Random thoughts

I cannot stop thinking about Karen (cosmic). Really, I hardly know her, only from her diary. Yet I am feeling this overwhelming grief that we may well be losing her. She has shared with us over the years her own sorrows and her triumphs, so much so that it is as though a dear and close friend is leaving us. I grieve for her husband, Terry, of whom she sang the highest praises, for her children and grandchildren, and for the many, many friends who will also be affected by her departure. Of course, there is a possibility she will pull through this and we can always hope for the best. Perhaps I am premature.

I am also preoccupied with thoughts of my mother and her deterioration. Watching her shrink, both physically and mentally, is very depressing. Her memories are becoming more and more unreachable. She admits that she remembers being married, but she has very little actual recollection of the 52 years she spent with my father. When I remind her of certain things, they come back to her. Otherwise, they are irretrievable. Some things she has kept, though: those memories with strong emotional content are still there. Otherwise, she is like a tapestry, worn with age, threadbare, and unraveling at the edges.

Yesterday we met our friends with the autistic son for brunch. As always, I count myself incredibly lucky that both Buddy Boy and Little Princess turned out so well. Both parents lead very busy lives, and yet they try to do as much for their eldest as they can. He’s in special classes, takes horseback riding lessons on weekends, and is actually improving somewhat. He speaks little, pointing to what he wants and using rare words. He is nine, but his 7-year-old younger brother has all the smarts and social skills between the two of them.

In the afternoon, when Hubby had gone off to play a gig with his jazz trio and a singer who had hired them and Buddy Boy was out making a film with a couple of his friends, leaving me alone to amuse myself on my new netbook, the doorbell rang. It was D, the father of the boys, frantically seeking a Macintosh computer connected to the internet. His wife was at a big party at her sister and brother-in-law’s house, he had dropped off the children at the place they were staying, checked his email, and got an S.O.S. from someone at his university that there was a problem with a file on their server. So he needed a Mac to fix it.

After he’d done what he had to do, I offered him some refreshment--a glass of Perrier with a slice of lime--and we chatted. He told me how frustrating it is raising an autistic child, how much mental and physical energy it takes. He said that if he had known this would be the case ten years ago, he wouldn’t have had children. As it is, he admits that he is exceedingly glad that his second son was conceived before they found out that the first was autistic, or there would have been no more. The younger brother is a great kid: bright, personable, funny.

Personally, I don’t believe in fate. We live in a world of chaos, of random events and unforeseen occurrences. Certain choices we make (like deciding to start a blog on the internet, marrying and conceiving children) contribute to the way things turn out. Sometimes we feel as though we have no control over our lives, though. Our friends certainly did not know their firstborn would be autistic when they decided to have children; Karen did not consider that she would get emphysema and its attendant health problems when she started smoking so many years ago; and my mother never expected that she would end up forgetting herself.

But I must hand one thing in particular to my mom: she planned to be financially solvent in her declining years, socking away dough from working, not buying expensive cars or taking extravagant vacations (although she still managed to travel the world). She told me that she knew that being old and poor was a very bad combination. So, even if one can’t foretell the future, one can still plan ahead.

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