You Are Hurting the Ceiling

One of these days we'll both be fine

One of these days we’ll both be fine

You Are Hurting the Ceiling

Part One

Today was batshit at the hospital even though the afternoon started out well.

My mother had a foot soak in soapy water, and then I gave her a pedicure before dinner. She was in one of her blunt and funny moods which I always enjoy.

With her foot resting on a towel on my lap, I noticed some fungus on her toenails and got some gloves.

As I continue trimming her toenails, she said, “How do you feel about what you are doing?”

“To be honest, a little so-so,” I said. “Not my favourite thing.”

She chucked and said, “I can tell.”

One of the psw’s came into the room and told another patient that dinner was coming soon.

My mother turned to me in disgust and said, “I don’t like their excitement about dinner.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because they are too excited about it.”

“Aren’t you excited about dinner?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“But you enjoy eating so much,” I reminded her.

“Yes, but I’m not excited about it.”

*

My sister bought an adaptive spoon for our mother to make eating easier for her, but I didn’t set it up properly, and she kept spilling each spoonful of soup on her lap. Each time she did this, she laughed and laughed.

We were having one of those laugh-cry laughing fits that was so loud the patients and psws in the room turned to see what was going on.

“Ignore us,” I said to no one and everyone.

At one point I laughed so hard I farted and then we both squealed in embarrassment and delight.

“Are you laughing or crying?” I asked.

“Laughing,” she said as she wiped tears from her eyes.

*

After dinner we read some poetry.

My mother had been enjoying re-reading nursery rhymes with my sister on FaceTime. Because nursery rhymes are often little absurd, I thought she might like some absurd poetry too, so I chose Russell Edson.

Russell Edson came to me years ago via Lydia Davis who had said in an NPR interview that he had inspired her to write short.¹ In her essay, “A Beloved Duck Gets Cooked: Forms and Influences I,” Davis writes about how Edson offered her creative freedom because not all of his works were successful:

Edson opened a path for me for several reasons. One reason was that not every one of his stories succeeded. Some were merely silly. Maybe this had to do with the way Edson went about writing them.

As Natalie Goldberg describes it in her book Writing Down the Bones:

He said that he sits down at his typewriter and writes about ten different short pieces at one session. He then comes back later to reread them. Maybe one out of the ten is successful and he keeps that one. He said that if a good first line comes to him, the rest of the piece usually works.

Here are some of his first lines:

“A man wants an aeroplane to like him.” … “

A beloved duck gets cooked by mistake.” …

“A husband and wife discover that their children are fakes.”

“Identical twin old men take turns at being alive.”

Some of the stories I found brilliant, but others faltered. Yet the stories that did not quite succeed showed me two things that were helpful to a young writer: they showed more clearly how the stories were put together; and they showed how a writer could try something, fail, try again, partially succeed, and try again. A third thing the stories showed me, both the brilliant ones and the faltering ones, was how you could tap some very difficult emotions and let them burst out in an unexpected, raw, sometimes absurd form—that perhaps, in fact, setting oneself absurd or impossible subjects made it easier for difficult emotions to come forth.²

I think about this a lot in relation to my own writing and perfectionism which is usually the source of a block.

And for my mom? Well, Edson’s poetry was a hit!

This was one of her favourites:

It worked best when she read the pieces out loud to me and when they were short.

Tomorrow, I'm bringing in Stuart Ross, Suzan-Lori Parks (micro plays), Gary Barwin, Osama Alomar, and Lydia Davis for her.

I’ve been looking for large print books for my mother and the selection is pretty bleak. All the stories are uplifting and condescending.

We don't want that.

One thing my mother hasn't lost is her sense of humour.

I'm going to put together my own LARGE PRINT anthology of absurdist poetry and flash prose for people with dementia.

What are your favourite contemporary absurdist poems?

Part Two

Just before I was about to leave the hospital, one of the patients went into a rage at the nursing station. It was loud and very frightening. Two patients who are hard of hearing were sleeping, but Mom and her neighbour across the room were not.

In the hall, a man with an oxygen tank asked for more oxygen and to be moved away from the screaming.

