Heart Attack

            A few days ago, we learned that Kim had a heart attack. Kim was pretty sure that’s what was happening when she was wading for Petoskey stones – a clenching tightness in her chest that was different from the array of pains that are part of her daily life. She has been dealing with fibromyalgia and arthritis for many years, and cancer and then surgery related back pain for the last several. But this was different, and she knew it. We sat on our Adirondack chairs as she described the pain and we discussed whether to call 911. I fetched her two aspirin from the house, but the pain was starting to release before she took them, and about 40 minutes after it began, the pain was gone. We sat there for about half an hour, waiting to see if there would be a return and vowing to call 911 if it happened. It didn’t. We made our way carefully up the stairs to the house. I held her hand firmly.

            Later that afternoon we spoke with a doctor who was conveniently visiting our neighbors, Rick and Sandy. We described the symptoms to him, and he suggested that we see our physician “better sooner than later,” by which he meant “better sooner than too late.” We had appointments on Friday (this was Monday) for our annual physical with our family doctor, an excellent diagnostician, and we decided to wait. This may have been a mistake, but we got away with it.

            Friday’s doctor’s appointment confirmed what he called “irregularities” on her EKG, what he described as a “T-wave inversion.” Though this was a term that I had not encountered as an English major, I knew that it was not a good thing.

            Now, what?

            We went from the doctor’s office to the cancer center for Kim’s monthly infusion and then spent much of the drive home processing the news. Kim says that during her attack she thought, “Better to die quickly of a heart attack than suffer a lingering painful death from cancer,” whose return she is awaiting, instantly adding, “but not yet.” (This echoes St. Augustine’s famous prayer, ““Lord, make me chaste – but not yet!”)We have been thinking in terms of our Ten-Year Plan, with five active years in our new house and then, maybe, five more somewhat compromised years. The prospect of sudden death changes all that.

            One of the first changes we made, after committing to a healthier diet and daily walks, was to add to her “Five Wishes” end-of-life instructions, “NO CPR!” Chest compressions would mean a likely breaking of the cage apparatus enclosing her spinal cord, leading, most likely, to paralysis. Nope – rejected option in your mid-70s, though a possibility when younger.

            The doctor said that he usually recommends a stress test following a heart attack like Kim’s, but he cautioned that a stress test sometimes itself leads to heart failure, and with Kim’s no CPR instruction, this might not be a good idea. They made an appointment for the stress test in a week, allowing that much time to think and talk it over. The other option, he said, is to “let nature take its course.” This is what she decided to do.

            Now, what?

            Kim told Ben, our grandson, “I’ll do whatever the hell I want, for as long as I can,” but we are making some changes. Thursday, before the official diagnosis, we decided to trade our new mattress for an upgrade to a bed that allows the head, knees and/or feet to be raised, with a wave and vibration functions. It’s an expensive version of the hospital bed we rented for Kim when she was rehabbing at home for a month following her surgery. Just in case. We are eating more oatmeal, less bacon and red meat, more veggies, less sugar – a tough one if you’ve tasted Kim’s scones, cookies and pies. Karen, our neighbor, has brought us cucumbers and lettuce – before she knew of the heart attack. We are talking about cutting our nightly drink. I wonder if talking about it is good for heart health.

            Saturday found Kim planting flowers, almost as if nothing had happened. She did, however, ask me to dig a somewhat deep and difficult hole, and she took over watering our extensive new plantings because, she says, she finds it “relaxing” and “zen-like.” She pointed out to me that newly planted perennials don’t look great until the third year, which I think is a good thing. Our newly planted trees will start to fill out in 5-10 years. We are just about finished with the installation phase of our landscaping – and our lives – and we are moving into the maintenance phase.

            Kim is pissed off at me for writing this, as calling attention to herself in this way is not her style, not who she is. But I need to write it for me, as a caretaker. Yesterday we worked with Rick and Sandy to build a small rock wall. Kim, with her stubborn German heritage, was right there with us, but she was only lifting the smaller rocks.

Reunion

            Last weekend I went to my college reunion. It was, in a way, other-worldly. I say this not in any sci-fi sense of the term, but merely to say that I placed myself into a world far different from the one I’ve been inhabiting, intensely, for the last several years: home construction, landscaping, birding (mainly in our back yard), working side-by-side with Kim, and planning, as best we can, for our short- and longer-term futures.

