Tag Archives: Aging

It’s raining, it’s pouring

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Today is a wet, wet day in New York City.  We don’t need the rain, but the rest of the country does.  This is what happens when you mess with Nature.  Nature messes right back.

We did a drive-by to visit DOB (father of blogger) and had brunch.  The usual comfort food: bagels, nova scotia salmon, cream cheese.  Of course, because POB (partner of blogger) did the food run, there was no matjes herring or white fish salad.  Really?  There wouldn’t have been enough food had I not held back.  This, in my mother’s (may-she-rest-in-peace-her-memory-be-for-a-blessing) house?  Ok, so I do a self-serving calculation and determine that most people Mom and Dad knew are dead so there is no one to talk about the fact that there wasn’t enough food.  But if these people are Heaven, do they know and is Mom embarrassed?  Exhaustion sets in just from the emotional and tribal toll this takes on me.  I have just enough energy to text SOB (sister of blogger) who is on call at the hospital “Drive-by successful, taking nap.”  I get a text back, “strong work.”  Nothing like elder sister approval, in the absence of my mother.  I am happy, if hungry.

I should not have given the task to POB.  When we started to date, her parents had to buy more food because I would gnaw at the antique table.  If there were left-overs, her mother instructed that they be passed to me so I could Hoover it up.  POB has come a long way.  She has food crises (what if an army comes knocking?) but sometimes she forgets about the joys of matjes herring (no cream sauce) and white fish salad.  I love her and frankly I don’t need so much of the comfort food since it occludes the arteries, however, deliciously.

Then, there are those rainy day tasks we have all planned, like scan photos into the family archive.  I look at some, and then sigh.  Rainy days, with their poetic sorrow, only magnify my feelings when looking at long dead family members when they were young, strong and undefeated.  I remember them this way.  Not the later pictures when time and disease did their violence.  I can’t look anymore. Nope, going through family photos is NOT a rainy day activity.

I need to hug and kiss my child.  Will he remember POB and me as strong and solid?  Or will later pictures of when we are frail form his lasting memory?  I guess, as long as he remembers the love, it’s ok.

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The conversation turns, updated

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My conversations turn, invariably, to how does [insert issue] affect me?

So, as we were remembering Cousin Bernie (see prior blog), SOB (sister of blogger) and I started talking about buying cemetery plots.  Actually, we have been talking about it since Cousin Gentle told us (over dinner, of course) about his trip to visit his plot.  He even did a video that he showed us.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45bMpw5CByM  SOB and I think that this video captures the humor, the eccentricities, the sweet zany-ness and the bonds of our greater Blogger clan.    We could easily see ourselves doing this, too.

SOB and I weren’t sure whether the location of our remains mattered much, assuming our souls go to Heaven (or the other place).  But we don’t know about the transportation system for souls visiting each other across the vast universe.   TLP (my son the little prince) would probably imagine a train system.  Ah, I knew Soul Train http://www.televisiontunes.com/Soul_Train.html would find its way back into vogue.   What if SOB and I wanted to see Mom or Dad or our grandparents?  Would it be a schlep?

So, just in case, we may need to be buried somewhere along the Long Island Expressway (traditionally a Jewish stop on the road to Heaven) to be close to our family and as well as an easy drive-by visit for the living.

This is very complicated.  Should we buy a large plot so we have space between us and the neighbors?  Or should be huddle together because it could get cold at night.  I might bring a sweater under my kittel (funeral gown) just in case.

Also, what with perpetual care?  TLP is our perpetual care.  Weren’t POB (partner of blogger) and I good mothers?  Certainly good enough for him to make sure that the eternal resting places for our bodies are properly maintained.  And that goes for Aunt SOB and Uncle HOSOB (husband of SOB), too.

Dear TLP, you may have to give up your day job in order to tend to our graves and show gratitude for all we did for you in our lives.  And when you do win that Nobel Prize, you’ll bury near us so we can qvell and brag to the other mothers in our section of the universe.  It is the least you could do, my sweet.

Ok, maybe I will get cremated.

 

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RIP, Cousin Bernie

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Cousin Bernie died yesterday,

Cousin Bernie wasn’t really my cousin.  But I didn’t find out that Bernie wasn’t related until my mother’s shiva.  Trust me, that’s when you learn everything about everybody, whether you want to or not.