My mom’s neighbour who I’ll call Betty got up, and I alerted one of the personal support workers because she can’t walk on her own. They brought Betty into the hall in a wheelchair so they could keep an eye on her, but she was even closer to the screaming which was causing her distress. I rubbed her arm in an attempt to comfort her then remembered the stuffed donkey from her bed. When I brought it to her, she clutched it tightly to her chest and pet its head.

Then I had to go back to check on my mom who was also getting out of bed to see what was going on.

It was a shit show with me going between the hall and the hospital room to soothe these two frightened women.

I couldn’t see who was creating all this fuss but could hear everything.

Security was called and the man begged them to take him to jail.

“There’s all these fucking crazy old ladies around me. The one that goes up and down the halls. The one in my room on her cell phone morning till night talking to her sister about her problems. I can’t stand it. I’ve got my own problems. I can’t stand it. I can’t listen to anyone else’s problems. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I want to leave. The doctors can’t find anything wrong with me. They’re incompetent. Everyone morning a doctor comes in for about five minutes. He doesn’t know what’s wrong. I’m going to call a cab right now to take me home. I’ll be home in ten minutes. In all my life I’ve never seen a hospital so badly run. I’m going to sue this hospital for billions and billions.”

The man would quiet down and then explode in a burst of rage. At one point he was weeping and saying, “I’m not a bad person. I’ve got grandchildren. I’m a grandfather.”

I heard someone say gently, “Can I hold your hand?” and he seemed to let her.

Finally they told him that they would give him a private room which pissed me off immensely, and I said to my mother, “I hate men.”

“You hate men?” She was confused by my sudden rage.

“Yes.”

While I knew he was sick and having a breakdown and he too was likely waiting to be put in some kind of long-term care, it infuriated me that he just threw a tantrum destroying everyone’s peace and calm, frightening many, and he still got the prize—the private room.

After security left and things calmed down a bit, I went into the hall to check on Betty again and that’s when I finally got a look at who was doing all the yelling.

I was surprised to find that it was this nice gentleman that my mother and I spent some time with in the TV room the other day and who we have had several pleasant conversations with over the past few weeks. He was one of my favourite patients in the hospital because you could have a pretty good conversation with him. When we watched the news or a dumb comedy, he talked at the TV and made sarcastic comments which were amusing. He was a little bright spot in our dreary days.

The man looked at me in recognition, then horror and embarrassment and said,” I’m so sorry. Is that your mother?”

I told him that Betty wasn’t my mother, but my friend. She’s a little upset right now.”

Then he turned to the nurses and screamed, “Help this woman. Help this woman” even though it was his outbursts that had contributed to her agitation.

The nurses assured him that she was fine. And she was.

I left feeling so many things: I was happy for the good day and laughs with my mom and glad I could be there for Betty (her family has been so good to my mom) but I was also at odds with hating the man I liked and liking the man I hated, and in my own petty way, I was still mad about the private room.

On the bus home after debriefing with my sister, I thought about why I love absurdity so much. At first I thought that it’s because it lets you experience a range of contradictory emotions without having to actually live through them, which is part of it, but actually for me absurdism represents most closely of all literature the actual insanity of the world.

A story of a mother throwing her baby at the ceiling until it cries makes about as much sense as genocide or war, and I find it comforting to read absurd works because it means the author sees the same horror as me and that makes me feel less alone.

I imagine for someone with dementia where everyday presents like a strange dream, the juxtapositions and unusual associations provide some familiarity and hopefully comfort too.

This kind of writing also helps keep me grounded during this time of global and personal crisis, and it’s just about the only thing preventing me from screaming at the top of my lungs at whoever is forced to listen.

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1. Lydia Davis' New Collection Has Stories Shorter Than This Headline, NPR, 2014, https://www.npr.org/2014/04/06/299053017/lydia-davis-new-collection-has-stories-shorter-than-this-headline

2. “A Beloved Duck Gets Cooked: Forms and Influences I,” Essays One, Lydia Davis, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2019, e-book, p.13-14. This essay was written as a talk for NYU’s Master Class series given in 2012–2013. An adapted version appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review 95, no. 2 (Summer 2019).