Yeah, so….it looks like I won’t be writing for The Flounce anymore.  I won’t get into the details other than to say that stuff went down over there, enough so I don’t feel it’s the right forum for my writing.  And so we’re back to writing about Alzheimer’s, and caregiving, here.

We’ve hired the Geriatric Care Manager (GCM), and boy – she got to work immediately.  She’s speaking to our lawyer, and to Kevin, to figure out where we’re at financially.  She gave my mother-in-law what’s called the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE).  How did she do?  Put it this way:  her neurologist gave her the MMSE last year and she scored TWO out of thirty.  This time around?  The GCM gave up after the first few questions.

She is significantly, if not severely, impaired.  She doesn’t know what day it is.  She doesn’t know my name.  And yet this morning she made her bed, as she does every morning, hospital corners and all.  This is just absolutely the most messed-up disease ever.

The GCM feels that it’s time to put her into Assisted Living.  We are not superheroes.  Her needs have far surpassed what we’re able to provide.  She needs to be somewhere with constant supervision, and the kind of stimulation that only professionals can provide.  We have done our best, for over 3 1/2 years.  We’re exhausted, and that’s even with help.

I was in the basement last night, searching for a paper I’d written in graduate school about Marilynne Robinson (specifically, Emily Dickinson’s influence on her writing, and on Housekeeping in particular).  I’d promised to look for it and send a copy to Megan Phelps-Roper, who’s been devouring Robinson’s work lately.  I didn’t find it.  I think it may have been lost in our last move.

I did, however, find The Box Of Terrifying Journals.

Now, most everyone knows that I don’t shy away from the sometimes-very-embarrassing moments in my past.  I’ve gotten onstage and read my high school diaries in front of total strangers countless times now.  But The Box Of Terrifying Journals does not cover that period of my life.  The Box Of Terrifying Journals spans the years between 1992 and 1996, which were my early-to-mid-twenties.  The period during which I was in graduate school, writing papers like the one I was now trying to find for my friend.

It’s very…interesting…to revisit that age, when one is in one’s forties and navigating a fairly brutal and emotionally devastating family crisis.  I flipped through the pages, scanning the scarily huge scrawling and strange little cartoons, and felt a combination of affection and exasperation with myself at that age.  It’s the way I feel whenever I read something on Thought Catalog.  Some of you know what I’m talking about.  “Bless your heart, but, oh, honey, no.”

During those years, I was constantly writing, constantly agonizing over musicians, and taking myself just a wee bit too seriously.

Oy fucking vey.

I remember FEELING things so very, very deeply.  I remember feeling outraged and entitled and possessed of a preternatural wisdom.  I remember that my biggest problems involved boys (the aforementioned musicians), and that I would never get over The Great Heartbreak of losing one boy in particular.  I fueled myself on that grief, on the energy that comes about when someone’s disappearance renders them even more conspicuous and extraordinary.

Should I say it?  I am jealous of myself at that age.  Even though I was clearly exhibiting symptoms of the mental illness and addiction that would overtake me at the beginning of my thirties, I am envious of that girl’s energy.  I wish I had her “problems.”  My God, I’d kill to pour so much gusto into bad poetry about bad boyfriends.  I wish I still had that much faith in my powers.

Some of it was pretty clever, too.