My sister has been in the arduous process of applying for a refinancing of her mortgage, an arrangement that will create much needed financial stability for her, and set her up in more of a retirement situation, rather than having to find freelance work or otherwise scramble. At first, it sounded like the appraisal was going to be a simple matter, but she suddenly learned that, in spite of the global pandemic and all, the appraiser was going to arrive on Monday, and would be inspecting the entire property.
This led to severe anxiety and even panic on her part, since her financial stability rests on the appraisal reaching a certain dollar amount, and in her own estimation, the property was a "fucking disaster zone." For a couple of days, I was in reassurance mode. Her rage seemed bottomless at times, and she finally started expressing anger at her dead husband, for dying, for leaving her with "this entire fucking mess," and for not being there to help her sort it all out. Then, the day before yesterday, we went into her dead husband's room, where she had not dared to venture since he died, and set about completely clearing it out. The experience helped me understand a phenomenon I had heard about in the past, but didn't really get until now: how, sometimes, people just leave a dead person's room exactly as it was when they were alive, and never even change or move anything.
I removed more than a dozen extra large trash bags of clothing, belts, shoes, boots, hats, and clutter. As I did so, my sister alternated between rage and sobbing. A repeated refrain was that he had intended to take care of this, or that, or some other thing, but just hadn't gotten around to it. It was astonishing and odd, clearing away the personal possessions of a dead man, most of which went directly to the trash, even the most tenderly sentimental and personal of items. Trash. Personally, I would have donated all of the clothing and many other items to a Goodwill or whatever, but between the pandemic and my sister's desire to just get rid of all of it, it went to the dumpster she has on her property.
The room was completely transformed in very short order, which I could tell was a huge relief for her. Her dead husband was a very "large" person, that is, he had a gigantic footprint on their property, including his office and shop and outdoor storage for his HVAC business. But at least we were able to almost entirely eliminate his presence from her house. The rest will take a few days.
Yesterday, we tackled hours of outdoor labors to try to make her deck, pool deck, yard and garage look more presentable. Yet again, every problem or mess presented as something her dead husband was "going to take care of but never got around to." After about five hours, the place looked a lot better. But, of course, everything was a reminder of him, and it was a difficult day, again, for her. My approach was to just do whatever I was told with no questions or suggestions. By the time we were done, I could tell she felt better. I doubt that everything we did will have any impact on the appraisal whatsoever, but that, of course, was not the real purpose.
I crashed out for a while, feeling like I had been in a radioactive zone of rage and sorrow for two days, totally understandable but challenging for empathetic me, and then I packed up and drove down to my brother's and parents' in Allentown. My brother has been doing certain home care things for my father since January 25th, every night and a few times a day. There are home healthcare workers who come in from 8:30 to 5:30, six days a week, and from 1:30 to 5:30 on Sundays, but there's a series of tasks that have to be done at bed time to put my father to bed, and then sometimes some other things during the day, as well as a getting up ritual on Sundays, etc. There's also a baby monitor that's on all night, since sometimes my father tries to get up in the middle of the night or has other issues, like getting his foot stuck in the hospital bed rails or whatever. So I am going to take over for about 10 days while my brother gets a break, after 90 continuous days and nights of being on call.
The bedtime job involves disrobing my father, emptying his catheter bag, removing his diaper, using rubbing alcohol on his penis and genital area due to the catheter, applying zinc oxide to his genital region to prevent diaper rash, applying lidocaine to the tip of his penis because the catheter is annoying, putting a new diaper on, and positioning him appropriately in his hospital bed. I watched and took notes last night, and will try it on my own with my brother's supervision, before he leaves. My father is too stubborn to allow the use the Hoyer lift that the home hospice program provided, so there's a lot of lifting and positioning. He's not particularly heavy, but he is tall so I guess my main worry is that I won't move him around properly. It's also surreal to do catheter care for one's own father, and he's not always pleasant or in the greatest mood, so I expect he'll snap at me, etc.
This has been a recurring theme: providing care for people who are angry and frustrated and can take that out on the person who is showing up to help. It's been challenging for me to set boundaries gently but also let a lot of things go, with compassion. If I were in either my sister's shoes, or my father's, I'd be irritable and probably mean, also, although I tend to stuff my crankiness and continue to be "nice" to people, even when I am annoyed.
Being around my sister has been like seeing my own tendencies toward bitching, negativity, and catastrophizing, externalized. It's been a powerful instruction in letting go of victim mentality, reducing the habitual angry or irritated response to minor annoyances, and generally just facing life in a more flexible, positive, and sanguine way. It's weird how one habitually lives and is unconscious of one's own tendencies to be irritated or annoyed or angry a lot of the time, but how unpleasant and anxiety-provoking it is to be around the anger and irritability of someone else, and how it can help make one's own habits a lot more clear.
