Mood Lifters July 1,2022

After watching the House Internal Committtee on  the January 6 attempted coup on our government plus the outrageous rulings by a 6-3 Supreme Court, it was difficult to rejoice in our first female Black Justice taking the oath yesterday. It is difficult each day , even with the sunshine and warm weather to rejoice in nature, to feel the gratitude for good health and increasing stamina, to enjoy the studying I am doing in researchhing Noah and getting lost in the commentaries of the the first part of Genesis, Barashit.

My daughter's stepmother who had been sick for many years, causing Linda so much divided loyalty feelings added to her grief at losing another parent, died this week. My feelings were complicated. I want to be supportive of my daughter, but there is so little she can accept from me. I settled for sending a long email about how she needed to act as Power of Attorney and spoke only words of love .

I could only focus on getting to the gym, adding a yoga class each week to my two dance classes, and almost getting my 7500 steps in every day.

I, who have so much, drowned for a while in self pity, upset that my old friends are less available to go and do and my new friends have other, younger companions to spend time with. My peers with whom I volunteered last Friday packing food for the poor, bickered with each other which was not pleasant. One woman who was not there, told me by email afterward that she broke her back and was staying out of the city for a while to recover. I ws upset that I had not inviited Steve to come to the city to share my birthday and to share my reminiscences of Bob on today, his Yahrzeit, the death aniversary I commemorate each year. Seven years ago today and Steve was by his side, not me.

I thought I was past the stages of grief and mourning, but my mood  reflected my memories of the wonderful times we had, overwhelmed by his suffering and mine through his many years of Alzheimer's.

Where did the mood lifters come from? One friend invited me to dinner tonight. Another accepted my invite to spend time tomorrow. I purchased tickets to a play for next week and Naomi will have dinner and see another play with me on my birthday. I will not be alone.

Remembering Those We Have Lost June 12,2019

I sat in shul yesterday, listening to the cantor chant the Ali Rachamim, the prayer remembering the dead and I am reliving Bob's funeral, almost seven years ago. Then the Rabbi reads the names we are remembering today and I sit quietly. The mourners rise; I sit. As I mouth the prayer from memory as I always do, I remember. Today is the yahrzeit, the day we remember my grandfather, my Opa. He died on June 12 which is today. I don't observe these dates on the Hebrew calendar. Those changing lunar calendar dates have no personal meaning for me.

But June 12 1968 certainly does.Opa hadn't really been well for a few months. He was content to sit without reading his paper; that was new for him. When I sat next to him, he wanted more physical contact than he ever permitted and never sought before. For his 80ieth birthday, March 8, Steven and Linda and I drove to their apartment building. The kids loved to ride the elevator and inhale the cooking smells in the hallway. They had never lived in an apartment building; neither had I.

We had decided in advance to bring 8 large candles instead of 80 small ones, making it easier for him to blow them out. Steve was just turning nine, Linda was six and a half. I carried baby Ted, just a year old.

For Seder the next month, Uncle Willy picked "the parents" as they were referred to, up in his car and drove them to my parents' home in Millburn. My mother, Aunt  Lisa, Uncle Willy, Sharyn and Bert, Oma on one side, Opa at the head and my father at the other end of the table with Steve next to him, Linda, Gilbert and me, baby Ted in a high chair.

I insisted on sitting on my Opa's right hand, as I had since I was eight.

Over the course of the 22 years we had sat in this manner at the Passover table, Aunt Lis and then joined by my husband, groused at how long the readings took before dinner was served. 

But not this night. 

My father was prepared to lead the service; Opa could hardly see anymore.  But Opa stood with  his wine glass shaking in his hand and began to recite the Kiddush, the book open before him, but he did not read. He did the whole service from memory, only letting my mother give out the symbolic foods. Steven read the Four Questions.

After he sat down, and Opa began to read the answers to the questions, in Hebrew from memory, the tears began to fall. There was not a dry eye I could see. We were all aware, this was the last time Opa would be here with us on this day.

Food Issues Complicate a Difficult Emotional Experience July 2019

 Traveling while lactose intolerant to the point of having to carry exra supplies if I or the chef includes any butter or cheese to any unsuspecting dish, like milk added in with the oatmeal at breakfast time has always made travel irksome for me.

