Fun House Chronicle: Comfortably numb
When the Joker runs wild, life takes turns that would wow a hoop snake. The Mister’s arrival at a nursing home was one of those turns.
After 34 years of married life in rooms we shared, we have just past our second anniversary in a room I only visit. Most days are OK. We laugh, play Scrabble, watch movies, talk about his difficulties with the adminstration and mine with clients. A good couple hours then I return to my house, which he has never seen. He returns to his new love of online shenanigans (jeez, I hope he’s not stealing identities). We have both worked hard to establish a new life that is not just acceptable, but even pleasant.
Yesterday, I read a letter he sent to a friend in which he said: Best thing that ever happened to me? That’s easy. Meeting Linda.
Nice, huh? But then, the Joker yelled Boo! The letter went on:
Proud of my life? I look back on it with pleasure for many fine moments and events. But I take no pride in it at all. If my life were something to be proud of, it wouldn’t be ending like this. Here is a list of my accomplishments. I got fat. I got diabetes. I lost a leg. I got poor eyesight and bad kidneys. I became impotent. I went bankrupt. I didn’t stop any wars. I didn’t cure any diseases. I didn’t even publish a book or paint a picture. Like millions of others, I simply became an old man waiting to stop breathing.
Well, shit. Just about the time I convince mysef that we’re both doing OK, I realize the hidden part of the ice berg is still a pretty cold place. He fails to see value in the things that make me proud of his life:
- He can make me laugh til I snort. Yes, snort.
- He actually won a gross out contest over all the other college students, a victory no less remarkable than an Olympic gold.
- He didn’t embarass my mother with his opinions of fireworks when she made him hold a sparkler in the rain on our first Fourth of July.
- He submitted a short story to a contest in Writer’s Digest and won the damn thing. What are the odds?
- He got jobs at ad agencies way too cool to hire the likes of me.
- He took the wedding vow “I promise to kill all the spiders” very seriously.
- He stopped drinking before it became the crushing problem it threatened to be.
- The worst thing he ever threw was a phone; it wasn’t aimed at me, but it bounced around the walls and never worked quite right again.
- He has had to visit the principal’s office at the Fun House more than once.
- He has never gone into the woods to kill anything with fur or feathers.
- His sports addiction is limited to three teams.
- He never voted for anyone named Bush.
These day’s, the Mister’s favorite lyric is Pink Floyd’s “the child is grown, the dream is gone, and I have become comfortably numb.” In a nursing home, I guess that’s the best you can hope for. But out here on the back nine? I’m very aware of pride in man I married.