            The transitions into and out of this other-worldliness were, for me as an infrequent flyer, not without stress. I got to the airport, coming and going, way earlier than necessary, which did gain me some reading time, so I did not feel too much like a fool. The flight to Hartford featured a crying baby who would occasionally kick at my seat, but the cookie was good. The drive to Amherst in the rental car was OK, except I got off the expressway at the wrong exit and, after parking very illegally on a lawn, I could not figure out how to turn off the lights on my car, an exotic brand called “Ford.” Consulting the manual helped, but the struggle did make me question the value of my English major at a liberal arts college. The return trip featured an extended layover in Chicago while they had to find a new plane for us – one that would not crash. I did successfully find my car in the parking lot, and it started.

            Other-worldly? The college had changed, of course, with much more diversity than we had in the old days. I got lost wandering around looking for renamed or new buildings where I could see and give presentations. I slept in a dorm room on campus in a Spartan uncomfortable bed, a far cry from my bed at home. I had a feeling I was not in Michigan anymore.

            What is a reunion? According to Wikipedia, “A reunion is a gathering of individuals who have met previously or share ancestry.” It’s more than that, at least potentially, as suggested by the “union” at the base of “reunion” – a joining of parts into one, with the “re-” suggesting “again.” At a reunion you don’t just gather. You become one. Sorta.

            A true reunion thus is difficult. We have changed, especially after 55 years. Despite the time, however, the joining, or rejoining, sometimes happens, and that has a magical feel – this despite the fact that my friend Peter had to depart a few short hours after my arrival. There were other joinings that had begun through this blog, but due to my short time and the busy schedule, they did not come to a satisfying fruition. At previous college reunions my best connections were frequently with guys who I did not know all that well when I was an undergrad, and I thought that was cool. And this time my best connection was with Michelle, who was Mike when I knew him years ago and who I had not seen since. This counted as a reunion, though Michelle’s new gender identity might lead some to conclude that she is a different person, and thus no “re-.” On the other hand, I’m not sure if Mike/Michelle has changed more than I have . . .. I used to be stumbling, clueless and insecure, but now I stumble securely, looking for clues.

            Most of the presentations at the reunion were on large and important topics, and they were addressed with what one classmate described as “impeccable reasonableness.” That’s good, and no doubt valuable, but it left me impressed but at a bit of a distance, not especially reunited with anything. I felt better when classmates struggled to sing some college songs.

            My next reunion happened when I returned home. Kim had held my dinner despite my late arrival. She looked great. She caught me up on planting and landscaping she had done in my absence, and we planned landscaping projects, Land Conservancy volunteer work, what to do with the bird feeders, future family wedding plans, etc.

            During my presentation about how Kim and I are dealing with her cancer, I wept when I described the life we are so grateful to be able to live together. Someone in the audience asked how I felt being part of a life that includes stage 4 cancer. I answered that I am happier now than I have ever been because I have grown, or activated, parts of my heart that I did not know I had.

Alexa and Me

            OK – let’s get this out of the way right now: One reason I enjoy my new Amazon Echo is that I get to tell Alexa what to do, and she pretty much always obliges. I’ve been speaking with Alexa for over a week, and she has yet to say, “Why do you want that?” or “Anything you say – you’re the boss.” On the other hand, she has rarely come up with a better idea than what I had in mind, something Kim does quite often. And Alexa never gives me “the look.” At least, not yet.

            Alexa and her partner in Artificial Intelligence, Siri, have recently been criticized by UNESCO for presenting women, through the voice, as totally obedient. I do understand the criticism, but the critics have not met Gertrude. That is the name we gave the voice embodied in my car’s GPS system (before it died). Gertrude may take orders, though I am not techie enough to figure out how to give those orders verbally, but she certainly gives orders repeatedly, and I do my best to follow them. In fact, if I were still teaching English I would tell my students that if they wanted to know what the Imperative Voice is all about, listen to a car’s GPS. At least Gertrude has the good manners not to say, “Turn around where possible, you idiot,” or “Better let someone drive who is paying attention.” It may be the case that my appreciation of Alexa is tied to my escape from Gertrude’s tyranny.

