Better for me/ Better for you

08 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in AARP, Aging, Silver Tsunami

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This is not just about me. It is about you too.

This is what I imagine myself saying to my grown kids.

In March, my mom died. She was 78, just 19 years older than me. (TickTock)

The disaster of her death sent my already challenged family-of-origin spinning from our normal gulf of confusion into an uncharted sea of calamity.

In the end, it was a full-blown, ocean-sized Tsunami. I refuse to let my own children, go through the Hell that I am only now, beginning to escape from.

My maternal grandmother’s last spoken words to me (on her death bed,in her own home) over twenty years ago were about a similar, tragic situation.

She warned me, referring to an enormous rift between my cousins, over their mom’s death debacle; “Do NOT let this happen to your children.”

My grandmother was 100% Danish. Her Scandinavian heart was gentle but these words were spoken with a Viking might that meant she was dead serious.

At ninety, she proclaimed to me that now she felt old, and we made a pact that I would not let her be put into an “Old-Folks Home.” (This was 1995, and that is what she called it.) She and her three siblings had struggled fiercely over what to do with thier own mother.

I have decided to take the the sum of these familial experiences and create an achievable plan that will hopefully avoid some of the painful pitfalls I witnessed.

The place you live as you enter the “golden years” will determine much about how this plays out. My mom lived in an elevated, remote beach house. I had tried for the past five years to get her to move to a more accessible, reasonable space to “age-in-place.”

Her excuses were numerous; she stubbornly resisted and stayed put. So to actively embrace the unavoidable, next phase of my life, I have put a contract on a very small duplex.

It has a ground floor unit and an upper floor unit. It needs work. I plan to fix it up, one level at a time. The ground floor level will be an elder-friendly/gracefully-gray space. The upper-level unit can be rented out to produce income or possibly house a care-taker, if that need eventually arises.

I want to do this when my mind and body are still fully functioning. I saw how swiftly my mom’s life-force was altered and in the end, destroyed by disease. I am scheduled to close the day I turn 59.5. I will continue to share this journey with you. Stay tuned…

Rape Story

24 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by in Bill Cosby, Rape, Zombie

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It took me nearly two decades to unblock the memory that I had been raped.

I heard the soundtrack from the movie I had seen hours before I was raped, and it all came crashing back to me. I’d never told anyone.

All this press slamming the women who are coming forward about Bill Cosby makes me cringe. A disturbingly large portion of our society takes an absurd stance on rape.

In my case, I was a 15 year old Nobody and my rapist was a big-shot, football hero in a small town that idolized jocks.

All the people who are questioning why it took so long for these Cosby victims to come foward don’t have the first clue about what being raped can do to a person’s life.

The damage is so deep that it can take decades for it to simply surface. But I can clearly remember every dirty detail and for me, now that both my parents have died, I can try to write about it.

When I finally did allow my memory to surface, I sought counseling. And eventuallly found the courage to tell my parents, I had to relive part of it and that hurt all of us deeply.

Mom died last March. Dad’s birthday is November 27. To honor him, I am writing this to share my tiny part of the rape story, my story.

I was raped. I didn’t tell. I was afraid my dad would kill the guy who raped me.

I was embarressed, ashamed, and wounded in a way, shape and form that is not logical. It changed the 15 year old teen that I was- into something that anyone who had known me before that devastating night could not recognize.

Along with my blood-stained and torn (brand-new) bell bottoms, I threw  my just-emerging self, into the trash can. The zombie-teen that remained, stumbled carelessly and confused through a few decades, desperately searching for her discarded life-force.

Cut these rape victims some slack; not tellling – is a way to cope.

When you are a Zombie, you barely get through a day. At last, I can speak up.

Bye, Bye Bridget

23 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Bridget Jones

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I loved Bridget Jones. When I was having a really bad day, I could turn on one of those movies and cry/laugh away my own no-good sorrows.

She was an adorable, admirable hero.