It turns out that Cousin Bernie was the cousin of Betty, one of my mother’s closest friends from college.  Betty and my mother married two brothers, so Betty was my Aunt Betty by the time I was born.  Cousin Bernie also was (for time enough to have two children) the husband of Blossom, one of Aunt Betty’s and Mom’s other close friends.  For the record, Aunt Betty’s only successful match was Mom and Dad.  The rest were, shall we say, short-lived.

Not only was Cousin Bernie, and therefore, his wife Susan not my cousins, but Blossom wasn’t, and Blossom’s second husband, Aaron, wasn’t and his third wife, Marjorie, wasn’t.  All of which I found out at Mom’s shiva.  And Marjorie was the only one who asked POB (partner of blogger) if we were having a child by a known donor or unknown donor.  You mean she asked that and she wasn’t even related???  You have to admire a woman who picks up the beat of the Blogger family.  No boundaries, ever.

What makes them my family is more important than blood or marriage.   They are related by love.  And if not, love, then time.  After a few decades, even my mother, who would cringe at Bernie’s cursing like a sailor (he was one, in World War II), loved him even though he divorced Blossom and swore in front of her children.  Family is family, however it is constituted.

And so my heart is breaking for his wife Susan, Aunt Betty and Bernie’s kids.  Bernie, my Mom, Aunt Betty, Uncle Willy and my Dad were among the generation that bridged the divide between immigrant children and Americans.  They were the generation that fought in the war that American won.  They all put their foot on the gas pedal and roared into the American dream.  They laid the foundation for my generation’s successes.

And they were characters.  In his later years, Bernie was a caricature of himself.  And we lovingly laughed at his meshugas (craziness).

He used to be president of the New York Runner’s Club.  I ran in one of the New York City Corporate Challenges and, as I crossed the finish line, Bernie was there to hug me.  I said, “Bernie, it is great to see you!” He said, “[Blogger], is that you?”  So, in fact, he was hugging any sweaty, young woman who would hug him back.  “I won’t tell Susan,” I said as I kissed him.  At the next family function, OF COURSE, I told Susan.  Bernie’s response: “Jesus Christ, all of these f*%$ing young beautiful, sweaty women!! What the hell do you want me to do? Wave? How else would I get anyone to hug me. [more profanity].”  That was Bernie.  (You should know that he hit the jackpot with Susan.  He knew it, too.  To use his parlance, he would have been a schmuck to do anything untoward.)

I drove Bernie and his wife Susan to Uncle Willy’s unveiling a few years back. Bernie called and said he hadn’t seen Willy in a while and would I include them in the Great Schlep.  SOB (sister of blogger) and I didn’t know whether he remembered that Uncle Willy had died.  So, during the Great Schlep, we asked leading questions intended to elicit some acknowledgment that Uncle Willy was dead.  We were afraid that Bernie who had a defibrillator and pacemaker in his chest might go into cardiac arrest if he thought he was actually going to see Uncle Willy and then we pulled up to the cemetery. Thank G-d, he knew.

We saw Susan and Bernie at Dad’s 90th birthday party in October.  He looked frail. He was cursing about all the doctors he needed to see and how he had no more room in his schedule.  He also was singing the praises of prune juice as an elixir he recently discovered.  Cousin Bernie never changed.

I just called my Aunt Betty to express my condolences and I started reminiscing about the prune juice and the cursing and the doctors.  She has buried a son, a husband and countless other loved ones.  It was good to hear her chuckle as she mourns another loss in our greatest generation.  As we mourn right along with her.

Rest in peace, Cousin Bernie.

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Just Give Us Something To Talk About

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A friend who is slightly paranoid about being known as a friend of blogger (and ergo, SPOBFOB) and I were discussing (and, might I add, solving) the world’s ills over lunch.  It is so frustrating when two people make major breakthroughs in world peace, economic policy, and moderate reformist politics and no one will let us see the President.  We wouldn’t have made him take notes (he is the President); we know enough about protocol (we could write the book) to bring a short-form and long-form memoranda setting out the action points for achieving these huge global steps forward.

