August has been speeding up and despite my protests, much of it is gone, pushing me to Fall. I keep busy. I distract myself. There is plenty to think about and plenty I do not want to face.

I am having a biopsy under MRI this week for something suspicious that appeared on a recent MRI. The MRI is the new annual protocol for breast cancer people. Like I said, I don’t want to think about that for now, so, let me report on my last Facetime visit with Robert. By the time you read this I will have had an appointment with the surgeon for an exam. Holding my breath.

 

I had a FaceTime visit with Robert. It was almost an hour and a half visit.

 

 

 

I did my show and tell: I read a letter from his sister. He did not react. She wanted me to show him a stamp she had written to him about in the letter. He knew who was on the stamp, Pete Seeger, but then he could read his name. No reaction from this life-long stamp collector.

 

 

 

 

I was able to coax a smile out of him.

 

 

I showed him the pile of beautiful tomatoes I had grown. He had no reaction. But I’m used to that: most of the time he does not react unless prompted. And even then there is no guarantee.

 

 

 

 

I told him that I had something special to show him. His friends in Chicago took his instruments on a recent visit, to see if they could help to find them new homes. A musician friend was filmed playing Robert’s 1949 Martin guitar. It’s been ages since I had heard it played. This got to me, brought me to tears. Guitarist, Fareed Haque plays Robert’s Martin Guitar Hallelujah/Leonard Cohen. Thank you, Alan & Jerri T.

When I asked Robert what he thought of Fareed’s playing he said, “I have a lot to learn.”

I showed Robert that I was raising butterflies again. No response.

I am also photographing insects. They’ve become good companions.

I met a dragonfly, one of the hardest insects to photograph. It posed for me.

I asked if he remembered that on our last FaceTime visit we began watching The Automat, and he said, “yes.” I asked if he remembered the Automat, its location, and the food.

He did not.

I was surprised.

So, I propped up my phone, placed it opposite my computer screen and put on the rest of the movie which he has seen about a third of. For a moment, things were almost normal. We were watching a movie together, sitting side by side. In our years together we went to so many movies, it was hard for me to believe that life had come to this.

At one point I stopped the movie and asked if he remembered this ad:

He did not. But, it is somewhere in the basement. He had taken it from a bus or a subway. It was a great ad and he knew it, about fifty years ago.

After this virtual visit, I had two dreams. My most vivid dreams occur just before waking. I’ve had a number of them over the last few months where my fears spill out onto my pillow and wake me, in a sweat. This time, I was between my mother and Robert. I think we may have been in a nursing home. My mother passed in early November, 2020 at age 102. Her aide once told me that my mother told her that I should put Robert into a nursing home. (My mother once said that if I put her into a home she would die.)
At the time, Robert was functioning, he was using a cane. But, later that same November, just a few weeks after my mother’s death, that’s exactly what happened: Robert ended up, in a nursing home although at that point it was for “rehab” after a fall.

He has never returned home. And in the dream, my mother walked. And so did Robert. I had two major losses in one month that year. I suppose that my mind was telling me that my mother and my husband would end up together.

In the second dream, Robert and I were in a theater about to watch a show. The seats were red velvet. We were sitting high up. The people around us were Indian I had made a curry dish the night before and the odor lingered in the house which may have prompted the association.

There was a woman who had been sitting a few seats away from me and she left. Where she had been was my son’s blue and yellow plaid quilt, from his earlier years. The underside was stained with orange food spots.  (Funny, I had been doing loads of laundry.) “I’ll have to wash it when we get home,” I announced. At that time Robert was functioning. He was able to walk, to get us to the theater. However, at our last time at a theater we got to a restaurant early to have lunch before the show.

He fell in the restaurant.

He had a terrible stomach issue which came on suddenly; this was happening more and more often. He was in the bathroom for at least an hour, leaving me at the table, feeling sick and sinking, myself, with staff coming over asking if he was OK, if they should open the door. We almost missed the curtain. When he emerged, his clothes were defiled. It was the beginning of the end.

The mind tries to process, but does it ever understand?

Robert was a classical music buff, but he grooved on every kind of music imaginable.

I remember he loved the arrangement of this Otis Redding song.

What could be more appropriate than a song about dreams?

 

 

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

The previous post is here.

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