A Steve Martin Joke About Death

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.