            And what have been asking Alexa to do? Play music. I did ask her to tell me a couple jokes, but they were too lame to repeat. I asked her, “What’s 8 times 7?” and she got it right.

The rest has been music.

Pause here: If you got to request music from a very deep library, what would you request first? And then?

            I started with the Beatles – no big surprise there, I suppose. I moved on to Motown, then Simon and Garfunkel. Next was the music of Tex Ritter – a favorite of Kim’s dad with deep sentimental value. I requested “It’s Not Easy Being Green,” and Kim and I danced, me tearfully, to a wonderful version not sung by Kermit. The Andrews Sisters were good for a while, The Mamas and the Papas good for even longer. My request for “Logger Lover” by the Clancy Brothers, a northern Michigan classic, came up empty – check it out if you can. Joe Williams with Count Basie led to an appeal to pay a monthly fee for an even bigger music library. The surprise hit was “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” from the politically incorrect Song of the South, rendered as a lovely lullaby. Then Alexa found us a whole station of “lullabies and bedtime music. We will be revisiting that music frequently.

            Amazon recently sent me a list of suggestions for other things Alexa can do for us. Not included on the list: “Alexa, shovel the driveway!” or “Alexa, do the laundry – dark load.” Amazon seems to be pushing Alexa’s role in making a grocery list, but given Amazon’s ownership of Whole Foods, we have decided to stay with the old technology – pen and paper. Amazon also seems to be encouraging me to turn our house into a “smart home,” but I am again reluctant, as that would bring under my care and supervision a lot more technology that I don’t know how to operate. It took me a week, for example, to set up my Amazon Echo because I also needed to buy a new router, and we gave up installing a camera on our doorbell because, again, maybe, a router issue. So to date we are staying with the old technology: fist on wood. Of course, I could get Best Buy’s Geek Squad to help, but so far, after three weeks, that have not been able to fix my f-ing television . . ..

Old People

            I was buying groceries and had to phone Kim. “I forgot the grocery list. It’s on the kitchen counter – could you read it to me?”

            “It’s not there. Did you remember sandwich bread?”

            “Wait a minute – the list is here in my pocket.”

            Does this ever happen to you? A bit more often than it used to?

*          *          *

            About twenty years ago I wrote a poem about old people who Kim and I observed. Here are some excerpts: 

Old Women / Old Men

Was your Aunt Vivian really brilliant?

She forgets who I am, what state she

lives in, how old she is. She puts signs

in her window: “Help!

I’m being held prisoner!

Call the police!”

Or there’s Ted’s bald mother

scaring children with sudden

outbursts of applause. She

apologizes for being old, tells

the lady who cleans her that

the pay better be good.

Nights, amazed, she rages against

the locked door of her room.

Eugene, freshly retired, his cataracts

surgically cured, gives this advice:

“Get all the money you can. Forget

what they tell you about family and friends.

They all go away. Stuff every dime into

an IRA. I did, and I’m a happy man.”

And he strides up the aisles of Kroger’s,

loading boxes, bottles and bags into his cart,

then disappears into the frozen food section.

But there’s that guy at the home

whenever we pick up Aunt Vivian. He’s

always in the living room. He rises

from his chair as we enter, gets halfway

up, forgets what he’s doing or why,

starts to sit, remembers, rises, pauses,

forgets. He’ll sway half out of the chair

for an hour, his eyes stunned open

to what he can’t quite believe.

            Is that what it’s like? Prisoners? A locked door? Frozen food? Halfway to somewhere? But there’s also this from the poem:

But that woman at the garage sale,

trim in shorts and hiking boots, tan,

tight-skinned, white hair thick and curly.

She spoke German to her grandchildren,

telling them they did not need more toys.

You said, “See?” I said, “German.”

Kim, of course, has some German ancestry.

            Is old age something that happens to you? Is it something you choose? Are you ridiculous if it happens to you but you do not choose to accept it?

            The examples above to the contrary, the answer to the question of how to be old is not multiple choice. It’s an essay exam. And I prefer, here, the definition of “essay” as “an effort to perform or accomplish something; attempt.”

