I’m being a shill for myself, but since this is my blog I get to do that…

Right now we have a special sale going on for the Kindle version of my book The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving. From July 29th to August 2nd the kindle version of my book is available for free. Get a copy and you will have it forever (well, for as long as Amazon exists). You will be able to lend this book to other people who have a kindle, so even if you don’t have a kindle device get yourself a copy. It is something you can share, and it will help give me exposure so I would really appreciate it.

As of this moment, in the Kindle free list I am #15 in Memoirs and #3 in Alzheimer’s Disease category. Get your copy and help push me to number 1: http://amzn.com/B00XWGSB3C

Ranking as of: 2015-07-29 14:35:12

When discussing the writing art one can argue that all fiction has basis in fact. No matter the smoke and mirrors–or flights of fancy–fiction is always in some way a representation of the author (a factual thing). True enough, but a tad too pendantic. When we commonly talk about non-fiction or fiction we are speaking about whether the stories themselves are presented as having really occurred, or not.

As regular readers know, I write both fiction, and non-fiction. Until this time my factual and fiction writing have existed in completely different spheres. My fiction has been outlandish–fantasy and science fiction far removed from life, with characters larger than life. By contrast, my non-fiction has been very grounded. My non-fiction includes the poignant, thoughtful, and funny (and, rarely, all three at once), but there are no grand adventures. I have long been content with the great separation between the content of the two writing forms–but I have felt a shift.

I’m not entirely sure where my writing might be going, or if I want to go there.

For many writers it has been a regular staple to take from life and weave it into their fiction. Those who teach writing instruct their pupils to do such. Fair to say this has been a hallmark of some very good writing. It has been fashionable to write fictional stories that are but thinly disguised accounts of factual happening in the authors own life. And there is an entire industry of writing fictional stories about historical events, recent and ancient.

In the early years of my writing (many years ago) this mixing of fact and fiction never occurred to me because I was convinced most of real life was boring–at least as far as reading about it. Nobody saved the world in a grand way in real life–that was for fiction, and that was the grand adventures I wanted to write. So as a young writer I wrote fantastic fiction, and my factual writing was, by and large, simply to amuse myself about my own life.

As I grew more mature I became increasingly cognizant of the fact that there is much in life that is interesting beyond just saving the world–but still I felt all of life that I had seen was pretty boring, and certainly wouldn’t make an interesting story. The interesting and real things out in the world which one might incorporate into fiction required more finesse and skill than I had. So I stuck with what I knew, what I imagined, and felt capable of–grand fictional adventures and mundane factual life.

It was only when I began writing about my time caring for Grandpa Purdy that I felt I had personal experience, and writing, which formed truly compelling factual events. But even then I found the events so compelling and weighty as pure  fact that I couldn’t see myself writing it into fiction. And so I wrote The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving, a factual book. And I am quite glad I wrote it.

But in the process of writing the book I inadvertently discovered an advantage of using fiction to talk about factual things. It is very hard to be fully truthful, accurate, and faithful to a story as it occurs in life. As a writer you quickly discover how much you don’t know about events and motivations necessary to tell a full story. So what do you do–fill in as best as you can or leave holes in the story? Anyone who feels compelled to maintain a high standard when telling a factual story can find these limitations very difficult.

In writing The Sea is Wide I had a great advantage in that I had lived through the three years that I was primarily recounting in the book, and I had kept extensive written accounts of many of the things that happened. But even so, I was surprised at how often I ran into occasions where I didn’t have as much information as I would have wanted for writing factually. I allowed myself leeway to write from my memory and observations such as they were because I was writing a memoir “the world as best as I remembered it,” not an attempted objective historical account. But if it was hard to write a complete and factual account when I had so much at my disposal, how much harder would it be with stories I caught only in part, or saw only in a glimpse?

Writing about my time caring for Grandpa showed me very vividly how much impact the things of life can have in written form. It gave me the desire to write more such meaningful material–and yet it also showed me how difficult it would be to write such purely factual material. If I wanted to tell complete stories that were accurate and fair to all parties involved then there would be many stories that I could not tell because I would never have enough of the facts to be factual in writing.

I am mature enough now to see that everyone in life has stories worth telling, but I can also see clearly that I will never know enough of most people to tell much of their stories in a factual medium. Which has brought me to the place of contemplating how one writes fiction that draws from things heard, seen, and people known–and weaves it together in a fiction that tells truth about the world without being bound to a truthfulness of one person’s literal factual story.

