Dear Family and Friends,
AS EVER, WE ARE ON FOR EASTER!! EGG HUNT AT 11AM, FOLLOWED BY POT LUCK LUNCH, DRINKING OF BEER WALKS TO THE BEACH AND LATE AFTERNOON DANCING. (please leave your dogs at home) 624-7119 or 624-8401 if you have any questions.
Come before 11AM if you want to help hide the eggs, and please bring beverages in cans, no bottles.
If it rains on Easter, take a raincheck for next year. You can call the above numbers for a Sunday morning update as to the
egg hunt if the day arrives with rains.
I
Writing this Update on Sunday evening now, waiting for Molly and Cynthia to arrive home from the airport where they have gone to pick up Susan (Clifford) Rayner who is here for a two week visit. Her son Adam, star of stage and screen, is currently working in LA and he will be coming to Carmel for Easter, Susan is one the last of Cynthia's (almost) children to arrive for a visit and we are thrilled to have her here. Tom Davies has gone off for a week in Death Valley, and Sarah just left to go back to Mills following her spring break.
Sarah is fabulous with Cynthia. Better than the rest of us in just sitting and being with Cynthia. No past, no future, just sitting together, being. Sarah reads her
Shakespeare and dusts off old favorites for Cynthia to read. They chat about literature, and when Cynthia has a piece of a poem floating in her mind, Sarah will find the source. Sarah is 7 weeks away from finishing up at Mills. On returning to college after a 2 and a half year break out working in the world she found her added maturity to be a big plus. And now on May 15 she will graduate. Also on May 15 Burl Martin, daughter of Danielle (Judge) and Larry Martin will be getting married. Sarah and I are sad that we can not be in two places at the same time.
Many moons since we last sent out an "Update". People have been e-mailing and calling, wanting to know what is going on here in Carmel Highlands. What they are wanting to know is "how is CW?", which is just a hard question for me to answer. Cynthia is now in transition and it is fairly difficult. Difficult for her, and difficult for us. I see her sitting there on the couch, and I recognize her to be Cynthia, but at the same time she is not Cynthia, but a certainly familiar old woman. I miss her deeply already. She now, in waves, loses some familiar personality and function. Her capacity on all levels slowly shrinks, and she has the blessing of being able to mostly accept this state of affairs. But she does feel frustrated when she can't recall something, some days even the names of the dogs escapes from her memory. Then the other evening we were trying to, I can't think why, remember the name of Isak Dinesen's lover....and it was Cynthia who, sometime later, suddenly said, "Denys Finch Hatton". Of course.
So you just don't know, and she does not know, from day to day how or where she will be. For awhile she was having a hard time passing between the dream and waking state, and when she awoke in the night from a dream not knowing where she was, or thinking she was traveling to one place or another, she became anxious and disturbed. And sometimes some paranoia, as with a nightmare that she had been put into a resthome. (She has trouble, at night, recognizing her bedroom or the caregivers who sleep in the room with her.) One afternoon, about two weeks ago, she came into the living room after negotiating her walker up and down the hall. Molly and I were sitting on the hearth. "What are you talking about" she demanded to know, "are you plotting to put me away somewhere?". We assured her that the thought had not even entered our minds, and we wrote out a little paper saying so which we all signed and gave to her. Little post-it notes have become very handy and reassure her about things that she can not hold present in her mind. But since then she's been much better, and there's been much less nocturnal disorientation/delirium.
We all know what a fine mind she had. And now she sits, dependent upon others for most everything. She gets great pleasure in looking out the window at the view. It has been a most beautiful winter and early spring. And baseball season is almost here, bringing with it many hours of the SF Giants soon to be coming to the living room for her viewing pleasure. Imagine that, a TV in the living room. Who would have ever thought! Molly has put a small TV in the cabinet where the LP records used to live, and will bring it out when the games are on.
Myrna remains our usual 24/7 care giver, with Carina here when Myrna takes her days off. Strange to have the care of your mother in the hands of other women. Molly and I would be at our wits end without Myrna and Carina. Sister Molly, blessings be upon her, goes on really holding down the fort.
So let me think, what else has been going on? Lord knows, things have not slowed down. We have had visits from many people. Laura and Jack Holmgren have been faithful Sunday evening visitors, bringing much cheer to all of us, especially to Cynthia. Jack brings her presents, chocolate mostly, and usually he and Laura bring dinner. Melody and the beautiful Octavian, and Hansi when he is in this country, come for Friday night dinner.
These past months have brought many visitors. Cherie and David have been here a few times for a day or three, Geoff Hoyle and MaryWeingarden have visited, as has Cynthia Dyer-Bennett with her charming husband David Peoples. and Margo and Tony. Greg has gone off to live in Rome for several months where he is studying Italian. Oliver Davis is also in Rome, where he is housesitting and having a last vacation before beginning law school. His brother Julian visited Oliver and Greg in Rome during his spring break from law school. So two Davis lawyers. I'd have to say it surprises me.
