TheBanyanTree: Time Marches On

[Margaret R. Kramer]

It seems like since I turned 50 that time is flying right by.  I see my
journal entries on my computer sorted into folders by years – 2002, 2003,
2004, and 2005.  How did I get so many folders?  And how many folders will I
be able to create in the future?  How many years do I left?  I’m half a
century old.  Will I live another half century?

I had a weird dream last night.  A bunch of kids were trying to shoot major
fireworks at a house next door to me.  The canon type apparatus moved back
and forth as the missiles were shot out.  One of those missiles flew into my
house and somehow I caught it before it exploded.  I thought I was a goner.
But I caught that missile and threw it back outside where it landed at least
50 feet away from my house.  It never exploded.  It was a dud.  How many
duds will I be allowed to have before the real thing explodes in my face?

I just finished reading Donald Hall’s The Best Day The Worst Day: Life with
Jane Kenyon.  I’ve always been a fan of his poetry.  I love how he condenses
complicated emotions into simple words.  I’m not sure how I feel about Jane
Kenyon’s poetry.  They definitely had different styles.  But I used her poem
“Let Evening Come” for my dad’s memorial service.  That is such a powerful
poem.  I get shivers whenever I read it.

Hall’s book started out describing Jane’s death from leukemia when she was
47 years old.  Then his book meandered and twisted around their lives
together as he went into great detail of how her disease progressed, how he
took care of her, and the hope they had after her bone marrow transplant.
He wrote about the deaths of their mothers.  He wrote about their 20 years
at Eagle Pond Farm in New Hampshire and how they spent their days writing,
napping, gardening, and enjoying their solitude.

His book was an arrow shot into my heart.  How do I spend my days?  I get up
early and go to the gym and exercise.  I go to work and come home.  In the
late afternoon, I have a cup of coffee and some light fat and salt-free
popcorn, and then I spend some time in my garden and with my dogs.  I try to
cook good meals, but time always limits me on how well I cook.  Lean Cuisine
usually comes to the rescue.  I read and answer email.  I edit a newsletter.
I try to keep up with my magazines and books.  I fall into bed exhausted and
begin the cycle again the next day.

I wonder if I’ll ever experience a life changing event where my world will
flip flop and my current routine is turned into mush.  Ray was in the
hospital for three weeks three summers ago.  I didn’t handle that very well.
I continued to work out and go to my job, but my evenings were spent at the
hospital until 9 pm and I went home.  I was a basket case emotionally.  Ray
had a lung biopsy and that is a horrible thing.  He was so weak after that
and I didn’t know if he would ever recover.  But he did.  And he came home
to an oxygen machine that I didn’t understand how to use and I panicked.  I
didn’t know anything about using a nebulizer or his medications or anything.
Thank goodness a home care nurse came by that first day he was home.

I am the most inept and overly emotional caregiver.  The movies and TV
always make it look like it’s easy to care for someone who is very ill, but
it’s messy and awful and life isn’t the same and it’s emotionally draining.
Hall touched on this in his book without whining about it.  He just did what
he had to do for Jane.  But like me, he seemed to feel better when Jane was
in the hospital, because he felt she was getting better care than she was
when she was at home with him.

A week after Ray came home, he got sick again, and he went back into the
hospital for another week.  I remember sitting in the emergency room all day
with him while they tried to get him admitted.  He was so sick.  I didn’t
leave him because I didn’t know what was going to happen.  But he got better
and came home and everything was OK.

And he is better.  The oxygen machine only stayed a few months.  His
wheelchair hangs in the garage.  His doctors told me he had pulmonary
fibrosis and he would always need oxygen.  But Ray does not.  He can do
physical work, but he just needs to pace himself.  Hot and humid air shrink
his lungs and it gets hard for him to breathe, but he handles it fairly
well.  He’s learned his limits and stays within them.  So our lives quickly
went back to normal.

But that will change one way or another for us at some point in the future.
How will I live without him?  How would Ray live without me?  I think about
that a lot and I try not to take our days together for granted.  Sometimes
when I feel irritated and cross with him, I remind myself that he might not
always be here, and no matter how I feel, I have to appreciate and love the
time we’re having right now.

Like Hall and Kenyon, Ray and I are cleaved together, preferring each other’
s company to that of other people.  We’ve woven our threads creating a
beautiful tapestry of love and life.  What would happen if one of us isn’t
able to weave anymore?

Hall has gone on with his life.  He continues to live on his farm.  He
continues to write.  In fact, he comes quite often to Minnesota.  One of his
friends is Robert Bly, the ultimate Minnesota poet (I can’t stand Bly’s
writings, his poetry to me is very self-centered), so Hall comes here for
readings and talks.  I’m sure he continues to add yearly folders, too,  and
probably wonders which one will be his last.

Time keeps relentlessly moving forward.  I mark the events in my life as I
did when I measured myself as I was growing.  I quit smoking fours years, I
started working out five years ago, my oldest grandson is six and my
youngest grandson is four.  The roof on our house is six years old.  We
painted our house seven years ago.  Our magical deck under the trees is four
years old.  I began writing in OD in 2000.  I can barely see these
milestones anymore, because the time in my life has accelerated to almost
the speed of light.

I tell myself that all I can do is to keep going, go with the flow and let
this meandering path take me where it will.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not
with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a
show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw
Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness.  You
may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism. .  ~Erma Bombeck