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This is a free, public post from Hank Kalet’s Channel Surfing. You will continue to receive these email stories and newsletters as long as you remain a an email subscriber. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get paywall-protected posts, the ability to comment on posts and participate in discussion boards, offers to write guest blog posts, and copies of my books. If you are a $5-a-month Patreon patron, you already are considered a paid subscriber.

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The Fading Away

Mediations on Alzheimer’s

Hank Kalet Oct 11

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My mom cut her leg recently, apparently trying to get out of bed at her memory care facility. They think she caught it on the bed rail. She barely noticed, even when the hospice nurse treated her for the wound. She didn’t flinch or react. That’s what the primary caregiver at her facility told me when I called. Mom just lied there. No expression. Not even an involuntary twitch. No recognition.

This comes with the territory. With her Alzheimer’s. The disease slowly shuts the brain down, sector by sector, robbing the patient of brain function — ultimately compromising not just thought but body function.

It’s difficult to know whether we are there yet. Mom had Covid, which could be contributing to her unresponsiveness. To her need to sleep nearly all the time. Or it could be her Alzheimer’s. We can’t know, because she can’t tell us, hasn’t been able to tell us for a while, doesn’t know herself.

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Monday Music: Imagining the Unimaginable

Hank Kalet Oct 10

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John Lennon would have been 82 yesterday (Sunday). The same age as my mom. I remember where I was when news broke that he had been assassinated in the street outside his New York home. I can remember my reaction when someone ran into the bathroom in my Penn State dorm and shouted that Lennon was dead. I dropped my toothbrush. Stood before the mirror and stared.

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I find it strange now that it hit me as it did, almost as hard as when my grandfather died. I know more about Lennon now than I did then. Can see the flaws, the damaged man that he was, and I get angry that he took his anger and disappointment out on those around him.

Lennon was a lot of things, including being an often shitty person. But in his contradictions lied a desire that the world be better than it was.

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This is a free, public post from Hank Kalet’s Channel Surfing. You will continue to receive these email stories and newsletters as long as you remain a an email subscriber. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get paywall-protected posts, the ability to comment on posts and participate in discussion boards, offers to write guest blog posts, and copies of my books. If you are a $5-a-month Patreon patron, you already are considered a paid subscriber.

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