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LJI-M 2024 03 - Without You
Jul. 22nd, 2024 05:52 pmA Void Inside (with apologies to Georges Perec and Gilbert Adair)
My most darling Anastasia Rose,
I hope this letter finds my little girl doing well. I have to apologize for how long it has been since I last wrote. It has been a demanding time here at the family home, what with mother having to leave her job after the medical treatments made her too tired to keep working. Please forgive her for avoiding conversations, she has been in bed and listening to the radio most of the time when she was not sleeping. And as always, she hates to bother anyone with her own problems.
In any case, she is making progress, and while we both know that things might be easier if there were more relatives of hers here to help, we don’t dwell on it. There are so many important things in life. We both know how impossible choosing between them can be.
I do miss having the chance to observe my amazing child (and maybe grandchildren one day) growing into the strong, loving, intelligent, and kind person I know she can be. Sorry, I promised not to start that again with my favorite girl.
So how are things here otherwise, one might ask? Well, we don’t see anyone to speak of. The new cats are doing well; however, they hate being locked away from the bedroom at night. They cry constantly at the door and shove their little paws into the opening in an attempt to get in. We can’t let them in for another few weeks, maybe sooner if the scars heal faster.
As for me, I am trying to enjoy retirement, which is something I never believed I might even attempt, never mind write in words. Fifty-three years at the same job, the same calendar every week, it creates a pattern that is hard to break. I still find myself rising at five in the morning even now with nothing to do. And with mother’s constant sleeping, I have even more time to fill than before. Still, I keep myself active - painting, cleaning, gardening, watching the local wildlife, reading, and sometimes even writing, like now.
The neighbors bring over meals for mom and me, which is a great help - I don’t have the kitchen skills that she has. And that leaves me even more time to think. That’s the bad with the good, as my pops always told me. I visited his grave yesterday. I think that is why I am finally forcing myself to write this. He always wanted to have a grandchild, and it saddens me to know he never got to experience that. I constantly tell his stories - it’s not the same as really knowing him. He was one of a kind.
Okay, so I have been avoiding typing this for too long. The biggest reason I am writing today is not easy to set down in words. Yet I have to try. So here goes, and sorry for the long preamble.
I think I am losing my mind.
I know, it probably has seemed like that was the case at some level for a long time now, however this is more noticeable, even to me. I spend an ever-increasing and inordinate length of time every day trying to remember a specific something I forgot, or something I lost, or something I never even really had. It is like there is a hole in my brain, or in my life, or - I don’t really know how to explain. Something is missing, and I can’t place my finger on it.
Maybe an analogy will help.
As has been the case ever since her sickness came back, mom is having problems with her vision. When she looks at the TV, there is a blank spot in the middle. She can see the edges pretty well. Not the center. We joke that we have to start calling it a T V (with the space in the middle). It’s a charming way to describe a scary concept. She isn’t blind, yet her blind spot is significant and large and right in front of her. She has to move her head from side to side and peer along the edges to see everything.
My brain feels the same way.
Remember those old shows and movies and jokes where old people walked into rooms and forgot why they ever walked in in the first place - the ones they don’t show any more as they are no longer politically correct? Well, I wish that was all this was.
This is no joke. It’s a constant feeling, beneath the skin, that I am missing something all the time, have been for a long time, so long that I am not positive I ever had it to begin with, nor what it was. Something important. Something with meaning. Something I miss even when I don’t remember what it is.
I can hear the teasing now - if I can’t remember it at all, how important can it really be?
Well, I don’t know. And that only makes it worse. I have always had a really good memory - I can remember scores of baseball games from my teenage years, clothes I wore that were dropped off at Goodwill decades ago, conversations I have had, places I have visited. I have a mind like a steel trap.
At least, I did.
How can I remember the color of the balloons at my nephew’s third birthday party and I can’t remember the day my own child was born?
I tried to talk to mom in this regard, and at first she seemed concerned, and now she is merely annoyed with me. She is sick, I know this. Yet it pains me to hear her deny the existence of the most important person in the world to me, well next-most, after her. I cannot even speak thy name near her for fear of how she will react.
She says we never had a child. That there is no Anastasia.
She reinforces the hole in my life.
Please, Rose-Ana, my sweet little flower. I need help. I need reminders. I need my child. Please. Visit me. Call me. Send me photos, letters, anything. I don’t want this hole in my life to persist.
