visits

Mom's health is precarious enough that I forayed out during the wife's second day of labor, leaving her cupped safely in the capable hands of my sister in law.

Mom's dog Lulu was badly adrift.
There is a stark contrast between the early visits when mom was still ambulatory. She stares a lot, she doesn't jump into my lap any more, she doesn't charge out her pint sized doggy door to challenge perceived intrusions, she's lost weight.
She may not understand the scripted call and response of cancer's tedious litany, but she knows everything has gone fucked and there's nothing she can do about it except dive deep and wait.

Dogs are like children that way.

Mom's pill organizer is the size of a cereal box, a drawer for every day of the week, subdivided into hourly bands each with their own toy surprise. Squat bottles tipped with rubber membranes dot the counter beside her bed, toadstools sprouting between the ranked trays of inexplicable medical paraphernalia.

Talking to her is like navigating a ship through the fog, a general dreamy haze with jagged dark shapes that loom unexpectedly near at hand.

Something murky and indefinable has been traveling between us during this series of visits. Neither one of us says anything for the record, but heavily encrypted messages are negotiating deniable back channels and triggering equally enigmatic and unauthorized responses.

It is in no way satisfying, and we still can't understand each other.
But at least something is happening.

Which brings me back, as happens so often lately, to Elliot Smith.

i'm here with my cup
afraid to look up
this is how i spend my time
lazin' around, head hangin' down
stuck inside my imagination
busy making something from nothing
pictures of hope and depression
anything is better than nothing
anything is better than nothing
anything is better than nothing
anything is better than nothing