{"id":5149,"date":"2015-03-18T22:56:11","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T02:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=5149"},"modified":"2015-09-26T16:16:06","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T20:16:06","slug":"in-the-darkest-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=5149","title":{"rendered":"In the Darkest Place"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theme Songs Page<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Previous Theme Song<\/a>\u00a0| Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n

In the Darkest Place<\/h2>\n

\"In<\/a><\/p>\n

In the Darkest Place<\/em>, by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello, sung by Elvis Costello (1998), encountered 1998<\/h3>\n

Buy it here<\/a> | Available on Spotify | See it here<\/a> | Lyrics here<\/a> | Sheet music here<\/a><\/p>\n

The call interrupted a happy moment. On a Veterans\u2019 Day evening, I had just come out of an enjoyable dinner meeting of the county bar association. My cellphone rang. I don\u2019t even remember who\u00a0 was on the other end \u2013 maybe Mother, maybe one of her friends. My stepfather had fallen and was in the hospital.\u00a0This time he was\u00a0in serious danger.<\/p>\n

Dug In, Shut In<\/h3>\n

No great surprise there. He\u2019d been in awful health for years, especially since a fall he\u2019d had in 1977. He had the classic health threats of his generation, too, alcoholism and tobacco addiction. Still, he had beaten a lot in his 76 years, and even, recently, tolerated an amputated foot (lost to diabetes he didn\u2019t acknowledge at the time but I\u2019d suspected). He had remained grimly optimistic, notwithstanding. \u201cI expect to die an old, old man,\u201d he\u2019d told me. \u201cNever in good health, but old.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d always been skeptical. When the foot had come off, his emphysema had been so bad, he couldn\u2019t draw the air into his lungs necessary for the exertion of getting around on a prosthesis. He lived in a house with stairs to get into and out of, and stairs to get to the bedroom to the living room, so it was a catastrophe for his mobility. And it was a catastrophe in the delicate synergy by which he and my mother managed to stay independent. Her cognitive powers and hearing were fading, and even with his physical strength being none the best, he had still been able to do various things for the two of them. Now he was essentially an invalid, and had had to move downstairs to the study, putting additional strain on my mother, who really wasn\u2019t up to bearing it; her friends had had to become far more involved, bless them. A man whose great love was world travel and who in his youth had been noted for his grace as a dancer was now basically a crippled shut-in.<\/p>\n

I had done what the adult kids always do in such situations: begged them to move to a senior living facility where they would have support and company and no stairs, preferably somewhere near me, their only child. I had been stonewalled by both of them. It wasn\u2019t a matter of money; they could have afforded it. I never received a satisfactory explanation, but I suspect the root cause was a realization by both of them that my mother lacked the mental and my stepdad the physical ability to pack and do the logistics of a move. But probably there was also just some codger cussedness at work.<\/p>\n

That Vertiginous Feeling<\/h3>\n

In any case, coming off the call, I promised I\u2019d make my way to Michigan the next day or possibly the day after (my calendar and my memory both fail me on this point).[1] And then I let myself feel it a little: that vertiginous \u201cthis is really happening\u201d feeling that comes when you realize that things are going very badly, very badly in a life-changing way.<\/p>\n

Whichever morning it was when Mary dropped me off at the airport, I was oppressed by that feeling. By now, as I\u2019ve written elsewhere in these pages, I had had some experience in shooting life\u2019s rapids, but that training wasn\u2019t entirely helpful in maintaining my composure here. What I\u2019d learned from experience was to tell myself things like nobody\u2019s dying<\/em> as I confronted whatever lesser crisis I encountered. The trouble was,\u00a0on this occasion, I was pretty sure somebody I did not want to lose was<\/em> dying.<\/p>\n

First Aid<\/h3>\n

My instinctive mode of first aid for myself in these situations throughout life had been to get myself some kind of treat, to cut life\u2019s bitter taste. I did that here; there were a few minutes before the flight, which I took advantage of to stop by the music store on the concourse and buy myself the CD \u2013 in those days one traveled with a tiny portable CD player \u2013 of Painted from Memory<\/em>, the recent if unlikely album collaboration of Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello. (I\u2019d seen the movie Grace of My Heart<\/em>, a song from which, God Give Me Strength<\/em>,<\/a>\u00a0was the germ of the album<\/a>, and I\u2019d loved it.) The album proved to be an excellent choice for what I was about to face, though not in the way I\u2019d been expecting. Instead of making an effort to cheer, the songs almost unremittingly take you to a dark place where relationships end.<\/p>\n

And that was indeed exactly where I was about to go in my life: where relationships end. Admittedly, this was to be an ending of a different sort from the kind Bacharach and Costello were making music about. Nobody had cheated on anybody, which seemed to be a frequent theme in these songs. My stepdad, Ernie Gohn, had been extraordinarily faithful to me, as best he could be with his addictions and other issues, in the forty-four years we had been family. It had not my choice to lose my much loved birth father\u2019s last name, but I could never be ashamed of bearing my equally loved stepfather\u2019s. When I used the word \u201cFather\u201d as a name in conversation, Ernest Gohn was the person I was referring to. I shall do so now.<\/p>\n

