I'll Have a Breakdown With a Xanax Chaser

"To weep is to make less the depth of grief."
—William Shakespeare

Today was my implosion day. I've had plenty of explosion days since Steve's original diagnosis in March, but those blast out of me and they're over in a few moments. Emotional implosion takes a lot longer to work through.

It started with Steve calling, thinking that he had a doctor's appointment this morning when, in actuality, it's on Monday afternoon. It's a fairly big thing for him, as he's still working on moving from the bed to a wheelchair; still only one hand to use.

I had had a tiff the day before with the convalescent hospital folks. They were adamant that I bring them a check for $50 as soon as possible to cover the two-block ride to and from the doctor's office (and not even in an ambulance, but in "medical transport"). Since the check was made out to the transportation company, the desk at the hospital wouldn't give me a receipt for it, and wanted me to wait until the transport company got around to faxing one over ("There's nobody there now," explained the receptionist at 11 a.m. on a Thursday: the fact that I cannot find them anywhere online makes me think it's probably somebody's brother driving a modified VW Microbus).

After I explained to Steve that the appointment was Monday afternoon, I could tell he was not feeling good about getting something so simple so wrong. There was a little pain in my heart that he is in a situation that is so monotonous, so limiting, so stultifying, that he's slipping on facts like that.

About 10 minutes later, a woman from Dynamic Metric, a "digital marketing" company called. They have been sending me their e-mail newsletters, unsolicited, almost daily for the last month. The fact that they are ripping off mailing lists from the chamber of commerce and bombarding everyone with offers of "free eSeminars" shows how little regard they have for Internet business ethics or taking the time and money to develop a genuine target audience: I'm the last person in the world to use online marketing to "grow my business." And yet they bombard me with their aggressive, pushy and blatantly black-hat online techniques.

"Hi. Could I speak to Mark?"

"This is Mark."

"Hi. This is Karen from Dynamic Metric; how are you doing today?"

Without a beat, I replied, "Take me off your mailing lists. Good-bye," and hung up. So my day started with worry about my husband's deteriorating mental condition in hospital and anger at this obsequious telemarketer. (I known damn well she was calling because no one is signing up for her "free eSeminar.")

So the day started shitty. I got up, showered, sat down to check out where the household bills stood (since Steve has handled the lion's share of them these past eight years). Most of them are hooked up to online Bill Pay on Steve's bank account. We have connected accounts so we can transfer back and forth, but we can't access one another's Bill Pay services. so I signed on as Steve and tried to cypher out what had been paid, what hadn't been paid, what was scheduled for automatic payments, etc., etc. And at some point I started crying.

Finally, that well-built and expertly crafted bubble of brave ebullience burst, and everything fell apart in my head.

Being emotionally mature (well, mature), I realized it would be awhile before I would have another such breakdown, and so I had better make the best of it: I played Barber's Adagio for Strings, followed by Rutter's Requiem. Just my luck, there were only two tissues left in the Kleenex box, so I ended up blowing my nose with paper towels.

After 20 minutes or so and some rehydrating, I calmed down and returned to the bill paying. I tried to sign on to Steve's bank account via my iPhone so I could make a mobile deposit of a check I found on his desk. The bank did not recognize my "device" as matching up with his account, so it asked me in what town his mother was born. Even carrying around his wallet, that was information I didn't have, so I called him but he didn't answer, so I left a message. About 10 minutes later, he called back.

Just talking to him again got me going, and the waterworks returned while I was on the phone: I miss him so much. The house is so lonely without him here. It's been two weeks since I've been able to hug him, much less touch him without fear of causing pain, and it will be weeks more before I can have him back home with me. As I hung up, I hoped that he didn't feel dumped on.

Robert Bailey, the salesman for the chamber directory ads, called later and was wondering why I hadn't updated the information on the ads—which ones were in, which were approved, which needed to be built. I reminded him about my situation and Steve, and asked him what he needed to know. He wanted to know if Kaiser Permanente had sent in their ad.

So I opened my files and gave him a rundown of each and every ad that was in, which ones had final approval, and which needed to be built by me. I rattled them off, as I am very organized with my clients' stuff, and he sounded genuinely impressed. So I told him, "If you have any question at all on ads and I haven't sent the updated information in, just call me and I'll keep you updated. At some point I'll get this info on the spreadsheet and back to the chamber for updating."

Around 4:30 in the afternoon I stretched out for a short nap, slept until 5:30, and then went over to the hospital. Steve was snoozing when I got there. Kit was assuaging Ed in the next bed, and he was grousing, as usual (although after she left he was more than willing to ask me for help getting his tissues within reach for him).

Ed plays a radio all day long and the content is exclusively "easy listening" (what I call "elevator music"). It's simply assumed that everyone else wants to hear it. So while I was visiting with Steve, he finally picked up the television remote and turned the TV on (Ed hates television, just like he hates computers and most of the modern world, I'm sure).

"Aw, Christ!" he yowled from behind the privacy curtain.

"Fuck off, Ed," I answered in a blunt and authoritative manner. There were two or three beats of silence.

"At least turn it down," he grumbled.

"That I agree with," I said, and Steve brought down the volume. When a commercial came on, I said, "Muting the commercials will help a lot, too."

Ed is scheduled to be discharged on Monday. We will be very happy when that happens, because, at times, I'm more than ready to bitch slap him for his nasty attitude. I'm crossing my fingers that Steve will have the room to himself for a while before they fill Ed's old bed. And when someone new comes in, Steve will have seniority, as Ed did. If a decent sort of person arrives, hopefully they will respect that and cooperate rather than trying to dictate and dominate (as Ed does with his wife and attempts to do with everyone else).

The sun had set. Steve and I sensed that we were both getting bored with "visiting," so after a kiss goodnight, I left and drove home, cried a little bit more, and took a double dose of Xanax. Right now, I'm feeling pretty mellow.

I look up at the clock and there's only an hour left in the day. Another 24 hours passed, never to return. Why are we so mystified by the past and the future: They really don't exist, you know, and only the future can ever become something we can anticipate and experience. The past is gone, with only nostalgia lessons to be gleamed from its memories.