Bring on the liars, lovers, and clowns

Elaine Stritch who originated "little things"

 "It's sharing little winks together,
Drinks together,
Kinks together,
That make marriage a joy."

-- Stephen Sondheim, Company 

 The death of the great American genius, Stephen Sondheim, hasn't so much saddened me in itself as made me nostalgic for all the wonderful musical shows Will and I attended together over 41 years.

I remember a review called Side by Side by Sondheim which played in San Francisco at the Marines Memorial Theatre in summer of 1978.  (I know the year because I have a subscription to Newspapers.com and chased it down in the San Francisco Examiner.)  We would have been staying down the street at the Hotel Beresford, an old place that had special rates for teachers.  While I remember little of the actual show, I do remember the deep enjoyment I experienced being with my sweetheart, listening to the sophisticated lyrics, believing, as I did then, that we were having the same experience as we listened.

Now I understand that we probably weren't interpreting the lyrics or the evening in the same way.  But whether or not our minds were processing the cognitive aspect of the evening in the same way, I know we were enjoying being with each other and the performers.  

Will was never as sophisticated as I thought he was and I was never as emotionally mature as he hoped I was.  Nevertheless, we've always cared for each other, even without understanding what makes the other tic  (sic).  The Sondheim song with which I most identified was another one from Company:  

"I've got those
"God-why-don't-you-love-me-oh-you-do-I'll-see-you-later" Blues,
That"Long-as-you-ignore-me-you're-the-only-thing-that-matters" Feelin".

In the summer of 1981, after we spent time in Los Gatos and San Francisco, we drove to Los Angeles to see Sweeney Todd where it was playing at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.  We were both so excited to see the show with its original cast of Angela Lansbury and George Hearn.  I remember best the moment when Sweeney slits the first throat and raises his blade high as lights blast on to catch the blade and the drops of blood sliding from it as the great whistle blows.  Wow!  And the music, so terrible and beautiful.  I remember at the time being amused that many of the people in the audience were of the same class and power as the folks Sweeney was butchering.

Ad from LATimes, August, 1981

Two other Sondheim shows Will and I enjoyed together were Assassins (Artists Repertory Theatre, 2006, Portland) and Company (Ethyl Barrymore Theatre, Broadway, 2006).  

Will stopped going to the theatre and to the movies in 2014, during our second-to-last trip to New York City. He got sick on that trip and was too tired to go out at night.  I look back now at one decision I made -- to go to a play without him  because he freaked out and thought we were going to the movies but it was a play and "too expensive".  I was so upset with him (because I still didn't understand the dementia) that I let him walk back to the hotel himself.  

That was the last time I let him alone on the streets of a city.

 

Of course my first Sondheim was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  I overplayed the album I took out from the Los Gatos library. I also and watched the movie whenever it played on television so I had a few of the songs memorized.  I can still perform much of "Everybody ought to have a maid" and "Miles Gloriosus:" the Braggart Soldier.  

Buster Keaton in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

 

 

 

Creative Writing Assignment

 I've been taking some memoir writing workshops. Below is a piece a turned in to Eileen Casey along with her feedback (in red).

 

photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Prompt:  Write a ‘someday’ piece, imagining what it is you most crave is suddenly within reach. Find an object/detail which epitomises this ‘someday’ feeling. How would you react?

 

“Always look on the bright side of death:
Adjust before you draw your terminal breath.” --  Eric Idle

 

I am waiting for the Reaper, that slacker!  Sometimes I picture him as Bengt Ekerot, the white-faced actor in Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal.  More often, I see Death as the John Cleese-voiced puppet in The Meaning of Life:  the Grim Reaper with his pointing skeletal hand.   And I yell at his black-robed, scythe-clutching figure, while tapping my Shinola watch:  “What the fuck!” LOVELY...GREAT VIBRANT OPENING. I'M 'IN'....

He’s late, you see.  Going on six months now.  In December of last year my spouse was accepted into a local for-profit hospice.  In order to get federal funding, they needed to claim he had only six months to live. So now Mr. Death is late for his very important date.  And I’m ready for him. 

I’ve been ready for him since the mid-Nineties, when I volunteered with a non-profit Hospice. For two years I was part of care teams that included a nurse, chaplain, social worker and family members.  Though most of my clients lived only a short time after our teams were involved, my last continued on for six months.  Joe, like my spouse, matured past his hospice sell-by date.

Because of my work duties, I was unable to be with Joe during his last hour.  But as soon as I could leave the college when I was giving a test,  I jumped into my Toyota Corolla and sped across town to Deschutes River Woods.  When I got to the mobile home he shared with his wife, I found the Hospice nurse in Joe’s bedroom.  His old body was completely naked. 

“I just got him undressed.  Would you like to help me wash him?”

The body was thin with knobbly joints.  The skin was very soft, except for on his fingers, rutted from decades of guitar playing. ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS DETAIL He was almost hairless.  As I passed the washcloth over him, I felt his body temperature slowly changing from warm to cool.  Soon rigor would set in but as the nurse and I cleaned the corpse, the joints were still easy to move. 

I wondered if this is what my own husband would look like when he died, though at the time he was only sixty-four.  He is now ninety-one.  Ninety-one going on three.  He has late-stage vascular dementia.

So I am prepared and will use my past experience when the Grim Reaper arrives.  While I know that widow-hood will be hard after a fifty-year partnership, I believe that what we’re currently going through now is harder. 

Well, what I’m going through. 

My sweetheart seems perfectly content.  He is a hummingbird,  living on the sugar in hard candy and clear Ensure.  I don’t think he knows what he’s lost or what we’ve lost together.  He doesn’t wake up and go to sleep with grief.  He probably doesn’t think about what it’s like for me to wipe shit off legs I used to kiss.  He sleeps much of his day.

And I look ahead to the beginning of my freedom.  Look ahead to the horrible morning when I wake up beside a cooling body, smelling the final release of fluids in our bed, a smell I already know.  When I will cry for an hour or two and then wash his body myself, touching with love the great bones that are now barely contained within the fragile skin.  When I will call the Hospice, the Funeral Home, and my Priest.  When I will finally have no one to take care of but myself.

HI Kake, I have to say. This IS among the best pieces I've ever received in all my time on this course. Honestly, I wish this piece were mine, it's excellent. You really won't have any problem publishing Kake, once you decide on what type of book you want to write to full fruition....diary of this time recounted here? I mean I don't need to tell YOU, when you have this much talent, this much courage and inner nous, knowing how to pace, where to take me in the emotional sense, honestly? This piece is of the standard I don't see too often. I can't fault it and in a way I wish I could. For now, I'm a very keen reader of your work, Eileen

 

And now this new thing

 So yesterday morning he was up, getting some hard candy, just before I went into the office.  He said there were children in the bedroom.  I got him back into bed and he was okay.

Then, when I got home, he talked about seeing his niece running around in the back yard, "Elmer and Esther's child."

I did not think hallucinations would be part of vascular dementia.  I thought they were associated just with Alz and Lewy-Body.

Nope!

Destination F&*#d!

(Concept of the destination mentioned above stolen from the brilliant comic, Ozzy Man)