Jottings
by Nancy Massman The ideas are there in my head but the expression doesn’t come easily, not like in the olden days, before Alzheimer’s. But I’m going to kick Alzheimer’s out of my mind for a while. The day will be good, and I will write a bit. I come back to Natalie Goldberg’s suggestion to just write a word or two, like “this moment” and go from there. So here I am, trying to keep my hand moving. I’m in my favorite chair, watching the accumulation of more snow from yesterday’s fourteen inches. I’m cozy, hearing beautiful music in the background, dimly remembering that I have trouble remembering – but it doesn’t matter. This moment, in this space, is a small miracle, as is everything in life if we only look, listen, and feel. When I’m in a nursing home, sinking, I want someone to say to me, “Write something, Nancy. Anything.” I wonder how long I could last with that. I can’t be cured of Alzheimer’s. It can only get worse. Yet, I can have hope that I will at some level still perceive love, laughter, beauty. The heart coaches the brain to hang on. *** “Pay attention” I told myself as Beethoven’s beautiful, tender lyrical sounds from his Fifth Symphony came to me in the kitchen as I prepared dinner. I often take it all for granted, having music in the background while fixing food or looking for a mislaid book or worrying about the children while a miracle of sound surrounds me. When I focus, I hear every note. Every movement, tone, thunder and whisper. When my now 38-year-old daughter was about three, she asked me, while listening to Viennese Caprice, “Why is the violin sad?” How does one answer that: beauty and sadness coexisting. When I’m dying, I want to hear great music. I want to hear it everyday I’m living, too. *** I know I’m slipping, yet I feel joy. I have made peace with the idea that I won’t live forever, but today is good, so was yesterday, and I’m betting on tomorrow. I look back at the generations I have loved – in photos of my grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, siblings, children, and grandchildren. Being called “Grandma” is a lovely sound. Yet, I know that at some time, I will give up my space on earth so that new life can occupy it. It’s a necessary system. Everything is recycled. Atoms that were building blocks for making molecules that made me may eventually become part of a flower, or a bird. |