February 7, 1999 - February 13, 1999

Sunday Morning, February 7 Shankari made us a delicious breakfast of oatmeal with raisins, apples, and bananas. We talked over the day to come: Shankari needed to be out most of the day attending to a friend in need, leaving Don and I pretty much to ourselves. We made plans to have dinner at the new restaurant in "downtown" Bolinas. We made some decisions about how to sell his car, Don setting what I thought was a very shrewd price and bottom line, and worked on getting his credit card records in order. He was concerned that someone had removed the records he kept in the top drawer near his desk. He hates feeling that his mind is unreliable. I reassured him that the records had indeed been there the last time I looked, but that they had probably been removed by the people who set up the Friends of V fund. Perhaps they needed them to estimate how much debt he was carrying. Nevertheless, I quietly wished they had returned them to Don's "filing" system. His last clear memory of home is of a well-ordered and carefully controlled life, especially when it comes to his finances. It distresses him when things aren't where he put them last December. We puttered around the house until around noon, when Sara, Katherine, Jnani, and Maha arrived. They had spent the night at Commonweal and had come to Don's house to figure out the schedule of home visitors for the coming week. Sara is a quiet and concise person, and Katherine can usually get right to the point of a topic, but Jnani and Maha tend to consider every alternative aloud, and frequently interrupt each other as a new point comes to mind. Soon, all four of them were debating whether Don should be taking one dose of CoQ10 or another, whom he should buy it from, whether the upcoming medical test was an angiogram or an arteriogram, how much Vitamin E is enough and how much causes thinning of the blood (to be avoided), whether one doctor or another would be seeing Don on Friday (or sooner), whether the angiogram (or arteriogram) would be a Marin General or U.C.S.F., whether Sara was coming Monday afternoon or Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday, and if Wednesday, whether katherine needed to come on Tuesday or at all, and how many times a day and in what dosages Don was supposed to be taking his Chinese herbs. All six of us were in the kitchen as this squall of topics and personalities washed over Don. In the midst of it, he got a phone call from Lalitananda, which he took in the living room. The ladies and I adjourned to the dinning room table, Maha carefully pulling out a chair for Don to take when he got back. But instead of joining us, he returned to the room wearing his jacket. He came over to me and said, "So, are you hungry? Should we be going?" I was a bit startled. We had talked about going out for dinner, not lunch. This was the kind of confusion between present and future I thought had been left behind. But I saw something else in Don's eyes, and quickly agreed. "Excuse us," I said to the women, who were toiling over a much-revised schedule of visits and appointments for the coming week, "but we're going out to lunch." We were barely out the door when Don put an arm around me. "Thank you for rescuing me," he said. "I don't think I could have stood that much longer." "It's a bit like having a flock of song birds in your kitchen, isn't it?" I said. "One would be nice, but the whole bunch of them at once is a little overwhelming." "They're dear people," he said, "but there was just too much going on."
Sunday Afternoon, February 7 They had gone by the time we got back, leaving a clear, hand-written note describing who was visiting when, and noting that Don's medical appointments later this week might change if Jnani can arrange to have the angiogram done at U.C.S.F. Shankari was home when we got back, and she soon put us to work stacking firewood outside. Don was in good form, bending over, picking up logs, stepping over a bungie cord that held a tarp in place, and handing the logs to me to stack. All in all, a good workout in strength and balance. We finished when he grew tired, having filled the wood rack nearly to the top. Later, Don entered the schedule into his computer, a habit he had well before the hemorrhage, but which combines an old skill with the new one of keeping a "memory book." I noticed he had no difficulty reading Jnani's handwriting, though he himself has said that cursive is more difficult to read than print. He is also getting in the habit of double-checking his input, catching the typos that creep in due to his field cut. I noticed on Thursday that the flannel sheets Don was using were a little worn and lacked a fitted bottom, so I brought a set of mine. We put them on before bedding down for the night. He liked the lavendar color, and even Ceasar seemed to approve of them (see photo).	Hail, Ceasar
Monday Morning, February 8 In the morning, Don worked on revising his poems. He seems to be refamiliarizing himself with his computer and how it works, learning to check the on-off switches for the printer, double-checking file names before he saves to disk, checking his spelling. The occupational therapist arrived around 10:00 AM, but she mostly asked interview-like questions and observed him on the stairs and getting into and out of the bath tub. After she had left, Don complained about being endlessly evaluated for the same skills again and again. "I'm tired of being poked and prodded and constantly judged," he said. "You'll probably have to undergo the same series of tests when you get admitted to Kentfield Outpatient therapy," I said. "They'll want to know all that information for themselves, not just take the previous therapist's reports." He groaned, but agreed that it was likely. David came by and installed the railing for the back porch stairs, even though he had to work in intermittant rain. We talked briefly about how I would get Don's car to Mountain View and how I might then get back to Bolinas, where I was going to leave my Caravan. At first, David said he would be glad to drive my van into San Francisco or down to Mountain View on Saturday, but later in the afternoon, while Don and I were at lunch, he called and left a message saying that he really wanted to spend his Saturday at home. I will have to come up with an alternative plan.	1. Revisions 2. A Man, a Plan, a Railing
