Insomnia is my middle name. I spent about 32 years in broadcasting, most of them in Houston. Working in a major market is the goal, but it comes at a cost. I worked varying shifts….overnights, early mornings, middays, weekends and horrendously long shifts, often during severe weather and disasters, both of which H-Town is well acquainted. The problem with this is the havoc is wreaks on ones circadian rhythms (sleep patterns). I was awake when I should have been sleeping: asleep when my body naturally wanted to be awake. It’s a very difficult habit to break….even nine years post retirement. I’ve been up for 48 hours before. It is hellish. Your mind can’t shut down and relentlessly spins and spins like a roulette wheel gone rogue.
I’ve seriously contemplated asking Pfizer to make Halcion tabs in a convenient apple size that I could just bite into. Hell, I’d settle for communal Ambien salt-lick, Covid be damned.
But since I have no plans to run for office and be vetted (and believe me, a mere five minutes into any kind of vetting, aspects of my past would rear their ugly heads and my political career would be over before it could even begin. As it is, I’m fairly certain some smart ass Tweets have me on a few special lists., But I want to be honest: I’ve had issues with pills before and while that’s no longer the problem it was, I don’t want to risk this type of potential recidivism, so I sleep when and where I can. I try to tell people that the dark purplish sleep deprived circles under my eyes are a new eye shadow application straight from the runways of Milan.
I recently wrote about my mother’s agonizing waltz towards mortality, thanks to a recent hemorrhagic stroke and dementia….and the fact that she is also 90 years old completes the tragic trifecta.. And then, in the midst of another stretch of insomnia with 3:00 am infomercials subbing for human contact-slash-background noise, I learn through perusing the web that a college boyfriend died in early November.
Good old Larry.
We were together for a little over a year, back when shoulder pads and huge, helium infused hair were all the rage. We broke up for reasons I won’t bore you with, but it wasn’t pleasant. I don’t mean to sound arrogant or conceited by what I’m about to say, but Larry loved more than I loved him. Much more. In fact, he was a bit obsessed with me, and remained so almost 25 years after breaking up…even though he was married with children. But my friends, I want to make something abundantly clear: I avoid extra marital territory at all costs. I will never do to another woman or child what was done to me. Besides, I never shared his level of emotion to even contemplate that kind of involvement. My ego didn’t demand it. My heart simply didn’t want it.
He finally got the message in 2011, right before I retired. He apologized for what could be construed as decades of minor stalking, he wished me a good life and hung up.
And now, he’s dead.
I was shocked to read his obituary.. There was no cause of death mentioned, but it included a video and it was painful to see how he declined physically as he aged. He was a few years older and even though we’re AARP material, his decline looked more ill+health related than just all the requisite wrinkles, sags and creases one normally accrues after making 63 trips around the sun.
I hate it for his wife, his kids and the grandchildren I learned he had. I hope they can walk through this storm. It isn’t easy. Trust me, I know.
So far, I’ve lost three men with whom I had serious relationships. One of the them, a man I truly loved once is now gay and fighting a sexual assault charge. He physically came on to a man he didn’t know in the parking lot of a very public business in broad daylight. The old journalist in me insists on including using the word “allegedly”, but I read the police report and the court filing, so……there’s that.
And those were just the men I knew biblically. Since 2000, I’ve had good friend and close co-workers drop like bird shit in Central Park. Cancer, strokes, dementia, heart attacks, overdoses, diabetic complications, cirrhosis, AIDS, one suspected suicide, maybe a car accident or two. .I can’t even remember the specifics. I don’t mean to sound cavalier, I really don’t. All these men touched my life in more ways than I can count. It’s just that you get to point when this kind of bad news comes so often, you get a bit jaded….shocked that you’re not more shocked, you’re emotional over not feeling the loss more with emotion.
It’s all part of the process of aging. Comes with the territory. After a while, the how’s and when’s and where’s don’t matter. But the why’s do. And that’s the one question out of the four that can’t be answered. Oh yeah, cancer may have been the culprit, and while difficult, it’s understandable. If severe enough, if progressed enough, any disease can and will kill you. But you just want to know in the celestial scheme of things, why it had to happen beyond the obvious causalities such as smoking, eating red M&Ms prior to the 80’s or living near Chernobyl.
Why? And therein lies the rough.
I’m not afraid of death, but I’m terrified of dying. Whatever lead poor Larry to his grave saddens and scares as much as his actual death. It’s the process of dying that makes me shudder and contributes to my inability to sleep at night. But it’s an inevitability. We’re all mortal and someday, sooner maybe later, we’ll all take that final breath. Perhaps, it’s morbid but I’m at the place in life where I wonder about the specifics of my inscription in the Book of Life (ספר החיים), if I’m even inscribed at all. When will I die? What will I think about when I take my last breath? Who will I be thinking about? Will I have regrets? Well, I’m Catholic so let’s assume THAT’S a yes, How will I die?
But more importantly, when that time comes, will I have enough consciousness to think that the life I’m about to lose, was worth it and well lived? Did I do enough to help others or make a difference in anyone’s life? Was I generous? Was I kind? Were the Monica Lewinsky’s stained blue dress or John Bobbit jokes at 6:27 in the morning a bit much? Was I generally speaking, a good person? At the very least, was I good enough?
I guess the advantage I have is that I can actually do something about the answers to those questions now.
I might be a Calvinist’s nightmare, but I believe Free Will and fate can co-exist under the same steeple, temple or minaret. We can choose to temper what we can’t completely change by righting any wrongs in our lives and by saying the things that need to be said. There are times when standing by a headstone and spilling one’s guts and saying I love you or that you wounded me really only works one way. Sometimes we need to say things and have others actually hear what we have to say. The “you hurt me’s” or as important as all the “I love you”s”. So, are the “I’m sorry’s” and “I forgive you’s”.
And on that note, the Protestants have asking for forgiveness so easy. You can go directly to The Big Guy and ask for it at any place, at any time. We Catholics have to go through a mediator who took an oath of poverty and chastity. What does that have to do with anything? Nothing really, but as for sacrament itself? I mean, think about it,….in a way, it takes some real chutzpah to be able to confess your sins to another human being, someone you know in some cases and while the anonymous confessionals still exist, more and more Catholics are opting for face to face requests for contrition. Oh, hell I don’t know. Perhaps it’s all semantics because when you get down to it, confession is of kind is sort of a zero sum game…ultimately.
So, clear your conscious, absolve yourself by yourself, ask God to do it or ask Father O’Malley, Rabbi Abromowitz or Mullah Omar to intercede. Just do it while you still can. Time is the one thing you can ill afford to waste. So go for it,. Ask, beg, grovel, prounounce. Whatever gets you through the night and for me, one consisting of eight to ten righteous hours of deep, uninterrupted REM sleep would be devine.
And Divine.
