A CAGED FEELING

composition in gray #10

I'm in something of a rotten mood today. Feeling caged in a minor kind of way. Also not. I look around and everything is fine in all directions. Jr is on the bed either sleeping or drifting, the dryer is going for soundtrack. I'd put on some old-time music, but when it's in the air, I can't do anything but listen. It pulls me in completely in a very short time. The dryer makes good white noise. Does that mean something I really want to listen to, like old-time banjo by Morgan Sexton, is called black noise? Or would it have another color, like red noise? That doesn't sound right. It's not green noise. Maybe that could be because it's not noise. It's sound. Sound must be what we listen to and noise what we hear but tune out.

It could be said I have the blues today. This morning when I woke up, Jr was on the pottie chair. Peed into his diaper sitting on the seat. He couldn't get up. I woke to him calling me to lift him from pottie chair to wheelchair. Change diapers, change socks. Lift him onto the bed, then lift him again to get him a little farther into the bed to lie down, instead of on the sagging edge. Absorbing pads the Hospice nurses provide are kept under the pottie chair and they get most of it. He told me he'd been there for two hours.

Believing him in the bed and worn out, I went on to the radio station for the Saturday morning show. I never dare expect before I enter the door anymore, as what I find will be unexpected whatever I might expect. When I came back in the house 2 hours later by the clock, he was in exactly the same predicament he was in earlier. On the pottie chair, peed in the diaper and the floor padding and his socks. And he couldn't move. Couldn't get up. Had been there '2 hours.' 2 hours has become his term something like a Southern minute, which is an undetermined period of time that won't be a long time. 2 hours means a long time, longer than a Southern minute. He said he also broke his right knee.

We had another talk after he was comfortably clean and ready to get back in the bed, sitting in the wheelchair. I like to sit with him sometimes when he's fairly lucid and be some company for him. I got him an ensure and his pills. We talked some more. Just before I lifted him onto the bed, I pleaded with him to go ahead and wet his pants. Don't get up when you have to pee. Just let it go. Telling this to somebody who hasn't peed in a diaper for 86 years doesn't mean it will be heeded. Talking to hear my head roar again.

Yesterday, after a similar time, he'd asked what I was going to do about a vehicle. I didn't want to bring up the issue of buying his car again, because since the time I said that, and he fortunately forgot it, I've regretted the presumption. It was an artless way of saying, You're dying soon, you don't have a chance. I told him I was looking, driving his car in the meantime. He said he wanted me to drive his car. After the struggle from wheelchair to bed, then from sitting on the edge to a little further toward the center, he lies back with head on pillow, I put the covers over him. Lying there with his eyes closed he said, 'Here's a fool's advice: don't be in a hurry.' Then he drifted to wherever he goes in his mind.

This is what I mean when I say he is still in there. It told me that worry over what I'm going to do about a vehicle occupies his mind. One time, a month or so ago, he was worried over money, and I explained all his business is being taken care of honestly by Ross; Ross is not cheating him. No, no, Ross wouldn't do that. Then I said you have no worries. He said with a smile, 'I have to have something to think about.' I laughed and said, 'Have at it.'

Also in my mind today is Meredith's wedding day I wanted to drive to Atlanta for. Even if I could find help to stay with Jr for 3 days and nights, or even 2, I'd be afraid of bringing back every disease in the USA, as people are traveling in flying disease pods to get to Atlanta from all over. Anything would be fatal to Jr and I'd have it to live with. This, I believe, is my restless feeling of being caged. Also, there's a chilly wind out on the porch. And it's 84 degrees inside. Jr needs it warm. Nearly all the time I'm comfortable with it, though sometimes not. Step outside for a little bit in 60 degrees with wind--it won't be long before 84 feels good.

Another contributing factor to the caged feeling could be that I've been here so long that my home has become unfamiliar. That's ok, because I committed of my own volition, but even thought the mind finds something perfectly reasonable, emotions, feelings see a bit differently. It's not a problem, by any means, just an underlying feeling I've noticed that feels perfectly natural, nothing to get excited about, a part of the process. I don't wish Jr's last breath to hurry up and get here, not at all. I don't want to influence his destiny to the sooner or later. I'm here to allow him his own place and his own time. The place is secured, but the time is unknown. Even when he's gone in mind, I still feel like the world is a better place as long as Jr Maxwell's soul is in it, a candle light in the darkness of our collective confusion. We need more light in our world, not less.