I am getting ready for a memorial. Funny how each loss makes you think of others.
When people are gone, they recede into a fog.
There may be certain things you remember.

Memories slowly blur.

I wrote this in 2009. I don’t know why this gentleman comes to mind today. Partly because I have a friend in the hospital. She is in her 80s. When the doctors ask how she is, she says, “Fine.” I want to yell “Liar! She is NOT fine!” Luckily she has her daughter-in-law and me and her sons saying “She is NOT fine!” Sometimes people are very stoic and will not tell you that they are not fine.
When I was in residency we rotated through the Veterans Hospital in Portland, Oregon. Most of our patients were either very elderly or they were alcoholics or addicts in their 50s, starting to really go downhill medically.
One elderly patient is particular vivid in my memory. He was in his 80s and black. He was weak and had various problems. I was not doing a very good job of sorting him out.
He wouldn’t answer questions. Or rather, he would give a reply, but it was not yes or no and I couldn’t figure out how the answer related to the question.
On the third day he gave a long reply to a question and I recognized it.
“That’s Longfellow,” I said. He nearly smiled. “We did a bike trip around Nova Scotia and read Evangeline aloud in the tents at night. The mosquitos tried to eat us alive. That’s Longfellow, isn’t it?”
He wouldn’t answer but the twinkle in his eye indicated yes.
So our visits were cryptic but fun. I would try to guess the author. He knew acres of poetry, all stored in his brain, no effort. I tried to relate the poems to my questions to see if he was answering indirectly. I wondered if he had schizophrenia and these were answers, but I didn’t think so. I thought he was just stubborn and refusing to answer.
I challenged him. “Ok, you are the right age. Come up with a song with my first name that is from early in the century. My father used to sing it to me when I was little. Can you?”
The next day he sang to me: “K-k-k-katy, beautiful Katy, you’re the only beautiful girl that I adore. When the m-moon shines, over the cow shed, I’ll be waiting by the k-k-k-kitchen door.”
We sat and grinned at each other. Soon afterward I moved on to the next rotation. I don’t remember his medical problems. But I remember him and remember wondering what he had done in his life to have a memory and a store of poetry in his head. A teacher? A professor? A man who loved poetry? I started matching him with my own store of poems, the Walrus and the Carpenter, songs, bits and pieces. I felt blessed and approved of when his eyes twinkled at me, when I recognized an author or even recognized the poem itself. I looked forward to seeing him daily on rounds. And he seemed to look forward to my visits. I was sad when I had to say goodbye and the next rotation was out of town. And since he had never told us his name, no way to stay in touch. Farewell, poetry man, fare thee well.
____________________
We were not doing nothing. He would not tell us his name, so we were awaiting an opinion from neurology. Waiting.
The photograph is not as old as the song. The young man holding the ball is my father, in the 1950s. My Aunt and I think this was at Williston in around 1956.
This is my beloved cat who died in February 2020. She was named Boa Black or Feather Boa, depending on the situation. We got her as a tiny kitten at the pound. She had the softest fur and purred the instant I picked her up. She was 17 when she died.
For the Ragtag Daily prompt: dishabille.
I am trying not to curse you
for hurting my small child AGAIN
she doesn’t deserve that, how can you?
hasn’t she been hurt enough?
I am trying not to curse you
I am a scientist not a witch
witches curse people, I won’t do that
at least, I try not, try not
I can see your choices though
the map laid before you: you must choose
the path to take. A serious decision
that will take some honest work.
I can see your choices: it’s not a curse
it’s not my fault. It’s up to you, your choice
Grief again makes me hurt and angry
but I don’t curse you, I try not
I don’t know when it is too late to choose
you have refused the path over and over
but I am not part of it any more, not angry,
sad. The choice is yours alone and always was
I believe it is never too late to choose the path
and at the same time some people never do
my sister, dying, saying to me alone: “I’m bad.”