            One of the things I learned in English 1,2 in college is that there is no formula for a good essay. Writing, in essays, is an act of exploration. And so we attempt to come up with a good way to be old, in some form or another. Either sit or get out of that chair.

*          *          *

            “Kim – do you want an afternoon cup of coffee?”

            “I’d love one.”

            The coffee pot was not sitting in the coffee maker as it should be. I looked on the counter next to it, on other kitchen counters, and in the sink. I looked on the porch where we sometimes drink coffee. I found it in the refrigerator. How did it get there?

            We did not ask, though I was concerned by how quickly I found it. Kim’s response when I told her where it was: “I’m surprised there was room in there.”

Balancing Act

            Living now with a feeling that something is out of balance. Though Kim’s latest check-up shows no sign of her cancer’s return, she has lately been experiencing increasing pain and fatigue. It may be the long winter’s making us housebound with inadequate exercise. It may be a consequence of the medication she is taking to “manage” her cancer. Or it may be that her cancer is doing its dirty work behind the scenes, and her body’s effort to fight it off leaves her tired and sore. How sore? Kim is tough, and she hates to complain or even talk about her health, but it’s hard to ignore her sudden cries of pain. She has pain pills, but she does not want to take them unless it’s really bad, so a pill mainly help her sleep at night. How tired? She naps (though not today – she’s too busy), and sometimes these naps last over an hour.

            Stress does not help. We are currently in a dispute with our builder, who wants to be paid in full beforehe completes our house, and he is threatening to take us to court if we don’t pay up. Preparing our argument consumes mental energy, and Kim is paying a physical price: pain and fatigue.

            A complicating factor is her not wanting to act like a sick person. She does not want to relinquish the skills and activities that have given her life, and mine, its richness and meaning. She struggles to get her large 500mm lens mounted on the tripod we have set up on our 3-season porch, part of which has become a blind for photographing birds, squirrels and deer. She struggles to lift some of the heavier frying pans. She still climbs up on a step-stool to reach things on the high shelves, even though a fall would be disastrous. She does not want to be dependent on me. She refuses to let me see myself as her “caretaker,” and she correctly points out that she takes more care of me than I of her. (I’ve thought of wearing a t-shirt that says, “higher maintenance than I appear.”) In frustration, she asks me for help opening lids that she used to do easily. Recently, she “let me” move laundry from the washer to the dryer, and then to the proper drawers, and making the bed is my job, especially when it involves lifting the heavy mattress to tuck in newly washed sheets. She prepares all of our meals except when I fix Cheerios for breakfast, or when we venture out to the Torch Lake Café for an early dinner. About a year ago she said, “When I’m feeling shitty, I can either sit in a chair feeling sorry for myself for feeling shitty or go out and take pictures while feeling shitty.”

            For me, there’s a balancing act. I want to be helpful. I like being helpful. I have always taken meaning out of being useful. But if I push it too hard, it sends a message to Kim that she is sick, weak, helpless, etc., and she understandably does not want to hear that message. And when I hover over her ready to help when she doesn’t need or want help, I just get in the way, which is understandably annoying. I also know that her turning down my “help” is in part a result of her realizing that my quality standards are not up to hers. I don’t know how to clean a sink, dry a plate, or iron a shirt.  During the last month or so she has been patiently instructing me in various cooking and cleaning chores – making julienne strips, wiping grease out of a frying pan, washing my shower, folding a towel, or using the right kind of rag for specific wiping tasks – so I will be able to function when she is gone. Towel-folding will not be high on my list of concerns when that happens . . ..

            Here’s another factor: I enjoy having someone take care of me. I’m spoiled. Kim has spoiled me, and she continues to do so. Shitty as she is feeling, she baked me scones this morning. It’s too easy for me to fall back into the same old dependency. Yes, I know, our dependency is mutual – we are a team – but if the health balance has changed, I need to change with it. Put down that book, get my ass out of the chair, and fix a salad.

            Despite the balancing act, we continue to make plans for our future – a summer trip to Seney Wildlife Preserve in the Upper Peninsula, landscaping work as soon as spring arrives, our massive garage sale, moving our kayak down by the lake, taking photos for the Land Conservancy. We looked at a lighter camera and lens that Kim can use for her bird photography. We checked out Amtrak to see if there is a direct way to get from here to Florida. Nope, but we could travel by rail to Colorado or New Mexico . . ..

