Social Work! Plus Dementia!

[mallorys_camera]

In an overabundance of communal zeal, I volunteered for the last garden fundraiser of the year yesterday. It involved peeling 50 pounds of apples:



I like gardening as an activity and the collective garden as a Force For Good in the Community, but except for Claude, I don’t particularly like any of the other gardeners.

I don’t dislike them or anything! They just bore the shit out of me.

Yesterday I peeled across from Alan & Judy who were the two people a couple of years back who went on a rampage that homeless people were stealing their tomatoes!!!

I mean, even if it’s possible that all homeless people are innately gifted with the power to materialize and dematerialize through cyclone fences (kinda like the way all Black people can dance), it was like three tomatoes. Who fuckin’ cares?

At some point yesterday, Alan mumbled something about his pre-retirement occupation.

“Oh,” I said. “What did you do?”

“I was a social worker.”

A social worker!

Of course, you were.

And we wonder why the world hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain…

###

I tromped and then spent the rest of the day ostensibly analyzing state-specific variables responsible for the enormous range of nurse practitioner salaries across the U.S. but really fulminating over a photograph RTT had texted me the evening before:



It’s Annie.

Congratulations, Alicia, I thought when I first lay eyes on this photograph. You’ve finally succeeded in turning your mother into a barnyard animal. Which is something you’ve been trying to do since you were born. You creepy bitch.

###

I’m not sure why my reaction to this photo was so strong.

I haven’t been keeping up with the Annie news because the Annie news is frankly unbearable to me.

Ichabod stays in more regular contact with Stew.

So, when I texted Ichabod the photo, he remarked mildly, Well, she IS pretty far out there, you know. She doesn’t look unhappy.

My second reaction to the photo had been, I am never going to speak to RTT or Ichabod again. I am going to block their numbers on my phone. If they show up on my doorstep, I’m going to slam the door in their face. I am going to reinvent myself in the time I have left: Children? I’ll say. No, I never wanted children. Why would anyone with half a brain? All children do is fuckin’ drain you and humiliate you.

My first reaction had been, Hmmm… I wonder if Hamas does contract hits? And takes credit cards? Because I’d like to arrange to have Alicia and Hailey taken out as publicly and humiliatingly as possible.

###

I suppose I felt this photograph was a horrible invasion of Annie-as-I-remember-her’s privacy. And dignity.

Annie-as-I-remember-her was very big on privacy. And dignity.

Though, of course, I loathe Alicia. And look for every excuse to loathe her even more. So, that was doubtless part of my reaction.

Plus, Ichabod has been on my case about that long-term care insurance thing. And looking at that photo, all I could think was, What is the point of living long enough to need long-term care insurance? Who wants to end up like that? Wouldn’t it be better to take advantage of Vermont’s liberal assisted suicide laws?

###

This is how I prefer to think of Annie:



Though I suppose if Annie isn’t around mentally to advocate for herself, it doesn’t matter how one thinks about her.

Comments

[bleodswean]

I hear your rage. But all I can do is weep.

[mallorys_camera]

Honestly, the anger was so strong that it took me a while to figure out why I was feeling it.

[benicek]

I weirdly like peeling stuff. Not gardening though.

Why do you hate that photo so much? I don’t understand.

[mallorys_camera]

Yeah, my son didn't either.

I don't get the same sense when you post pix of yr mother. I feel your obvious affection, and I'm also hip to how medical professionals must maintain a black sense of humor because otherwise, we couldn't deal with what we're supposed to deal with.

In this case... I guess I know too much about the underlying family dynamic. So, this picture reminds me of some Roman general parading his captive naked & in chains. Or something. 😀

[asakiyume]

Is the other woman in the picture Alicia?

Your line of thought about Hamas doing contract hits made me laugh (because I'm an awful person)--I could just imagine the Hamas organization doing the sort of appeal I've seen artists and such make on social media ("I'm going through a rough patch rn, so if you'd like to commission me to do a drawing or s/t for you, my rates are in my profile. Or you could just donate to my Ko-Fi.") Only with contract killings instead of art commissions.

