A Steve Martin Joke About Death
I can get so Death-obsessed, always have been this way, used
to believe as I child that I was the original “Debbie-downer.” Some days I
wonder how ok I really am, if that ok is enough to be in charge of a family of
special needs people and my menagerie of animal companions, but it doesn’t
matter—I’m who’s here, and there’s ain’t no one else being sent over by G-d or
government to fill the pillboxes or clean the chicken coop.
Updates may be spotty for a bit because I’m struggling with
processing another family member’s critical illness—this time an aging family
member, a natural decline, and while I’m not the primary caregiver, there’s a
an inevitable sadness. I guess that sadness is depression. On the care-plan I
get from the free clinic it says my bipolar 1 is “active”—now, that doesn’t
mean I actively hallucinate or am incompetent. It means my depression is
active. It has been for over a year—same with “anxiety.” So much for treating it in Bobby Jindal land
though—my psychiatrist told me to keep on doing my tai chi and yoga, that the
meds only can do so much, that the social workers are overbooked. Eh, it’s
ok, I’m fine, I’m fine. The social workers I see for myself and my family’s
multiple issues pour praise on me. The praise amuses me—I find myself wishing
it were money or time. I realize that this wish is a depressive’s wish, that
all praise runs like pricey perfume out of a tiny bottle onto a vast dark ocean
and floats there, meaningless.
I wonder why my husband never got a care-plan from the same
free clinic in Bobby Jindal land, but consistency and competency aren’t the
clinic’s strong points. This is the same clinic that didn’t give my husband any
medication for five weeks after committing him in May. This is the same clinic
that promises me a whole hour of therapy once a month but usually double books
me so I get one half hour instead, during which time I’m praised for all the
hard work I do—that’s nice, and the social worker I see is actually very good,
but if I had some regular cognitive behavioral therapy or support I might be
able to do more hard work. Maybe. Or if the clinic actually wasn’t shy about
prescribing anti-anxiety medication for fear that its clientele would sell it
or abuse it, I might get Klonopin for the short-term and get some sleep and be
more functional as a parent and caregiver. But eh, I’ll sleep eventually. Never mind the adage that a person with
bipolar is one bad night’s sleep away from an episode. I haven’t had a good
night’s sleep for five days now for worrying about Death.
The a.c. busted on the hottest day of the year in Baton
Rouge and cost me the weekend price so my driving lessons are going to be a
little delayed. I’m not as worried about facing my lifelong phobia of driving
at the moment as I am about Death in general. It used to be that in my youth I
was obsessed with Death, probably since the onset of my first depressive
thoughts at age 10 or so, and I hoarded the fear by reading confessional poets
and existential philosophy. Then my roommate in college died of AIDS in 1992
and I got slapped into appreciating even the cruddy moments of my life—David’s
death coincided with Prozac being widely prescribed and I was the beneficiary
of that ride and lo, I was never hospitalized in a looney bin again.
But here I am today, still sad and “active” under my axis 1
diagnosis. My daughter’s bipolar is in “remission” and I wonder what it will take
for mine to be. Maybe one day someone will invent a pill to make the world a
less horrible place? I skim Facebook and a friend of a friend of my Zen priest
friend posts something Zen that reminds me of how I used to deal with my
suicidal rage (probably mixed episodes) in the days before meds. I used to be
still and bear the pain in loneliness. I may have actually had some Zen
realization in those days that there was no alone, that there was no war with
myself. But these days with the noise of chores, children, where is the time to
bear? Now, in writing this?
I’m very happy for another friend who recently was awarded
disability after the usual long, protracted ordeal with the government. Social
security doesn’t award you based on how sick you are, of course—it awards you
based on how long you worked or how much you paid into the system. Some people
are dying or on life support by the time they get their disability money. As I
type this, I’m still fighting social security to restore my disabled daughter’s
regular SSI payments on a judge’s ruling (the local office seems not to have
received the memo and is being willfully obstinate about facts). My husband never got proper disability (only SSI)
because he worked FOR the government as a teacher and didn’t pay into social
security; I have a disability but I was an undocumented alien (brought here as
a baby) and when I worked as an adult I did so illegally or I quit because I
got crazy so I never paid into social security either. It’s all so unfair but
then again, my favorite joke in the old days was Steve Martin’s “We’ve had a
lot of fun considering we’re all going to DIE SOMEDAY.”
Death is Life is Death.
Perspective jolts help my mood, along with coffee in the morning. I read
an article about the universe being older than we presumed or expected to die
billions of years earlier than expected. I take an online test that forecasts
my time of death. I have forty more years to live. At odd moments, I see no difference between
myself and the universe entire.