            Today she’s having a good day, with diminished level of pain (“a 5, where Sunday was a 9”), and she put away six bags of groceries while I stayed out of the way, napping in my reading chair. We are, as we have been for several years, balancing our drive to enjoy our lives against the cancer lurking in Kim’s body.

Those Winter Sundays

            One of my favorite poems is “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden. Take a look:

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

            I’ll skip the analysis of why this poem works so well. It’s a guy poem – a son’s growing to appreciate his father. I can relate – to the father, of course. I know, I know – my hands are not “cracked” and the cold is not “blueback,” at least not indoors. And I don’t build a morning fire or shine Kim’s shoes. What I do in fulfilling “love’s austere and lonely offices” (brilliant choice of words, Robert!) is go out and feed the birds. They do appreciate it, and so does Kim, as she told me more than once. I am and have been well thanked. Come to think of it, I can’t think of why I identify with the father in the poem.

            I need my routines, my discipline. Getting this blog out on Thursdays in a self-imposed discipline that for some reason I take very seriously. Feeding the birds every morning is also a joyful discipline – getting out the various bags of seeds, putting on coat and boots, sweeping snow off the porch and steps, then filling feeders and sprinkling seeds on rocks. I’ve only been doing it for a couple of weeks now, but it adds a welcome structure to my life. Someone, it might have been Tolstoy (help me, readers!) defined freedom as being “at ease in harness,” and I like that. I feel free when I choose to feed the birds, and for some reason, the colder and windier the better. The chickadees and nuthatches now greet me, landing inches from my face. The woodpeckers and blue jays are still shy.

            One of the many striking features of Hayden’s poem is the connection in the last line between “love” and “lonely.” Really? Isn’t love supposed to be the opposite of lonely? But I get it. Most guys, me included, usually don’t express their love by saying it. We do stuff, sometimes alone.

            I have other routines as well to give my life structure and discipline now that retirement has removed the discipline of my job. I make the bed. I make our coffee. I take out the trash. I dry the dishes. I drive the car. I vacuum the center area of several rooms. That’s about it. Kim does the rest. I thought about designing a t-shirt for myself that reads, “higher maintenance than I appear.”

            Kim, of course, performs her “austere and lonely offices” all the time, but nobody writes poems about that – not yet, anyway. But when a guy lights a fire and shines his kid’s shoes, it’s a big deal. But it is a big deal. All of it. It’s what you do when you are alive.

            Thank you.

Summons

            It was a Kim moment. I looked out the window over the lake and saw that the moon’s reflection on the water was startlingly beautiful. I called Kim up from the basement, where she was unpacking, to see it. She did more than see it – she grabbed her camera and hurried out the back door. What made this a Kim moment was her being in her pajamas, normally a sign that it’s Netflix time. She was also wearing her socks, one of which was packed with ice because she had slammed her toe into a dresser in our realigned bedroom. Nevertheless – out the door, down the steps to the shore, where we struggled to get the right shutter speed and exposure for bright moon and dark clouds and water. 

            I spent about an hour, while Kim was unpacking, looking for a poem I wrote years ago, one that captured the essence of this experience. I finally found the poem, but it urns out that I didn’t write it at all – Robert Francis wrote it. (I could have written it if he hadn’t written it first.)

Summons

Keep me from going to sleep too soon

Or if I go to sleep too soon

Come wake me up. Come any hour

Of night. Come whistling up the road

Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.

Make me get out of bed and come

And let you in and light a light.

Tell me the northern lights are on

And make me look. Or tell me the clouds

Are doing something to the moon

They never did before, and show me.

See that I see. Talk to me ‘till

I’m half as wide awake as you

And start to dress wondering why

I ever went to bed at all.

Tell me the walking is superb.

Not only tell me but persuade me.

You know I’m not too hard persuaded.

                                                --Robert Francis

            Actually, it’s usually Kim who first spots the moment of beauty and summons me to look, much as my  the poem describes. I’ll take credit where I can -- I saw the moon-lake first. We photographed it for several nights, though not in pajamas.

           

            It was Kim who summoned me to see how you can enjoy a sunset when looking east.