Speaking of photos, the one of you peeling All The Apples is great.

[mallorys_camera]

I live to amuse! And we've already established that I'm an awful person. 😀

The other woman in the photo is Haley, spawn of the eeevil Alicia and Annie's granddaughter.

Max doesn't understand my reaction to the photo at all, so I'm trying to keep a tight lid on my rage. Who knows? Maybe this is the first sign of dementia in me, and shortly Max will have to move me into Happy Memories Acres as Annie's roommate or something.

I guess my rage is over the fact that Annie was so much more than the old demented lady in that photo. She was a novelist and, at her best, a pretty good one, too. She toured the world as a musician. Her daughter is bitter and resentful because these are the wrong types of accomplishments: Annie couldn't bake cookies, so Annie was a baaaad mother. Annie wasn't self-sacrificing enough.

Now, I'm the only person in the world who remembers what Annie accomplished.

So, now I'm wondering why anyone ever tries to accomplish anything? Since it's always going to end like this.

[asakiyume]

I get why you're angry. Part of it is maybe grief and rage at LOSS. Loss of the woman in the second photo, sorrow over the disappearance of that person, even though she's still alive. And even though maybe/probably the woman she is right now is happy and fine in herself, at least sometimes, at least judging from the smile. But YOU know that she was once someone else, someone with much broader wings, someone who maybe would have wanted to put her hair up or style it in some way, someone who maybe would have preferred different clothes, etc etc., and no one now is helping her do those things.

Although actually she has that late 1960s, early 1970s free-flowing curls thing going on with her hair in the second photo, so maybe even being more aware of stuff, she'd be happy with her hair loose. But I bet she'd like brighter, better clothes. (Me! Focusing on trivial things!)

[mallorys_camera]

Bingo. ❤️

Annie was living very happily with her male companion of a billion years. He was totally devoted to her, demented or not. Loved her selflessly. But they never got married and bla bla bla. You know that drill.

Anyway, the eeevil daughter swooped down and carted Annie away from Santa Cruz, CA, where she had a support network and knew the landscape to fuckin' Bend, Oregon. I had to stop talking to Stew, (the male companion) because every time I called him, the only thing he would talk about is how in his daily phone calls with Annie, she kept begging, When can I come home?

I guess she's sufficiently sunken into dementia now not to care where she is. And you're right, she doesn't look unhappy.

So, really, there's no reason for me to get bent out of shape by this.

Except that I am.

[moonbeam6612]

"I like gardening as an activity and the collective garden as a Force For Good in the Community, but except for Claude, I don’t particularly like any of the other gardeners.

I don’t dislike them or anything! They just bore the shit out of me."

That's how I feel about the people in my line dance groups and choir. And literally everyone in the village.

Motherhood... I'm not going to hijack your post for a rant about motherhood, but... yeah. I read a great quote a few days ago (loosely translated): The delivery room is a time machine. You enter in 2023 and come out in the 1960s.

That picture is pretty sad. :-(

[mallorys_camera]

Good to "see" you!

The delivery room is a time machine.

Hah! 😀

Yeah, I mean I had to have children because parenting children was the only opportunity I was ever going to have to reparent myself, and I was so damaged by my upbringing, I needed to reparent myself.

But if I hadn't been so damaged...

I think now I would have opted to remain childless.

[smokingboot]

Maybe its the context. Or rage against the dying of the light. Or rage against the injustice of where Annie is right now. So many things to make one burn.

But she doesn't look unhappy in that photo.

The real Annie, or one of the real Annies, is radiant in photo 2. The Real Annie, just like the real Debbie and the real Patrizia, is immortal and eternal. At the risk of sounding like an idiot child, I don't just feel this to be true because I want it. Something in me knows it to be true.

[mallorys_camera]

There's a backstory there, which is really what makes me cringe when I see that photo.

I won't bore you with it. 😀