My sister also goes into a helpless state easily and often, in spite of thinking of herself as "strong and independent." Physically, she has beaten the shit out of her body for decades, and is disabled. She would definitely qualify for disability benefits, but is far too proud to admit that she is disabled, and would never apply. She shows her strength and independence as a myth in this way, among many others. For example, the smallest technical difficulties are a complete mystery to her, and she doesn't pursue any kind of solution on her own. Her dead husband was obsessed with strange gadgets, and so she now lives in a world full of solutions to problems that he came up with that are sort of complicated and patched together. She can't fix these things on her own, because he left her no instructions, and she doesn't follow instructions anyway.
For example, a lamp in her office has a broken switch. Instead of getting the lamp repaired, her dead husband bought a remote switch that you plug the lamp into. She tried to move the extension cord that the remote switch is plugged into and "the lamp wouldn't work." It turned out she had plugged the lamp into the extension cord, not the remote switch. But she was unable to troubleshoot even that extremely simple situation, move the lamp's plug to the gadget, and be able to turn the light on and off. Her entire physical world is rigged in similar ways, and I'm sure "unsolvable" problems will continue to pile up on her, because she lacks any resilience or ability to be patient and do research. I told her a few times that everything has a user's manual on the internet, but she entirely lacks the skill of accessing information and translating it to a solution. She has relied on a cleaning service for more than a decade and so does not know how to use her own vacuum cleaner, let alone have the physical strength to do the vacuuming.
She will not seek physical therapy or a remedy for her disabilities. She also stubbornly refuses any kind of emotional or spiritual help. In these ways, her "strength and independence" creates problems for others (myself, currently) who have to show up for her chaotic emotional life and physical helplessness. For example, my parents' hospice program provides for a counseling social worker to visit (or, with social distancing, call) and talk with them. He offered his services to my sister, so she might have someone to talk with about how she feels and what she is going through. My mother, afraid to broach the subject with my sister (which tells you something), asked me if I would ask her if she was open to talking with this counselor. I usually refuse to engage in this stupid family system triangulation, but this time it seemed simpler to just go with it. I mentioned it, and, of course, the mere mention of talking with a counselor set my sister off on a cascade of irritated and defensive resistance, including statements like "talking to counselors does no good. I'm always smarter than they are and I can't see the value in that. What's there to talk about? I'm sad all the time and that's that, talking about it would be a waste of time," etc. If she were able to contain her contempt to simply her own perspective, it would feel safer. However, she judges anyone who uses counseling services as weak, stupid, and foolish. Once again, the self image of "strong and independent" is revealed as a total sham, a fantasy, extremely brittle and miserable. Her brittle egotism doesn't even pause to consider that the person to whom she is ranting might find great value in talking with a counselor. She is not capable of the simple switch to speaking for herself while maintaining space and respect for others. I have to work consciously to let go of my own sense of being offended by her rants, when they are related to things I personally value. Meanwhile, in spite of being a laryngeal cancer survivor and having experienced kidney failure, and having an infarcted spleen, etc., she continues to try to quit smoking and drinking without success. She sees not being able to smoke or drink as a terrible deprivation, and that of course makes it even more difficult for her. Another example of her contempt for how other people try to find happiness comes out in barely concealed ways around my sobriety. "If you had just lostyour husband and were dealing with all of this stupid fucking shit beleive me, you'd be drinking again," she said the other night, while drunk and miserable, and I didn't argue. What would the point be? Her egotism and suffering means her own misery and her won habitual ways of trying, and failing, to cope are simply the only imaginable ways.
The suffering is tremendous, and my main work is to detach myself with love, and remember that it is her suffering caused by her choices, and that I am separate from it.
Meanwhile, observing my brother get my father up this morning and get him dressed, it occurs to me again how much I take for granted. For my father to get out of bed, it takes a lot of assistance. It takes several minutes for him to traverse the 15 feet or so from the bedroom to the bathroom, put his dentures in, and then to the dining room for breakfast, about five inches at a time. Then, another elaborate process about an hour later back to the bedroom, and the incredibly laborious series of maneuvers to get him in clothes. One rarely thinks about how complex the simple task of putting on a shirt, pants, and shoes is, until one watches someone else try to dress another person who really can't help much. The elaborate process is quite arduous. I asked my brother why it is done every day, and it turns out it is more for psychological and emotional reasons, as apparently just staying in a robe or pajamas all day is connected to severely disabled people feeling more depressed. I hadn't even thought of that.
In the midst of all of these things, I continue to answer reviewer comments on the species distribution article. I have given up looking for a job at the moment, but should start again. Probably listings are starting again, with people thinking a little bit into the future. It's been devilishly difficult to be motivated. I might be teaching online in the fall, as I expect ASU to cancel in person classes until January 2021. But, as with everything right now, who knows?
One nice thing about being down here in Allentown is it's a few weeks ahead of my sister's place, spring-wise. Here's a flowering cherry tree.
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