Tag Archive | autobiography

A Brief Gathering of Old Classmates

Aug25

Class of ‘Sixty-Four

All our decades somersault, deposit us
in this circle of cross-legged strangers
whom I almost recognize. We put them
together like a wall of fragments: eyelid,
earlobe, bone. Laugh or grimace.

I cough without sound; nothing must smack
of mortality. We balance carefully, attentive
to hips and knees and feet, spines
no longer flexed like spring birches.

Backlight from a window casts our runes.
Her fine hair glows angelic. His shoulder
curves, a hillside traced on shadow.
Your eyes belong to the boy hidden
in them. We study each other, look away,
people the spaces with our own memories.

Dust spins in sloped rays that settle
on the floor. I think of stars slowly turning
until one finds us worthy, offers us life.
A hopeful fly circles my glass, perhaps
meaning to drown herself in bliss.

We speak quietly at first; explore
this new country. The room recedes
while stories form around us. The past
rebounds off our hostess’s painting
of a young girl, playing her flute forever.

Somebody mentions band concerts,
army cadets, gym, rifles. Male affairs.
I once stood with my swirly-skirt friends
– proper ladies – and wondered why.

But I have worn a dress today. I tuck
my legs, wish I could sit like a lotus,
then unfold, petals sharp as blades.
Glory from the mud. Surprise bloom
after such long and secret growth.

My chardonnay splashes, magnifies
the coffee-table grain. It’s like viewing
the universe through the wrong end
of a telescope. What we have become
is a contraction, yet the detail shines
with greater clarity than it ever did.

Science teaches us the definition
of gravity but we need no illustration
beyond a breast displaced, a chin
dropped, a belly tugging free from its
moorings. We bow to the dominion
of a force far greater than ourselves.

Yes. Gravity, regal and cruel, Henry VIII
of physical laws. I briefly rub the back
of my neck and this room shudders
with the ring of a crown falling. No one
else notices. You refill my drink and grin.

Brenda Levy Tate

for my Wolfville High School companions

On Doing

Apr16

“What an adventure my life has been!” – Napoleon Bonaparte

One of the crucial questions often posed on ALS sites reads like this: “What would you do while you still could?”

I often think about this. What, indeed? We’re all gifted with time and capability – until suddenly, the gift is withdrawn. A moment missed, an event planned and never carried out, an invitation refused. These are gifts not unwrapped. But there’s no refund for returning them. They’re just gone.

On the day my husband fell, we were anticipating a lovely drive in the early-spring sunshine. He has always enjoyed going to Sandford, seeing which boats were in (or out), meandering along Main Shore Road, parking on Port Maitland wharf across from the breakwater. We’d stop at Edna’s Bakery for tarts and fresh-sliced bread. As his disease advanced, he knew that most of it would be uneaten, except by me, but the scents were delirious! When a man can’t swallow food, his nose must provide a substitute experience. Nothing beats the olfactory “high” of bread straight from the oven.

That drive will never be taken now. A stumble – and everything changes. We’ve been well aware this was coming. ALS destroys mobility, one way or another. Falls, limb dysfunction and atrophy, or both combined. The neurons die and their tiny sparks fade. Anyone with a neurodegenerative disease will recognize this forward lurch toward stillness. For some, it happens quickly. For others, it is a slower part of the process. But inevitably, the critical point arrives.

So the gifts handed to us must be taken out of their boxes as soon as they’re received; appreciated and enjoyed. As the old Nike slogan goes, “Just do it!” Take an extra jaunt into unfamiliar territory. Spend a few nights on the road somewhere. Be open to whatever opportunities arise. Seek out friends of long standing, renew acquaintances, laugh together. Remember those who have always been there, through the darkness and the dawn, and cherish their company. Give yourself and your days to the people who stand to lose most from your absence. Allow them to keep pace with your journey, because you can’t go back again.

David was blessed to discover a companion named Gary from his long-ago childhood in the south of England. He has kept in touch with this man for a few years now. Of all our friends, only a few can know us as we were from the beginning. We scatter like wayward dandelion fluff on the wind. We might end our days without ever seeing or speaking with a single person who climbed trees with us, ran beside us on the beaches of our youth, went to camps and on school outings and off to college together. Swapped stories and traded the exciting secrets of adolescence. It is no surprise that for many older folks, recent memory erodes while recollections from past decades spring clearly to mind. They’ve worn the deepest grooves in our psyches. We speak of the ’40s or ’60s, of classic cars that were new when we first saw them, of old warriors and movie stars, politicians and adventurers – most of them dust now. Most of them unremembered by the young.

What would you do? Take a course in a subject that’s always interested you. Study a new language. Sign up for a cruise or hike to some unknown place. Read more. Learn a skill – garden, make wine, create art. Write or sing or skip down the country lanes of the heart. So what if you skip slowly? That merry girl or lively boy inside your head is going to enjoy it!

When you’re lying in a hospital bed or confined to a wheelchair, surrounded by machinery that gasps and rattles and whooshes as it sustains you, make sure you regret nothing. Do it while you still can! Celebrate wherever you are right now. Unwrap every gift – including the weirdest ones – and toss away the boxes.

Even if something breaks into a thousand fragments, the sunshine will turn those pieces to a glitter on the grass, the jewels of your own history. The mosaic unique to you, which nobody else can assemble.

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!