Plenty of writers have done it, and done it well–with a wonderful effectiveness. But when I found myself seriously considering this form of writing I also found myself hesitating. This made me curious as to why I hesitated, which led to some inner searching.

One primary hesitation, I realized, was a concern that taking factual things and weaving them into fiction would make the facts less powerful, not more. For example I was (and remain) utterly convinced that I could not write a fictional story equivalent to the factual account of The Sea is Wide. Any fictional story would have been less powerful in conveying true things. Far enough. But (I remind myself) the whole reason I am considering weaving facts into fictional stories is because many stories I know I know so incompletely that I will never have enough to write a complete factual account. In such a situation a fictional story conveying truth about life is better than no story at all.

A second concern I felt was the fear that if I started combing factual things that I knew with fictional things that I’ve made up I might become confused about the facts of life that I know. I’ve had dreams where afterward when I woke I had to think very hard to separate dream from reality. In this fear I may not be giving myself enough credit. Doesn’t an author always remember their own writing? I’m not entirely secure in that. I remember years ago pulling out a scrap of writing stuffed away somewhere, reading it, and thinking “Wow, that’s pretty good writing–I wonder who wrote it.” Maybe thirty seconds later I remembered I had written it.

I don’t want to go back in twenty years trying to sort out my actual memories from the stories I invented. For this reason there was a certain safety in all my fiction being larger than life fantastical stories. The boundaries felt safe. Obvious.

But I realize my concern in this regard is only legitimate (if legitimate at all) if I attempt to wholesale take factual events and simply lightly skin the story with a veneer of fiction. For example, it has crossed my mind to take all of the funny country-life events that have happened to me (along with some that have happened to others) and combined them into one condensed hilarious country-living novel. That could be pretty funny, but with just a few names and bits changed and a bunch of true things otherwise stitched together I can legitimately see how I might, possibly, have problems in thirty years sorting it all out (if I should want too). However, I think that concern is not real if I am merely taking the substance of things I have heard, seen, or experienced and working them into a different narrative, completely unlike their birth. I don’t have such a shaky of a grasp on reality that a completely fictional narrative would cause me to become un-anchored from my own life narrative.

At least, I hope not.

In my dreams I would like to know the stories of this world so well that I could write them as straight factual accounts. But in the reality of my life I know only bits and pieces of true stories, and events, and they provoke thoughts in me about life that I cannot share as accurate factual accounts because I don’t have enough to be that kind of witness. I simply can’t. So I can either not share the thoughts, and the bits of life that I’ve seen which speak about larger truths of life, or else I can take those bits of me, and the world, and weave them together into fictional stories that speak to the larger truths of life.

I’m still not sure if I have the skill to do that, or exactly what stories I would make. But I give myself permission to try.

So much of life is routine, but there are the times when it is not. Like regular clock-work, I take three bikes each week–same days, same route. All year. But on Saturday I rode off into the countryside. It wasn’t a day I normally ride, and it was a route I had never taken before. Twenty-five miles later, with several dirt roads explored, I made my way home.

Adventuring bike rides across the countryside is one of my favorite things to do, but I don’t do it very often. I guess mostly because of the weekly routine–I don’t have three hour chunks of time is lying around waiting for a bike ride. If I go adventuring on back roads something else isn’t getting done, and so the adventures rarely happen. But whenever I do head off for unknown hills and valleys I regret that I don’t do it more often.

The rides give me a quiet peace, and a joy in the natural world that I don’t get in my normal life. And I think it does me good.

I find in the rides a metaphor for life. They are hard (you should see the hills around here) and they require perseverance. I don’t know what is coming around the corner, I don’t know how the road will play out, but I do know the end (home). There are so many interesting things to see, and unexpected beautiful sights. The expanse of the world can be breath-taking, exhilarating. It’s never boring. But it is solitary. It is just me, struggling along, the world sliding by. Occasionally I’ll see someone, maybe there will be a wave, and then they are gone never to meet again.

I guess the rides capture something that I don’t know if I’ve found anything else to capture so well–the experience of aloneness with a faint hint of melancholy held in the perfect balance with the realization that there is more than that–a beauty and grandeur to all that is which says that as alone as we might ever seem we are not so alone as we think we are. And whatever trials we might have, in the sweating and struggling of this moment, there is a radiance that spreads beyond what we can see.