Monday Afternoon, February 8 Don and I went to lunch around 1:30. It was an unexpected adventure. We had been expecting his physical therapist at noon, but she hadn't shown up. We put it down to the bad weather and the likelihood of landslides across Mount Tam. So we decided to have lunch at the Parkside Cafe in Stinson Beach. I had another reason for wanting to go out to lunch. Since I was going to drive Don's Explorer to Mountain View, I wanted him to give me a brief driving lesson. On the way out to his car, I discovered I didn't have my wallet with me. I went back into the house and took a quick look around. I was in the bedroom when, to my horror, I heard the car engine start. I raced downstairs and out to the car, waving my hands. I was afraid he might actually start off down the road. "I can't find my wallet," I said, a little breathless. "Can you come and be a second set of eyes for me?" He agreed, and we joked on the way back to the house about his "mental confusion" being contagious. I said, "It's a good thing I'm not being evaluated today. I'd flunk for sure." Don laughed. "I'm also glad the therapist didn't show up just as you were starting the car," I said. "Oh yeah," he said. "That's all we need: 'There he goes again, being impulsive.'" We found my wallet. It was next to Shankari's computer, where I had left it while I was putting in the ad for Don's car. We made it into Stinson Beach with only minor gnashing of gears and had a fairly quiet lunch. We talked about the upcoming angiogram and the possible outcomes of the test. "Rachel told me that she showed the first angiogram to some experts at UCSF," Don said. "They told her, 'this guy didn't survive, did he?'" "That was what the emergency room doctor thought, too," I said, "that you wouldn't survive." "That really frightens me," he said. "I wish she hadn't told me that." When we got back to the house, we found Grace, his physical therapist, waiting on the front porch. Apparently, she had left Don a message, but she had left it on Shankari's phone, not Don's. Fortunately, she had not been waiting long. They went inside and were soon busy with various exercises, including jumping rope. I found a way to do a little Glyphic work using Shankari's Macintosh and a local dial-up to Best Internet. The rest of the afternoon went by quietly enough, and I began preparing to leave around 5:30. I had just about gotten my things together when Don proposed taking a bath. I thought this was a marvelous idea. Don and I had enjoyed many pleasant and sensual baths together. His tub is enormous, and both of us can stretch out side by side in it. However, it is also where Shankari had found him, semi-conscious and half-paralyzed, the night of December 11. Bo and Annie had purified the bathroom and bedroom with burning sage while Don was still in Santa Rosa. I myself had some apprehension that he might remember it as a place of pain. But he said he has no memory of that night and doesn't want any. We had a pleasant, quiet bath together, Don washing my back and I his. It was, in its own way, our own purifying ritual.	Home Therapy
Saturday, February 13 No one was home but Don when I arrived Friday night. That says very good things about how much he is being trusted to take care of himself. There were signs of a recent party: a chocolate cake, spanikopita in the fridge, a large, hand-made Valentine's Day card on the dinning room table. After putting the quinoa on the countertop, I went upstairs with the paperwhites from my garden, some chocolate, and a card. Don did not notice me at first, but as soon as he did, he was very happy to see me. He became very animated, talking about how the week has gone. Although it was nearly 10:00 PM when I arrived, he was more animated than I have seen him in a long time. He liked the flowers, opened the chocolate immediately, and put the card aside. Then we went downstairs and talked about tomorrow's plans - a trip to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, followed by grocery shopping for dinner - and put away the quinoa I'd brought and a few things I'd brought for tomorrow's dinner. He said that Jnani and Dr. Remen had had a bit of a set-to, trying to settle what was the best policy to follow for his upcoming therapies and tests. I gathered from his tone that there had not been so much a meeting of minds as a clash of titans. But, he said, it was all settled now. Two specialists were going to examine the Santa Rosa pathology report to rule out microvascular disease, and if it was ruled out, the angiogram would be taken at Marin General, which was (finally) judged to be "adequate" for the data-gathering. Back in bed, we had a wide-ranging talk about love, fate, God, and fear. He was relieved that none of the fears he'd felt about being controlled by others once he got home - even if they were his friends and it was "for his own good" - had materialized. "I wrote a thank-you note, which I guess Rachel is going to post on the Internet," he said. "She already has," I said, "I read it tonight." "Shankari helped me with it," he said. "Originally, I said I was doing things like hauling and chopping firewood. Shankari advised me not to mention chopping wood or we'd have Rachel out here in a flash." We both laughed about that. "It's not really 'chopping,' anyway," he said. "The ax is so dull it's more like I'm bludgeoning wood." After Shankari had helped him with the text, Rachel edited it further. In particular, she pared down the list of people he thanked by name. In the version I saw, he mentions only his housemates. Rachel said she didn't want him to offend anyone who might feel left out because they were not mentioned by name. 'Too late,' I thought. I had wondered why Don mentioned each of his housemates but didn't mention me, although I'd seen more of him in the past two months than either Bo or Annie had. Now I knew. The blunt sensibilities of Dr. Remen triumph once again. He said how he felt humbled by the amount of love he was receiving, far beyond what he felt he had earned. "Do you think love like that can be earned?" I asked. "I don't. I think it just happens, like grace." He agreed, and recounted the feeling of grace that had come over him when he forgave Waz. "It was like a great burden being lifted," he said. "It can't be earned, it can only be - experienced, I guess, or just acknowledged and blessed when it comes." "What do you think of karma?" I asked. "It doesn't lead me to any useful insights," he said. I said I felt the same way. "It's like the Catholic doctrine of original sin," I said. "They both seem to be designed to explain away injury or disaster that has no real cause." "And they're such complicated explanations, too," he said. We fell asleep soon after that. I was able to acknowledge two occasions for grace this evening. The first was letting go of my disappointment that Don didn't open the Valentine's Day card I brought him. It was supposed to be a "flowers, candy, and a card" sort of thing. But I have learned to try to follow Don's focus of attention. When I arrived, I was far more important to him than my gifts. That's a difficult lesson for me to grasp: that I might be more important than what I have to offer. The second occasion was letting go of the anger I felt at Rachel's editing of Don's thank-you note. Her patterns of control are becoming predictable to me, and though her spiritual one-upmanship is tiresome, I had to acknowledge that it would not be nearly so grating if it weren't occasionally correct.