– Edna St. Vincent Millay

On the Road Again

May13

How ’bout them Habs? That final game should be somethin’ else! I have a happy husband this morning. We are Canadian, so we tend to root for the only Canadian team in the Stanley Cup race. However, Boston has Canadian players too. Brad Marchand is from our part of the country. And of course, there’s also Sidney Crosby; the Penguins face their own seventh game, do or die. We are hoping for “do”.

For those unfamiliar with Nova Scotia, this is a small province. The odds of producing NHL players are probably against us, owing to population. Yet produce them we do, and not just your average puck-chasers, either. According to one list, there have been 68 NHLers from NS. However, Yarmouth’s own Jody Shelley was omitted from that roster because he wasn’t born here, but his formative years were all spent in NS. He was a local favourite during the many seasons of his on-ice career.

So most Nova Scotians know and love their hockey, even when we don’t always watch every game on TV or at the local arena. My late father, Bert Levy, coached and/or managed teams in the Annapolis Valley back in the day. As a child, I often went to the old Acadia University rink to watch Valley Hockey League contests with him. I vividly remember the excitement, the smell of the place, the hot dogs slathered in mustard! I’ll write about my father in another blog entry at some point.

We have a visit to the ALS clinic tomorrow at the NS rehab centre. We’ll soon know every curve in the road to and from Halifax. I need a good cushion for my butt … which in itself IS a cushion, but not nearly enough! I take along my camera(s) and manage to make the most of the drive whenever I can – but I will never again leave a camera in a hospital! I made that mistake when we were at the Infirmary for the second neurological consult. I had thought of walking through the Public Gardens during David’s tests, to shoot a few images of whatever was in bloom, but misplaced my Canon T4i in the examining room instead. A month later, it came back to me after someone found it and the neurologist’s office tracked down the owner. Meanwhile, thinking it lost, I’d already replaced the missing camera with a Canon 7D, so now the T4i has become a nice backup for the newer and fancier model. Both cameras will last me twice as long. And the lesson has been completely absorbed. They stay locked in my car!

Still, these drives are daunting after awhile. They take seven hours, round-trip, not counting any stops. Our daughter works at an elementary school in Yarmouth; she’s a guidance counselor at Meadowfields. The staff raised money to buy us gift certificates that are certainly making these trips easier to bear. This will be our fifth one and we continue to be grateful for their support. The ALS clinic is held twice a month but I don’t think we need to attend all of them, although there will undoubtedly be a referral or two to other specialists in the future. This week’s consult will involve an anesthesiologist, whose field is pain management, and a GI surgeon. The topic of placing a PEG tube is very much in everyone’s mind right now. ALS patients (PALS) risk choking and aspiration of food as their swallowing function diminishes. Yet they require nutrition, of course, so a feeding tube permits them to receive it with greater safety and comfort. Bulbar-onset ALS, which David has, first affects the throat, voice and associated areas. In fact, he first knew something was drastically wrong when he began choking on his food and swallowing with great difficulty, accompanied by slurred and indistinct speech. Fine-motor control in his hands has greatly diminished. Yet he can still use his legs and get around, albeit more slowly. Limb-onset ALS – which is the more common type – attacks the legs and the other issues develop later. It is, however, normally slower to progress. David’s bulbar symptoms began only in October, 2013.

So he can take walks if he doesn’t overdo it and wears proper shoes. Still, one should never assume. To the casual observer, such a patient appears to be able-bodied. But with a bulbar patient’s loss of strength to eat well also comes weakness in other locations – fingers, hands, arms – and inevitably it spreads to the legs, often striking one side harder than the other for a short time. We are there now. The falls at unexpected moments have started to occur. For a man who not so long ago climbed Gros Morne mountain in Newfoundland, this is a frightening and devastating consequence of his condition.

So the paperwork increases. A form for a handicapped parking permit is waiting to be completed. The definition of a disability includes more than confinement to a wheelchair. Those who suffer from conditions such as ALS, and are still able to walk, fit the definition if they are physically limited to short walking distances. In a small community, mall parking lots tend not to be too daunting but in larger centres, they can be vast. I’ve gained insight into those who park in a handicapped spot and then walk away from their vehicles. Some folks assume they’re abusing the system – and this is not so. They are simply trying to remain mobile, within the limitations of their strength, but can’t push things too far (literally). For cardiac patients, these limitations can arise from severe shortness of breath. With neuro-muscular conditions, such as ALS, there can be other difficulties. When those motor neurons quit, they quit forever. This can happen faster with over-exertion. And in the end, inevitably, the wheelchair and other obvious support devices will come. The series will, in essence, be tied at that point. Nobody should wish this to happen to a stranger in a marked parking space. So if you spot someone parking in a handicapped space, then walking to the mall, please keep an open mind. Please be compassionate. The reality is often not what the appearance might suggest.

We learn as we go. Looking back to May of last year, who could have imagined how life would take such a radical shift? But it does, for many people, all the time. We’re not unusual. Each of us confronts his or her own destiny, for good or ill. There are no fixed strategies to reach that destiny, no set rules of play. We just find the best approach and trust it will get us there. And that the team will bring  its A game, every minute of regulation play, right through to a hard-fought overtime. That’s the goal, after all. This disease will win in the end but it’s not much of a victory when the winner plays dirty.  And ALS plays very dirty indeed.