I’m sitting here trying to think of something uplifting to say. It’s not that today is a bad day, it’s just that like all my days, it’s too polarized — from the profound experience of learning to dance to the profane experience of life in my father’s house.
My father is 97 years old and is doing well — he gets up and can walk around by himself, can even take off the oxygen for a few minutes if he needs to go beyond the tether of the tubing. He mostly looks after himself, but the every day aspects of life are beginning to defeat him. He has a hard time concentrating and remembering, though these lacks are due to congestive heart failure and age, not Alzheimer’s. (He recently took and passed an Alzheimer’s test.) Still, there are always personal things that he needs me to take care of, such as shopping and cooking what few cooked foods he eats. There are frequent house matters for me to take care of such as bad television, phone, and computer reception. And there is my dysfunctional homeless brother who is currently camping out in the garage.
For some reason — perhaps because I am here — my brother delights in tormenting me, calling me childish names such as “Porky” and “Lard Ass” as well as more adult-rated names. He is obviously suffering, and I am trying to be kind to him, even when he graffities car and bangs on my windows for hours at a time, but I have no idea what he really wants. Even if I did know, I’m not sure I could do anything for him. His problems are way out of my ability to comprehend. His relationship with his problems is even harder to fathom. He likes his “evil” side. He thinks it’s the best part of him, and perhaps it is. His core personality seems to be humble and self-effacing, helpless, even, like a bewildered little boy stuck inside a grown man’s decaying body. For sure, he has no interest in getting help to balance himself out.
I sometimes think of moving on and leaving my father and brother to fend for themselves, but I’m not sure I want to be the sort of person who can walk out on her aged, increasingly confused father and leave him to care for himself. (My brother sure couldn’t do anything to help. He doesn’t seem to be able to recognize that anyone but himself needs help.)
Besides, if I moved on, I’d have to give up dancing. The irony is that by being here in this bizarre household, I have the freedom to indulge my newfound love of dancing. If I left, I’d have to get a job, which would leave me no time or energy for dance classes, and for now, dancing is important to me. It feels like a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey. It has lessons to teach me beyond the discipline of the basic steps and the joy of the choreographed dances I am learning, though I’m not sure what those lessons are. I might never know since much of dance is subliminal, needing the focus of both the body’s mind as well as the mind’s mind and perhaps even the soul.
As Shirley MacLaine said, “Dance is an art that impends on the soul. It is with you every moment, it expresses itself in everything you do.”
Whatever lessons I learn from dance will be with me long after the memories of this household have faded. Dance is that important. And so I continue this polarized existence, paying for the profound privilege of dancing with the profanity in the rest of my life.
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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
e spider dead. “Why,” Grissom asked, “did the spider die? Because one life impinged on another.”
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