It isn’t the perspective I normally have on life, or my troubles.

And after I finish the ride I can sleep really well too.

It is easy to trust God,
until there is something
you really want or truly fear.

Then you find it might not,
surely is not,
God

How deceitful we become to our very selves,
the lies we so quickly believe,
what we prefer more than truth.

What God gives
we fear
because we want what we want.

And we see no life
without
what we desire.

How can poison seem
so suddenly sweet
and trust such a terrible thing.

We frighten ourselves
for we are
a house divided.

She was the first to arrive for the talk, a senior with carefully curled hair, her demeanor neat and put together. As she walked down the center aisle between the chairs I went to meet her, offering the printed writing sample. When she sat near the front (but not in the front row), I sat a few chairs over in front and attempted striking up sociable conversation. No sense leaving her to sit there awkwardly in silence, I thought.

Perhaps she hinted at some surprise that someone so young as I was here giving a talk about Alzheimer’s and caregiving. However exactly the conversation began, it lead to a brief summary of my story. That was enough, all she needed to break the ice.

“I was a caregiver too.” She let it come out. “My husband had Alzheimer’s. I took care of him until he couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t stand. Then I couldn’t dress him. I wasn’t strong enough. I couldn’t do what was needed anymore, so I had to put him in a facility.”

A slight pause followed as she visibly controlled herself. “Every day I go visit him, and every day I cry and cry. I talk to him—but—he—he just sits there. He isn’t really eating, and he just stares ahead. Is he there? I don’t know if he is even hearing me. Is there anything I can do?”

The question was a mixture of fear and hope. Fear that there is no answer to the question, hope that I might give her one.

My talk hadn’t even begun and already I was handed a hard question.

There was no easy pat answer to her question, and not quick fix to her grief. Instead, I told her the story of how Grandpa would call, and even when I was sitting beside him on the couch he acted as if he didn’t hear any of my replies. I told her how since I figured he didn’t hear me I decided to say what amused me. And so when he called again I told him to shout a little louder because the Chinamen couldn’t quite hear him, and he had then stopped his endless repetition to say, “Was that a snide comment?” I used my story to encourage her that no matter how much it looked like her husband heard nothing she said—that still he did, and it mattered what she said and did, no matter what it looked like.

I don’t know if my story helped her. I hope it did. My story is all I have. But her question had reminded me that I was talking to people with heavy and hurting hearts, and lives filled with the difficult burdens they carried. In a few short minutes I was going to stand up and address a minefield of the rawest place in people’s lives—their struggles, failures, hopes, and fears of caregiving. My words would bring either healing, or hurt.

There is a balance—I don’t know how one manages to maintain it—of considering your words to speak in care, but not considering so much that every word catches in the throat. If I think too much about what all those people in the audience are going through then the words will die, and silence will seem the only acceptable course. There are no easy fixes for what such people face—and would I seem to make light of it by offering a few words?

Who am I that I could speak into the life and the hurt of someone else? It should be a humbling thing. It can be frightening. In this place, in this time, I can only trust that my story has meaning deeper than I can see and beyond what I can bring to it—that telling it truly will speak into the life-stories of other people in ways that I can’t see, and can’t even fully comprehend because life and the conveying of truth and hope is something that happens beyond my feeble efforts and in spite of the weakness of my best attempts.

The rest of the crowd began to arrive and I went to greet more people. When nearly everyone was seated, and it was almost time to start, I returned to the front of the room in preparation to begin. From there I saw the librarian helping an elderly white-haired lady to a seat. Even from my distance I could hear the elderly lady asking (in a very proper sort of way) “So why kind of experience does he have? What is his expertise? What has he done?” Thus, moments before I opened my mouth in front of all these people, I knew I had at least one member of the audience who would be watching me with a critical eye. And maybe she was voicing the thought of so many other members of the audience. What kind of expertise did I have, anyhow?

But no more time of thought for that. It was time to get started. So I opened my mouth and began speaking.

Here I must say that before I did any speaking events I wrote myself a nice speech. If I had even more time I would have polished it to a glorious piece of rhetoric—soaring and eloquent. However, I am a much better writer than I am speaker, and the fall back of attempting to stand in front of an audience and simply read aloud an excellent piece of writing is far less stirring than the extemporaneous act of grand eloquence. So I have the problem of being able to imagine a piece of communication far better than I am able to present. This weakness of mine meant I was very harshly critical of my own ability to present orally before an audience, and before my speaking engagements started I was very gloomy. My verbal ability simply does not in any way live up to my writing skill. As a result I faced the prospect of speaking with dread, certain I would utterly fail myself.