Not only did SPOBFOB and I have important problem solving breakthroughs, but we also took stock of the freak show that comprises the leaders of our nation.  Let’s face it:  Men like the game — thrust and parry, if you must — of negotiations.  Women want to get the damn thing accomplished in the least amount of time with the most impact. Sure there are women who are impossible to deal with in these situations (Michelle Bachmann, par exemple) but by and large, you don’t hear women say, “let’s say this and see what they come back with” when you know full well that “saying this” will only lead to vengeful behavior and reverse any constructive negotiations up to that point.  We rarely make grand pronouncements that make compromise impossible because our egos are in the way.  Just sayin’.

Maybe President Obama would not like to think that he is pretty much in the same camp as John Boehner and Mitch McConnell when it comes to purposeful and constructive negotiations.  Ok, so the answer is that the White House would slam the door on our advance team.

I was despondent because here we had answers and no one who would listen.  I mentioned having a cable talk show and SPOBFOB came up with the brilliant idea of naming it the “Alternate View” because we look at the world quizzically and with our heads tilted, as if we were trying to understand really edgy art.

[So, this is where I go off on one of my tangents and SPOBFOB has no responsibility for anything that follows:]

We can invite our friends and family to come on the show.  They represent a varied and seasoned cross-section of America.  Ok, the liberal, urban/suburban, well-heeled and over-educated America.  So, there would be wide national appeal.  (Ok, that would be in the sovereign nation of No-Where-istan, a state of my mind (see prior blogs).  But, I digress.)

Everything would be fair game, from:

  • did anyone really think Justin and Selena were anything but a media creation?
  • to: should you home school your children in places where the gay liberal communist agenda has not fully infiltrated main stream public school education?
  • to: should fertility treatments and surrogacy be tax deductible for same-sex couples in states where gay marriage is legal?
  • to: who is the sanest person in the Tea Party asylum? and is that like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
  • to: whether quinoa is subversive grain that could reduce America’s dependence on hamburgers?
  • to: how to keep skin from sagging without surgery?

And everything else anyone wants to cover.

 

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The bet

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DOB (dad of blogger) came over for dinner.  We were without reinforcements.  And SOB (sister of blogger) and I had the bet.  SOB said DOB would sing Sholom Aleichem within an hour of arrival and I bet that it would be well before then.

About one-half hour into the visit, DOB was in the bathroom for too long and, well since he is almost 91, I became concerned.  “Dad, are you all right?”  “No problem,” he shouted, “just a little [insert scatological issue].”  I had to call SOB at the hospital about intervening events that might either delay the bet or give me an automatic compassionate win (depending on the judges).

SOB was adamant that the bet was still on.  SOB is tough, but loving and caring.  So, the bet was still on.

With DOB back in the living room, we discussed certain issues relating to the pain, tightness and possibly a little blood relating to the unnamed scatological issue.   I think, “this is sooooo not what I bargained for.” But time was running out.  I thought, “how will I explain to POB (partner of blogger) that I literally bet the house on whether DOB would sing Sholom Aleichem within the first hour of his arrival?”  This would not go over well.  POB might even cancel the wedding and kick me out with a frying pan, like Felix Unger’s wife did to him. Determined not to be a divorcee on a 1960s TV sitcom, I became desperate.

Desperation propelled me into action, even though I know that the final accounting between SOB and me on these types of bets will be at the gates of Hell.  [As an aside, SOB claims that she engages in this kind of infantile behavior to make sure she goes to Hell with me because she would miss me too much if she were in Heaven.  Haven’t I a wonderful sister?]

With little time left, DOB starts singing “Happy Birthday” to TLP (our son, the little prince) to whom we have sung happy birthday ad nauseum.  However, DOB never tires of singing random songs like, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” or “Yes Sir, She’s My Baby”.  In what can only be described as a Hail Mary play, I say, “well, that is better than singing Sholom Aleichem!!”  And, G-d bless DOB, he starts singing at minute 58 and 45 seconds.  I call SOB at the hospital, “I won because even though I affirmatively coaxed him into singing it, there was a whole lot of information beforehand that was unnecessary for the non-doctor child to know!!”

SOB, a saint of a woman, wanted to come and save me.  I said, “no, but we will call this a draw, ok?”  She agreed.  What an awesome sister.

