Ramblings

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night. Somehow there is something about waking up like that that makes me feel isolated. So much change. On the verge between dream state and waking consciousness, everything merges past and present, imagination and reality, my mind map of my parents apartment in Queens, NY predominates even though I now sleep over 100 miles and 40 years away.

Then I slept not with my head towards a window overlooking my backyard, but overlooking a parking lot. An alley way connected the parking lot to the street and late night apartment dwellers retuning home would interrupt my sleep. My brother slept on the other side of the room we shared for 15 years. During my withdrawn adolescence we grew apart. He hurtfully accused me of “having no friends,” a comment no doubt overheard from my anxiety driven mother. I left home to work in Boston and I didn’t even attend his high school graduation. Yet, when I married he was my best man. I attended his wedding; back in Queens, in his fiancé’s backward. But, I was not the best man. The fiancé, C’s, brother was. This sort of pattern would continue throughout their marriage.

Time passes, and even though last night I dreamed of my father, still strong, at the breakfast table of my parent’s tiny kitchen and my mother preparing breakfast, while I took my usual seat, by the turn of the millennium they were in a nursing home near my brother’s house in Northport, Long Island. When I visited them, I slept over at my brother’s house. While C was superficially hospitable she seemed to ignore me and talk not to me, but over me.

She and my brother had three children. The first turned out fine, a red-haired chip off my brother’s block; he is now a marine officer serving in Iraq. May the God of Abraham and Moses watch over him. The other boy has mental health problems and will never be able to live independent of his mother. The youngest, a girl, is spoiled rotten.

C came from a slightly more affluent part of Queens than my family. We lived in a small apartment. C’s family owned their own home and had money in the bank. My father and mother were frugal and me and my brother inherited that frugality. Unfortunately our wives did not. But, not to get into particular’s I never liked C very much and she didn’t seem to like me. So, I was not entirely surprised when my brother announced his pending divorce.

Fortunately, the children, except for the one, are all on their own now. But, my brother’s house will be sold, by mutual agreement. I feel awkward about visiting him now. He will still be living in the house until it is sold. And, now I don’t know how I will visit my parents. Not that they will miss me. My mother is in an almost comatose state and my father while healthy is now senile. As undoubtedly I will be thirty years hence.

When, I am in that state between sleep and waking, I still think of my three children, or at least the youngest, asleep in their own bedrooms. But, they are not. Last year the youngest graduated from college and moved out. My wife no longer sleeps by my side. At my last doctor’s appointment, I mentioned my interrupted sleep patterns to him. Of which last night was an extreme example. “Do you snore?” he asked. I told him so much so that my wife no longer sleeps with me (truth). He replied, “At least that’s the reason she gave?” Strange comment.

Anyhow, I now sleep alone in a half empty house. My diabetic blood sugars are soaring and I wonder what my doctors think of me. Oh yes, I have become a swarm with them, primary care, endocrinologist, eye doctor, laser surgeon and podiatrist. I went for a job interview yesterday, to be a state tax collector, and I don’t think I will be getting that job.

Sometimes I feel that life’s a bitch and then you die, or at least become senile. Sometimes I feel that the internet is my only release, the only way of reaching kindred spirits. However, my wife and I still have our granddaughter Melina and the children do keep in touch. My son, the PhD, will be home for a while this summer. So life goes on and there are a few bright things to keep me going.