I miss my child. I miss the life we had. Or maybe never had.
Anastasia, I love thee.
Always.
- Dad
My most darling Anastasia Rose,
I hope this letter finds my little girl doing well. I have to apologize for how long it has been since I last wrote. It has been a demanding time here at the family home, what with mother having to leave her job after the medical treatments made her too tired to keep working. Please forgive her for avoiding conversations, she has been in bed and listening to the radio most of the time when she was not sleeping. And as always, she hates to bother anyone with her own problems.
In any case, she is making progress, and while we both know that things might be easier if there were more relatives of hers here to help, we don’t dwell on it. There are so many important things in life. We both know how impossible choosing between them can be.
I do miss having the chance to observe my amazing child (and maybe grandchildren one day) growing into the strong, loving, intelligent, and kind person I know she can be. Sorry, I promised not to start that again with my favorite girl.
So how are things here otherwise, one might ask? Well, we don’t see anyone to speak of. The new cats are doing well; however, they hate being locked away from the bedroom at night. They cry constantly at the door and shove their little paws into the opening in an attempt to get in. We can’t let them in for another few weeks, maybe sooner if the scars heal faster.
As for me, I am trying to enjoy retirement, which is something I never believed I might even attempt, never mind write in words. Fifty-three years at the same job, the same calendar every week, it creates a pattern that is hard to break. I still find myself rising at five in the morning even now with nothing to do. And with mother’s constant sleeping, I have even more time to fill than before. Still, I keep myself active - painting, cleaning, gardening, watching the local wildlife, reading, and sometimes even writing, like now.
The neighbors bring over meals for mom and me, which is a great help - I don’t have the kitchen skills that she has. And that leaves me even more time to think. That’s the bad with the good, as my pops always told me. I visited his grave yesterday. I think that is why I am finally forcing myself to write this. He always wanted to have a grandchild, and it saddens me to know he never got to experience that. I constantly tell his stories - it’s not the same as really knowing him. He was one of a kind.
Okay, so I have been avoiding typing this for too long. The biggest reason I am writing today is not easy to set down in words. Yet I have to try. So here goes, and sorry for the long preamble.
I think I am losing my mind.
I know, it probably has seemed like that was the case at some level for a long time now, however this is more noticeable, even to me. I spend an ever-increasing and inordinate length of time every day trying to remember a specific something I forgot, or something I lost, or something I never even really had. It is like there is a hole in my brain, or in my life, or - I don’t really know how to explain. Something is missing, and I can’t place my finger on it.
Maybe an analogy will help.
As has been the case ever since her sickness came back, mom is having problems with her vision. When she looks at the TV, there is a blank spot in the middle. She can see the edges pretty well. Not the center. We joke that we have to start calling it a T V (with the space in the middle). It’s a charming way to describe a scary concept. She isn’t blind, yet her blind spot is significant and large and right in front of her. She has to move her head from side to side and peer along the edges to see everything.
My brain feels the same way.
Remember those old shows and movies and jokes where old people walked into rooms and forgot why they ever walked in in the first place - the ones they don’t show any more as they are no longer politically correct? Well, I wish that was all this was.
This is no joke. It’s a constant feeling, beneath the skin, that I am missing something all the time, have been for a long time, so long that I am not positive I ever had it to begin with, nor what it was. Something important. Something with meaning. Something I miss even when I don’t remember what it is.
I can hear the teasing now - if I can’t remember it at all, how important can it really be?
Well, I don’t know. And that only makes it worse. I have always had a really good memory - I can remember scores of baseball games from my teenage years, clothes I wore that were dropped off at Goodwill decades ago, conversations I have had, places I have visited. I have a mind like a steel trap.
At least, I did.
How can I remember the color of the balloons at my nephew’s third birthday party and I can’t remember the day my own child was born?
I tried to talk to mom in this regard, and at first she seemed concerned, and now she is merely annoyed with me. She is sick, I know this. Yet it pains me to hear her deny the existence of the most important person in the world to me, well next-most, after her. I cannot even speak thy name near her for fear of how she will react.
She says we never had a child. That there is no Anastasia.
She reinforces the hole in my life.
Please, Rose-Ana, my sweet little flower. I need help. I need reminders. I need my child. Please. Visit me. Call me. Send me photos, letters, anything. I don’t want this hole in my life to persist.
I miss my child. I miss the life we had. Or maybe never had.
Anastasia, I love thee.
Always.
- Dad