Me saying “No.” My sister: “I’m sorry.”
I don’t want to do that again, do you hear me?
If you choose not to change, stay on this path
I suppose I would relent at the end
But I don’t want to. Do you hear me?
I am trying not to curse you
for hurting my small child AGAIN
she doesn’t deserve that, how can you?
hasn’t she been hurt enough?
but there are the elk
I spoke to them once and they answered
to my surprise and yours. I can’t help it if
the elk remember
But I AM your daughter! I was stolen as a baby! I was changed to bird form! Please listen!
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: changeling.
Today is my sister’s birthday, Christine Robbins Ottaway. She died of breast cancer in 2012 at age 49. She had gotten stage IIIB breast cancer at age 41. She went through mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation and was clear for two years. Then it recurred and she returned to treatment, rounds of chemotherapy, a gamma knife radiation, another gamma knife and whole brain radiation. She was very very strong and tough and fought the cancer right up until the end.
This photograph was taken at my father’s 70th birthday party, in 2008. My friend Maline took the photograph. She and other old friends gathered and we sang the family folk songs.
Here is a drawing that my mother Helen Burling Ottaway did in 1978 of Chris. My mother always had a sketchbook. This is one she sent to me, because I was an exchange student in Denmark that year. At Christmas I received the wonderful sketchbook with my mother’s comments. My sister was 14 when I went to Denmark and I was 17.
Trigger warning: this is about dementia. I wrote this over ten years ago.
wearing sunglasses in the rain
I am weeping for you both
you have cared for her
for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health
and she has lost her memory
you told me on the phone
that it’s not that bad
you say it again in the room
I knew before I saw her
that it was bad, very bad, much worse
she is only 60
she becomes agitated when we try to weigh her
old style doctor’s scale
frightens her to try to step up.
gentle caregiver that you have hired
pushes her, until I say stop, stop, stop
her weight does not matter
shuffling gait
she is frightened to be in a new place
I ask her questions gently
she does not want to sit in the chair in the exam room
“No!” she says “No!”
I leave the room until she’s calmer
when I return
I give her choices
“Shall I examine you first with my stethoscope
or shall I talk to your husband?”
I choose for her, the latter
she relaxes, a little
later, I tell her each step before I do it
she is slightly tense when I lay the stethoscope
on her thin shoulders, but she doesn’t fight
she tenses as I ask her husband questions
about the memory loss
ten years now, a steady course
I ask him what he understands about the prognosis
he shifts uncomfortably
and I ask her if she would like to wait in the waiting room
while I talk to him
Firm and clear: “Yes, I would.”
She is not in the room now
he says that she is not too bad
the picture comes slowly in to focus
mild memory loss, is what he thinks
there are three stages of memory loss, I say
mild, the short fibers, where short term memory is affected
we forget what someone just said
moderate, the medium axons
we forget the recipe that we’ve know for 50 years
we forget how to do math
we forget names and how to get to the store
we forget how to operate the car
severe, the long axons
executive function
we do not initiate things
we forget to get dressed
we forget how to speak
we forget our potty training
his eyes grow sadder and sadder
at last, we return to being a baby
we forget everything
at last, we remember the womb
we no longer want to eat
is she forgetting to eat?
he is not ready to answer
as we leave the room
he says that she is not sleeping well
she seems to be awake at night
eyes closed
but her fingers are moving, as in play
he doesn’t speak to her
he needs to sleep and thinks she should too
should he give her a sleeping pill?
maybe she is happy, I say
maybe in bed in the dark
you are there and it is safe
no one is making her get dressed
no one is making her bathe
maybe that is where she wants to be awake
I would not give her a sleeping pill
the dogs are in the room
he says
and the tv is on just a little
maybe she is happy
he is wearing sun glasses
as they cajole and help her in to the van
he is wearing sun glasses
though it is overcast, low clouds and raining
sometimes it is so hard
to say what I see
to try to say the truth
sometimes the truth is not gentle
but sometimes the truth is love
I am weeping for you both
written 2010
I have done two grief playlists. I will do more, but it got me thinking about other playlists. And we need distraction from grief too.
