The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Mindmelt

Now that the contest is over, I am left to write about what my mind tells me to. This could go many different ways.

M's mother is apparently having problems with the circulation in her legs. Above the knee, the nurse said, and things seem to be slowing down. A doctor will visit today, but M. is calmly assuming that this means something is happening, that the process of shutting down has begun. When I went into his office yesterday, he was researching the cost of funerals. You're already doing that? I asked, wide-eyed. He said it feels like the thing to do, that this time it's probably the only way it's going to go. At ninety years of age, with her mental faculties a whisper of what they were, it seems almost merciful for it to be this way. To continue living in that state, barely able to sit up, staring out the window in a room with white walls until the sun goes down seems like anything but living.

She's had an amazing life. She was a radar operator in WWII for Britain, living in London during the bombings, began calling herself Susan because she wanted to, until she later decided to be known as Diana, though there were other names in between (her real name, Isobel, does not satisfy her). She was questionned in a murder, though she was never directly linked (she has never commented about it though). She was on the same ship as Noel Coward when she decided to travel to the U.S to become a 'Hollywood Star' after the war ended, and she ended up having dinner with him and his friend/beard (homosexuality was not openly accepted at the time). She drove across the States in a convertible, before deciding that Hollywood was not for her (tall, lithe and blonde, she would easily have attracted attention, but she decided that she had better things to do). She bought a house, sight unseen, and moved into a neighbourhood of families in Pointe Claire, Quebec, where her war bride friends had set up house, all stunned at the way life had gone back to being the same. She married M's dad when he was visiting Canada from his native France, and they married quietly when she was thirty-nine, a little late in life for those days. She had M. at forty, and they moved back to France. Over the course of fourteen years, the marital discord would split them apart fourteen times, until a final schism took effect when M. was fourteen. In those years, she and M. lived in her native London, and in Paris with his father. When the split became a permanent thing, his mother and he moved back to Canada, leaving his father in France where he would be until the day he died. She says there is a painting of her in the basement of the Louvres (perhaps she was the inspiration for it, rather than the actual subject, though she maintains she is in it), but she will not tell M. who the artist was, or what the name of the painting is. Now that her mind is finished, it seems unlikely we will ever know. She has met Olivia De Havilland, which impresses me greatly, and I have the autograph from that dinner/lecture in my living room as I type. She has had her own businesses, dug her own pool, travelled until the age of eighty-six without assistance, held her secrets with a smile and loved her son in the best way she could. Now it's all about to be over, and I don't know if she has many regrets. Until recently, she still insisted on being known as Diana. I love that about her.

M. is handling it all in stride, which for him is odd. He decided that she will be cremated, that her ashes will be divided in two; half being sprinkled in our iris garden, and the other half secretly interred in the garden outside her favourite cafe near her former apartment. I find this odd, and a little off-putting. Half of the woman will be in the garden outside the kitchen window, where feral cats dig and amber ants work and build. It doesn't seem...in keeping with her character? But, M. says that he doesn't know what state of mind he'll be in when the inevitable comes to pass. If he's feeling sentimental, he will be sentimental about where she goes. If he focuses on the less stellar moments of her past, he might put her somewhere convenient. This is how he is with his mother, up and down. It's always been this way, and it confuses me. To me, making any kind of decision based solely on an emotion is a mistake. Emotions are interchangeable, the weather of humans.

So, it's a death watch, or perhaps a death wait, and it's morbid and sad, but given her advanced years it's not completely overwhelming. It's more frustrating than anything, not knowing when the call will come, or what plans we can make. M. has not been close to her for so long that I think he just wants it over, the responsibility and the strain of feeling unloved and unvalued for his entire life. He loves her, even understands her, but she has never been a warm mother, not the kind who would hold him when he needed her to. She was always careful about herself, didn't show too much or let anyone get too close. It made their relationship polite, but distant at best. It's tough watching him struggle with what he feels about her. He wanted so badly for her to be his mum, but he got the mother of all mothers instead.

I feel tired, today. I watched the American VP debate last night when I really should have been watching the Canadian debates. What is it about the American political climate which makes it seem more interesting? I need to be more concerned about what is going on in my backyard, since I don't plan on becoming American any time soon. Apparently, the debates here were far better, in that they were engaging and explosive, than the rival. Watching Palin speak made my head hurt. If there was a drinking game where you took a swig whenever she used the word 'maverick' or 'nucular', rather than the correct term, I would have been hammered by the end of it. What's with that ridiculous 'maverick' reference? Do they think anyone is buying that? If her father is a school teacher, why can't she pronounce nuclear? She came off like a PTA mom visiting the big city. I know she's brighter than we think she is, but she comes off like an amateur. If I were an American, I wouldn't want a hockey mom running the show. I'd want a leader who is a politician with strong diplomatic skills and a decent head on their shoulders. Leave the lipstick, the hockey, the maverick mumbo-jumbo and the 'he fought in the war so he's earned the right to be president' crap at home. None of that means much when you're dealing with real issues. She was a product on that podium. Biden was a leader. But, again, I should have been watching the Canadian debates. It's obviously more important for me.

I need sex and chocolate. Not necessarily in that order.

-*later*-

Have had one Snickers bar and one roll around the bed with M. while the trees howled outside and the sun tried to peek through the curtains to catch the matinee. I am feeling something close to fulfilled, sweetened and filled with love. No one has died, and the sun is still shining. The tension has melted all over the sheets, and I'm feeling good about doing the laundry.