If I watched myself present I probably would be very disappointed. I would see all the things I meant to say, but forgot, and all of the things I said much less eloquently then the carefully written document in my head. But I can’t watch myself present (at least, not in real time) and I discovered that when I began speaking in front of audiences I have to focus so intently on what I am presenting that I have a certain amnesia afterward about what I said. When the event is all over I can tell you that I spoke, but I actually can’t remember exactly how I said anything. This saves me from the mental lashing I would give myself, but it also means I can’t really give you my own accurate rendition of the quality of what I presented.

What I can say is that I made it all the way through my slides, and the reaction from the audience was very positive to whatever they heard. After I was done speaking people clustered around the book signing table talking with me, complimenting me on the talk, and sharing their own caregiving experience. The little old lady who had wondered before the start about my expertise told me in the end that she worked in the local hospice organization and my book was certain to be widely used in their hospice. I passed that test.

Open your mouth, speak, and discover what comes.

As a beginning to my speaking career it was all I could have hoped for, and more. But it was also sobering. These people I had touched were walking through one of the hardest, and saddest, periods of life. It was not a gathering of joy, or lightness, and I was reminded of how easily, and unwittingly I could hurt the already hurting instead of binding up wounds. Is speaking on these things important? Absolutely. Do I feel sufficient? Absolutely not.

So here I stand, here I walk. Here I speak.

My Grandpa O’Keefe always had a hard time relating to people. His social interaction mostly involved trying to win, offering his opinion (solicited or not), and telling stories–about himself. Grandpa loved to tell stories about himself. He was a man, particularly in his old age, who was easy to caricature. The teller of the same endless stories about himself.

I always wonder about the real people who hide behind what they present to the world. In some way we all do it, but some of us hide ourselves less than others, and some more. I never knew my Grandpa O’Keefe well. I can’t say I ever caught more than a glimpse of the man as he was behind what he presented. Perhaps I never had even that. Perhaps nobody really did. He was a man who had much he wanted to show the world, but I think also there was much he did not. I am not certain even he realized how much he did not want the world to see.

That I will never know.

Grandpa kept his inner life apart. He did not let people near those most tender places that dwell within all of us. So, I can’t tell you a story today about what I knew about him. But I will share with you want I think, and what I wonder.

On his surface, Grandpa appeared a very simple man. By that measure he was a man preoccupied with his success, his imagined success, and the more success he wanted. By that passing glance he was a man of utter confidence in himself. If you listened to him he was a man unto himself, a conqueror of the world.

But I have found that often a person praises themselves for the thing that deep within themselves (perhaps so deep that do not even recognize it) they fear that they are not. Grandpa blustered about himself, and I think it was vitally important for him to believe his own bluster. It is that importance which hints at what, in his own deepest place, may have bothered him. The people who are most supremely at rest in who they are, and what they have done, don’t need to talk about it. But Grandpa had to talk about who he was, and what he had done. He had to talk about it a lot.

Yes, probably just about anyone who knew him well could say he had an issue with being self-absorbed. But I think that his list of accomplishments and victories was so important, and such a key part of who he presented, because there was a little quiet fearful voice inside he needed to keep silent. And I think he became very good in his life at building a shell and a shield that made him feel safe. There behind his mask he didn’t have to be honest with himself or face the parts of himself that were uncomfortable, and perhaps frightening.

I find that sad.

He was a man who presented himself as supremely confident in his own skin. But in those deeply private places, I think he was not. And I wish that in his life he had felt more freedom to bring out who he truly was on the deepest level–both to himself, and to those nearest to him.

If what a person talks about says something about them, what they don’t talk about says something too. It wasn’t until Alzheimer’s began to break down some walls inside Grandpa that he began to talk about his younger brother who died around the age of eleven. Before, that event had been a topic of almost complete silence.

I wonder what impact that death had on Grandpa. A year older than his brother, the death must have exercised a profound influence on his life–one he was not willing to talk about, and maybe one he didn’t even recognize. Maybe that death had something to do with his repressed fear of failure, with his need to see himself as strong.

