying in the hallway clothed with all but her dress and shoes which were folded and laid side by side next to her. At 3:30 Christmas Eve a nurse came in and told me that she had hardening of the arteries and there was nothing else the hospital could do. Ie. the insurance was done and she had to be gone the morning of December 26. No, I couldn't give them cash up front and get a couple of days to get her moved. Cash isn't as good as insurance. I found a nursing home 30 miles away, close to where she grew up. Ok, now we be getting to the point. I'd go to see her and she'd go on about the hay rack ride they took the night before. She probably did go on a hay rack ride in the area 60 years before. She talked about going home and from what she said it was where she grew up and not where she lived from 1952 until 1983. She also wanted her two cigarettes a week. Now with my dad having died and my mom in a nursing home there was a ton of paper work to handle. What was really interesting was I'd bring down the paper work, give her a smoke and a coffee and she'd be as smart as a bank lawyer. Really sharp. Once the paper work was done she'd drift off.

To: Poet who wrote (15295)	6/23/2002 7:10:18 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

I was away all weekend, staying at a friend's empty studio, where there just happened to be a computer! So what could I do? You know why I got on her computer? Because it was there. A hotel has the advantage over a friend's place that one reads books instead of a monitor. I spent the past seventy-two hours trying to put this phenomenon of recounting history -- and repeating it endlessly -- into perspective. It's almost as though having a realtime conversation about the present is too....what? too overwhelming? then recounting the distant past. have you, or anyone else here, had experience with this? Yes, with my father, whose working life had made him feel important, successful, relevant, and to whom retirement, and the lessening of 'importance' and 'power' and 'control' was traumatic. The stories he told, over and over, were a way of reliving the parts of his life that made him feel like a man, recapturing that sense of himself. As he told the stories, which I knew word for word, he would become a different person, the depression would lift, he would become animated and regain 'presence,' confidence, the appearance of mastery. The painful thing was that he had all his buttons when he died at almost 94 (in an accident) (and he was healthy, and was still driving, and was sometimes mistaken for the son of his nonagenarian pals; I suspect had he not had that misadventure he would have made it to 100+), and so he knew exactly what was happening: that he was yielding to the impulse to tell (aka relive) a story he'd made me sit through dozens of times; but he wanted so desperately to enter the time machine that he couldn't resist telling it yet again. He would apologize, and continue.... I didn't mind. I found new questions to ask each time, pretended to have forgotten certain details. (I really loved my Daddy, Ms. Freud, whaddya got to say about that, hmmm? I mean, I not only loved him, I think he was a wonderful man. Admiration, all those things. When I was a child, i wished so desperately that he could be the president so there would be world peace and no more hunger. Sigh. If only it had worked out.) My mother had fewer intoxicating, happy memories in which to take refuge, poor woman, so she did it less. And: I just found out a moment ago that two of my pieces were accepted in an anthology. CONGRATULATIONS, Po, that is WONDERFUL!!!!!!!!!!