Communication Gap

One of my co-workers and her husband travel regularly from Detroit to Burlington, Vermont, which is about a 14 hour car trip, and I once asked her if they listened to music or books on tape while they traveled. "Oh no," she said brightly.  "We just talk.  We always have lots to say to one another."

Lest you think this is a couple of starry eyed newlyweds, I must tell you that they will celebrate their 49th wedding anniversary this summer.

This conversation came to mind tonight while my husband and I were waiting for dinner,  sitting outdoors at the little cafe located a short bike ride away from our house.   I was gazing peacefully across the lake, watching the herons diving for their own evening meal.  And Jim was -well, totally immersed in communion with his telephone.

A couple of weeks ago, he got a new cell phone that allows him to connect to the Internet anywhere.  You can surf while standing in line at the grocery, while waiting for dinner in the restaurant, while riding in the car (suddenly, he's all too happy for me to do the driving, so he can play with his telephone). 

Is there a word that describes the willful destruction of an electronic object - cybercide?  Or a word for divorce caused by alienation of affection secondary to the Internet? 

I realized tonight what an inordinate amount of time my husband spends staring at a screen-televsion, computer, and now telephone.  Of course, I'm no slouch when it comes to cybersurfing.  Just last night, we were both standing at the kitchen counter, staring at our individual laptops, racing to see who could be first to find the site to download a song we'd heard earlier in the day.

But I find myself resenting his constant immersion in all things electric.  "I can see I need to start bringing a book everywhere we go," I remarked this evening.

"Why's that?" he asked, without even looking up.

"Since you're so enthralled with that telephone, I need some way to pass the time," I answered.

"Oh for pete's sake," he said, shoving the little stylus back into its slot.

But then we sat in silence until our burgers arrived.  

Sometimes I wonder if our reliance on electronic devices for entertainment and communication has gotten out of hand, if its hampered our ability to communicate with people in the real world and in real time.  When Jim and I drive to Florida, we stock up on audio books, and dowload movies onto our laptops.  Frankly, I can't imagine what we'd talk about on a 14 hour car trip. 

Of course, it wasn't always that way.  Before we were married, we talked on the phone for hours every night, even if we'd been together during the day.  And we wrote letters -ten pages or more! -everyday when we were in college and separated by the whopping distance of 32 miles.  In those days we were like my friend and her husband - there was always plenty to talk about. 

But it seems we've become more interested in virtual communication than in exerting the effort to communicate with each other.  So we fall prey to an increasing sense of isolation and disconnection with one another. 

 Perhaps every couple should take a long road trip now and then, with no electronic distractions allowed, and see how many things they can find to talk about. 

How about you?  Have electronics impacted communication in your relationships?

Dreaming the Night Away

Last night was a terrible, horrible, very bad night.  Oh, don't be frightened, I'm fine.  Nothing bad really happened.

It was all in my dreams.

Usually, I don't dream.  Or at least, I don't remember my dreams.  And last night, I was really looking forward to a good night's sleep.  You see, I'm at my Florida house all alone -  no dogs hogging the bed, no chainsaw massacre snoring - just the king sized pillowtop mattress, the gently whirring ceiling fan, and me.

Alas, it was not to be.  I had nightmares of epic proportions, a continuing saga of a dream that kept waking me up with a start, and then, picking up where it left off when I managed to doze off again.  Somehow it involved me and two of my friends on a trip somewhere, and terrible things kept happening so we couldn't get home.

The last scene involved a gunman holding a woman hostage - she was tall and blonde and dressed in a forest green business suit.  "Don't hurt me, Paul," she kept saying, as he pointed the gun directly at her head.  Meanwhile, my two friends had disappered and I was crouched in the hallway of some conference center, not ten feet away from where this drama was taking place. 

Despite her pleading and the police totally surrounding him, he fired the gun and she crumpled to the floor.  A policeman tackled him, but he turned and started firing the gun randomly in the air, until the policeman wrested him to his knees, taking the gun from his hand by grabbing it with his teeth!