The final piece of Grandpa that I wonder about is his need to win. The only real way Grandpa O’Keefe could interact with his grandchildren was by either talking at them, or by competing against them in what he considered games of intellect. It was important for him that he beat us. He played chess against my older brother, and then myself in turn, until we would consistently beat him. Then it wasn’t fun for him anymore. So the game switched to the card game of hearts where there was four players and enough variety in the winners so he could always feel like he was competitive and clever (even if he wasn’t).

I am competitive too, but I find it odd that Grandpa could only interact with his grandchildren through the venue of demonstrating his competitive success. In my competitiveness I certainly relished defeating Grandpa in chess, but frankly as a sole mode of interaction (besides listening to his opinions and stories about himself) it did become boring. There is more to life than winning.

I don’t know, but I can’t help wondering if the dark touch of mortality so early in Grandpa’s life somehow influenced all of these things. Perhaps as the elder son with a dead younger brother he felt insecure, uneasy, alone, and perhaps not as loved as he longed to be. In the hard blow that life gave him, in the pieces he had to pick up and put back together, he felt the need to create himself a safe shell, and competitive success, along with a safety found in distance from others. Together it all gave him a sense of security against the insecurity early death brought into his life.

But if the story I have imagined is true, then at what cost. All of us in our messy ways face life and stumble through it, and none of us have a life free of shortcomings. For Grandpa, the person he showed to the world gave him children who were more distant from him than I think any wished, and who knew him less than they all desired. He wanted to be an island fortress to himself, and now nobody will know him better in this life. He wore his mask, and kept his shell, to the end.

So at last we have come to the place where Grandpa has no more stories to tell, no more defenses to hold, no more fears to flee. The time has come when all stories end for each of us. Grandpa has told all the stories he is going to tell, and now he is told out. His final sentence has been written and we wait for the last period, the closing of the book.

All of our stories will end. Some we tell, some are written in the very days of our lives. Consider the stories you live, and breathe, and tell. Measure your choices, values, and fears–for in them you write your story. Consider the masks you wear, and the shields you hold close.

As much as we make them, so they also make us.

_______

On this blog I have chronicled briefly Grandpa O’Keefe’s decline through the first half of this year, and now the final breaths have arrived. Late this afternoon my Mom came home from her visit to say hospice had said the end was very near. So I went to be what help and support I could for Grandma. I’ve walked two grandparents through their last days already, and I know it is good to not walk alone. When I arrived at Grandma’s house the nurse said Grandpa could go at any time. I checked on him and came to the same conclusion. He lies in bed, breathing regularly, but still. His eyes are half open, fixed, and unblinking. He responds to a moistened swab put in his mouth, but that is about it.

It’s strange how that moment comes like a flipped switch. When I stopped in on Monday Grandpa was awake and responsive. When I came in his bedroom and greeted him he responded–rather incoherently, and I don’t think he recognized me, but he was still interacting with the world. Even by Wednesday morning he was still eating a few mouthfuls, still responsive. But then by Wednesday evening he had slipped into an unresponsive state. And so when Mom brought the confirming news late Thursday afternoon I knew I should go and keep Grandma company through what may be the last night.

Or maybe not quite yet. When Grandpa Purdy reached this state he lingered several days. So, we shall see.

Yet, not long now. I am glad I have no speaking events this week so that I can stay with Grandma. It is good for me to take a break from my story to be with Grandma as she closes the book on this one.

Yesterday the tractor trailer arrived at the house with my shipment of two thousand copies of my book, The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving. Two pallets filled with a total of one hundred boxes. Weighing in at a little over two thousand three hundred pounds, we comfortably passed the one ton mark. A ton of books paid for by the Pubslush campaign with its many generous contributors. In a way, all of this was probably the most tangible sign of the culmination of years of work, and the visible marker of the cliff I am about to step off.

So much had to happen to reach this point, and there is so much more that needs to be done. I spent a good part of today clearing out the storage area in the study that would hold all the book boxes, and then carrying the (literal) ton of books, three boxes at a time, up the stairs. That sounds like an awful lot of carrying, but I still feel pretty good after all of that. The project was much less intimidating than all the things I have been through so far in the publishing process, and all that is still yet to come.