POB asked, “why did you have to call your sister twice?  She usually reads things on your blog and then you discuss.”  I didn’t want to tell POB how close we came to financial ruin at the gates of Hell (of course, she’ll be in Heaven, hanging out with our Moms).

A typical Sunday night chez nous.

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POB

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I love POB (partner of blogger).  She is the better half of my soul.  She is extraordinary.

She is also “at liberty” these days, since losing her job in a corporate restructuring.  To my mind, she can rest on her laurels and eat bon-bons for the rest of her life. I want her to be happy.  But recently, I think she needs to have a job for her sanity and well, frankly, for mine.

A few weeks ago, I learned from POB all about the scam of recycling plastic bottles.  The bottles are shipped to China (add to carbon footprint) where the process of recycling those bottles causes noxious gases to be released into the atmosphere (EPA would not allow such recycling in our country) and then the recycled product is shipped back to us (add to carbon footprint). All this, over dinner, after a long day trying to woo clients and bring in business.

Last night, we were at dinner at a restaurant with friends and POB had questions about the fish special.  Was it farmed? Was it certified as “happy fish” before it was fooled by bait and impaled on a hook?  Where was it fished? (as in, was it fished in a place that is overfished?)  I had an extra glass of wine that had a huge carbon footprint.  I felt bad but the wine felt good.

But it was really the other week that I decided that POB needs a job, ANY job, with or without pay.  POB announced over a gluten-free, nut-free and (dare I say) taste-free dinner that we should get one of those apartment-size composting kits so that we can create fertilizer and then drop it off at compost-receiving stations in Central Park.  That way, the parks will be greener and we will be, too.  Ok, ok, ok, ok, at age 47, I am composting nicely, thank you.  I will disintegrate enough just in time for the worms, etc. to break down the rest of my cells at my death.  POB is not mollified by the knowledge that I am in slow-burn compost mode.

What, am I not compost enough for POB????  At long last, has it come to this?

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Our Family’s Idea of Father’s Day

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To be fair, POB (partner of blogger) has more traditional notions of Father’s Day.  She invited everyone over for brunch and made a blueberry pie from SCRATCH (I know, I know, I am grateful every day that she doesn’t realize she can do better than me).

SOB (sister of blogger) and I took DOB (father of blogger) and HOSOB (husband of SOB) to the cemetery.  SOB and DOB really, really, wanted to go to the cemetery.  It scared me a little, because I feared something foreboding about needing to visit the dead.

At DOB’s age, it is like taking him to visit his friends.  For HOSOB, it was his first time meeting Mom. It was about time that HOSOB was formally introduced.

I rented a car.  A Mercedes.  I decided that it was important for our dead relatives to know that we are prosperous a few generations on in this country and that the “Vohrr” (as in World War II) was over as it concerns German products.

We schlepped to where most New York Jews are buried — Long Island. As we passed the Jewish cemeteries we made sure to say them in an old Yiddish accent, with the requisite throat clearing, “Achhhhem, Beth Moses Cemeterrrrry, dahlink”.  “Turn onto Vellvood [Wellwood] Avenue.”

First, we visited Mom.   Mom always packed a sweater in August and the day of her funeral was so bone-chillingly cold.  SOB and I still feel guilty that we left her in the cemetery on that January day.  And to add insult to injury, we left her all alone to fend for herself among Dad’s deceased family, also resident in the family plot. My grandmother never had a nice word to say about Mom.  And vice-versa.  Uncle Loud was, let’s just say, narrow-minded.  His wife was lovely, but she screeched when she talked.  My other uncle was a difficult guy.  We positioned Mom’s grave so that she would be closest to those she tolerated, loved even, in life.

There were stones on the graves (a Jewish custom to show the grave has been visited) except for the one difficult uncle.  Really, really, really?  My cousins visited the cemetery and put stones on Uncle and Aunt Louds’ headstones, our grandparents’ headstones and our mother’s headstone, but they couldn’t put a stone on our other uncle’s headstone?  The headstone is not even inches away from my grandmother’s.  In death as in life, the competitions and the divisions remain.