Other visirors.....Tom Lambert was here, as was Neal Hemmelstein. David Walton was here from China during his yearly trip to California. Always such a pleasure to see him. Cynthia Satchell and her husband Jeff were here for a week. We wish that they would move to Carmel and keep encouraging them to do so, but so far no luck. David Walton was here from China during his yearly trip to California. Always such a pleasure to see him.
Skip Richheimer breezed through last week while on a visit with all his children living in the Bay Area. Lots of other people....apologies to those I have forgotten to mention.
And we had 19 year old Jun Hatano here for a month. Jun is the niece of my Chinese friend Haixiang. Jun's mother is Haixiang's sister, who married a Japanese man and left China to live in Japan, where Jun was raised. Jun identifies as being Japanese, which is strange for me as when I look at her I see the so-very-Chinese Haixiang looking back at me. We had a wonderful time having Jun here with us, even though it rained and rained and rained. Just before jun left we spent a few days in the city with Geoff, Mary having gone east to deal with her dying mother. Geoff worked with Jun on her speech. How could Jun go to law school in Berkeley if when she spoke that word it came out "bakery". It was fascinating watching and listening to Geoff pull apart all the sounds of speech and show Jun what to do with the various parts of her mouth to get the needed sounds. Jun was very happy when after three weeks of Cynthia calling her "young lady", she began to call her by her name, Jun.
And Mary Mary. I left SF just before she returned, and I hated to miss seeing her when all her feeliing of the loss of her mother were on her sleeve. Have become very
aware and curious about others and their mothers, Moving ourselves into this uncharted territory , I seek to learn from other's experiences. But i am afraid that death, like birth, is one of those experiential things that no one else can really prepare you for. Two neighbors have rercently died, Bill Stewart and Tey Roberts. Such a slender thread that holds us with the living. Tey's death came so quickly, and she was far too young to die. Elliott carries on.
Thinking on Elliott, I realize that I have not seen or spoken with him since Tey's death. I think to myself that I must go and call on him, or invite him to dinner. This makes me painfully aware that the overriding feeling of these months is that there is just not enough time. Not enough time today, not enough time this week etc etc.
I have been working on the census, and working helping a client put in an orchard. This is my first paying horticulture job since doing my graduate work in Horticulture at Cal Poly, and what a pleasure it is. I always meant to have a nursery or something, but just didn't get to it. The real estate business hardly exists in the Carmel Highlands Big Sur area, although foreclosures are producing some well priced offerings. So if you are ready to buy property, sing out, for now is the time.
So thats the brief local update. From further away, we hear from Marshall Ganz "... I confess to having loss the thread of Cynthia's latest journey. . . and a journey indeed. It reminds me of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. . the first three movement are so powerful he didn't know what he would for an appropriate finale. . and so he came up with the Ode to Joy for full orchestra and it seems like 10,000 person chorus. . . I hope that the weather is beautiful and the ocean lively and the humming birds, humming." ......."It's been a very intense time for me, a whole new domain of activity opening up in the Middle East where I've been twice in the last couple of months, and will go again in March. . . and again in May . . . Damascus, Amman, Jerusalem, Ramallah . . . and points in between"...... and recently, " Syria was quite amazing and I'm making progress with getting a whole leadership (read organizing) initiative going in the region, rooted in Islamic culture, tradition, and, most of all, young people".
Ian Hefler, husband of Laura Flanagan, is, as I write, having his screen play made into a movie in New York City.
And Joanie B. sang for the Obama's at the White House. A report in the press said that the shoes she brought long did not fit and she ended up going in bare feet.
We hope so.
Thank you to all the people who sent in written pieces to the family and friends list server, Alcie and Mary and Margo. Thank you thank you. There have been many photos that just have not gotten posted, photos from Xmas, from Laura Flanagan's birthday party, from the New Years Eve party etc.
Talking with Cynthia d'Vincent this morning I wonder if I have projected far too much of my own depression into this letter. Cynthia says that when she saw Cynthia last week she was impressed with how lucid she was. And Marshall's friend Tamar also commented on how "with it" Cynthia seemed to be to her. Truth is, I suppose, that I am just in a depressed funk over this whole growing old and dying business. My spirits flag. I await the resurrection
One last quick story. When Jack was selling off the furniture from his father's house a woman came to the garage sale and asked for the price of the mid-century post
modern pieces in the living room? $25 dollars, he said, and immediately he made the phrase his own as he continued on selling the "mid-century post modern" furniture. Talking with Susan the night she arrived this story came up, and we realized that that is indeed just what we are, Mid Century Post Modern.
Postscript. Just home from 24 hours at Point 16 in Big Sur. Spirits lifted. Sitting tonight with Cynthia, pure love. She is such a wonderful woman.
Love to all,
Honey Williams
|