People ask me if I am excited. I don’t know. If I was a little kid I definitely would feel wildly, deliriously, excited. But being a kid means you are much less able to grasp all the future responsibilities looming over you, its a lot harder to realize in youth how much reality will not match expectations. Now, I find it hard to feel very excited. The requirements of being productive and practical, and to reasonably analyze future events all combines to impinge on my indulging of giddy excitement. If at some point in this summer it becomes resounding clearly that this whole process was a success beyond my wildest imaginations–then I might let out a big whoop. But right now, as the publisher, promoter, and author of my book I have so many things on my mind–worries, things that need to be done, remembered, and prepared for–I mostly feel worn out all the time. It is hard to feel excited when your mind is bursting with responsibilities and you’re trying to brace yourself for all the possible problems you’ve thought of (or failed to think of). It is hard to make time for feeling excited in the midst of all of that.

I probably would have more time for feeling excited if I was being published by some mega corporation which was also handling my publicity and travel itinerary. Then I could just kick back in my chauffeured car and let myself feel excitement. But since that isn’t happening my mind is mostly filled with all the things I am late on doing, or failed to do, or didn’t do as well as I wanted.

I am trying to learn to be kind to myself. This is the first time I have done such a major launch of a book, the first time I have ever gone on tour. I will be green. It will be a learning experience. I will make mistakes. Things won’t go as well as the could. And that is okay. Don’t be the fool who five years down the road is stewing over that one event that wasn’t publicized as well as it could have been and thinks that is the reason the book was a failure.

But I’m having a hard time emotionally convincing myself. I know that is important to have perspective, and to weigh things rightly. Yet in the moment when everything is building up it is hard to see that. I’ll just end up drowning in some swamp of self-loathing if I don’t learn to embrace the experience for what it is, laugh at my flubs, and just continue on.

Publication day is this coming Wednesday. I am in the last week of counting down. Have I done all the preparation I need to do? Will my mind blank out the moment I stand up in front of everyone? Panic, panic. Wednesday and Thursday are the first two speaking events. How can I possibly do it well? It is the strangest feeling of being utterly confident that I have important and worthwhile things to say and simultaneously not being able to imagine myself doing it well. The stuttering, stammering, word fumbler preparing to go speak in front of the world? How did I get here. You know, I wrote a fictional book about this years ago as a wry commentary to myself. Seems I wasn’t paying attention to my own advice.

Where I am now is a peculiar place. I feel like I have just leaped off a clip in the midst of a dense fog and I am now, for the shortest of moments, suspended in mid air–seemingly floating, maybe flying, but in the next second gravity is going to grab me and I will start hurtling downward in a heart stopping way.

This is the last moment before the adventure starts. The decision to go has been made, there is no turning back, but in these last few moments, in this handful of days, the adventure hasn’t actually started yet. I have gone out of what was before and for just this breath of time I haven’t yet entered into what is to come. There won’t be another time like this.

It is in this time between that I seek to remember how faithful God is. After something is over it is easy to say how God was faithful. But to say now that God is faithful and will be faithful as I embark on this publishing journey, to be truly comforted in this moment of suspended-in-air that all shall be well–that is something else.

What does it mean to go out joyfully?

As I think about these little in-between moments in our lives I am reminded of how they are pictures for what our whole life is like. Once this present life is over there will be no more trusting that God is faithful. There will be no more place for rejoicing in the midst of not seeing, not yet experiencing. For once we step out of this mortal life we will know fully.

And so I am reminded of how it is a privilege to walk in these suspended places where what is to be is not yet known. We have been given the place to trust–whether it be in matters of books and speaking, or life, health, and the soul.

So I will stop here now, in this suspended moment where I am off the cliff and in the air and be still in this moment being sure to know that whether I fall or fly, the wings and the catching will surely come from the One who has always known me and will never fail.

I am not ready for this path, nor am I able to make it work. But even so, I can say all will be well, and be glad I have been given this time to experience its truth in the days I have been given.

We are now counting down to the publication day.

I was remiss in not mentioning this a little earlier, but better late than never!

The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving won’t be published until June 3rd, but it is available now for pre-order on Amazon Kindle. If you would like to reserve a copy for your Kindle now, head on over to Amazon. If you have any family or friends with a Kindle, share the link with them.