Then we visited Mom’s parents in the next cemetery over.  They have graves in the International Workers Organization plot.  All headstones are the same height in this plot, in keeping with its socialist and egalitarian ethos.  I remember that my grandfather’s headstone was laid, but we didn’t have an unveiling because Mom’s cancer came back shortly before her father died and she just couldn’t have a ceremony, for a gazillion emotional reasons.  So, more than ten years have passed and as I looked at the stone, I thought the stone cutters got part of my grandfather’s Hebrew name wrong. Oy.  This is a huge problem in Jewish tradition.  So I better do some research first before I call a foul.

We started the drive back to the City and blueberry pie.  My father tried to navigate us to Queensboro bridge (why pay a toll?) and started each wrong instruction with an “Achhhhem” eerily reminiscent of the old generation.  We got a little lost in Queens, which is like being in another country to the spoiled Manhattanites that are SOB and I.  I saw the Empire State Building and just started driving toward it.  Luckily, we didn’t have to swim.  We found the bridge.

We arrived in time for blueberry pie and all was well with the world.

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Meanwhile on the other side of town . . . .

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Some back story (again).  TLP (our son, the little prince) asked BYP (beautiful young princess) to marry him two years ago.  BYP said, “Sure!!”  And they have been betrothed ever since the tender age of 7 years-old.  The Yiddish name for the relationship between parents of a married couple is “machertunim”.  The mothers are “machertenesters” and the father is a “shver” (not a really pleasant translation).

So, while I was having my well-documented endoscopy, our machertenester was having  laparoscopy to remove her not-quite-burst appendix.

How did we find out?  Our machertenester was emailing from her blackberry to tell us because they had to cancel our dinner plans for tonight.  Really?  Really? That was on your mind as you recover from surgery?

Laparoscopy, open-heart surgery, whatEVERRRR.  Surgery is surgery.

The emails went something like this:

“We have to cancel dinner tomorrow night.  I had my appendix removed this morning.”

[Blogger side bar:  I am thinking, WAIT, WAS THAT WRITTEN IN THE SAME WAY AS, “Sorry, we couldn’t get a babysitter”  ???????  Really, machertenester?   What, all of sudden, you like minimalist and Bauhaus in an emotional context?  Are you too assimilated?]

“OMG, what happened?”

“What do you mean ‘OMG what happened?’ You have an out of office message about an unanticipated absence! I am freaking out!”

“No, you can’t freak out because YOU-U-U had major surgery?”

“Not so major; it was caught before the rupture.  What did you have done?”

“Endoscopy, with Michael Jackson drugs.”

“And you thought you were going to the office after THAT?”

[OK, this conversation is going in the wrong direction.]

“Wait, we are talking about your almost disastrous brush with rupture, peritonitis and shock.”

I look up exactly what happened to Machertenester.  Ewwwwwwwwwwww.

(ruptured appendix)

(surgery)

“I’m fi-i-ine.”

“Should we take the kids? Do you need ANYTHING?”  [I am thinking if she said, “New cable box or blender” I would have gotten it for her.]

“We’ll check in tomorrow.”

Ok, Machertenester is a strong woman.

I don’t care if our kids marry.  She is my machertenester forEVEH.

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The View From Inside

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This morning I had an endoscopy. For stomach, esophagus and duodenum.  Not colon, thank G-d.

But first the back story. DOB (father of blogger) has horrible reflux.  SOB (sister of blogger) sometimes has bad digestive episodes, but she never complains.  DOB, however, does complain, but if you ask him, he would say that he just describes the sensations searing through his digestive system.

[You can tell that the family parses these distinctions at the dinner table because, after all, Jews can talk about anything with their mouths full.  A curse and a blessing, that tribal trait.  But I digress from my back story.]

Like DOB, like Blogger.  I try to be more like stoic SOB, but recently I had become concerned about the severity of the reflux.  I even went to a doctor last Friday.  SOB went with me, in case I did not present the key elements of my “case”.  (Doctors are that way.)  The GI Guy (gastro-intestinal doctor) lectured me on how I need regular check-ups and screenings.

All the time I am thinking, “you are a really nice man and come highly recommended but, GI Guy, if I don’t listen to SOB, why would I listen to you?”  But GI Guy is SOB’s friend and colleague and I didn’t want to make waves.

