Family Issues

Didn't write last night, stayed in town to listen to some music at the Pub. Blues, very good. A good crowd and I sat with the owners while they ate, at the far end of the bar, where it makes a little 'L' beside the fireplace. Friendly crowd but too noisy for me and I went back to the museum and watched some mindless TV on Hulu. Woke up early, did some grocery shopping for Kim's overnight visit, back on the ridge early. Made a quad-espresso and rolled a couple of smokes, and just when I was going over to the phone, to call my parents, it rang, and it was my sister, calling with a up-date on the various situations. Difficult to even outline the complexities. That point in the life-line when things turn awful. Mom had a pace-maker installed (telling word choice) and it doesn't seem to be working, she sleeps 20 hours a day. Dad can't see and his knees are failing, in pain all the time. That's the good news. They know they can't move back into their house, Dad can't deal with even the very few stairs required for life there, so they're living with my sister, as planned, and that's OK, except that my sister and her husband have lives too. I'm not there, but I agreed to come down in September, if not before, to give Brenda and Bill a break, so they could take a trip. Meanwhile my brother, 55, has lived with my folks for the last five or more years, which has been a very good thing, because it's allowed them to stay in their house, but now they can't live in the house, and my brother is still there, and he doesn't have a job, because he's been taking care of them for years, and we need to sell the house, to satisfy some debt and provide a little money for the end-game. A mutual dependency thing had developed, which now becomes very one-sided. Kevin needs to move on, we need to sell the house (I say we, this is mostly my sister who will handle the actually logistics, but there needs to be some kind of consensus, thus the call). Most of the debt has accumulated because of the expenses Kevin has incurred as caregiver. They don't drive, he needed a vehicle, he needed insurance, he needed a high-speed connection to the inter-net, so he could play his games; gas money, cigaret money, money to take his current squeeze out on Saturday night. At some point it got out of hand. Now, with the parents at my sister's, my brother feels he needs a surfing vacation, as his due, and he should be able to use their credit cards for a trip to Costa Rica, and maybe Puerto Rico. Wherever the surf may be 'up' from some tropical disturbance. This is why I live alone, without a television and running water. I can keep things simple. I refuse to fly and don't want to travel. My idea of a good time is finding just enough morels for an omelet. Even before the call is over, I'm in a kind of meditative immersion. Family stuff does that to you, it happens to almost all of us; except maybe those that are adopted and those few that are really psychotic. Comes down around your ears. Like slicing your retina or bursting your eardrum, not something that allows any relief. I hear, in my Dad's voice, that he would just like to end it, for he and Mom, just end it, lives fully lived; but there's a hint of religion, or ethics, or morals, or something, that doesn't allow that; and medical science has advanced so far, they can keep you alive almost forever, not matter the pain you suffer. It costs a lot, and pays for a lot of research. Quality of life is not really an issue. There I am with 'really' again, a mantra. What I'll do, if a heart-attack doesn't take me, is just walk down the driveway, just beyond where the fresh-water springs flow into the grader ditch, and drown myself in an inch of water. Easy enough, no mess, no fuss. A simple bloated body. The vessel, the corporeal manifestation, is nothing, it's a role, a disguise you might wear, to fool the world, what you really are is something you keep well hidden: an amorphous shadow. I'm not being clear, and I'm trying to be clear; I want you to understand what I say. But it's so difficult, the way language is charged. Doesn't matter what I say to you, it's pregnant with meaning, because I say it to you. Even if you try and back off that, you're in the cheap seats, looking from afar, but still the pattern emerges. And when the pattern emerges you start making sense. Right. Signify. Right. Meaning. You make it, you can't help it, Venus On A Half Shell, whatever your fantasy, your hand on her thigh, maybe just some music in the background. I didn't know anything about what I was going to write tonight, but I knew I was going to write. A feeling I get in the small of my back, sometimes I smell vanilla. Maybe it's nothing. But it's enough to keep me from killing myself.