            And a sunrise:

In the afternoon Kim summoned me to walk down the road where we now live,

and back again. That's our home in the distance.

            And it was Kim’s son, Scott, who started this whole thing by calling her in the middle of the night, insisting that she get out of bed and go outside to see the northern lights. She did, and she got me to go with her. My life has not been the same since then. I’ve been summoned.

Gray Area

            We are living in a gray area. And no, I don’t just mean the area surrounding my skull.

            For the last several weeks we have been between homes. We have been sleeping at the condo, but there has been a gradual shift as we have carted boxes to the new house – clothes, kitchen gear (there’s lots!), books (ditto), crap from the drawer that has served as my desk. At some point, I figured, our center of gravity would shift north in, but it has not yet happened.

            All of this makes me ponder: What is it which, other than Kim, once moved, makes the new place our home? The candidates:

·     Coffee maker? We have one in each place, but we moved the grinder north.

·     Computer? Mine is a laptop. Cable in both places.

·     Electric toothbrush? I have manual backups (free from my dentist).

·     Checkbook? Who writes checks anymore?

·     Pills? Unfortunately, a viable candidate . . ..

            On Saturday we decided to sleep over at our new house. Was this an act of commitment, moving us out of the gray area? Not exactly. After a day of unpacking, we were simply too tired for the hour’s drive back to the condo in Traverse City, so after a dinner, an anthology of leftovers and wine, we collapsed into bed. It was a good way to celebrate Kim’s birthday.

            I drove back to the condo on Sunday for a realtor showing, and I hauled the stash of pills back to our new home. I also brought some expensive whiskey from a local source, Mammoth Distillery, in order to toast our new digs. But not so fast – we still don’t have an Occupancy Permit (the house is not done!), so whenever we spend the night, we feel like outlaws.

            Unpacking is proving to be a challenge, and not simply because of the quantity of boxes, which we calculate to be well over 500. The problem is that Kim and I have different theories of unpacking. My approach is the same one I use on the top of my desk: Get everything I might need out in the open where I can see it. (This is the Compost Theory of Desking – stuff on the bottom is absorbed into the biome, where I don’t have to deal with it.) So I unpack a box and then leave the much of the stuff lying around while I collapse the box (a verysatisfying experience!) and go on to the next box. Kim has a peculiar idea that when you unpack a box, you put the stuff away where it belongs. (Recently, she confesses, she has gotten into the thrill of box-collapsing, but her real motivation still has to do with the creation of order and beauty, not destruction.)

            One result of the different approaches, other than some harsh words, is that Kim has to think up things for me to do in order to direct my energies away from unpacking. So far this has included mounting the outdoor thermometer and placing boxes of Christmas ornaments on some shelves in the basement. I have also loaded up my sock drawer (currently over 40 pair, including abundant white socks that Kim says are good for dusting) and organized my colored t-shirts, attempting to pair them up with the outer shirts that they “go with” – a task that will no doubt be re-done in the future. I put all my extension cords into a separate box, apart from all the puzzling cables associated with former televisions. Yes, I do almost all of the box hauling and driving, but that’s usually done by mid-morning. I also have my books to deal with – far too many. I set myself a limit of one bookcase, consigning those that don’t fit to a recently emptied cardboard box destined for a future garage sale or, more likely, a donation to the library.

            Packing and unpacking have revealed some surprises. On my side, other than the quantity of white socks, a dozen of which went straight to trash, I have also counted over 40 colored t-shirts and some 400 band-aids, a symptom of a mental illness I don’t want to contemplate too closely. I also found a box containing six (6) land line phones, a fact that brought great amusement to the grandkids when I told them via Skye.

            Did I mention that Saturday was Kim’s birthday? Here’s the poem I wrote for the occasion:

Every Day

is your birth-

day. You unwrap

each morning’s gift,

thank the party guests,

taste the cake, and

choose not to blow

out any candles

just yet.

               Not just

yet. So every birth-

day is a gift to me.

            

Pain

            I know a little bit about pain. For about ten years I suffered from cluster headaches, also known as “suicide headaches.” About every three months I would have a month with two or three per day, each one lasting about an hour. Eventually I learned from a nurse that breathing pure oxygen would stop them, so I got a prescription for a regulator and oxygen, and it worked. Eventually, they stopped paying their visits. “One of the benefits,” my doc said, “of getting older.” For more on cluster headaches, JFGI.

