“Just curing despondency, mam”

Our little Christmas tree sits in an empty room. It's tiny lights shine peacefully for no one. Our Vicky sits in a hospital room. Her uncomprehending propensity wishes to be with her Christmas tree, to gaze at it's peaceful tiny lights, to be at home where the familiar offers an anchor for the mind.

So us being somewhat impulsive, we pack up that little Christmas tree in a wimpy green garbage bag and head off across the street, that avenue which divides the scourge of Winterpeg from the upper class elites who perambulate the halls of the elixirs of the gods. Down through the maze of snaking tunnels who entangle a labyrinth of vents and pipes and cables which amazingly find their way to a destination where their usefulness is appreciated we saunter, ever wary of those security guys in their speedy little go carts who roam these subterranes, ever on the watch for infidels carrying wimpy green garbage bags.

We artfully circumvent capture to reach the fountainhead of elevator clamour and are whisked up to the fourth floor of one of the towers of respite where our Vicky desponds. Luckily the nursing station is deserted as we sneak down the long hall to the end room. Safely in the room our Vicky sees us and grins from ear to ear. She would think something was terribly wrong if we weren't up to some sort of misadventure, so it is no surprise as we unveil her little Christmas tree, setting it nobly on her window ledge and of course, we have to plug it in.

Now let us consider a generalized impulse control model for controlling a process governed by a stochastic state of affairs. The controller can only choose a parameter of the probability distribution of the consequence of his control action which is therefor random. There may be undesired results relating to the input scenarios of quasi-variational inequalities. These results will be a viscosity solution of the quasi-variational inequalities which could lead to unforeseen developments.

So, we plugged in that little Christmas tree and for a moment it shone so peacefully lighting up our Vicky's smiling face. The room grew peaceful as the angels of heaven all smiled their love down from above. But there began a wee murmur from the bed beside us. It grew, horribly. Panic and fear gripped the environs. It is said the screams were heard through the concrete floors far up above. Ever heard of christougenniatiko dentrophobia, that ghastly fear of misshapen Christmas tree branches casting long twisted shadows and clutching at you with prickly needle-like fingers: pine pitch, bone-white dried fir, and spruce tar with opoponax and blackened tobacco, who knew?

Well. Some quasi form of virtual reality must not be adhered to when life takes such a turn. We must grasp that impulse control model by the horns and create a rock solid scenario of face saving developments a little less viscid. To be loaded on board along with our peaceful little Christmas tree on a speedy little go cart and hauled off to the remotest corner of the subterranes to be thrown nonchalantly into the dungeons sealed from media and artful lawyers was not our cup of tea. Yes, we opened that window wide and dropped that peaceful little Christmas tree four stories to it's demise before you could blink your eye. When the matrons arrived we were calmly seated beside our Vicky comforting her anxious outpourings with a hug. Impetuousness jilted we went discerningly back to curing despondency one little smile at a time.

Of waifs and sanctimonious socialists

Conniving waifs. Them pointy little ears. Always adorning that sweet coif covering a brilliantly tufty coiffure. Wicked beady little eyes smirking out from hilariously bushy wrens nest eyebrows. Mystery of mysteries, how can mouths outwit themselves with lies heaped upon lies, deceit drooling from lips parched with the thirst for who knows what? Attention, scorn, ridicule, rapture? To crawl into bed at night knowing full well everyone you encumbered upon thought the less of you, my what a trip.

Must have been the upbringing we surmise. Negligent caregivers no doubt, allowed their five year old to roam the streets till the wee hours of morning, never a loaf of bread in the cupboard, supper only if someone was sober enough to cook. Created a spot of independence early on it did, that knack for shirking the grasp of child agencies in a land overflowing with sanctimonious socialists. Slipped through the cracks we sigh in hindsight, pass a few new laws and all will be well.

Is it freedom that is yearned for? To blatantly lie about everything in a legalitarianly correct society, heaping scorn and ridicule on oneself for posthumous amusement. That feeling that you screwed up totally everything in your life, leaving that empty feeling inside, no friends, no one caring the less at your burial. All in pursuit of that self image, unattainable dreams of a hardened compulsive. And then to laugh at it all. What masochists.

We create, us gods of human virtue. We create the valued and the admonished and the somewhere in between. We wheedle our unconscious pecking order loosed upon us by our hairy ancestors, we undermine the mesmerics of equality. Our esteemed values, ethical undulations of our kinky civilized thought, hiding in closets those obsessions which are too flagrant for social media, we are the perfect judges of our fellows. Speak not, and no one will hear. Use sticky notes.

