No Saints around Here: A Caregiver’s Days

Vanishing Perspective

194 VANISHING PERSPECTIVE June 23 Ayellow banana, a flowery mug, and a white plastic showerhead : picture them on my lavender Formica kitchen counter, carefully arranged so that light from the window above casts just the right luminous shadows. Does this perhaps remind you—if you are a museumgoer— of a Dutch still life? Everyday objects glowing with intensity and color? For me, this still life is an example of vanishing perspective. I am not thinking of an artist’s perspective, which I learned about years ago when I was briefly an art history major. No, this vanishing perspective is mine. Each of these three objects is a reminder to me of how my patience has frayed during these recent months of caregiving. Now I tend to lose perspective on my life at unpredictable times. I move through many of my days in something of a blur. I know my memory is working more or less fine, since I remember my dental appointments, solve occasional obscure clues in the Sunday crossword, and recall my deceased Aunt Clara’s middle name (Otelia), but sometimes I find it hard to remember what happened yesterday. Most days are very much alike, differing perhaps in whether I need to go to the grocery store or not, escape vanishing perspective 195 for a bike ride or a walk, empty the garbage, or do another load of laundry. I recently read an essay about caregiving in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Katy Butler, the writer, cited a 2007 study of the DNA of family caregivers of people with Alzheimer ’s disease. “The ends of the caregivers’ chromosomes, called telomeres,” she noted, “had degraded enough to reflect a four-toeight -year shortening of lifespan.” I think I can envision my own telomeres looking like ragged seaweed swaying underwater, their fringed tops ready to break apart with the next turbulent wave. (Will they soon wash ashore and rot?) Maybe my degraded telomeres are causing my loss of perspective. I need to get it back. That is why I try to picture that banana, mug, and showerhead. First, the banana. I could not continue without help, but I have not had my house to myself for three years. Helpers come and go, using my refrigerator (essential if they are staying through lunch), snacking (with my permission) on anything left on the counter, showering , leaving used drinking glasses or toothbrushes here and there. Someone who isn’t such a solitude-loving person wouldn’t mind much. But me? Sometimes—well, take the banana. I eat a banana every morning with my Cheerios. Once in a while, I vary my breakfast, but mostly I reach for that banana (and a handful of sliced almonds, plus any berries I’ve stashed away). A morning banana is essential. When James and I rented vacation apartments or cottages, he understood we’d have to find a supermarket if I was running out of bananas. Maybe we all have our little dependencies. A morning banana is one of mine. Before my kind stepson Frank leaves after his weekly overnight vigil with his father, he usually fixes himself breakfast. One morning not long ago, I wandered into the kitchen after my own breakfast (I was on duty then, and Frank had slept late), and I saw Frank peeling a banana and popping it into his mouth. Just the vanishing perspective 196 day before, I had made a grocery run, and I had carefully calculated how many bananas I’d need for the next four or five days. Was Frank eating one of those bananas? I refrained from comment. He was doing me an immense favor by giving up one night a week. I could surely spare him a banana. But, I thought grumpily, this meant I’d have to go back to the store a day earlier than planned. On a Saturday. I hate shopping on Saturdays. As Frank prepared to leave for his office, he gathered up his belongings from the front hall. They included satchels of newly washed laundry and several paper bags of groceries. Temporarily living in a rented room (during a divorce), he liked to do a week’s worth of cooking in my kitchen and then store his one-dish meals in his office. Kitchen and laundry facilities were little enough for me to provide. But this morning I was brooding about that banana. Then I saw a bunch...