Sixty-Nine and Six Weeks

It's been a strange week. Joe and I were in Memphis Wednesday to Sunday over Thanksgiving with his family. I wasn't feeling all that great, but I had no fever when we left Morgantown, so I figured it was no big deal. We flew via Pittsburgh and Atlanta. It's an eighty-five mile drive from our house to Pittsburgh airport. The weather was cold but clear, and traffic along that route is manageable. The plane rides were excruciating because my ears felt clogged, and all four landings were painful. I've been to Memphis many times with Joe, and I enjoy his family. We don't have political arguments with the relatives; all of us are on the same page.

I broke lots of rules in Memphis. I ate fried chicken, pie, pizza and ice cream. I shopped in the outlet mall in Mississippi, just outside Memphis. I try to avoid Mississippi. And it was Saturday, when I don't shop. I bought things at stores I don't like for political reasons. I like all the clothes I bought.

It was my intent to go to the gym Monday, the day after we got home, but instead I detoured to the walk-in clinic nearby. The doctor there said I had an ear infection common to children and prescribed an antibiotic. He said I would feel a lot better by Tuesday, but should take the rest of the day off. I did that, only I never felt really better. Maybe a little.

I'm on Morgantown's City Council, and we met at five Tuesday to interview applicants for city boards and commissions. It was cold out and had snowed overnight. The regular meeting started at seven, with several presentations, including one from our Municipal Utility Board, the water and sewer people, unhappy about a proposal to change things at the agency. I tuned out some of the discussion. We could have thrown out the proposal right then, but it was tabled. At eleven. Then we had speakers from the public. We left at 11:30. I was not feeling well, and it had snowed again. I went to bed as soon as I got home and stayed  in all day Wednesday.

The weather was better Thursday and I ran a few errands out of the house. I had my last lesson with an ADD coach. I like him, and he helped me, but his solutions to organizational problems are complex and I need everything to be as simple as possible. My default mode is closer to catatonic than hyperactive, and complexity, especially involving apps, confuses me. Still, he made me see how to list things that must get done, and set a time to stop doing the off-the-wall stuff that I find really interesting, in my case involving lists of cities, or pop music albums.

Joe had asked me to come with him Friday to a funeral for an elderly gentleman, an old-fashioned  haberdasher by trade, who had passed away at ninety-three in a nursing home. We hadn't seen the sun in a few days, and it was chilly and damp out. I felt I knew the man after I heard Joe's eulogy. A son-in-law also spoke about how the deceased man had years ago found him a suit in another store that was just right for him. He wore that suit to the funeral. I had noticed that it was a nice suit, somewhat out of style but not horribly so. We went to lunch with the family at a tattooed granddaughter's house, which took us about an hour to find. We got home late afternoon and still had services that night at our temple.

I again stayed in bed most of Saturday, feeling weak more than anything, still with no fever. I walked for a half hour in a cool drizzle. I'm always afraid to not exercise. My heart is weak, and I fear it will stop if I don't use it. Joe and I went out at five to a memorial for Jarred Parrot, who was involved politically in town, running a successful campaign for an outsider candidate for the state legislature. Jarred was hospitalized just before Election Day and diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, at thirty-seven. He died the Monday before Thanksgiving. I knew him, and would have attended the funeral, but it was Friday, when we were in Memphis. This was an informal gathering of friends at a restaurant. People were invited to speak about Jarred, but few did. I don't think most people knew him well. He stayed in the political background. I didn't get a chance to greet everyone, although I know most of them. We left to  dine at another restaurant, and were home early.

 I ate too much (again) at dinner. Joe left half his enormous meal. I had to eat all of mine. The weather had warmed up some, and our cat, Tappuz, wanted to go out. We couldn't convince her to come in when we went to bed. I got up to go the bathroom at three, and by then she was waiting at the door. I brought her to our bedroom and hoped she would sleep with us, but she was awake, and wanted to play. Eventually, she jumped off the bed. I couldn't get back to sleep. Although it was cool in the room, I was sweating, probably dehydrated and overstuffed, awake because I drank iced tea at eight at the restaurant.

Saturday was also World AIDS Day, and we learned of the death of George H.W. Bush, the former president. Some praised him as a President who knew what he was doing and was faithful to his wife. Obama was all that, too, but of course, he's still alive and he's, well, Black. The counter narrative was that Bush deliberately ignored the AIDS crisis, refused to allocate money for research, and allowed anti-gay Evangelical Christians to take over much of the Republican Party.

My take-away from World AIDS Day is more personal. It's about my friends who perished: Scott Stamford, Rue Starr, Hal Wakker, Fred Shuldiner, Art Horowitz, Avram Chill, and David Fyffe. There were others who put me off when I suggested we date, hurting my feelings, until I found out a month or two later that they had died. I was in a performance art group in Santa Monica in the early 90s, and several young men in the group died. I was taken back to those times, and the heartlessness of the Republican Party, despite the kindly faces and the jokes, especially Ronald Reagan and both Bushes. I know of no one my age who is still alive and HIV+. Everyone I knew who was infected has died.

Today, Sunday December 2,  was warm and sunny. I slept late after being up much of the night. I got to the grocery store, and walked in the warm sunshine. We had to be at temple early for the five P.M. Chanukah Party, so I didn't nap, like I usually do.

Today I am sixty-nine years and six weeks old. That is, to the day, the age my father was when he died. I've been obsessing about this for a long time. I have most of the same ailments my father had, particularly a damaged and failing heart. What's different for me is the advance of medical technology. When I had a heart attack in 2003, a surgeon inserted a camera into my veins and found the blockage that caused the heart attack, placing a spring in the clogged artery to reopen it. In 2015, the cardiologist I see here in Morgantown, unhappy with my swollen ankles and some poor test results, sent me to the hospital, where three more stents went in. My father didn't have that technology.

I can still walk up steps, ride a bike, dance, drive long distances, not without a certain degree of fatigue, but I think no more than average men my age. I can't delude myself into thinking I am anywhere other than the last stage of my life, however long that may be. Rabbi Joe, my spouse, who is seven years younger than I am, asks me where we should retire to in five or ten years. I'm being realistic, not morbid, when I suggest he may have to do that with his next husband.

The Chanukah party tonight was great. I felt energized and I won the 50-50 raffle. I ate a lot of forbidden (diet-wise) foods. It took my mind off my father, my friend Jarred, my friends who died from AIDS, George H.W. Bush, and my still somewhat clogged ears.

Time to move on to the rest of my life.