Dear Lord.

So much for a restful night's sleep.

Where in the heck do dreams like that come from?  Was it the late dinner at PF Chang's where we stopped on the way home from the airport?  Was it the extra glass of wine I polished off before bed?  Was it talking with my son and daughter in law about their upcoming trip to Thailand?  Was it being all alone in this big house?

Some people believe our dreams have important messages for our future.  The high school kids I work with just presented the musical Fiddler on the Roof, and it contains a scene where Tevye uses a (fictional!) dream to convince his wife their eldest daughter is destined to marry the "poor tailor" instead of the butcher chosen by the matchmaker. 

"Tell me your dream, and I'll tell you what it means," Golde says to Tevye.  And he proceeds to recount a horrific tale that involves Golde's grandmother and the butcher's first wife, both of whom have been dead for years.  By the end of his story, Golde is convinced.  "It is a sign," she says.  "So that's how it was meant to be, and it couldn't be any better."

Of course Sigmund Freud made a scientific phenomenon of dream analysis.  In his book The Interpretation of Dreams, he contended that the foundation of all dreams was "wish fulfillment" and the instigation of a dream was always to be found in the events of the day proceeding it.

If that's the case, then I think Sigmund and I need to have a talk.  Neither of these options is very appealing in light of last night's dreams.

Last week, a blogging friend had some interesting things to say about the connection between depression and dreams.  Seems a book she read indicated that depressed folks dream more, and as a result, wake up feeling less rested, thus perpetuating this vicious circle of depression and bad feeling. The whole bad dream cycle begins as a result of "failing to have ones basic needs met," thus inciting worry about these particular difficulties.  The authors of this particular tome (which she never identified, more's the pity) refer to this as "misusing the imagination," by allowing "emotionally arousing thoughts to go round and round in their heads." 

And so night falls, and one's mind must deal with all these bad thoughts and feelings that have been roiling around all day.  The mind converts them into dreams (and not necessarily good ones), but in doing so it prevents the body from falling into the deepest level of REM sleep needed to feel rested and refreshed the next day.

Remember those "basic needs," the lack of which started this cycle to begin with?  Well, one of them is (of course!) plenty of restful sleep.  And so the cycle begins again, in all its viciousness.

If you visit here regularly, you'll know I've had some worrying things to ponder lately.  Perhaps last night's dream was the equivalent of "worry soup," an amalgam of all my concerns and fears, all poured into the stockpot of my unconscious mind, and set to bubbling in my sleep.

Surprisingly enough after last night, I've felt rested today.  I spent the morning quietly, drinking coffee, sitting on the lanai doing some writing, taking a long bike ride before lunch.   Jim arrived this afternoon,so I'm no longer alone.  The four of us enjoyed a good dinner on the lanai and sat around talking in the cool evening air.

And now its late once again...the king sized pillowtop beckons. 

What dreams will come tonight?

I wonder.

How about you?  What are your dreams (or nightmares) telling you?

Renewal

This week has seemed rather long, and today seems like Thursday instead of Wednesday.  That's probably because I worked in the office on Monday, which I rarely do.  But I've taken on some new reponsibilities in my office job, which means I may be working a bit more.  That's okay though - I've rediscovered how much I like my office job this week.  True, there's lots of paper shuffling going on, but in the past few months I've started developing some new procedures for doing things, started training a co-worker to help me out, and convinced my boss to let my department handle more of the documentation the nurses were once required to do (which will be quite a bit more cost efficient for the company, and makes the nurses happier too.) So I've been bustling around there feeling quite proud of myself. It's been good for me - takes my mind off some of the other problems I've been dealing with on the domestic front.  (And thank you all for your kind and supportive comments.  How lucky I am to have such a wise and wonderful network with which to share.)