Does Mr. Sun shine on you? Does he roast your skin with barbaric tan lines? Open up your lives to the gods of plenty, let the deceit drool from your lips that you may value the full encumbrance of freedom, the freedom to express the naughtiness of that five year old roaming the streets at 2 am. Piss in the gutter once or twice, then crawl into bed unencumbered by your deceit. Show up for work at noon, and just smile, willfully. Touch base with the nations downtrodden. Just smile away.

Express yourselves. Delve into the world of symbolism. Let those lies pour out their potency. Adorn that sweet coif covering a brilliantly tufty coiffure. Hum away your national anthem. Enjoy life. Those waifs will enjoin your presence in the park at midnight, although they may be somewhat underhanded in the expression. Catch a falling star. Be a waif.

We may sort of wonder what on earth we just esoterically obscured in the above conundrum. To make things perfectly clear, in our search for moral bedrock, when Mount Olympus erodes into the seas and the gods search for a new universe to call home, the waifs and sanctimonious socialists of yesteryear will be wandering the great halls of heavenly tablets searching and searching and forever searching.

I don't know anymore

I don't know anymore. She wakes me up. She wakes me up anytime she wakes up. In the middle of the night I hear “Len, Len, Len”. “Yes Vicky” I venture in my sleep. I know if I don't get up and give her a hug and rub her back and fix her black TV (I don't know why those damned networks can't show their pics on the whole screen instead of half the screen in the middle which makes it all black around the outside which my Vicky can't comprehend, I don't know), I know she'll keep calling “Len, Len”.

She wakes me up in the morning, at five and thirty. “Len, Len” I hear. “Are you getting up?” If I don't answer, which is most of the time because consciousness does not stir that quickly, she comes shuffling to my bed. Poke, poke, “Len, are you getting up? Len, it's time to get up!” poke, poke. Then it's the old pull the blankets off Len trick. That's just plain irritating when your cozy warm and half asleep. I don't know anymore. So we get to the kitchen, we set her down in her chair. “Len, Len” she says, scared as I venture off to get her morning meds. “I'll be right back” I mumble, mumble mumble to myself mostly. I don't know anymore.

We sit here, us personas, trying to type a few words between “Len, Len” and getting up to give some much needed assurance with a hug and a little back rub in her increasingly confusing world. “Len”. “Yes”, as she points towards us. “It's your ear”, or “It's your glasses”, or “It's your knee”. “Yes we say” as we tweak our mentioned body part. That need for acknowledgement, a mind bent on attention. I don't know anymore. Time for some distraction by manufacturing some breakfast. “Are you having some too?” she asks worriedly as I give her an orange neatly sliced into six chunks in a little bowl. “Yes, yes” we say as we point to ours on the other side of the table.

The cats are better at this than we are, us personas. Shucks, she can chuck them off the bed and two seconds latter they're cuddled back up beside her, all forgiven and forgotten. That's just their mom, they've adapted to her ways.

Her leg swells up. It's happened before. They ran a million tests, nothing showed up, it mended on it's own. We take her to her doc, does ultrasound, shows baker's cyst, leg improves. Her arm swells up, bad, lots of ouches. What shall we do? I don't know. We phone her docs, no one can see her for three days. In three days her arm improves, a doc gives her water pills. Next day she's quarterbacking for the Blue Bombers. I don't know anymore.

We tried Home Care, mostly we needed a break. They did their assessment. We were doing just fine they surmised. Recommended a senior's day care, half a day a week, bus would pick her up, had to take her meds on her own though, good luck, better hide your garbage cans. She refused to go anyway, wasn't going to no old folks day care, she wasn't. I don't know anymore.

Grocery shopping day is a joy. We can't push a wheelie chair and a grocery cart at the same time so she uses the grocery cart as a walker and off we trot. She gets a tad tired now and then so we find some convenient cases of straying commodities to settle her down upon for a minute. Take her to the back of the store and make our way to the front, leaving her at the main artery to await our plucking from the cross aisles. So long as she can see us, no panic. You got to watch out for those roving family groupies though, grandparents with hordes of moms and kids and shopping carts can certainly fog the view. Employees with those towering dollies of Cherry Coke can do the same. It's the chance you take, not? Lose a wife much? Found her wandering the parking lot once, never used the checkout, she didn't, cart full of groceries. I don't know anymore.

How long can someone look after a person like this? I just don't know anymore. We asked our doc. Somewhat of a fuzzy answer he forthcame with, an answer bordering on vagueness articulating ambiguity and generality with an emphasis on many-valued logic, supervaluationism and contextualism. Seems like there is no cut and dry time line to the disposition of dementia. In the end it makes little consequence to the inductees as to who feeds and shelters them, so long as they feel well disposed of. So we asked our Vicky “Do you feel well disposed of?” “Yes” says she quietly with that all knowing grin. Well. I just don't know anymore.

Does anyone know? Who knows. I know I don't know.