Sunday morning, three weeks ago, I was trying to sleep in. I am never good at staying in bed long after the sun has risen, but that morning any attempt was cut short at seven thirty by the insistent ringing of the phone. While rare is the occasion I manage to sleep much past eight, rarer still an early Sunday morning phone call. With Grandpa in poor health there is an easy place for thoughts to leap when the phone rings at a strange hour. By the sixth ring I was scrambling out of bed and hurriedly dressing. Mom reached the phone in the hall first.

“Yeah. Here he is.” She handed the phone to me. Grandma was on the line.

“Sorry to call so early, but I just found Grandpa on his bedroom floor,” Grandma said. “I can’t get him up.”

Time to rescue an old man from himself.

Exactly how long Grandpa was on the floor we will never know—he wasn’t able to explain. And, though the worst he physically suffered from the fall was a small scrap on his back, the event heralded the beginning of a new reality. Everyone who had seen Grandpa in the several weeks prior to that fall could tell he was declining rapidly, his strength failing. Now his weakness had reached a critical point. In the ebbing of his strength the ability to walk now deserted him. Two months ago he wanted to get out to the car and move back to his past. Now he required help to simply move out of bed.

I had seen this change coming far in advance, but for a moment it seemed even more precipitous than I expected. I easily moved him from the floor but the day did not improve for him. By Sunday evening I was called back down to help Grandpa back into bed. He was exhausted, but refusing any help. When he reached the utter end of his rope I finally convinced him to lay down and there he collapsed within himself. He stared at the ceiling with a fixed gaze of half-open eyes, his mouth hanging slack, his breathing shallow. In that moment he looked so ravaged, so wasted, that he seemed the picture of death. In that second I wondered if he had slipped away under my hands, in the follow minutes I considered how few days he might have left. So I went home and wrote an email to the extended family, the “If you want to see Grandpa alive one last time you should come now” email.

I had not expected the end to rush that quickly.

As things turned out the end did not come so fast as that exhausted Sunday evening made it seem. What I saw then was only a glimpse of what we were drawing near, not the final rush. Following a span of not eating, and not drinking, Grandpa rallied over the course of several days to again drink in moderation, and eat in scant measure. One meal a day is not the man he once was, but he has a little time yet. We are not counting down the days of the last week, but this is the final stage, the last act. When this is over, it is the curtain call.

Grandpa’s independence—before failing—has vanished entirely. Both Grandma and Grandpa are struggling to adjust to the new reality. Grandpa can’t get himself out of bed, and Grandma discovers she can’t either. Somebody else must stand in the gap.

When everything came crashing down, figuratively and literally, at the beginning of May I stepped in. I made the fifteen minute drive twice a day to change Grandpa and get him out of bed, and then change him again and put him back into bed. It was a manageable—if far from ideal—situation, but with one catch: When June arrives I will begin book touring and then I am no longer available for every need.

It has been nearly a year since Grandma Purdy died, and so for that span I put off the mantel of caregiver and live a life by my own schedule and for my goals. But I find it easy to slip back to the old habits of tending a person whose body is failing. The strange contradiction of an unhappy but comfortable familiarity.

Grandpa hates being weak and needy, and with every fiber of his being he tries to deny it. If he can’t do something it is the fault of something else—or someone else. And so Grandpa needs me, and dreads me.

The familiar contradictions. A surge of thoughts and feelings come back and I can’t really set them in order. They are like the debris left by a flood—jumbled, confused, familiar and yet beyond sorting out. The tempo and rhythm and friction is so familiar–and with it a deep weary thought which ponders how approaching death is one of the most familiar things to me.

How do I walk in this place where death is near and grasping at all? I never have an answer to the question. I walk and I do and where the knowledge for apt deeds and the doing comes from I can’t really explain.

I wrestle with feeling guilty. That damp festering settles around dying, in many shapes and sizes. The more abstract guilt is found in considering how I’ve carried this load before, and the feeling that I should carry it again—lift it away from Grandma’s shoulders, relieve everyone else, and do what I have done before. I can do this. I have walked this road before. The scourge and the weight are long familiar to me, and when I leave Grandpa mostly in Grandma’s care I have the gnawing feeling that I haven’t done all I should. I could put off my book tour. I could handle the situation.

I must wrestle through it, remind myself that this one is not mine to carry. It is not my place to carry every load, or hold the vigil at every bedside. There is a privilege in walking these hard roads, but Grandpa has not asked me and does not want me, and it is not my place to usurp what Grandma would carry in her own way.