I travel to only the best of places, to only the high rated hotels.  Of course they fry their eggs at the buffet table only in butter and they add milk to the eggs they serve scrambled. Don't you? But I am not in any hotels where the chef would prepare a separate meal for me.

Austin and I use food and restaurants to help us tolerate the emotional toll of tracing our ancestor's path toward the spot where he was murdered.. This morning we are in Zagreb.. The ample table has an assortment of cheeses and pastries that look wonderful, made better with butter of course.I love the local breads and rolls as I settle for a hard boiled egg, as I do most mornings at home. Most mornings, Austin doesn't eat at all,or very little.

My personal restrictions don't end there however, since I don't eat food made from pigs or cows or sheep or goats and baked beans with mushrooms might be delightful for lunch as will any one of the fresh fruits offered, but not breakfast.
For lunch I usually can find a salad in any country we visited. Balsalmic vinegar makes a wonderful dressing when I remember to ask the waiter not to dress my salad. In Frankfurt I was served a Salade Nicoise which came as a do-it-yourself salad. The lettuce leaves were whole, the sliced olives from a can, the tuna also from a can dumped on top with large quarters of tomato and hard-boiled egg halves.
In Frankfurt also I had a real treat called a vegetarian burger which is the  same as the new Impossibe burger I enjoy  at home. I tried a tofuburger for a late supper in a quaint Renaissance style hotel near Rymanov in southern Galicia and lo and behold, it  was the same thing. I was a happy camper! Austin is loving the food; the bratwurst in Frankfurt, the Italian dinner with Hendrik and his parents, the Wiener schnitzel in Vienna, the huge steins of beer, too.
When I ask that a chicken or fish dish have no dairy ingredients, they comply, serving me a dry protein with no flavor. I had chicken schnitzel with vinegar potato salad and once chicken in a tomato sauce with  mashed potato pancakes as a side in Vienna. We have not had green vegetables served often with a meal, but lots of  potatoes.
Last night in Crakow, we ordered pasta outdoors among many other diners at many  charming outdoor tables seemingly set up in the middle of the street or on the square, accompanied by a three piece band playing old American standards from atop a low roof. By eight, when we left the hotel for dinner, the temperature had decreased to 88 degrees which was comfortable. During the day it had soared to 32 C. which is in the 90's somewhere, but who's counting. It was SO hot.
Austin's bolognese was juicy and he reported "delicious." Mine was with seafood with hardly any sauce as if the chef knew it  had butter in it and was treating it sparingly. I did not get sick, so it worked to my benefit and I twirled it down with two glasses of sparkling white  wine.
Today it is raining and will only get to 84 degrees as Austin will drive to the Jasenovac concentration camp on the last part of our journey retracing Grandpa Salaman's journey as he tried to escape.

Gratitude March 30, 2022

I awoke this morning before dawn and watched the sunrise from my bed as it crept in through the large east-facing window, through the closed blinds. The open, screened window let in the crisp night air of springtime.

My previous winter rental faced north and, since Covid forced me to remain in Arizona through two hot summers, I was grateful for the shade provided for me by the building.

I never considered my morning thoughts on awakening as any sort of ritual, but I was reminded yesterday that many people, whether for religious reasons or as part of a sobriety practice, list  thier gratitudes upon awakening every morning. Some even text or otherwise communicate with another person, to share the day's gratitude list.

I have not yet felt the need for that level of support, but I do feel gratitude for my ability to begin each day recognizing the good in my life.

I feel especially good this morning; my family will attend Father Desbois' lecture next Monday on Holocaust by Bullets and my daughter, son, son-in-law and one grandson will listen to me guide them through the  exhibit before the lecture. Since the beginning of this exhibit, I have been acting as a docent on Sunday afternoons,, sharing the material of this horrific time which occurred in my childhood, when my  parents had no  idea  what was happening to their parents in Europe as we sat, worried and safe in the U.S.