Maybe GI Guy is a mind reader because he suggested that I consider an endoscopy.  Or more probably, based on my sparse history of going to doctors, he must have realized that I must be concerned if I was in his office.  We set today as the date for a look-see down my throat.  Then, SOB reiterated the lecture about getting checked out regularly.  So, I asked her if she practices what she preaches.  Pause.  I told her that she was unashamedly hypocritical.

It is amazing what you can find on the internet.  Pictures of not so good results:

 

I thought the procedure would look like this:

 


But not exactly.

 

Anyway, enough back story.  Fast forward to this morning at 6AM. I picked up SOB in a cab and we went over to fancy shmancy East Side for the procedure.  But at 6AM, even the tony, tony neighborhoods look like hell:

Still, I am not so unnerved by this.  I figure a relaxant and then a tube and a few pictures and that’s that.  And there was a spa two doors down…

Ok, not so much.

Blogger is on a gurney (the first picture is to show off the pedicure) next to really enthusiastic GI Guy – it IS 6am and the civilized world is still asleep or at least in their jammies.  (SOB is in the room (and taking pictures).)

The anesthesiologist shows up.  ANESTHESIOLOGIST?????  He mumbles questions and we had a little Marx Brothers routine, where he asked questions in English mumble, SOB translated into English non-mumble and then I answered in Blogger-ese.  SOB then had to translate into doctor-speak.  It could have been the United Nations, except we were all speaking some dialect of American English.

Thank G-d for SOB. She gave me a good luck kiss on my forehead, but I knew she was staying right next to the anesthesiologist.  She is my bodyguard and I am hers.

In went the IV and the propophyl (the stuff that killed Michael Jackson).  I had to bite down on a plastic ring and off to sleep I went.  I was awakened after the “scope” and tissue was scraped for biopsies.

First question to GI Guy when I awoke:  Did you take pictures for my blog?

I stayed loopy for a while.  GI Guy’s assistant told me: Do not to resume normal activities (she doesn’t know that no one ever ascribes “normal” to anything I do); do not go to work; do not make any important decisions; and do not sign legal documents; do not make business decisions.  As if directed at me specifically, she told me:  Do not do anything that requires unimpaired concentration or judgment.  I don’t get it; that is how I live every day.

So, I went to sleep.  That propophyl is awesome.

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A Day at the Refuge

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Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is a world away from New York City. Imagine a place so quiet that you can hear the bird calls and Canada geese walk right past you as calmly as if you belonged.

 

Except the refuge is actually IN New York City (see faint red arrow pointing to Empire State Building).

Seemed like another world, except for this sign:

 

But, then again, in this country, that sign could be anywhere.  But in a wildlife refuge?  Really?

Yesterday, POB (partner of blogger), TLP (our son, the little prince), SOB (sister of blogger), HOSOB (husband of SOB), DOB (Dad of blogger) and CB (newly rediscovered cousin who is a birder) had an outing there.  TLP had binoculars, HOSOB and CB had those AND these crazy telescopes on tripods.

I thought we would be stared at for all the bird nerd equipment. I was soooo wrong. People there had all manner of paraphernalia to observe birds. And these people are serious. No jocularity allowed. Apparently, lawyers who are new to bird-nerding are the most opinionated (and most often wrong). In fact, we came upon a heated discussion among the nerdiest of the nerds about the kind of tern that was on the beach ahead.  CB being a low-key but über-knowledgeable nerd tried to help and consulted the various field guides handed to him. It was getting so heated that we had to leave as did the neophyte lawyer nerder who had made a “wrong tern” identification (as it were). He stomped off, taking a “left tern” and we opted to take a “right tern”.  Okayyyyy, no more tern jokes.

Actually, we did see some extraordinary things through the nerd scopes.

But then when the boys — HOSOB, CB and TLP — started debating whether a bird was a mature, immature or juvenile sub-species of something (I know two birds; pigeon and yellow belly sap sucker, the latter may be a made-up cartoon bird), the rest of us needed to rest.

Needless to say, the mature females — SOB, POB and me — along with the eldest male — DOB — enjoyed a lovely walk around the quiet, calm sanctuary. (Ok, except for the near altercation I mentioned.)

A terrific day for nerd and non-nerd alike.

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