Music, Spanish and a Puzzle

It just seemed so much that Mom was in pain the other evening. Her muscles were clenched, her face in grimace, her body jerking. One of the caregivers attending Mom asked me if I would please go home, I didn't need to be seeing Mom like that, she said. I wanted to help, so I called Hospice. The nurse relayed to me that rather than experiencing the type of pain we might associate with trauma, Mom was having a kind of seizure. It was cold comfort.

I reported back to Mnembre, the caregiver what I had been told. In her thick East African accent she asked: "This life, David- what has it's meaning?"

When I got home that evening the song Guantanmera was running through my head. The spot where Mom (is sat) is near the CD player, and I've been playing the houses' music library for her. Mom sang songs in German, she sang the Hebrew words to Hava Nagila, and she knew the words to Guantanamera. I looked up the translation tonight, it's a delightful and pragmatic sentiment:


Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crece la palma
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma
Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

I am an honest man
From where the palm tree grows
And before dying I want
To share the verses of my soul.

Mi verso es de un verde claro
Y de un carmín encendido
Mi verso es de un ciervo herido
Que busca en el monte amparo
Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

My verse is light green
And it is flaming crimson
My verse is a wounded deer
Who seeks refuge in the woods.


Cultivo una rosa blanca
En julio como en enero
Para el amigo sincero
Que me da su mano franca
Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

I cultivate a white rose
In July as in January
For the sincere friend
Who gives me his honest hand.


Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazon con que vivo
Cardo ni ortiga cultivo
Cultivo la rosa blanca
Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

And for the cruel one who would tear out
this heart with which I live
I do not cultivate nettles nor thistles
I cultivate a white rose


Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
El arroyo de la sierra
Me complace más que el mar
Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

With the poor people of the earth
I want to share my fate
The brook of the mountains
Gives me more pleasure than the sea

Hospice and the CJD Helpline

My calls are returned by somber, even voices
Humane and gracious, these are grown-up people
Using grown-ups tones with genuine compassion
They seem to know the trajectory of my questions
Even if I'm stumbling in the asking. They're there.

Nurse Someone's got an affirmation for us
There's some pharmacutical something somewhere
I hear "Take it an hour at a time", and it resounds
That's a phrase I've used myself about myself, so
It must be true. It must be there, there's truth there.

Today the house had a party for a birthday for a lady
Wheelchairs and baloons, a hired musician with a ponytail
I observed the most mute resident move his lips in song
To "Happy Trails To You, Untill We Meet Again"
And again, we took that hour that time, and we left it there.

Oranges, a Sweetness so Tart

While I was living with Mom during what has turned out to be the early days of her decline, she said to me: "Eat oranges. You know, eat oranges and citrus- they'll help burn the belly fat you're amassing. It's no good to carry belly fat, Dave." I was fixing us a dinner. One of the signs I now recognize as a signal that she was "losing her marbles" (as she had put it) was not only that she had been forgetting to eat, but that she had made no real effort to cook for me while I was checking-in on her back in early May. Mom would almost always be planning the next meal. If she hadn't been soliciting a request for the next night's supper while we were eating tonight's meal, she had something brewing in the crockpot in the morning while cooking up breakfast.

Lots of times I'd ask for a salad. A request for salad would sometimes get me a roast, broiled asparagus and brown rice. Mom knew healthy eating. Mom loved oranges.

I've met lots of the families that visit loved ones who share Mom's Adult Family Home. Today I visited with Lois's husband Myron. Lois and Mom would share lots of fundamental connectivity; they were both professional women, each of them with similarly advanced educational accomplishments and each from New York State. Neither women any longer have an ability to communicate in the convention of language, but hold in ephemeral reserve a connection through those who love them. Myron and I talked in reverent witness to our loved ones lives in action. Maybe they might not have been fast friends, but colleagues indeed no doubt. They would certainly have respected one another's status and maybe even have shared professional contacts. They might have even bumped-in to one another on a flight to Hawaii at one time, who knows?

Myron's Mother happens to have also achieved the same Duplicate Bridge Life Master status that Mom has. As Myron rose to leave to walk to the bus stop he mentioned purposefully- in the way that a person is entitled to after having shared personal anecdotes with a newfound soulmate- that he's 92 1/2 years old.

I'm 42 1/2.

The staff of Mom's home want to oblige her preferences for food and music and comfort. I told them she dislikes bananas, peanuts, peanut butter and cats. "Cats?" they say. "But we have many cats here!" So, I can keep the bananas at bay and the peanut products aside- but there's only so many cats I can shoo away, as for the rest I hope the staff ladies abide.

But I can eat oranges, for Mom.

Piece of Paper

I caught a glimpse of some fluttering urban flotsam while heading home from Mom's house on my motorcycle today, an ethereal flutter of a white rectangle in my periphery- and then I registered what it might be. Sonia's address she wrote for me on a business card. I need that, so I stopped. Where I stopped was a small park at the foot of a bridge I've been by a thousand times but never visited. So today I paused. I retrieved Sonia's note and I regarded the bronze statue of the girl offering the world her origami crane, an offering of peace.

Peace to the world, peace to the busy commuters, peace to the distracted and sorrowful rider. Peace is love.

Fruit Crisp on the Fourth

When we cleaned out mom's house, we also emptied her fridge and freezer. Nancy was sentimental about the frozen fruit mom had picked and canned in freezer bags so she saved it. Today we had a picnic at mom's house. I brought the Brats, Nancy brought a fruit crisp. Well, I brought Bratwursts for mom and I, and tofurkey dogs for Nancy, Porter and Chloe.

We were speculating that Mom knew the answers to the crossword puzzle clues, but she was just holding out on us to make us challenge ourselves. We also noted that it would be an excellent time to roll-out the Scrabble game. Mom excelled at Scrabble.

Porter sets the grill alight. Tofu dogs need to be properly cooked, afterall.

Mom got half of a Bratwurst- they were huge. Naturally, I ate her other half as well as my two halves.

Nancy made Deviled Eggs. Chicken owners find lots of ways to incorporate eggs into most meals.
Mom and I took an afterdinner stroll around the compound. Roses are in fading glory now that it's July, but their scent is sweet not only to us but to the bees who love them as much as we love eachother.

Bless us, Lord. Our world is full of the wonders of your Glory. We seek your Grace in everything we sense.

Like This and Like That

Mom's lost much of her ability to communicate with words, but just the other day Nancy was saying her good-bys for the afternoon and she said "I love you Sara". Mom responded with these four deliberately retrieved words: "I... Love.... You.... Too"

We had been listening to the Buena Vista Social Club on the CD Player.

It's like this and like that.

A Glass of Cranberry Juice

A simple thing happened today. Mom drank a glass of juice on her own.

Mom's been unable to tell her hands to do what she wants them to do, but today she reached-out and grabbed the juice on her own. Virginia was impressed:

Menembre was impressed as well:
I was impressed and inspired. The simple glass of cranberry juice brought me so much joy today.

It was yet another glorious Seattle summer day, so after dinner we went for a stroll around the neighborhood.


We found a "pocket park", a city lot-sized park that had been a garden and donated to the city. Mom loves this kind of civic altruism. What an awesome day it was today.