Skip to main content

Losing Someone Piecemeal

I am of an age now where many of my peers have lost one or both parents. Some of them have lost them gradually, to the ravages of cancer, of Alzheimer's, etc.  I have been in that position with respect to one of my parents for a little while with respect to dementia, and the illness has progressed in recent weeks. My siblings who live closest are doing all the work; I try to provide support from a distance with weekly conference calls with them as well as frequent calls to my parent.

There will be a big change shortly in the level of care in the facility seeing to my parent's needs as the dementia continues to progress. Phone calls are filled with long silences; letters and emails have long gone unread and I am a nine hour drive away, so I visit when I can.

Having this piecemeal loss of a parent has made me reflect a good deal on what makes me me, and what would remain if I suffered memory or cognitive loss. It's probably common for folk in academia to identify their self, their soul with their intellect. Mine has changed over time, with pleasing improvements and painful losses that feel as if they still balance out. 

I suffer from sleep apnea and before it was diagnosed suffered from deprivation of REM sleep that really degraded my mind and shook my self-confidence. I recovered with treatment but that alone was truly depressing; to lose more seems unbearable.

My other parent, dead over 16 years now, often spoke to me of preferring death to mental diminution.  (It was a stroke that took them, fairly quickly.) My faith tells me to let God choose the circumstances of my end but insofar as I have preferences I share them with my late parent.

It is hard losing my parent piecemeal; I truly dread losing myself.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holiday Break

I have been teaching for 37 years now, and I go through many of the same things at the end of the Fall semester each year. There is relief at the completion of a significant task (teaching each of my classes) but there is a good deal of physical and mental weariness and aches. I could sleep for several days straight if not for my sleep disorder. By and large my mind is not very sharp and as an introvert I try to be pleasant with loved ones but am not outgoing at all. With age the feeling of being drained deepens in more and more ways. Of course this is when we have, almost every year, taken a road trip to visit birth families in the Northeast, a full day of driving each way, often involving winter weather far worse than what we are accustomed to in NC. I love my birth family members as well but as with my created family I am weary and not very outgoing. The conversation is rarely about me and my day-to-day life but rather about younger family members and family friends that I do not kn...
Post a Comment
Read more

Accountability

Mathematics as a discipline teaches accountability. Every claim, whether it be a computation result or a statement (theorem) about how things work is accountable. We teach this accountability developmentally, with lower expectations at the beginning, and sometimes folk who study mathematics casually don't understand this. In my multivariable calculus classes, which I teach most frequently, I usually phrase my expectations as "give me a reason to believe your answer", citing my time working at an investment bank where my recommendations had financial repercussions and my supervisor never took my word for anything. In higher-level mathematics classes such as Abstract Algebra or Analysis I can be more explicit: these are the things we all agree to assume, these are the proof techniques which we understand; can you make an argument that convinces the community who have accepted those axioms and rules of inference that what you claim is true? We work hard to remove the ego fro...
Post a Comment
Read more

Contents of Most Recent Email to NC Senators

 Sent to Senators Tillis and Budd of NC this morning: My uncle was a police detective in Philadelphia before he retired. He showed his face and his badge to all he talked to on the job; he gave his name and business card to the public he served. This is what law enforcement officials have done in this country as policy until now; what if anything has changed?   The violent thugs serving in ICE are not law enforcement. They do not protect and serve; they attack and refuse to identify themselves. They are a paramilitary force responsible only to President Trump and his minions, who reflexively desecrate the memory of their victims. All dishonor themselves daily, all lack integrity. Immigration is a serious issue. Using brutal thugs to deal with it is like using a chainsaw to remove an appendix. The appendix may need to come out but using a chainsaw is a silly solution that kills people. It is painful to think of all the children incarcerated by ICE. It is unthinkable to all...
Post a Comment
Read more