There are some things we just have to accept.
For example:
Maybe, despite what we told ourselves when we were younger, we're more comfortable working for someone else than we are running our own enterprises.
Or: maybe we're not willing to spend thousands of dollars for surgery on a pet, even if that surgery could give it a couple more years of life.
Like: there just aren't enough years left for our investments to return what they've lost.
And: some things are irreversible.
Limitations, shortcomings, bad news. Denial just piles on the interest and penalties, so that when we do finally come to terms with reality, we owe a hell of a lot more. Better to accept what we can early on.
It's a muscle worth exercising.
* * *
Here's a true Christmas Story involving a friend of mine. Names and a few details changed, etc...
* * *
32 years ago, my friend Cheryl's father lost the ability to form new memories. This was similar to Alzheimer's disease, but it was caused by a freak stroke or something and hit him in his early 30s.
Cheryl's mother, Sue, has taken care of him all this time. Sue, Cheryl, and the other children have learned that no combination of therapy and medication will improve Joe's life. All they can do is keep him safe and make him comfortable.
Joe can make his own instant coffee so long as he uses a kettle that whistles. Loud noises bother him, so the sound of a kettle that he put on ten minutes earlier will bring him back to the task at hand; he'll switch it off and make his coffee.
He can get by like this, and has done for three decades. He can survive for the day while his wife goes off to work.
Some things have gotten easier now that he's older. His knees bother him now and he never feels like going out for a walk. When he was younger, he had a tendency to wander. He'd get lost in the neighborhood. Once, he decided to take the Beagle for a walk, and on that walk, he gave it away to a couple of strangers. "I don't need this anymore," he told them. They were perplexed, but this guy seemed intent on abandoning the dog, so they took the leash and went on their way.
His wife saw the dog walking with the strangers on her drive home. It wasn't hard for her to piece together what had happened. Thankfully they were happy to give it back. Sue loves that dog.
* * *
Some things we accept, move on, never question. Others require occasional reminding, and some require all-day every-day outright effort.
After this fall's ice storm knocked out their power in New Hampshire, Sue took Joe and the dog to their friends' house to stay a few days until electricity was restored.
The few days turned into a week and a half.
These friends, Bonnie and Harold, they'd kept in touch with Sue and Joe since high school but they really weren't all that close. Still, in an ice storm with an elderly dog and a terminally forgetful husband, you take your kindness where you can find it. At least their friendship made up for in duration what it lacked in intimacy.
Joe and Bonnie had even gone to Senior Prom together.
Their friendship was being tested by the second day. The house had a guest bedroom, but Sue and Joe had not slept in the same room for years, and doing it now would confuse the living shit out of him. So Joe was installed in the bedroom while Sue stretched out on the living room sofa. She scattered her clothes and cosmetics around her, bringing a refugee camp feel to the living room.
By the third day, Bonnie was suggesting they be careful around one another. "I know you need to be here and I'm happy to help you, but I think it would be best if we respected each other's space and tried to stay out of each other's way when we can."
But Sue was trapped in her friend's house and unused to sitting still. As another storm settled in, she decided she was going to make some fudge to give away for Christmas. She set a thick mixture to bubbling on the stove. Heavy snow came down outside, adding insult to the previous storm's injury.
While Sue cooked and watched the flakes come down, their Beagle got into the medicine bag by the sofa and ate all his pills at one go. (I've never known a dog so eager to take his own medicine!) Soon he was whimpering and rolling around on the floor. A call to the vet confirmed that without emergency medical attention, the dog was going to die.
Bonnie doesn't drive, apparently, and she made it clear she didn't want her husband Harold taking the car out in a storm either. But Sue was too distraught over the state of her dog, she said, to drive herself in this weather. So she convinced Harold to take her over Bonnie's objections.
But the fudge! Sue pulled Joe away from the word-search puzzles he uses to pass the time and said, "Joe, the dog is sick and we need to take him to the vet. Harold is going to take me but there is fudge cooking on the stove and I need you to finish making it."
I don't know if she had a recipe book open on the counter or if she just assumed Joe would remember how to make fudge, of all things, when he couldn't remember anything else that had happened in the previous 33 years. Maybe his regular success with instant coffee gave her some encouragements.
Sue and Harold set off. Bonnie went up to her bedroom to fume at Sue and worry about Harold driving in the snow.
Joe was left in the kitchen.
The fire alarm went off half an hour later. Bonnie came down to a kitchen full of smoke and a pan burnt through with a thick layer of what looked like sticky vulcanized rubber bonded to the bottom. Joe was baffled. He clapped his hands over his ears and screamed back at the sound of the alarm.
What it's like to come downstairs and find your prom date of 40 years prior in your disastrous kitchen, I can only imagine.
Harold and Sue were in a car accident on the way back from the veterinary hospital which did some pretty serious damage to the car after all - confirming Bonnie's reservations about driving in the storm.
But at least the dog was saved.
Bonnie decided she wasn't housing the Beagle anymore, though. Sue and Joe were too much to take care of already. The dog was shuffled off to Sue's son Gregory, who, a day later, accidentally left his sliding door open so that the dog escaped. Gregory spent several hours looking for it, until he called the animal shelter to discover that a passing trucker had spotted the dog walking along the highway, picked it up, and brought it in. When the family all finally got together for Christmas dinner and the dog was returned, Gregory told Cheryl about the misadventure with the dog, but nobody told Sue.
All of which makes me realize: you can accept that your husband has a debilitating mental disorder that means you have to care for him and provide for your family entirely by yourself for the rest of your life. You can accept this because you have to, and you can survive and lead a life with a sort of hard routine happiness.
But in a moment of crisis that acceptance can become too hard to maintain, and you'll forget that your husband isn't able to handle the damned fudge.
