The Wrong End of Life

Originally Posted Monday, October 20, 2014

No factory today.  I am staying home.  I have a few minutes before I go to the orthopedic clinic for another exam before I set the date for knee surgery.  It worries me, of course.  I have tried to rehab the thing on my own, but it has been a painful failure.  I will unwillingly place myself in the hands of a surgeon.  I hate placing myself in the hands of anyone.  But I will go then come home and ready myself for the gym.  After that I will take a walk and eat some lunch and probably take a nap.  Repairmen come this afternoon to fix my dishwasher.  That is how to spend a day away from the factory. 

I fell into a bit of a depression last night.  It is not a depression, exactly.  It is some hollow, empty mood that leaves me feeling like a ghost.  My mother came to dinner last night, and it appears nothing will make her happy.  She dwells upon her age, her weight and her diet, and upon the pain she feels in her back and elsewhere.  She is grumpy about her friends and takes a stubborn pride in not doing what the doctor tells her.  She is on blood pressure medicine now, she says, but she isn't sure she will stay on it.  I told her that it is not a thing she can just quit taking, but she only says, "You want to bet?"  I asked her what makes her happy, what is fun, and she can't think of anything.  I make suggestions.  She goes to church, so obviously she likes the life.  Don't they have activities there for retired people, I ask?  No?  Then your church is fucked up.  They are just open Sundays and they take your money and tell you to get the fuck out until next week?  You should become a Catholic, I tell her.  They have things all the time.  But it turns out not to be true that her church has nothing.  There are just things.  It is at night.  It is on Par St.  I don't know anybody there.  Etc.  I ask her if she thinks other people have fun, and she says no.  She thinks people are generally bored.  I am concerned. 

When she leaves, I feel a deep guilt settle in.  There is a silent accusation in what she says.  I don't have a family life.  If only she had grandchildren, someone who had interesting troubles like drug abuse or trouble with the authorities like the rest of the family.  At least there would be something to talk about.  There would be visits to the jail, court dates, etc.  There would be kids to torment.  But you, the silence seems to say, you have to be solitary and cold.  You and your living. 

Then I feel the need to move into her house and make sure she has someone to bitch to all the time.  It would alleviate what she feels, that misery in solitude.  She is living with the existential horror, I believe, for which she has no understanding or name.  Her god whom she worships and prays to gives her no succor or relief, only the promise that death will end her suffering.  No phenomena but food can hold her interest any more.  It is all the cold, empty void. 

There is a difference between those who educate themselves and those who live without ideas other than the ones on television or passed between uneducated friends.  I am not trying to be superior about this.  But my mother is one of the very literal.  Perhaps Ghost Hunters and a belief in aliens entertains her for awhile, but is that enough to sustain you in the great, unmitigated nothingness? 

I'm not saying that all the ideas in the world will.  Bright people become depressed and kill themselves all the time.  Perhaps there is nothing that will save you in the end.  And so last night, I fell into that morass of sorrow, not so much for myself but for the horrors with which people live.  I think we call it the human condition. 

I wrote C.C. a text telling him I thought we were on the wrong end of life.  He wrote back several things, but I will put one of them here.  The day is gloom.  I must get to the doctor now to put my fate into the hands of another.