I was extraordinarily fortunate that one of the friends who had rallied around my parents so kindly during my parents\u2019 last years together was Kathleen, a nurse. I knew I could not count on Mother to give me a useful accounting of Father\u2019s medical status. But when I got to Ann Arbor, I met not only with Mother but with Kathleen. Briefly, what had happened was that, while trying to shift himself from his bed to his wheelchair, Father had fallen and was unconscious on the floor. As near as anyone could tell, the fall was the result of his unconsciousness, not its cause. Apparently his brain had largely shut down. He had awoken briefly in the hospital to which he had been taken, to observe to my mother: \u201cThey do things very well.\u201d (Probably meaning the staff at the hospital; if so, as a veteran of so many medical interventions there, he could speak with authority.) Then he lapsed into unconsciousness again.<\/p>\n

Kathleen warned me that Father was being kept alive by machines and artificially fed. I was going to have to help Mother make a decision. And I knew immediately what kind of decision I was going to have to help her make.<\/p>\n

Seeing for Myself<\/h3>\n

Shortly thereafter, I drove Mother to the hospital to see for myself. When they ushered me into Father\u2019s room, I found him lying in bed with ugly tubes covering his face, looking fatigued even through his unconsciousness. Monitors were relaying information about respiration and heartbeat. I believe Mother said something about our needing to pray really hard, and my immediate reaction was that we were well beyond prayer already. I also had a visceral reaction against the tubes covering his face. Although I thought it extremely unlikely that he was sentient enough to mind them at all, I minded them. They struck me as an affront to his dignity; I know it makes no sense, but that\u2019s what I felt.<\/p>\n

My recollection is also a bit hazy about whether we met with the doctor that day or the next day or even the day after that, but if I had to bet I\u2019d say it was that day. Whenever it happened, the meeting with the doctor was one of the things that stands out most vividly. He was wearing a brown suit and a bowtie, and was tall enough so that he loomed over Mother and me. He was struggling to describe Father\u2019s situation in layman\u2019s terms. Cirrhosis, kidney failure, diabetes, emphysema, and brain damage were the principal things I grasped. Father was not going to emerge from his coma.<\/p>\n

Mother, who could be thick, if pardonably so on this occasion, and who also very literally believed in miracles, seemed not to be taking in what the doctor was obviously telling us. At last she blurted out: \u201cIs there no hope?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo hope at all,\u201d the doctor said, with maybe a hint of irritation in his voice. Mother had been making it hard for him to get the message across, and he may have been taking the slightest bit of pleasure in twisting the knife in the wound.<\/p>\n

That silenced Mother. I asked what our options were. As I figured, they were to keep Father going in a vegetative state or to pull the plug. And having taken that in, we left, agreeing that we would talk it over and come back on the morrow.<\/p>\n

Losses<\/h3>\n

I remember going back to the house and cleaning up the blood from where Father fell in the study-turned-bedroom. Unfortunately, this was not my first task of this nature connected with the care of Father. I\u2019d been back on another occasion (before he\u2019d been stuck on the ground floor) when something in his gut had ruptured, and on that occasion there had been blood all over the upstairs bathroom. My mother, in her not-quite-there way, had not been able to undertake the cleanup, and it had fallen to me. But now I was thinking this was enough.<\/p>\n

Was I thinking about myself? Partly, of course. I didn\u2019t want this repulsive work anymore. But mostly I was thinking of Father. Even if it could have been possible to bring him back, this was no life for a world traveler and great dancer. Whether it was God or oblivion that awaited him, either alternative beat what he could expect here.<\/p>\n

The one for whom Father\u2019s death would be an unmitigated disaster would be Mother. Their relationship was a peculiar one in many ways, but no one could doubt her devotion to Father, or his to her. What she would lose when she lost him would be profound and incalculable.<\/p>\n

Again, there are holes in my memory, but I\u2019m sure that when I left Mother that night to return to my hotel, I left a woman who was heartbroken but holding that heartbreak at arm\u2019s length for one more night. We agreed, I recall, that we would put off any decisions until the next day.<\/p>\n

I left for a hotel rather than staying at the house for two reasons. First, unless I wanted to bunk down with Mother or in the alternative sleep in Father\u2019s bed, there was no bed for me. Second, I had for some years avoided sleeping there when I visited. Mother\u2019s degeneration had left her hostessing skills in tatters. She could not reliably provide sheets and towels, and breakfast preparation would predictably take an hour. Nor was this a matter of me lazily demanding service when I could do it myself. Where all the sheets and towels had gone was a mystery I could never solve, and Mother would not hear of me going into the kitchen to fix breakfast. In pity for my children and Mary \u2013 and myself \u2013 I had decided everyone\u2019s sanity would be served by my staying at a hotel I liked. And that always had continued to seem like a wise choice.<\/p>\n

