November 10-11, 2014

The day started with quite the little breakdown. The dream probably triggered it, a nifty number including a protracted and disputatious conversation with Linda, the first Mrs. Hanley, then a cheerier chat with Susie, a terminally homely girl from grad school, who was living in a not- quite-decrepit apartment building in Ann Arbor and was seriously considering being a cat lady there for the rest of her days. The dream ended with notice of publication of my posthumous Parkinson's memoir in the U-M Hopwood bulletin, thanks to homely girl who'd worked there for most of eight or nine years now and expected she would inherit the gig sooner rather than later as the current occupant had suffered from Parkinson's for years, didn't I know?

How could I know? Posthumous means dead.

And so it was that I started tearing up while pumping gas on the way home from taking my kids to school early for Jack's AP US History test prep to the point where I was pretty much in full wail by the time I came in the back door. I intended to pull myself together so as to spare her the spectacle, but of course, Julie would be waiting for me in the mudroom for our morning walk with Gus. Man, I haven't cried in front of another human being like that in years. Probably since it was Doreen who comforted me and brought me around from a pain less purely existential -- bee sting, stubbed toe, fist fight with best friend.

Be forewarned, I can't write about my mom for shit. Totally without thinking, I just put my hand to the back of my neck, which should tell you all you need to know. She was the first second Mrs. Hanley, which means she is one of Jack's three, not the only way that my parents' failed marriage baffles me. One thing about Doreen I can say without too much fear of idealization or score-settling: she was a survivor. So let me get this out of the way: lungs in the form of smoking-related emphysema got my mother, though I think her death certificate may also have implicated the gut, which would be the dreaded diverticulosis. To complete our tour of death sites of the human body might require a stop at Mr. Brain for me, which is just one reason I am far less interested in relating how Doreen died than I am in sharing a little bit of how she lived.

She was a good egg. I have no idea what that means outside of the rather unstartling complementary assertion that she was not a bad egg, and that it was one of the seemingly endless trove of such expressions she could reel off effortlessly. So-and-so was "distasteful" because she didn't show the proper "decorum." Nothing was too much for Doreen so much as it was "beyond the beyond." And then, of course, there was her all-time best swear: when so-and-so pretended to be something she was not, she left herself open to the charge of "trying to shit higher than her ass," a turn of phrase completely unique to her that in simultaneously defying geometry and anatomy always delighted me.

All that said, I realize none of that really speaks to exactly what and how she had to endure to survive, other than perhaps the deployment of a series of stock phrases that puzzle as much as they please. My reluctance to discuss what stems from a deep desire to respect her privacy, just as my reticence about exploring how is seated in that aforementioned inability to write well about her. The fact is that she holds enormous power over me, even now, as I explore mortal issues of my own, which is reason enough to STOP right here, but first, just this: my mom worked her ass off to stay alive.

Julie is my ace in the hole in this respect, she reminded me as she talked me off the ledge while we gave Gus his good morning walk. Her advanced practice degree in geriatric nursing makes her the perfect match for someone in my situation. As she told this blubbering idiot while we walked up our cross street at sunrise, I'm likely to have this chronic illness for a long time, and none of the dark possibilities to which I turn my thoughts on mornings such as these (dementia, long term internment in nursing home, catastrophic injury from a fall) are nearly as likely as a long, gentle decline to old age cushioned by her loving embrace. In other words, you're not going to die any time soon, so chill the fuck out, old man.