OLD AGE BLUES

Seems like whenever a bunch of people get together, any bunch of people, for a fairly extended period of time, dramas arise and get thicker and more complex until they become 'reality,' the people divide into factions and nothing can be done about it. This is how churches break up, how marriages break up, and other associations break up. We humans will make drama out of anything. It's called making a mountain out of a molehill. We love drama.


I've been in a crazy situation recently with ultimately about a dozen people thrown together around one man, all wanting to help him in his hard time of creeping up on death, the slow fade. People who wouldn't otherwise be so cooperative with each other put aside whatever heisitations they might have for the benifit of Jr. Every one agrees that's what we're about and we get along very well. Then this one and that one want this for Jr, but these over here want something else, and the offices at the nursing home have their own agendas. Then there's talking behind backs and all that goes with that.


I happened to be in his room the first day the Social Worker of the place came in to introduce herself. She was sweet and gave a great long routine of how she's not like other social workers, she works for him not the system, that kind of thing. All the time I'm thinking, after living in this world long enough to get white hair, there's something about this I don't quite believe. I've found that every time somebody comes on to me like that, the opposite turns out to be the case. While she was talking, I was thinking I don't believe a word of it. Since then, Jr doesn't even know who she is. He never sees her. That day a couple months ago was probably the last time he saw her or heard her name. That's not necessarily so, leaving room for my present state of mind that's rather aggitated, but if it's an exaggeration, it's not by much.


Like this morning I was told she's telling it that I'm "spearheading a movement" to get Jr home by telling him he's ready to go home. I'd rather she tell that to me than someone else. It set that little ole molehill to growing and I'm saying, Lord Have Mercy, of course I'm telling him he's ready to go home. The physical thearpy people in the rehabilitation department have been telling me for two weeks he's ready to go home. He's completed his rehabilitation. If Jr had no hope of going home he would shut down and waste away in despair. I see no reason for Jr to feel despair. I don't want him to despair. He's not afraid of dying. He's in there for rehabilitation, not to wait for death.


Jr wants to be at home. And when he says he wants to go 'home' he doesn't mean he wants to die and go to heaven. He wants to go back to his own bed. He sleeps on his left side every night. In the nursing home bed he can't sleep on his side, has to sleep on his back. So he can't sleep. Of course, someone can say he can indeed sleep on his side in the bed there, but he, himself, hasn't found the way after a couple months of looking for it. He doesn't like to take sleeping pills, which means he only gets a good sleep every fourth night or so. It's become his pattern. I've suggested something like Tylenol PM. No, wouldn't have it.


Then one night somebody gave him an Ambien, a way powerful sleeping drug for somebody who doesn't use drugs for this, that and the other. He's of the old way. When he got up in the night to go pee, of course he fell and hit his face on linoleum floor with cement under it. It broke open a 17 stitch cut on his forehead and gave him a knot that looked like half a tennis ball pushing through from inside his head. The whole upper left quadrant of his face was yellow and purple. Then it's his fault. He's "a walker." He gets out of bed and walks to the bathroom when he needs to pee. It's part of his life. It's what he does. He needs to pee. And they didn't know he was "a walker" until he fell, which kind of blew my mind considering he's in their care way over a month.


I've been patient with them not wanting to let Jr go home and find the physical therapy people really good. What's happened is I've been there so much I'm entering the zone of hearing more than I want to know. I don't like it, but it's what we humans do, have done all along so much it's not just tradition, it's archetypal. Cats are born knowing how to use a litter box. We humans are born knowing how to make dramas out of anything. I'm making my own drama of it right now. In fact, I'm letting off steam, because the drama has become emotional on my part. I have become determined to get him out of there first day possible.


And I'm done being nice. I was nice all the way through the banged up head incident. I asked nurses, the social worker, and others what happened. No one knew anything about it. An ambulance comes in the middle of the night and takes him to some hospital, stitches up his head and brings him back in the middle of the night. It's not like nothing is going on. The old boy in the room with Jr told me about him falling and pointed to where he fell. Told about the ambulance taking him and bringing him back.


His was the only information I was able to get from anyone. The blood was all cleaned up. His blanket that keeps him warm at night next to the air conditioner was taken away because it had blood on it. It's been a couple weeks without a blanket at night. Blood washes out very easily with cold water. They know that. I want him at home where he can call his own shots for his own well-being, not have to be expected to sleep next to an air-conditioner without a blanket.


