I Can Feel No Sense of Measure

Entry 1    11:00 a.m.

Malaise. 

The grass is long.  The grass has never been this long.  But I don't cut it.  I am not meeting simple tasks.  I can care for Jenny and the kids.  I can care for the puppy, its almost primal caring for another. I am writing it down here, but I don't want to talk about it, won't raise it as an issue.  I may raise it with my therapist, I may not.

There comes a point in life where, assessing progress--weighing your contribution--you can look at the scales and see whether you have been a net addition to fixing the human condition, a net negative, or a blank.  Given the nature of the universe, this is just a vanity of life, with absolutely no meaning except for the living.  This idea should give me peace, given I feel stuck and dissatisfied professionally and personally, with no light at the end of the tunnel.  It doesn't. This creeping malaise feels more like being absorbed by The Blob at this point.  Things aren't getting done.  Pleasure isn't even an option. I'm not feeling sorry for myself.  I have to stress that.  This is just reality, my reality.  I look forward each day to nothing and am never disappointed.  I have spent a great deal of time with depression in my life, but this feels like a different flavor.  I don't feel melancholy.  I am numb.  I move from distraction to distraction, to keep from addressing it.  

Over the years the things I found interesting started falling away.  Politics, social issues, poetry, novels, intellectual tracts, theory, activism.  All by the wayside.  I have ceded my hope for years.  I haven't even gotten a mess of pottage, just rank disillusionment in institutions and myself.

Jenny's sister Chris, who retired recently at 54, has volunteered to take Jenny to chemotherapy today.  That is excellent.  But, she can't stay the whole time--she will have nothing to do poor thing--so she is leaving at around 1. Therapy begins at 10:40, the actual administration of chemo won't happen until maybe 1:30-2:00.  But, with so much to do, who can blame a girl for needing to leave?  Jenny has her friend Jeanne coming in as backup.  I learned all this last night, and when I expressed to Jenny my exasperation with Chris. Jenny just gave me sad acknowledgement with her eyes and said nothing.  What is it with this family?  

Jenny will come home with a pump of Folfiri today, and feel lethargic.  She told me this morning her pancreas is producing a throbbing pain.  Never fun.  She seems healthier than she has been in a while, despite this report.  

We bid almost a million dollars.  House number 4, listed for well less than that, went for well over. Pick your realtor carefully. I chose a friend, who I believed was excellent, given his own p.r. over the years.  He told us two things that were wrong.  One, he didn't expect the home to go much over asking, given the comparables.  Two, don't do a preinspection.  His actual words were, "fuck 'em."  The four other bidders all had preinspections, and I knew better but trusted his expertise.  Again, there is frustration, but no sadness. The home had an ADU, awesome, but the living space for us would have cut a bathroom and about 750 feet of actual living space.  I would have done it, but not for the price the new owners are paying.  

Who buys a house when their wife is terminal and having an affair?  Me.

Tempus Fugit

Corey died 37 years ago next week. The early summer sun, its smells, the blooms on the tree all rush back to remind me.  There are some things that make me want to believe in the benevolence of the universe.  Corey and I had a huge fight on graduation night.  His girlfriend hated me, why I don't know. But, raised by my mother, I can give as well as I can get, so I gave it right back to her.  I am certain that, despite knowing her since 7th grade, we had never spoken, other than to exchange the most minor of pleasantries--hellos and goodbyes.  But she was fucking awful to me.  On the Virginia V, I told her off, and promptly retreated into the arms of the girl I was convinced was perfection.  On my way to the retreat, Corey decided to defend the honor of Becky. Words were exchanged. We didn't speak again until a week later, on the day he died.

On his way out to Green River Gorge with several friends and their girlfriends, Paul Houser among them, he stopped by my house, we apologized to one another, hugged, and he left.  As I was walking over to another friend's house to fire up a bong, I saw Corey drive past in his mother's baby blue Ford Fairmont.  Its the last time I saw him alive. I remember it as clearly as my name.   When I got home later that night, stoned out of my mind, my mother greeted me with panic.  They couldn't find Corey.  When they did find him a week later, it was in 20 feet of ice cold Green River water. I went to sit vigil at Paul's that night, the only one of us willing to admit he was dead, that when they saw him swept away by the current it was over. 

I don't believe in closure.  This wound will bleed until I am 6 feet under or turned to ashes. I
think that is normal.  I no longer make the yearly sojourn to his grave. I have mementos, crumpled Heineken beer bottle caps from homecoming night, when we double dated.  I don't look at them anymore, but they are a roadmap to a different time, there if I get the feeling to be particularly maudlin. 

Our adolescent rapprochement means everything to me. I don't know what it feels like to have a friend like that anymore, haven't had that connection with anyone since then. I haven't tried.  We were best friends since we met in grade school, and apart from the vicissitudes of growing up, remained so until he died. 

So, about my firm belief that life is a cascading series of losses.  .  .

Entry 2    1:01 p.m.

CA 19-9 ↑ 1137 to 9157.8.  She has lost weight again, after gaining most of it back. This is the

second time in a row she has lost weight.  Doctor P says the pain she is experiencing is likely pancreatic and they will consider a celiac plexus nerve block procedure to deaden the pain. I wonder what that will mean for the need for pain relief medicine? The celiac plexus block is only temporary.  The procedure typically involves an injection of alcohol that serves to deaden the nerves for several months.  

On chemo days, I am constantly refreshing the medical record lab reports, anxious to see what the numbers say.  Today is no exception.  I am relieved the numbers didn't double again, but that is only the smallest quantum of solace for which one might hope.

I feel like I'm listening to the Wreck of the Old `97, knowing what's coming, after playing it a thousand times, and despite this hanging on the edge of my seat, delusionally hoping the tragedy will be averted.

Entry 3.    7:12 p.m.

After the first trip to the vet with Willow, I came home to find Jenny, Jeanne, and Leiney in the living room.  I debriefed Jenny on Willow's visit, cut her and myself watermelon, and rousted Abby from her room for a walk to U-Village via Ravenna Park for some strawberry ice cream at Hello Robin.

When we got back, Jenny was alone, zonked out on the couch from the olanzipine, she is prescribed off-label for nausea.  I got her to the bathroom and then to bed, and she told me she'd be hungry later, which I am not sure is true.  

It has been months since the debilitating nausea and vomiting.  It doesn't seem like it.  This slow walk of doom somehow has become routinized, which may account for some of the numbness I feel. The monotony of suffering is real, which doesn't seem possible.