![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The News From Dutchess County
Apr. 21st, 2025 08:33 amSpending time in the garden was lovely. Stayed three hours. Got maybe half the 12' X 12' plot weeded? Will return to complete the task later this week. I may not even need to beg Claude to rototill this year: The earth is quite pliable.
###
Spring is more advanced in Dutchess County than it is in Ulster. Maple trees all sporting that tender green blur that, upon close examination, is not leaves at all but tiny tree flowers, lethal to anyone prone to allergies. The magnolias & weeping cherries are all in bloom, and the daffodils & forsythia seem to have staying power this year, so the roadsides are a riot of yellow & pink & spring green.
###
I drove by L's house where I used to live. It's shabbier than ever though the daffodils I planted are blooming in great clumps.
I was pretty happy for most of the time I lived at L's house, and I wondered—not for the first time—if L would have lost her mind if she hadn't had that knee replacement.
I warned her!
Good little libertarian that I am, I have a pretty hard & fast rule about never offering personal opinions about courses of action when it's clear the other person is bound & determined to see them through—except when I feel an emotional bond with the other person and the course of action runs straight through a disaster zone.
Surgery under general anesthetic is risk enough on its own for anyone over 80, but added to that, I'd seen L's chest X-rays! I knew how badly her lungs were compromised.
So over lunch at one of the Culinary's extravagant restaurants, I told Linda my concerns.
It was one of the few occasions I can remember that I ever saw Linda get angry.
I can't remember exactly what she said—I wrote about it at the time, so it's here somewhere—but the gist was that I was not the boss of her, so why didn't I just STFU.
I felt so badly about the encounter that I ended up paying for the lunch—$100 plus.
But shortly after the knee replacement, Linda began manifesting signs of dementia. I think she may have stroked out on the table. Or thrown a mini-clot. Or something.
###
Linda was never someone with whom I was going to forge a deep connection, but I was fond of her and grateful to her.
I haven't seen her since I moved out, but Belinda, whose grim sense of duty compels her to take Linda out every couple of weeks, tells me she's not doing well. She doesn't appear to bathe, smells faintly of urine. She prattles thoughtlessly. She eats half a dozen rolls at a sitting.
Neither one of her children like her, so they're not looking out for her.
Mrs. Neighbor Ed drops by for tea and takes her out shopping once a week, but Mrs. Neighbor Ed, though a kind person, has definite boundaries.
The house keeps getting shabbier and shabbier.
Sad.
And maybe I'm in complete denial, maybe this is just what happens to people when they get old, but I can't help thinking, It didn't have to be this way...
###
Spring is more advanced in Dutchess County than it is in Ulster. Maple trees all sporting that tender green blur that, upon close examination, is not leaves at all but tiny tree flowers, lethal to anyone prone to allergies. The magnolias & weeping cherries are all in bloom, and the daffodils & forsythia seem to have staying power this year, so the roadsides are a riot of yellow & pink & spring green.
###
I drove by L's house where I used to live. It's shabbier than ever though the daffodils I planted are blooming in great clumps.
I was pretty happy for most of the time I lived at L's house, and I wondered—not for the first time—if L would have lost her mind if she hadn't had that knee replacement.
I warned her!
Good little libertarian that I am, I have a pretty hard & fast rule about never offering personal opinions about courses of action when it's clear the other person is bound & determined to see them through—except when I feel an emotional bond with the other person and the course of action runs straight through a disaster zone.
Surgery under general anesthetic is risk enough on its own for anyone over 80, but added to that, I'd seen L's chest X-rays! I knew how badly her lungs were compromised.
So over lunch at one of the Culinary's extravagant restaurants, I told Linda my concerns.
It was one of the few occasions I can remember that I ever saw Linda get angry.
I can't remember exactly what she said—I wrote about it at the time, so it's here somewhere—but the gist was that I was not the boss of her, so why didn't I just STFU.
I felt so badly about the encounter that I ended up paying for the lunch—$100 plus.
But shortly after the knee replacement, Linda began manifesting signs of dementia. I think she may have stroked out on the table. Or thrown a mini-clot. Or something.
###
Linda was never someone with whom I was going to forge a deep connection, but I was fond of her and grateful to her.
I haven't seen her since I moved out, but Belinda, whose grim sense of duty compels her to take Linda out every couple of weeks, tells me she's not doing well. She doesn't appear to bathe, smells faintly of urine. She prattles thoughtlessly. She eats half a dozen rolls at a sitting.
Neither one of her children like her, so they're not looking out for her.
Mrs. Neighbor Ed drops by for tea and takes her out shopping once a week, but Mrs. Neighbor Ed, though a kind person, has definite boundaries.
The house keeps getting shabbier and shabbier.
Sad.
And maybe I'm in complete denial, maybe this is just what happens to people when they get old, but I can't help thinking, It didn't have to be this way...