Nor Did He<\/h3>\n

I know I played the Bacharach and Costello disc later that night in my hotel room. The mournfulness of the music felt like a relief. I might pray as my mother was praying, but I knew what I had to do the next day, and I knew that God was not going to spare me from doing it.<\/p>\n

Nor did He.<\/p>\n

The next day, back at the hospital, I found myself in a conference room with Mother and others whom I cannot recall. Even with the doctor\u2019s advice, Mother couldn\u2019t wrap her mind around the dilemma facing us, the dilemma that really wasn\u2019t a dilemma, since there was no hope of reviving him.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t think of many things more wretched than to tell someone that yes, they really do have to pull the plug on the person they love best. And tell them and tell them, because they are mentally challenged, in denial, possessed of religious beliefs that question worldly science and logic in such matters, and desperately frightened. But sometimes you have to keep at it, even so. Was I persisting because I needed my own relief from this dilemma-that-wasn\u2019t? Oh, yes, I know I was. But I trust Mother\u2019s welfare was uppermost in my mind. And Father\u2019s too. He needed to get on with the business of dying; I knew he did, though he could neither feel nor know that need. It was time for his poor tired body to shut down.<\/p>\n

I cannot tell you the words any of us used. But Mother eventually relented. I think she asked for one more night, but the fight had gone out of her.<\/p>\n

Saying Goodbye<\/h3>\n

I believe it was the following day we came back, just Mother and I and Kathleen, to finish it. I think they\u2019d already taken the feeding tube out, and we could see Father\u2019s face properly. Then Mother, sitting across the bed from me, launched into one of the most amazing goodbyes I have ever heard. Talking directly to Father, in the conviction he could still in some fashion hear and understand, she told him all the things about their marriage that had been wonderful to her. I would give a great deal to have had a recording of that speech. I remember her mentioning the parties they had given and the trips they had taken together, and the friends they had shared. It went on for a long time, a very detailed list, unique to Mother\u2019s and Father\u2019s experiences, almost a history of their lives together. At the end, it was evident that in saying goodbye to all of that, Mother was saying goodbye to her own life in most ways. With her dementia, she wasn\u2019t that clear about much, but she obviously grasped that nothing much good was ever going to happen to her again, and she would never have anyone to share it with as she had had with Father.<\/p>\n

Then the nurse undid some other connection, and very soon the monitors made it clear Father was sinking. I think it went on for about an hour and a half. Eventually he flatlined.<\/p>\n

I burst out in tears, embraced Kathleen and my mother, and went out into the hall to call Mary. I know I spent some time crying on the phone to her.<\/p>\n

Yet even then, to be honest, I was holding some realization away from myself, using my misery to hold off even greater misery. I had had to do that, to begin with, in arguing with Mother that we had to let Father go. And I had to go on doing it now, in all sorts of ways. The Bacharach and Costello CD was a lifesaver in that regard. The music beguiled the ears: spectacularly lush, vintage Bacharach orchestration with lots of the signature staccato flugelhorn licks. Costello\u2019s voice and lyrics perfectly combined to chart various courses of romantic misery. I could focus on them, suck out the pleasure, and feel subtly, not overwhelmingly miserable.<\/p>\n

Fighting Misery With Misery<\/h3>\n

In the Darkest Place<\/em> was an excellent example:<\/p>\n

In the darkest place<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m lost<\/em><\/p>\n

I have abandoned every hope<\/em><\/p>\n

Maybe you’ll understand<\/em><\/p>\n

I must<\/em><\/p>\n

Shut out the light<\/em><\/p>\n

Your eyes adjust<\/em><\/p>\n

They’ll never be the same<\/em><\/p>\n

You know I love you so<\/em><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start again<\/em><\/p>\n

I was starting to see that I would never be the same, but that I could never start again, having been exposed here to some kind of loss I was not going to recover from entirely, although there was still a large part of my mind that was youthful enough to reject the notion of my own vulnerability. And paradoxically, this music, by embracing misery but not too much, helped on both sides of the dialectic.<\/p>\n

I got through the next two weeks that way: the arranging a mausoleum-site, putting together a funeral mass service, helping to hold Mother together. I could not have done it without my family, without my parents\u2019 friends and my own, and without this music.[2]<\/p>\n

___________<\/p>\n

[1] I think that by coincidence I had already purchased a ticket to visit the next weekend but one, for his 76th<\/sup> birthday. However, I believe that the tickets I purchased to get to Michigan at this juncture were separate. I think I used the birthday tickets to get back there for the funeral.<\/p>\n

[2] This is not the place to write a tribute to my stepfather. I have written about him in pieces I hope to post on this site after my Theme Songs are covered.<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn, except for cover art<\/p>\n

Theme Songs Page<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Previous Theme Song<\/a>\u00a0| Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What I\u2019d learned from experience was to tell myself things like nobody\u2019s dying as I confronted whatever lesser crisis I encountered. The trouble was, on this occasion, I was pretty sure somebody I did not want to lose was dying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,968],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closeup","category-theme-songs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5149"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5573,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5149\/revisions\/5573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}