Photoessay #214 - This year (losses, pt 1)

It struck me last night how profound the losses are that I've experienced this year.

Allen Sidney Ginsburgh
Lanaya Ruth Barnes
Daniel C. Beittel

These people have had immense influence on my life. I have known them all or most of my life. My elders, the people watching over me, always there, part of the fabric of my life. You think that it might be easier to let go of these important people, they are aged, their time is over, their lives rich and complete. But it's not. All my life, I have turned around, and they are present ... including me as part of their journey ... and, of course, being part of mine. I am truly bereft, they no longer inhabit this world. They live on in our memories.

Allen Ginsburgh, my father. Yes, he does share the name (and the exact birthdate) as the famous poet. But he was not a beat poet. A Jewish Nixon Republican, a believer in fiscal restraint, a loyal if sometimes detached family man. His principal conceit was that, as an engineer, everything must be approached in a rational logical manner. But often he made his decisions based on his own emotions and prejudices, then cloaked it in a pragmatic logical context. He spent many of his later years withdrawn, not interacting much, especially with his daughters. Always stable, he remained married to my mother until the end though they had their constant double bind bickering act going on. I know that he always loved and cared about me, but was often critical and wary. He lived in fear that he would lose control of his surroundings, his finances, his home and angrily tried to ensure that this would never happen.

For years, really my entire life, he insisted that money and his health matters were none of my business. Not the affairs of children. If I visited and he had an appointment, I was not allowed to go, be in the waiting room, I was not even allowed in the car. Not to be discussed. If I called, he would dismissively insist that 'he was fine'. Not to reassure me, but to make it clear that this was NONE of my affair.

Yet, at the end, I was called on to orchestrate two difficult interactions, both occurring on the same day of this year, the Ides of March. He was in the nursing home and he desperately insisted that he was coming home. Though it was not clear what he meant by 'coming home'. The purpose of the scheduled Care Meeting was to officially declare that he would not be able to go home. I set up a a pre-pre meeting where I discussed the options with the social worker and the pre meeting when my mother came and declared she was unable to care for him. Then the formal meeting where he was informed that he could not go home. I sobbed then (and do now) because I knew that this was SO what he did not want. He had finally lost control and this was so difficult for him. So hard to watch.

Then on to a doctor appointment by wheel chair van where the internist informed him that there was nothing else medically to be done, all care was palliative, there was a plum sized tumor in his brain. It would kill him, just a matter of time.

Can you imagine a more devastating day? We brought him back to the nursing home. As I was helping him out of the wheel chair, he said "Thank you so much for your help today". I was stunned, but touched. I fully expected him to throw me out of these meetings as he would have done in the past.

A final gift to me, an acknowledgment of his respect?

Too much, I can write no more today. Picture for May 2005 on his last visit to Seattle to watch his granddaughter play collegiate ball.