For the past month, in my Panda Planner, under “passion project” I’ve been writing down “Resurrect Blog???” I’m not sure what’s up with the question marks . . . perhaps it has something to do with too-many ongoing priorities, the constant feeling of overcommitment and overwhelm, the coming to terms with dwindling reserves of energy. Yet I’ve been stubbornly writing it down every week as something I want to do for myself: something I want to do for myself as a writer, as a person.
The question marks, though. They seem a little bit wistful to me. So much of 2017 has been conducted in Emergency Crisis Mode. Dealing with a cancer diagnosis and surgery in April. Eight weeks post-surgery having to return to Wyoming to help my elderly parents (after they stopped speaking to me three years ago, following the publication of my book, Dandarians), followed by a mad dash back to Vermillion several days before the fall semester started to hit the floor running in the most ungraceful possible way for a busy and chaotic semester: behind, unprepared, stressed, tired, preoccupied, cancer experience completely unprocessed.
At the time, I felt that the late start was worth it, though, because I thought that I’d managed to get things squared away for my parents well enough that they would at least be in a temporarily safe holding pattern: house much cleaner and in better working order, adaptive equipment purchased, contractor hired to make accessibility renovations, home healthcare in place. After my father returned home from the care center, though, where he had spent the summer rehabbing a broken hip, my parents immediately began refusing their home healthcare services, and in a matter of weeks, everything came unraveled: my father was driving again against doctors’ orders, my parents were both losing too much weight, they were having trouble with meals and bills and dates and prescriptions, failure to thrive, failure to thrive, failure to thrive.
My father went back into the hospital in early December, is now back in the care center, and my Japanese mother’s alone in the house again for the second time in their 62-year marriage. On top of a constant clusterfuck of professional commitments and deadlines, there’s now a veritable tsunami of daily problems that need to be solved: legal, financial, medical, domestic.
I’m the only child, and also now the only one in the family who currently has the capacity to think clearly, and it feels lonely.
Facebook feels hollow and lonely, too, in certain ways. I miss the potential for nuance, for complexity, that seems more possible in the blogosphere.
Resurrect blog???
I think of the ways in which blogging played a role in the genesis of my third and fourth books of poetry. Of the ways in which blogging helped me to write my way into becoming a budding essayist. Of the ways in which blogging was so formative to creating a sense of writerly/poetic community during times that I felt isolated or lonely in the SoDakian Tundra.
Everything right now feels so ???: the constant hideous uncertainties and instabilities perpetrated by a cruel and corrupt administration, ever-looming ecocide, coming to terms with one’s parents’ mortality, coming to terms with one’s own mortality.
Maybe the tentativeness of Resurrect blog??? is about feeling simultaneously embroiled in a flurry of overcommitment and hopelessly stymied/paralyzed. Feeling overstimmed to the point of numbness. Like the helicopter-wing thrum of dragonfly wings stilled in amber.
And it’s not that I wish for certainty, which strikes me as being much too rigid, and inflexible, anyhow.
Maybe I just want more quiet space to articulate my own ??? Or perhaps to see if any of you are feeling ??? as well. Or to hear possible responses to this sense of ???
???
RUNNING BRUSH : 
Hi, Lee Ann. I’m so heartglad to see you (maybe) blogging again, having been a reader of yours from back in the Artichoke Heart days of a decade or more ago. I just wanted to give you some long-distance support re: your parents. I work in Home Health & Hospice and your parents refusal to follow orders and home care services in general is sadly all too common for a variety of reasons (like facing one’s own mortality). As an only child caregiver and long-distance at that, this is tough stuff. It’s no wonder you are exhausted and filled with uncertainty. I will just throw this suggestion out there in case you haven’t already explored it: is there a social worker at the care center you can sit down/call up & talk to about tapping into community resources (financial, caregiving, emotional) that you may not already be aware of? I am not only married to a hospice social worker but spend much of my work time with social workers, and I know from experience they generally have resources and suggestions coming out of their ears to offer families of patients. And they’re just plain nice to vent to!
Hang in there. Keeping blogging if it helps. I’m listening!
Thank you for this kind note, Betty! I’ve been in touch with several social workers at this point, and they’ve been very helpful! The sticking point this fall had been that my parents simply refused to answer the door to home healthcare or to welfare checks. However, with this most recent hospitalization (which revealed several new small strokes in my father’s brain, in addition to an earlier undiagnosed stroke, as well as the dementia he had been diagnosed with this summer), the medical consensus at this point is that my father is, sadly, no longer competent enough to make medical or legal decisions for himself, and that he is no longer going to be able to safely live at home. While on the one hand this is awful, it is a small relief in the potential catastrophes that could have happened this fall and that I was dreading might happen this fall, and it also means that I can move forward with conservatorship/guardianship and make the necessary decisions to ensure my parents safety and well-being. It’s hard, hard, hard stuff, though. Thank you for listening! ❤
Dementia combined with other health problems, along with your mother not being open to home health services, is rough. I know that being the Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care is rough as well. But I’m so glad to hear that you are willing and able to make decisions that he (or your mother) may not be able to make for himself. It is so so hard. If you ever want to chat, both me and my husband are here for you. Private email me if you ever want to. In any case, we’re here. ❤
Wow! I love this so much. I never really blogged very much, so it feels new to me and I’m not sure how to find my way around blogrolls and such–but this is wonderful! To know more about you, your struggles and your thoughts and heart. I’m sorry about everything you’ve been through this year and I can relate so much, with my own estrangement from family and then my dad in late stages of Parkinson’s, and the question of the whole year all those ???’s. This was beautifully, so warmly and graciously written. Thank you.
Thank you for reading, and for this lovely note, Heather! My blog rolls are antique, so I will have to update them at some point. I loved your blog post, too! Eileen Myles grouchy and fidgeting in meditation = bliss!