Elaine, one of the nurses in my office, came in quite excited herself today.  A long term client of hers- a young man with brain injuries and physical impairments resulting from a car accident when he was 12 - has been working for a while in a rather dull sheltered workshop, a kind of place where special needs adults can perform manual labor and get paid a small amount of money.  She's noticed that he's been getting more and more depressed,  talking less and less, and using his wheelchair nearly all the time instead of trying to walk with a cane.

So she started looking around for other opportunities for him.  Knowing that he liked art, she tried to get him a volunteer position at the Detroit Art Institute, but nothing was availble.  However, staff members there suggested she try the Opera House. 

It's been a miracle.  Not only have the staff at the Detroit Opera House been accepting and welcoming, they have gone out of there way to provide this young man with the best possible experiences he can have.  He's going downtown now at least three times a week, ushering for special programs, working in the office, and having the opportunity to see all sorts of great musical productions.

He saw his first full length opera last weekend, and his mother said he was in tears at the end, completely overwhelmed by music and pagentry.  As a result, he's decided to take an adult piano class at the community college.  And Elaine reports that he's speaking more, smiling and laughing a lot, and using his cane to walk with.  At his neurology appointment today, his physician said he "looked better than he'd ever seen him."

Amazing, isn't it?  How finding something you feel passionate about, activities that are fulfilling and satisfying, is the best medicine for one's physical and mental health?  It's given him confidence, stimulated his mind and body, and enriched life on so many levels.  If it can make such a dramatic difference in the life of a young man with a brain and spinal cord injury, imagine what it can do for ordinary, healthy folks?

Sort of like me this week, working away at my new job responsibilities, writing memos and re-organizing files, creating policies and explaining procedures. 

It's given me a new little lease on life.

So here's to finding something you can get excited about - a new hobby, planting spring flowers, a committment to help others, whatever it is that sparks a sense of enthusiasm about life in general. 

How about you?  What gives you that sense of renewal, that extra spark of energy and confidence that can make you say "yes" to life?

The New Territory of Old Age

Until I was 12 years old, I was lucky enough to have my great grandmother living right across the street.  My Gramma always seemed very old in my estimation, although in actuality she was only in her mid 70's when she moved in with my aunt and uncle, and 85 when she died.   But we spent lots of time together, watching her favorite stories on TV (General Hospital and Lawerence Welk), drinking Cokes and eating Fritos, and piecing quilt squares together.  In addition to having this wise and wonderful old lady across the way, my maternal grandparents lived with us.  So, I grew up with the elderly and I became quite familiar with the aging process. I only recall my Gramma becoming weaker and less energetic that last year of her life.  She was often in bed when I'd dash over after school, and sometimes I would just sit in the chair beside her bed and read quietly while she slept.  One day I came home to the news that she had fallen and broken a hip.  Surgery was performed, but within a couple of days she developed pneumonia and died in her sleep.

"She was ready to go," I remember my mom saying through her tears.  "Bless her heart, she was just all tired out from living."

Today, people who are "all tired out from living" have spawned their own cottage industry.  Assisted living, memory loss neighborhoods, respite care, nursing homes - all euphemisms for warehousing the aged.  My mother in law "lives" in such a place, and I place quotation marks around the word "lives" because I'm not sure that what she does qualifies as living, at least not the way I define it.  She doesn't remember that she was married, that she raised a child, that she worked in a productive, responsible job.  She recalls her mother- whose photograph she will bring to her lips and kiss - but she doesn't recall her own name, or her only son's, or her husband's, or mine.  She's been "banned" from participating in the one activity she might enjoy (playing Bingo) because she becomes "adversarial" if she doesn't win.

Sigh.

I've just been conversing with my mother in law's physician (a young woman who sounds as if she's about 15 years old) and she tells me that recent test results indicate her creatinine levels are "alarmingly high," and her potassium levels are also "quite high."

"Normally a physician would be very concerned about this because it signals kidney failure," Dr. C. says.  "I'm only telling you because I need to know how you'd like to proceed.  With creatinine levels this high, we might start talking about dialysis.  But considering her age and mental status, I'm not sure this is the direction you'd want to take.  And the elevated potassium, if left unchecked, could lead to atrial fibrillation and heart failure."