My family has shown no particular interest in WWII, although my parents escaped from Hitler's grasp, three of my grandparents survived very traumatizing times during the war and one grandfather was murdered.There was a smattering of interest as I travelled to Europe  before writing my book, and then  they each read the book, but daily life takes precidence, as it needs to do.

This exhibit of Father Desbois' research into the genocide of the Jewish  people has come to my family in Arizona, to the university my younger grandson attends and from which the older one has been graduated.Perhaps their interest will spur  me on to write the next book, the one about my grandfather who was killed by the Ustasi in Zagreb, Coratia where my older grandson and I travelled in 2019 to bear witness. We stood at Pit number one, into  which his shot body was thrown; we gathered thirty-one stones to place nearby, one from each of his living relatives we could think of, as we stood, tears running down our faces and recited the Kaddish.

Follow-Up to Scary Saturday March 19, 2022

Transient Global Amnesia is a real thing. There is a definition and studies with incidences, comorbidities and recurrences.

What

is really interestiing, is how well I look up all ailments my friends and family tell me about, but when it came to researching what happened to me last Saturday , I needed a friend who volunteered that she had had a similar experience before I was ready to explore the internet.

I became so frighteneed, in additon to losing an entire morning, I was frightened of what the future may have held. There is nothing unusual about my response. It is perfectly normal at age 83, to worry about death and disease and disability, with its concommitant dependence on others, loss of control and diminished sense of the furture's possibilities.

Here's what I learned. An event of forgetting, even losing a whole day occurs in adults beetween the ages of 60 and 80. In only 2 to 25 per cent does the same person ever experience another of these episodes.  There is no connection to this transient amnesia to any other neurological illness or disease. It is not a precursor of Alzheimer's or other dementia, ALS, TIA or anything else.

I had a good scare. I aplogize for alarming those who love me. I understand my reaction as of course I have cared for both my mother and my husband degenerating from dementia and Alzheimer's disease. I dread putting my family through the trauma we have already experienced too many times.

We don't know the future. We can only live our lives the best way we can, while we are able, make sure our final wishes are well known and documented and relish the knowledge that in the way we live our lives, others are there for us and wish us well.

Brain Fart. March 13,2022

"A temporary mental lapse or failure to reason correctly"

What an inelegant phrase. I never ever thought it could or would pertain to me. Even "panic attack" is not any way I have ever thought of myself. At the risk of sounding arrogant, at 83 I do not feel I have ever felt so out of control as I did yesterday. Except of course, for my infamous trip to club Med in Martinique when I was recently divorced and 32. At that time, a fellow shared his hashish with me. I watched him open a cigarette after removing the filter, mixing the tobacco with the other brown material and rolling the same paper again and lighting it with his lighter, before offering it to me.

Actually that was the second time I was given an hallucenogenic substance after which I became so fearful and paranoid that I slept, in a communal room on a pallet at Su Casa in the Catskills, holding my shoe to protect myself from imagined perpetrators.

But neither of those experiences approached what I felt yesterday.

All of a sudden, I couldn't remember  simple responses to the question "What time are you being the docent at the ASU library tomorrow?"

My gym instructor was planning to listen to me discuss Father Patrick DuBois' investigations into the deaths of whole towns of Jewish residents by Nazi firing squads in Eastern Europe during WWII.

I checked my phone, finding the correct information, but the calendar felt alien to me. I didn't understand that it was March, not that it was Saturday. 

I said nothing and I walked, kind of dazed, to the elevator with a woman who had taken the class with me. She asked what floor I lived on and I had to struggle to find the appropriate answer. She pushed the elevator button for her floor and mine and I  exited first.

I had to orient myself in space to get tenuously, to my space, but I did.

I went to my tablet and reviewed the day. It was shortly after 2 PM. I was trying to program my phone's calendar to match what my synagogue's programming said I had participated in that morning, but I had difficlty translating EST into MT. Did I wake at 6 to get to the discussion by 7, or was it 8AM?

I couldn't figure it out. I asked my phone to clarify it for me. Next, I decided I must be hungry, so I made myself an English muffin with melted mozzarella cheese, spead both halves with tuna salad, set the table, poured myself some V-8, but sat instead on my sofa, feeling shaky.  I had no further plans for this sunny, brisk Arizona day, but I could not relax.