Then there are the earthy moments of guilt when I must wrestle with the practical aspects of day-to-day care. Guilt that Grandpa was in a dirty diaper to long, and I should have done something about it. Guilt because Grandpa doesn’t want his diaper changed and I do it anyway. Guilt that he hurts when I change him and move him and somehow it hurts and he blames me for it.

If death were neat it would be a little easier, but the hardest things of dying are when it gets ugly. Grandpa is falling slowly, falling through the days and hours to a final jarring impact with the ground–but he thinks he can catch himself, and he vehemently wants no one to catch him. When to abide his unreasoned wishes, and when to hold him even though he curse you for it? The seems, there feels, a horrible tension in what love is when someone asks you please to not do something and you must decide whether you will honor that request or not. In the light of a nice day the answer to that might seem easy, but what about when it’s “Please don’t change me. Oh, please don’t move me?” and what the means is leaving them in a reeking urine soaked bed? It is easy to say love is giving people what the need, not what they want. It is another thing to have your grandfather curse you for it.

How does love it manifests itself in such a slow unfurling disaster? You cannot make someone chose life and so in all of the moments I must harden myself to the curses and do what must be done still I must also remain sensitive to the fact that the time will come when there is nothing to do but step back and let go. This is where the hardest part of life resides—where to do what is not wanted, and when to let go of what is wanted. I cannot make him eat, or drink. I cannot make him decide to live. In so many ways, and so many things, the tension of that plays out in the stumbling moments of each day. Sometimes I don’t do the things to him which are best for him, but he vehemently doesn’t want because I don’t muster myself to fight those battles. And there is the temptation to fight him to chose life when the time of his death has come. It is his life, and his death, and in some measure that means giving him the passing he would chose. But as his mind deserts him it also means sometime stripping the reeking diaper off him, and changing the sheets, no matter the opinion, the begging, or the curses.

Always in all of is the reminder (if we would consider) that life, and love, does not have the neat and clear we want. If only love always did look beautiful and gain us thanks then the path would seem straight. But sometimes love is the reek of ammonia so strong it chokes in your throat, and the sound of an old man cursing you for what you do and dreading your appearance. Such times remind me again again that life is hard, and will be harder still. In such places it seems an intolerable thing that love so often hides behind scorned service, and the greatest sacrifices are often the most reviled.

That is the mystery, and the path we must walk in this life. So I be patient as best I can, bear his dogged insistence and accusation with as much grace as I can, and remember that here in this life of dying is all of the strange paradox of what living and loving truly means.

You know you have grown up, when you are talking to library directors. It also means you might just be an author preparing to go on tour. If you spend too much time thinking about it, the whole situation might start to become intimidating.

At least it is that way for me.

I remember as a kid that the librarians were always very intimidating. They were the figures of authority, the ones behind the desk who frowned on noise and the abuse of books (two things as a kid I was always in danger of infringing upon). So, librarians were way up there. Tremble to approach, or something like that.

For an introverted, shy, kid like me it was an act of great bravery to finally go up and get my first very own library card. I practiced signing for it in advance.

All of this to say that I was reflecting this week that I have certainly come a distance in my life that now I am calling up librarians. Even more, when I talk to them they say, “Oh, you’ll need to talk to the Director about that. Let me see if I can find the Director, or transfer you.”

So now I am talking to library directors, emailing library directors, and answering library directors questions about my qualifications to speak at their libraries. And I am convincing these library directors that I am qualified to speak at their libraries, and getting them to schedule dates for me to speak at their libraries.

Some days I feel like I’ve never grown up, and never will. But I guess if we have to draw a line somewhere and say crossing it means you are grown up, I suppose “Convincing a library director to let you speak at their library” counts as that line. At least for this boy who was scared to even talk to a normal librarian.

Touring events for my book are starting to come together. Below are the first I have dates solidified on, and more are in the works so stay tuned. Some future ones might be in your area!

• June 3rd, 2015. Time: 7:00PM-8:00PM. Place: Vestal Public Library, 320 Vestal Pkwy E, Vestal, NY 13850 (607) 754-4244
• June 18th, 2015. Time: 6:30PM-7:30PM. Place: Guernsey Memorial Library in Norwich, 3 Court St, Norwich, NY 13815 (607) 334-4034
• June 20th, 2015. Time: 11:00AM-12:00PM. Place: Moore Memorial Library, 59 Genesee St, Greene, NY 13778 (607) 656-9349