I'm about to the point that I'm ready to become such a nuisance they'll want him out of there to get rid of me. I'm willing to let him stay a few more days for the slow turning wheels of The System to get all the paper work done, etc. But if it takes more than a few days, I might be tempted to make an ass of myself and set a few people to hissing when they hear my name, like I did at the nursing home in Sparta escorting him out the door, him bent over his walker.


Jr is a humble man, way more than I am. For him there's a point, just like for me there's a point, where a man takes the matter of living his own life into his own hands and will walk away from anything to that end. He has plenty of support at home, no slick cement floors, and his own window to look out at the weather, his own life to get back into for at least awhile. There's no telling if/when he has to go back for the final stretch. In the meantime I'd like him to be able, as a friend whose life I care about, to have his life back. I'd rather he be at home and live a short time than live a long time in a place where everything he does is directed. I just prefer than he not die in despair when he doesn't have to.

A PINK CADILLAC IN HEAVEN

Jr was drifting in and out of sleep this morning when I went by the nursing and rehabilitation facility in Independence to see him. He'd not slept in the night so he was about half asleep, half awake, never fully asleep, never fully awake. When he so obviously needs rest, I don't disturb him. I sit in a chair by the bed and think about whatever my mind follows, looking out the window at the boiling clouds.

A crow flew by the window with what I call a mockingbird and Jr calls a raincrow flying on top of it pecking the crow's back, the crow giving it all he's got and the raincrow staying with him like a mad hornet. I made a mental note to tell Jr about it when he was awake. It always made him laugh at the house to see a raincrow chase a crow and pluck a feather or two.

My friend Sarah came to mind I saw in the Food Lion parking lot yesterday. I didn't recognize her because she looked so different from last time I saw her. I think it might have to do with her coming into her middle aged woman look, which I'd not seen on her before. We jabbered as fast as we could go catching up, what about this and what about that.

She asked about Jr and I told her his circumstances, nursing home, care-dependent. I told her I'd been with him the last couple years doing what I could to keep him out of the nursing home, seeing him every day, like that. She said something about me having a place in heaven for it. I didn't argue with her, but wanted to say that has nothing to do with it for me.

I'd been thinking about that ever since. I recalled a time an old hard-shell preacher told me works don't mean nothing to God. I kept it to myself, but felt compelled to say, I don't care. That's not why I'm doing it either. I don't want a Mary Kay Cadillac in heaven. That is not my motivation. Where heaven is concerned, just put me in the section where the Bell Spur String Band plays and I'll be happy for eternity. What I'm doing with Jr has nothing to do with rewards, good karma, not anything like that. I believe God is involved, because God threw me and Jr together looking at it in hindsight. Jr needed somebody in his vulnerable time he could trust.

For me, the best is having earned the trust of someone like Jr Maxwell, someone I'm in awe of not just as a man but a human being. First, I can say without exaggeration or fear of contradiction that Jr Maxwell is the only wise man I've ever known. I've known several with brilliant minds and good educations who are good people too. But I mean wisdom. Wisdom comes only through experience. It doesn't come second hand. Jr got his wisdom the same way Job got his, suffering.

He can make a better case for himself a fool than I can for his wisdom, so I call him the wise fool. It fits him. He has both dimensions to about the same degree, like the yin yang, a good balance. He is self-aware without being self-absorbed. All his life he had the freedom to allow his inner wild man expression, and he knew how to keep his wild man under control so it didn't run away with him. He became aware of consequences of actions early in his life. He'd had his heart wrung out and thrown in the road to be run over by tires until it was just a spot on the pavement so many times it's a wonder he isn't buried under the burden of sorrow he's survived.

Jr doesn't stay down. When something gets him down, he'll be deeply depressed for about a day and a night. After a sleepless night he'll have it worked out in the morning, be fresh and on his way. From there on it's just a matter of working out physically what he already took care of in his mind. The last heartbreak he'll never recover from. He's healed pretty good, but it knocked the wind out of him. It's slow coming back and he'll never come back all the way.

If this were India I'd be calling what I do with Jr sitting at the feet of the Master. But this isn't India and I don't call it that. I call it life-sized respect for a man who has told me his whole life story in thousands of chapters. I see one of the best respected men in the county and I understand why he is so well respected everywhere he goes.