(At this point, I press my finger to the ear opposite my cell phone because there's a cacophony of background noise on her end.  Did I hear someone say "do you want fries with that?")

"Well," I say, taking a deep breath and looking over at my husband who is sitting at our dining room table on a business conference call of his own, "at this point we really aren't pursuing any course that will prolong her life.  We basically just want to keep her as comfortable and pain free as possible."

Do you realize what I just said?  I'm standing in my kitchen on a sunny spring morning, coffee cup in hand.  My dogs are sniffing around the back yard.   And I've virtually just pronounced a death sentence on my mother in law.

"I understand that," Dr. C. tells me.  "I can document that you want me to check her potassium levels in three to six months and then go from there.  If I check the potassium and it's dangerously elevated, we can do something as simple as providing medication to counteract it.  Or you can decide to let nature takes it course.  It's completely up to you."

Oh god.  I speak enough "doctor" to know that she's asking me whether we should check her potassium levels at all or let her die a (semi) natural death.

At this point, I'm longing for the ease of a broken hip and pneumonia.  How easy that would be.

Of course, it isn't really my decision to make.  This is my husband's mother, every difficult, stubborn, pessimistic bone of her 90 pound body.   She doesn't really belong to me - she never has.  The two of us have absolutely nothing in common save our relationship with this man sitting at my dining room table talking to a fellow engineer about heat calculations.

"I need to talk to my husband about this," I tell the good doctor. 

"Of course," she says again.  "Just let me know how you'd like to proceed."

So here I am, plopped squarely in this brave new world of old age.  It isn't anything like the old age of generations gone by, where the elderly tended to be cared for by one family member or another until they died.  Oh no, it's much more complicated than that.  Now we have "living wills" and "do not resuscitate orders" and hospice.  We have to make "decisions about how we want to proceed."

My oh my, how life (and death) have changed in the last 40 years.

Of course, I'm not the only one in this predicament.  It would take all my fingers and toes to count the number of people within my circle of acquaintance's who are currently dealing with similar problems. 

Sometimes,  I  imagine myself in this situation at some point in the (hopefully) very distant future, when my son and daughter in law might have to make these same decisions.  My worst fear is the loss of my mind, my ability to read, write, think, know what is going on in the world around me.   Would I want to continue living in some institutional type environment, sucking up time and money to prolong my existence?  Or would I advise them to "let me go" as peacefully and painlessly as possible? 

And does one person really have the right to decide for another just when life is no longer worth living?  But what do you do, how do you "proceed" when the person in question cannot decide for themselves?

When I talk to my husband about this, his reaction is basically what I've come to expect in regard to dealing with his mother.  "I really can't handle this right now," he says, staring at me glassy eyed, the look that means "don't push me too far or I'll break."

Sigh. (again)

I'm traveling through uncharted territory here, folks. 

Wish me luck.

Friday Night Meme Time

Just stumbled across this meme at Tea Reads, and i've never seen it before.  Try it - it's kind of fun (smiles) You’re feeling: content To your left: stove and refrigerator On your mind: paying bills Last meal included: pasta You sometimes find it hard to: stop worrying The weather: SPRING! Something you have a collection of: notebooks A smell that cheers you up: fresh coffee first thing in the morning A smell that can ruin your mood: skunk

How long since you last shaved: two days The current state of your hair: freshly cut The largest item on your desk/workspace (not computer): telephone Your skill with chopsticks: clumsy Which section you head for first in a bookstore: new fiction Something you’re craving: chocolate mint chip ice cream (about to go out for some, actually) Your general thoughts on the presidential race: god help us

How many times have you been hospitalized this year: once, if you count two hours in the ER

Favorite place to go for a quiet moment: my back porch You’ve always secretly thought you’d be a good: novelist

Something that freaks you out a little: the price of gasoline Something you’ve eaten too much of lately: sandwiches, my fallback meal You have never: smoked cigarettes You never want to: live without dogs