I am a swing dancer and jitterbug dancer. I lived in the Washington, DC area from 1985 to 1989 and then left for medical school. I spent a year being depressed about a breakup. The only time the depression lifted was when I went dancing. I started with contra dancing and then took a swing dance class. In the 1980s, we would have 400-600 people show up at the Spanish Ballroom in Glen Echo Park in Cabin John, MD, for a live band and a lesson, in a no alcohol venue. We would dance our socks off for three hours. We barely clapped for the bands, but they didn’t seem to care, because they liked watching us throw each other up in the air!
Marcia Ball
Daryl Davis
(You could watch his ted talk, too.)
Maria Muldaur
Uppity Blues Women
Little Red and the Renagades
Doc Scantlin and his Imperial Palms Orchestra – at the Kennedy Warren Ballroom in Washington, DC.
I took the photograph of the poster this morning. It is from the 1980s.
This is a tintype. “Tintype photography was invented in France in the 1850s by a man named Adolphe-Alexandre Martin. Tintypes saw the rise and fall of the American Civil War, and have persisted through the 20th century and into modern times.” — from here.
I do not know who this young man is, nor the year. I asked my maternal uncle before he died and he denied any knowledge of the person. He was the family historian and archivisit.
However, I have four tintypes in the box of china doll furniture clothes and accessories. My sister and I received a box of jewelry and the tintypes from my Great Aunt Esther Parr. She was my maternal grandmother’s sister and married Russel Parr. Her maiden name was White, a daughter of George White, the Congregationalist Minister who ran Anatolia College in Turkey and then moved to Greece. My sister and I divided the box of jewelry and the tintypes. There were eight so we took turns picking. We used them for dollhouse portraits, not realizing that they were real photographs. I wonder if the tintypes are from the Parr side of the family.
Last month I was missing my father on February 12. I was a month off. His birthday was today, Malcolm Kenyon Ottaway, born in 1938. I miss him now, too.
I will label more photographs, since I appear to have inherited the maternal family paper archive. There are people that I don’t know, though, and my parents are gone. My mother’s siblings have died as well. I am so glad I still have my father’s sisters.
Ask your parents about the pictures and the objects they keep, before they are gone and you lose the story. Time marches on.
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: March.
Today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt is chunk.
One of the family jokes leaps into my mind first: How much wood would a woodchunk chunk if a woodchunk could chunk wood?
I know, it’s just rong, rong, terrible rong, but wordplay was a part of life.
Some of the creative paths that escaped from my brain!
Books, reading and more ... with an Australian focus ... written on Ngunnawal Country
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
spirituality / art / ethics
Coast-to-coast US bike tour
Climbing, Outdoors, Life!
Paula Light's Writing Site | The Classic Edition
Refugees welcome - Flüchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflüchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
En fotoblogg
Examining the Ordinary and Extraordinary
Books by author Diana Coombes
NEW FLOWERY JOURNEYS
in search of a better us
Personal Blog
Raku pottery, vases, and gifts
Rural doctor, mom, writes poems, dance, sing.
𝖠𝗇𝗈𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗋 𝖶𝗈𝗋𝖽𝖯𝗋𝖾𝗌𝗌.𝖼𝗈𝗆 𝗌𝗂𝗍𝖾.
Taking the camera for a walk!!!
A blog designed to remember the past and celebrate the present.
From the Existential to the Mundane - From Poetry to Prose
1 Man and His Bloody Dog
Homepage Engaging the World, Hearing the World and speaking for the World.
Anne M Bray's art blog, and then some.
The Home for All My Coding Projects
My Personal Rants, Ravings, & Ruminations
...out of a digital shoebox
Writer
You must be logged in to post a comment.