I was no longer hungry; I felt I did not want to be alone. I called my son Steve, I explained how I was feeling and asked him to keep me company for the afternoon. He said he understood I was feeling scared. I began to cry.

I knew it would take him at least a half hour to get himself together to come  with Chipper, "our" dog, who Steve was at that time walking in the park.

Meanwhile, I planned out all the horrible scenarios of Alzheimer's disease I had experienced with my husband. I reviewed in my head the trust agreement I had signed and the apartment transfer in New York which I had not yet signed, worrying that I would no longer be able to accomplish these end of life goals.

As I was waiting, I remembered that I have the availability of an on call nurse from my Blue Cross/Blue Shield Federal health insurance plan, whom I could call for advice. I had done so once before, when my husband had fallen out of bed in the middle of the night and I knew calling 911 would be so disorienting for him, I could not expose him to tha trauma.

The nurse advised me not to eat the lunch I  had prepared, in case I needed some emergency treatment; she asked for my address. I could not remember it. I went to this trusty tablet and looked it up, quite aware that a good part of me was functioning normally, but that my 

memory was failing me. After listening to me, she called  911 and put me on the phone with them.

I intended to sit until they arrived, but I got my belongings together if I had to go to  the hospital with them. I unlocked the door for them; I saw the white fire truck pull up in front of the entrance to the building. I also transferred the load of clothing from the washer to the dryer, having a great deal of difficulty figuring out which cycle, which duration, which button was the "on."

Meanwhile I am beginning to shake as I write this; I feel I am reexperiencing the panic.

Five handsome black-clad young men arrive, masked for Covid .They are well coordiniated. As one guy asked questions, another took my blood pressure, one pricked my finger for a blood sample . All this happened while one of them was listening to my story.

They then asked if I wanted them to call an ambulance or if I wanted to wait for my son to take me. I hesitated; Steve would be very upset to see me get taken anywhere by ambulance. I decided to wait for Steve and to go by car.

One guy said, "You know, we wouldn't give you the choice if we felt you were having a stroke or a heart attack, right?"

I kind of woke up at that moment. I was not going to be incapacitated yet. We could figure this out at leisure. I was actually ok.

Self-Centered?

Self centered, narcissistic, ego-driven, full of hubris are all negative connotations about a person expressed and diagnosed and seen from outside the person and usually these are derogative words.

How do we think about ourselves? How do these words, thoughts and ideas reflect the actual thoughts and feelings we have about our selves during the course of our  lives?  How can I write about my feelings today compared with my thoughts and feelings, like when  was four years old?

For I have discovered similarities. I had already decided about right and wrong when I was three and my mother's tiny strawberry plants wandered onto our neighbor's yard. I thought they were ours.  The neighbor thought otherwise. I knew I was capable of walking to the park next to my mother and the baby carriage without having to hold on to the handle. My mother had even told me her dog Toddie, whom she had to leave in Frankfurt, Germany, knew how to walk to the end of the block and not go into the street when she walked with  her ten pre-school children. I was at least as smart as her dog. My mother thought otherwise.

I had much to learn about living in society, about the rules and obligations I had and my parents had, to keep us all safe.

I debated with my math teacher in eighth grade about labelling the multiplier and not the multiplicand. Of course I had to label my work the way the teacher wanted, after I had my say.

I had some successes when I spoke up for myself, voicing my opinions, which disagreeed with what was told to me. I convinced the Foreign language department head in my high school that if I passed the German 1 exam at the end of the year, without sitting through the classes, they would have to enroll me in German 2 for the next semester, and they did.

Gererally, I was successfully socialized. My life has been defined by my dedication to the service of others, to my husband, children and grandchildren, to my students, then to my patients. I am a good listener and I like to think of myself as a good friend. I donate money to charities I believe are worthwhile, I protest the unfairness of abortion and immigration policies that I know are unfair and should be unlawful.

The question now arises,  who am I to myself? In general, my obligations to others in my personal sphere are greatly diminished and I have the luxury to decide both my present and my future for myself. And I am at a loss. This I have not been taught.