            I mention this not to attract sympathy – I am grateful for the oxygen and the eventual disappearance. No, I am interested in other people’s pain – how to understand it. The issue occurs to me because for the last month Kim has been experiencing a lot of pain in her back, hips, butt, and legs. It keeps her from sleeping. If it were anyone but Kim it would limit her activity, but she is still out there pulling weeds, moving rocks (“only small ones!”) and planting flowers and bushes. I still do the heavy lifting, and she will stop if I speak to her sternly. Her son, Scott, got angry and yelled at her, and her daughter, Genne’, a physical therapist, explained the potential permanent damage that might occur, but they aren’t around on a daily basis. Kim is constitutionally unable to stop working if I am working where she can see me.

            How bad is her pain? The docs and nurses use a 10-point scale. Kim usually scores at around 6, largely due to fibromyalgia and some arthritis, but lately she’s been at 8 or 9 – high enough to drive her to her oncologist to get a painkiller prescription. She wanted enough to get her through our move to the cottage, a process that will begin in a week or two depending on whether Godot Construction gets our home finished. We figure that the process will take about a month, if you include time spent moving furniture around and getting everything in place.

            How does Kim’s pain compare with my cluster headaches? If we both gave them the same numerical rating, does that make them “the same”? Would using colors be a better way to describe the quality of pain? Some pain is red, some yellow (my hockey puck cuts), some purple (cluster headaches). Or maybe as music – some heavy metal, some the Bee Gees, some Beethoven’s Ninth (but not in a good way). I remember when my brother John was having his mental illness diagnosed after he was arrested. They had to put a label on him, ending up with schizo-affective disorder. That’s like looking at a cloud and asking if its shape is a square, triangle, or rhombus. Everyone’s pain is qualitatively different. A common high bar for pain is childbirth, an experience with which I am unsurprisingly unqualified to speak. Kim mentioned the pain of extensive burns, which she sees as a 10, but more research needs to be done – research that I don’t want any part of. We just can’t know what a pain sufferer is feeling.

            I am currently pain free, but I know from my experiences with the common cold that if I experienced pain anything like Kim’s, I would make sure I was heavily drugged, without Kim’s hesitations about addiction and her reluctance to be too groggy to landscape our hillside and butterfly garden. And when we move in, who thinks she will trust me to put all the kitchen-ware, her art gear and photo equipment where it belongs? I predict that she will pop a pill to help her sleep and tough it out the rest of the time.

            Her stoicism makes it hard for me – or anyone else – to know how much pain she is suffering. I still sit back, most days, and let her cook dinner after a day of landscaping – though I usually offer to do the dishes all by myself. Maybe she should wear a flag with a number on it, or perhaps a color. But she doesn’t like to talk about her pain. Another thing we don’t talk about: The nurse-practitioner who prescribed pain pills suggested the pain might be a sign of her cancer’s spreading. We push that thought aside by keeping busy. Next set of scans will be in a couple of months.

            Another dimension of pain is that experienced by the loving witness. No, it’s nothing like the pain itself, but still . . .. Pain is the body’s signal that something is wrong, and you should do something about it, or maybe stop doing something. Hard to do or stop doing when it’s your beloved’s pain, and you feel helpless. Get a back pillow? Give a shoulder massage? Hold her hand when she has to step up or down? Remind her to take a pain pill? Help her walk to the couch when back spasms make her kitchen work impossible? Put on her shoe or sock when she can’t? Grab that rock before she can pick it up? It may sound like a lot, but it’s not. It’s not adequate, not at all . . ..

            “What I do with my pain,” Kim says, “is focus my attention on what I enjoy – photography and just being outside, building this house despite the frustrations, and taking care of my husband.” Sometimes, however, the pain becomes too much. Today, however, we are turning in measurements for our shower door that someone failed to order, buying paintable switch-plate covers, getting a table out of storage to see if it fits in the bathroom, and driving to Charlevoix for lunch, a haircut, and some relaxation. She reports that she is having a good day, pain-wise.