I have spent a good two weeks contacting what felt like endless institutions; about a dozen, in fact. Institutions that have been responsible for banking, retirement, investments, pensions, all that good stuff I never think about on a daily basis if at all: the legalese behind it. The weight of the statements. Five years of statements are needed as part of applying for a nursing home. It’s likely that I had all of these treasures already, but things became disorganized here, more so than I would like to admit, in a household that always gave the illusion of the “everything in its place” syndrome. Robert was in charge of the “stuff:” the filing of the detritus affiliated with important papers. So symbolically, the years of work represented by the accrual of the “statements” banished the fear of never having enough. That fear, I believe is a genetic inheritance. As the stories go, his mother would change the price stickers on the supermarket chicken, and she would never spring for chicken in the chow mein, no, no, she would put in her own and augment the 1950s takeout without guilt.

In the last couple of years I found that things that would normally be filed and organized had just been shoved out of sight. I would open the huge file drawers and there would be explosions of papers, statements, articles,odds & ends. What was happening? And yet, Robert maintained endless files about endless subjects, the clippings within the files would crumble at the touch of a curious hand. Obituaries, history, restaurants, food in general, theater, “stupidity,” etymology, quotations. His head would echo the files, stuffed into place so tightly they could barely be extracted without ripping a cuticle. His head was full of stuff but it was getting disorganized.

Hence the following situation:

My son and I were going to get those new IDs. A passport would suffice for one of the identification mandates. The passports were to have expired in 2019 and we decided to go to AAA to have the (God-awful) photos taken. Previously I could do it myself but got lazy. We sent out what was needed. Something was sent back: there had been a problem, an omission, perhaps, and finally they returned the new passports with the old and, with the latest: Passport cards.

For a lifetime, passports were kept in a specific desk drawer, from oldest to newest, all together.

They are missing.

They were moved. Somewhere.

The Passport cards are there and there is no sign of the passports. There’s been a separation.

I have looked high and low, under and over the messes that were his. In and out, up and down.

They have disappeared.

But, in that same drawer, he had every bank book he ever used for every account he ever had, every passbook, Every plastic cover issued for same, every Traveller’s Cheque wallet, most were dry and hard and cracked. He had blank deposit slips and withdrawal slips to the point that the drawer would always be stuffed beyond capacity. He was big on souvenirs, on ephemera: He created his own. Everything had value to him.

I cleaned out the drawer. I felt guilty. He is not returning, I tell myself. I am slowly understanding that and claiming new spaces. A drawer here, a box there. He was suffocating us in that which was beyond its life of usefulness. All  from an inherited place of poverty, emotional poverty, fear of need. Fear. I tossed about five pounds of old bank deposit slips that would never be used. And, I went back, again and again, to that drawer, over and over, magically thinking that the Passports would suddenly re-appear, and they would exclaim: Surprise, here we are! We were here all along and we fooled you!

But that didn’t happen.

So, my attention was turned to the parallel undertaking for the collection of statements, the massive envelopes that were arriving after either sitting with bank personnel or spending time on the phone, sending out Powers of Attorney, following up with calls. All to verify that I am, we are, not filthy rich and gifting whatever we had to our progeny whereupon we will be penalized for that amount when the nursing home stakes its claim.

America.

Ironically, the system needs to see EVERY account, individual, joint, open or closed. That includes the joint account I had with my mother to pay her rent. I haven’t even begun with that bank yet as they want a huge fee to print out; just as I shredded all of those statements thinking I’d never need them.

Strangely, for about 6 weeks I was without an ocular migraine, for about forty-five days. This was an anomaly. I thought to myself, there! I’ve beaten it! Only to have them return, along with some migraine vertigo (thankfully, not the violent kind I used to get) for days in a row. The bottom line: if you think you have control over your Universe, you most likely don’t. But I still believe, I want to believe in magical thinking: I need that hope. I will be migraine free and the Passports will return.

Yesterday might have been a turning point. I feel helpless. I am watching someone’s demise. Again. It is only a few months that my mother is gone and Robert picked up where she left off. Leaving me in that continual anxious state and disbelief. Shock might be a better word.

Is there a message in the loss of a passport? Freedom of movement is curtailed. One’s identity is compromised. I ask myself daily who I am and how to redefine myself.

How does one get from point A to point B when must cross a border?

The best I can come up with is a divorced widow but not really. There’s no term for watching a spouse die. I am crossing borders alone without a document that will be stamped.

Each day the rehab calls me to set up a virtual call. I can see Robert lying there on a special bed-like wheelchair. He gets distracted by the other people around him who compete for air space on the iPads. They speak in different languages, the aides have loud laughs, I compete with the chatter and nothing happens; he just lies there and picks at the label on the iPad: Virtual calls only. He reads it aloud several times.

I blather to kill time, to try to hook him on something interesting.

“What would you say to Evan if you could tell him something now?”
Keep your chin up, he answers, after a pause.

“What would you say to me? …pause
I love you.

And then we sign off and there is a sound that is redolent of Star Trek, something outter-spacey and the screen goes blank.

Yesterday, at about 11:30 am, the usual time, I pulled up youtube on the computer. Then, I pulled up Mahler. I said, what would you like to hear?

He said: The 5th. I played it on my computer and had the phone with the FaceTime call on a stand so he could watch but more importantly, listen. With some trials and errors, we were good to go. He said he loved it. He closed his eyes and listened.

He listened to the entire concert with some interruption at the very end, for an hour. When the aide came in with his lunch, she was an intrusion. I heard him say: I’m listening to Mahler! Like she should have understood. They let him stay in his room instead of that noisy dayroom where there is constant chatter from iPad visits.

And then I thought: this will make him human. This will bring a bit of him back. This. Something that he loves. His soul needs a feeding. It is on empty.

I decided: everyday, instead of the trite blathering, I will provide a concert. I will find them on the web or start playing the thousands of CDs in the living room. I will be a conductor, a concert master. I will lead the best I can.

Today I said, how about the 2nd?

Of What?

Mahler.

That’s OK.

They let him listen in the hallway with the noise competing, to The Resurrection Symphony. He was able to get through two-thirds of it. I promised him the rest of it tomorrow. It was lunchtime and he had the iPad longer than anyone, I presume. Over an hour.

I also thought: if anyone needs a little resurrection, it’s him.

Just the other day, I found a bag of Valentines that Robert had purchased for me a year or more ago and was saving for the occasion. A few years’ worth. He wanted to be prepared. Finding them gave me hope. They were stuck between some folders in the living room wall unit. I might just find those passports tucked away somewhere after all. Or, I may not.

We now dwell in strange places, away from home, he in his, me, in mine. We are expats in foreign lands. With no passports.

And even if we find them,

we can’t go home again.

Leonard Bernstein, conducting

 

 

 

 

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

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