Thoughts & Musings for Saturday, July 15, 2023, or: Weekend Update, Part the First

Late Morning, Saturday, July 15, 2023, Lithia, Florida

Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s almost noon as I begin this, my 1,181^st post on A Certain Point of View, Too. Here in the Tampa Bay area, it is a scorching summer day. Outside, the temperature is 89°F/31°C under partly sunny conditions. But even with quite a bit of cloud cover, the “feels-like” temperature is 97°F/36°C, which is higher than the forecast high of 94°F/34°C – which means the heat index this afternoon will be in the low 100s/high 30s.

The Burden of Memory

If you’re a regular visitor to this space, you may know that mid-July (indeed, most of the month) is a difficult period for me emotionally. As I wrote in yesterday’s Tempus Fugit: Adieu, le 14 juillett 2015!, this time of year marks the anniversary of my mother’s final days from the day she entered hospice care – July 14, 2015 – to her death in the early morning hours of July 19, 2015.

As I recall, today is the eighth anniversary of the last food-shopping trip I made to Winn-Dixie while my mother was still (barely) alive. Since Mom wasn’t eating much – getting her to eat was, by then, a labor worthy of Heracles because her body wasn’t “asking” for nourishment – most of the groceries were, sadly, for me. I remember feeling guilty about it cos I had to use Mom’s state-issued SNAP card to pay for the food (which included, as I recall, a package of microwaveable BBQ ribs), but I also realized I had to go on, even though I had no idea what the future had in store for me.

I usually walked to Winn-Dixie alone – the distance from the townhouse to the shopping center was only a third of a mile, and (encouraged by Mom) I had made the trip several hundred times since we’d moved to East Wind Lake Village from Coral Estates Park – with a dreadful five-month layover in an apartment in Sweetwater – in February of 1978. Most of those solo excursions took place between 2010 – the year Mom chose me to take over the running of her household – and 2016, the year I moved here to Lithia, and I made them in all sorts of weather…rainy, clear, hot, or cold.

I don’t – thankfully – remember what the weather was like on Wednesday, July 15, 2015, but I do recall that the hospice care manager from Catholic Services, “Jorge,” happened to be at the house to check on Mom and to confirm that a package – which included several doses of morphine in case Mom experienced severe pain at any time before she passed – would arrive later that afternoon. He saw that I was going out – “Fulana de Tal,” the home health aide from Nursing South, was at the house, and so was my half-sister, Vicky – and he asked me where I was going.

“Winn-Dixie,” I replied. “I’ve got to get some groceries, plus the walk will do me some good. Besides,” I added with a subtle nod in the direction of Mom’s sickroom, “I need to get away for a while.”

Jorge knew that I was referring to my need to get away from my half-sister’s presence. Vicky and I had had a stormy relationship for the longest time, especially during my college years, and Mom’s declining health had widened the breach between us. It was a demanding situation, and one that I had not sought, but I realized – and accepted – that no matter how conciliatory I tried to be with Vicky, there was no way to avoid an eventual estrangement.

And, of course, since I was having to come to grips with the reality that Mom was dying and that she no longer was the same person she’d been as recently as June 2010, I was too tired, too sad, and too angry to be the one who always backed down or offered olive branches to my older half-sibling whenever we quarreled. Taking care of an elderly parent with dementia and other ailments is physically and emotionally tiring, and when you’re tired, depressed, and scared, it is impossible to be diplomatic, patient, or loving toward someone that you know dislikes you intensely.

That’s why I welcomed every opportunity to go grocery shopping whenever the HHA and Vicky were at the house, even though I also fretted about stuff going missing from the house in my absence, especially items that Vicky and I both wanted as keepsakes.

I was on my way out the front door and off to the temporary sanctuary of the Park Hill Shopping Plaza when I heard Jorge say, “Wait up, Alex. I’ll drive you to the store.”

I protested, saying that I was used to going on my own, but Jorge insisted. “Look,” he said. “It’s hot. It might rain. And I don’t have to go to the office yet, so I can drive you there.”

I wasn’t particularly thrilled, but it was hot, and the forecast called for rain and a high in the low 90s/30s. So even though I can be stubborn and contrarian at times, I accepted the ride.

I knew that Mom’s EBT card didn’t have a lot left cos I’d already made one trip to Winn-Dixie with the month’s amount of $150, so even though I took one of my Visa cards with me in case I needed it, I don’t think I purchased too many items. I’m a fast shopper when I need to be, especially at that Winn-Dixie store, and – as I mentioned before, most of the food items were for me now, so Jorge and I were not there too long.

 Aside from that, Wednesday, July 15, 2015 is just a blur of sad memories and a jumble of mixed emotions. Mostly negative, I must admit, including sadness, fear, and anger, especially at the knowledge that my half-sister wasn’t going to be a source of emotional support after Mom died.

Action This Day

Well, since today is Saturday, I should take the day off from writing – especially since I’m already spending time and effort on a long blog post – and rest, at least as far as Reunion: Coda is concerned. The rational part of me wants to; I didn’t sleep well last night (a situation that has become the norm for me lately), so I’m tired, fighting the effects of a mild but nagging headache, and – to be honest – not in the best of moods.

The emotional part of me, though, thinks that I should at least consider taking a nice long break throughout most of the day, then work on the manuscript for at least an hour. In the early evening hours, if I feel up to it.

I don’t know. Yesterday was not a good day for me as far as “Writing a Novel” is concerned: I didn’t write any new words in Chapter 10, Scene Two, nor did I make any revisions to the stuff I’ve written for the previous chapters. I feel guilty when I don’t “produce” anything on a working day, so my natural instinct is to make up for lost time on weekends.

The problem with that, of course, is that tackling any writing project when I’m tired or troubled (and today it’s both) almost always has pitfalls. My recent experiences with revising Reunion: A Story are a good example of what happens when I try to work on a project and I’m not at my best, either physically or mentally. What I thought would be a simple process – uploading a few corrections to Kindle Direct Publishing – became a marathon of multiple repetitions of the same task over the long Independence Day weekend and even beyond!

That, Dear Reader, didn’t go so well.

Well, I’ve been writing for over an hour already (two hours, if you want to really know), which doesn’t seem to be a good omen for my ambitions to work on a novel today. So, rational side…looks like you won – today, anyway.