I  know that Renee Z. was not really Bridget Jones. I know next to nothing about the real Renee, but in my mind, Bridget Jones is how I will always remember Renee.

The concern about Zellweger’s drastic change in appearance is understandable. For me, it isn’t that Renee Z. looks so altered that this true fan can no longer recognize her.

OK, the Bridget Jones that I knew and idolized will never age. She will always only be the ‘not-so-perfect’ but just-exactly-right-girl-next-door that we all want to root for; the imperfect creatures that we all really are.

I am sad about the loss of my imaginary film friend, Bridget Jones.

I look at the new, improved Renee and I long for Bridget.

I loved her expressive eyes and those eyes seem to be what has been lost in this cut and paste version. Renee made Bridget come alive for me with those eyes. They made both her troubles and her triumphs feel real.

I hope this cut and paste version is what she was hoping for. I hope she can still recognize herself when she looks in the mirror.

Ebola/ iBola

17 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Ebola, Galveston, iOS8

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My ipad and I got into big trouble when the latest iOS8 bug infected us. Then, there were the supposed fixes; nothing worked. Prior to the invasion, I normally worked from my iPad. Due to another device debacle, my  laptop was out of commission.

I was working from my trusty 5 year old iPhone.

A precious 3 year old honestly asked me if it was from ‘the age of dinosaurs’ – her parents have smarter phones. I adore my old iPhone and am consistently reluctant to get new gadgets. My output was ice-age slow.

I was stressed out, but it’s nothing compared to the stressing out that is going on around here.

I work in Texas and the Ebola crisis has been saturating the headlines. I was joking with some close friends when I teased that my iPad got iBola. It’s a sadly sick joke. (no pun intended) People are truly concerned around here; I am in Galveston, Texas.

This morning’s weather report announced that a late tropical system is brewing in the southwest Gulf of Mexico, it probably will not come this way. But seriously, why in the world is a National Lab located on a vulnerable barrier reef island – in a facility (UTMB) that was devastated by hurricane Ike six years ago?

The National Lab is dilagently working on a vaccine/cure for Ebola.

The Governor of Texas toured the lab ten days ago accompanied with Rick Perryish headlines. More breaking news; this UTMB facility is now going to get the Ebola leftovers (medical waste) to incinerate.

Some schools are closed here in Texas because of Ebola exposure and eight hundred airline passengers have been notified that they may have been exposed because a nurse (now infected and isolated) flew roundtrip out of Dallas.

AND just now the TV news is saying that a Dallas hospital lab supervisor on a cruise ship that left from Galveston was exposed to Ebola. They have turned the ship around. It is coming back to Galveston and the State Health Department is “working frantically to get that worker off the ship.”

As I write this, I hear a buzz. I see a mosquito; I swat. Splat, I connect and see the blood. I wonder, whose blood is that and are any little viruses are lurking in there? What’s next? Stay tuned.

Hung up

17 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Robin Williams fan, suicide, surviving suicide

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I ‘d  been stalling. I made up one excuse after another. Finally, my hand was forced after eight years. An appraiser was coming to the house. I had to deal with this.

My friend Eric had hung himself in the bedroom of my apartment over the garage. My brother Dave found him for me; after I begged, explaining that Eric was very uncharacteristically not answering my phone calls. (Eric and I were very close.)

My brother was really mad at me over having to find Eric’s dead body and he stayed mad for years until Robin Williams (my brother’s all-time favorite ) hung himself.

My brother finally peaced-out.

Together, just last week, we climbed up the stairs and went into the room. The coroner had done the initial dirty work but I needed to empty out the room and get rid of all of Eric’s old things. We loved to cook together and he had some of my old cookbooks mixed in with his.

Going through his things was like visiting with him. I saw his hand-writing on a piece of paper and for a terrifying nanosecond wondered if it was a note for me. It wasn’t.

But this was painful in a way that I cannot explain. It hurt in a place that I didn’t know could ache. Now, finally, after eight long years, I have finally said goodbye.

I am no longer hung up.