The Fourth Turning

It seems like there is a constant churning, yet for all the waves, the boat has moved very little.

I am embroiled, as usual, in justice skirmishes. Many legal. Many the same, carried on from year to year. Sometimes substituting new faces in the same conflict; sometimes still with the same faces. It’s true that my “business,” to what degree it might be called such, is an unusually litigious one. It’s also true that this town is particularly prone to various kinds of defaults. Still, it’s not a time sink I really relish. And it does keep me from the substance of matters. I aspire to resolve most things by mid-2024 – I know that it’s far, but the wheels turn slowly and I am not completely efficient. Maybe not even partially.

My mother, with whom I had a complicated and unresolved relationship, died in late March. That has been punctuated by the death of my grandmother, just a few weeks ago. I do find myself cast in The Gift of the Magi, coming into inheritances I didn’t know I had coming. A funny thing, to be in a laden ship which is adrift.

I feel a peculiar combination of anxious, depressed sad, hysterical sad, and a fair dollop of being in trouble. I suppose that’s my usual fall flavor, but it’s amplified. A kind of bad trip spice latte.

I had planned a big surprise party for my grandmother’s 97th. In an abstract way, it was likely to be a last one – at least, at home. You of course can reasonably say that at 97, death is not unexpected, really. But although she had gotten a bit frail and just a bit too forgetful to probably continue living alone with the limited support we could get, she was actually quite fine. She did still live alone. She had trouble imprinting new memories and lost track of days, but she wasn’t time locked like people think of in dementia: she knew everyone, including herself. She just wasn’t sure if she’d eaten earlier. And so we had the party, and she seemed to be unusually tired, but still charming. And the next day, she died. It was unexpected, for me. Sudden.

In some ways, I can appreciate the silver lining. I had spent the day visiting nursing homes to try to find something that could be okay. They’re not. None of them. In one place, they kind of insisted she’d have to go on a memory ward, although I didn’t know why, and it frightened me. It was like an asylum. I couldn’t imagine leaving her in a place like that. As it was, she never had to leave home. Never had to make the decisions about which essential items to pare her life down to in order to fit into a shared room. Never had to deal with the pervasive smell of pee or the undisguised machinery in what is supposed to be a personal space. It would have been awful for her, and I am glad I did not have to be the author of that particular ending.

But in many ways, I can only carry the anguish of my choices on that day. A day spent running around while she was left in daycare – and apparently, left alone in a room by herself most of the day. By the time I picked her up, it was too late. I could have picked her up earlier. I could have spent the day with her. I didn’t. I picked her up, saw that something was amiss, took her to the hospital, and then it was done.

Sometime I think the next day, I was standing in the kitchen, shell shocked. I noticed that the kitchen clock had stopped. Then I was stunned – it was stopped at exactly the time they’d called it in the ER. No joke. I have the picture. To the minute. It kinda scared me, even though I’m sure it was not meant in any kind of negative way. She was bonded to that house in a way I may never understand being bonded to a place.

I hadn’t imagined that I would keep the house. Now it seems imperative. It’s not necessarily a best business decision, although it’s not a bad one; there’s equity in it, just not a big margin, given work I’d want to do. But it’s definitely emotional more than rational. I discovered that as much contempt as I had about the notion of having to go “home,” the fact remained that I could. There was always a literal place I could return to, and be welcome, no matter how much it might feel like an oppressive embrace, or abject failure. My grandmother and her house have always been there: I am not ready to let the place, both physical and symbolic, go.

My mother’s condo is a completely different story. I had never been there before a couple of years ago, and I’ve only been there a few times even now. I am not a condo fan. They were chain smokers, so you cannot get that smell out. The layout is not great. But, it’s in a great market. It has specs which give it legs. So, I will make it as beautiful as possible and sit on it, to see what happens. After all, since money is supposed to become virtually worthless, I may as well sink it into tangibles.

Meanwhile, my little house here continues to be plagued with parasites. I have yet to break even on it, in terms of income: my lost revenues are almost double what capital I have in it. For a moment, the property values here surged and so I had some good equity; but now they’ve ebbed and so it’s not as great. Once I get the current set of ticks out, maybe finding a viable course out will present.

And the triplex. Well. Perpetual.