i was never a Girl Scout. I wanted to be, I wanted that moniker, which, to me had such panache, but I settled for a play-group that was likely just as much if not more fun.

Fun. Trying to recall what that little 3-letter word means. For now there have been issues weighing heavily on me and I needed information. Heavy information. What called me to arms? I finally, after hours of making attempted calls got through to Robert via a nurse. I could barely hear him. I tried to tell him about the latest news, about what happened yesterday in Washington DC.: about the chaos, the fear, the insanity, the disgust that continued from 2020 into 2021. I tried. I spoke to the air.

I don’t know what he heard or what he understood. He may still be living in 2014. That seems to be the time he pulls out of his memory when asked what year it is. It is a year before his major decline, it is two years before his brain shunt and the ongoing falls. If he wants to rewind the clock he has every right to that wish. It is a safer place in memory.

I bit my lip, took a deep breath and called the funeral home that took care of my mother the night of November 6. I spoke to the same woman. I couldn’t let this go another day, I was becoming too agitated by what I was observing, blind, from afar, relying on audio. My husband is fading.

I received a phone call from Karen in the hospital. This was about discharge plans.

Discharge plans.

Robert wanted to come home. With Covid.

I said there was no way I could take care of him. In fact, I was so alarmed, I told her, that I just began planning his funeral.

Here’s the thing, let’s unravel the red tape together: it is likely that Robert got Covid from the rehab, that by the time he was ready to be discharged this past Monday, it had incubated and reared its spiny head. But, that rehab facility would not take him back with a Covid-positive diagnosis. He would have to go to another facility. There is only one:
The Hebrew Home in Riverdale, The Bronx. Miles away. However, there were no beds. So he won’t be moved. Yet.

The Universe giveth and The Universe taketh away.

It is going to be a while for Covid to get out of his system, if he survives. I add that tag, if he survives, because the world has become so unstable that everything associated with it, everything that resides on it is also unstable.

We can’t depend on anything. We are spinning too fast in too many directions and if we don’t hold on tight we will fly off this ride.

So, everything is changing and nothing is changing. We are stagnant. The zeitgeist of chaos, confusion, hurt, pain, terror and shame from our political situation permeates our pores. Infiltrates our beings. And now this.

I couldn’t find the deed to the cemetery plots.

Robert chose Flushing Cemetery and pushed for us to find a final resting place a couple of years ago. He thought it was beautiful, that is was an Olmsted creation, designed much like Green-Wood in Brooklyn, redolent of Central Park. In fact it is an arboretum. It is the final resting place of Louis Armstrong. What the heck, we love jazz. We love Louis! We went for it.

During the last six months Robert wanted to write his obituary for The New York Times. He never got around to it, just like he never got around to a lot of things that I hoped would prepare me for events like this. That was the other stop on my daily brain train: to get a copy of the cemetery paperwork.

This was not a fun morning. It was downright painful. But it is the kind of stuff you want to  have in order so that your child, no matter what age, didn’t have to cope with one more thing. Something my mother didn’t do for me and I know how difficult it all is. The end. Someone else’s “The End.” The end that can hit you between the eyes when you are least expecting it and force you to look in the mirror and ask yourself who you are, how you got this far, how you made it in the parallel universe of someone else’s trip, be it good or bad.

So let me dabble in an obit.

He was a Renaissance Man: he painted, he photographed, he played the 5-string banjo and the guitar, could have played the piano but it didn’t appeal to him. He wrote, he designed. He had three degrees in architecture, he taught science for forty-four years in public, private and parochial school. He went back to work and paid for his son’s two Ivy degrees and passed on the whole Post Office interest and his post mark-collecting hobby. He was an avid reader. He loved going to museums, culture, classical music, eating out, exploring restaurants, traveling abroad, standing up to the establishment, protecting trees that were threatened, supporting causes, the environment. He was a collector and a clutterer and maybe even a hoarder. He feared being without and was hoping to leave a room of science equipment to a deserving teacher. He recycled before anyone knew about it or would adhere to laws. He had a selflessness about giving to the world and making it better. He had a wicked sense of humor and would outsmart his higher ups at the schools in which he worked and often paid the price.

I say all of this in the past tense because just about all of the above have taken leave. I know the love of it all is still somewhere within him, dear Robert, but cannot be accessed, not now.

He’s just not prepared to pull it all out, to discuss that book with you or name that symphony, or to find his membership card to The Gustav Mahler Society. He’s just not prepared.

I, however, must be.

📌The series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

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