I'm grateful for the trust of such a man. That's reward enough for me. I cannot see him fade in his last years and months to such frailty under circling buzzards without lending a hand. I ask God for his comfort, the least controlling thing I dare ask for, and believe it doesn't hurt for me to lend a hand to back up my request. If I think he's important enough to ask God to help, I can be there for what part of the help I can serve.

What I gain from knowing Jr so well is boundless. It's a reward money can't buy. My soul is richer for knowing Jr Maxwell and for being there for him when he needed a hand. I don't need a promise of heaven or anything. Just seeing Jr comfortable as he can be is all I ask. Besides, it's not for my benefit anyway, it's for his. I feel like it's the only important thing I've ever done in my life and I aim to see it through. I don't want a Cadillac in heaven. I want to walk barefoot.

THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE

Every day now I drive to Independence. It's a beautiful road all the way, smooth driving with a good flow to it there and back. Heading down the mountain on the Gap Civil turnpike to Twin Oaks seems like I just drove out of Alleghany County. Like Sparta Parkway, it always feels like I'm someplace else when I'm on it, like a Charlotte bypass. That new intersection where 93 turns off from 221 always disorients me, it's so like someplace else.

Every time I drive down the mountain toward Twin Oaks, I recall a short period of time after all the trees and the beautiful places of rock and fern on the mountain side of the highway were destroyed and everything beautiful about the drive down the mountain was made ugly real bad. The wires were absent on the right and the distant mountain landscape had the quality of a Japanese screen. It felt tremendously open and free, giving a subliminal feeling of flight, spaciousness and freedom.

When the poles and wires went back up, I couldn't believe how much difference it made. It felt like a fence restricting the sense of flight. The difference without the wires is so vast I subconsciously try to see it as it was without the poles and wires and am unable. It's still nice. Without the wires we use candles and kerosene lanterns. Light bulbs really are a lot better for light. Candles and lanterns make good decorations. The aesthetic travesty of wires everyplace is a small price to pay for what they deliver.

Like going down the mountain on 21 toward Thurmond, when they timbered the whole side of the mountain, I couldn't find much about it to praise. But, it opened the view over the Piedmont which is beautiful day and night. The vastness is such a good feeling to look over all the way to the horizon and distant, distant mountains. It's one of the joys of living in mountains to see from time to time such expanses of landscape.

I've seen the pipeline buried beside the road all the way from the state line up Gap Civil. They're in the place now where it's taking some time. Driveways to cross underground, one after the other, and repair them to like they were before. During workdays. They are doing a good job all the way along. They've planted what looks to my inexperienced eye like orchard grass, grass that will mow easily by mowing machine and look good.

I park at the nursing and rehabilitation facility parking lot amazed at how many cars, most of them people working there. Inside, there are people working everywhere. Everybody is busy, in a good humor, all of them seeming to be deeply caring people who care a great deal about the people they're helping who can't do for themselves. The people of the staff get to know the people and stop and speak when they're passing by the room. Any kind of assistance needed at any moment is attended to. It's like the staff is there to serve the patients instead of the patients there to serve the staff. The whole place seems to have a certain flow about it that is centered around the patients. It's beautiful in that way to see how well a large number of people is being cared for individually.

I'm especially grateful to see my friend I respect way up high comfortable in every way possible. He can't be where he wants to be, home, but that's not out as a likelihood in near future. Most of the women there call him Wylie, and by now they've learned why that's his name, and one, his physical therapist, calls him Max. Everybody who works in his hall likes him and keeps him cheered up simply paying attention to him.

Like these changes in the roads that I never seem to get used to, I never get used to seeing Jr Maxwell, master mechanic, master banjo picker, sawmiller, a man awake and alive with such a spirit for life it's seemingly inextinguishable suspended in the space between question and answer. His body fades gradually, steadily and there's not a whole lot he can do. Even less that he feels like doing.

It's disorienting to see somebody so full of the life spirit hobbling around with a walker. They have him walking now. He couldn't stand up when he went in. He is so out of his element sometimes it seems he's upside down on the ceiling like helium-filled silver pillows. He's up there unable to move, unable to leave the bed, looking helpless and weightless, outside his life, waiting all day and all night for a good sleep.