The Cash Dream
My wife and I were in this big indoor shopping area. Had a tidy flea market vibe to it. She worked for someone, managing several different venues. I was helping by collecting cash and paying out.
We came to the day’s end. I was due to turn in the cash and had a huge amount. But I realized that the business cash and my personal cash had become mixed together. I needed to separate it.
To do that, I started going around, looking for a private place to count the money and organize it. The first place I tried, the wind was blowing, threatening to blow the money out of my hands.
Finding a church like building, I went in there. But people watching me knew me and started calling out jokes, disrupting my concentration.
Going off, I found another, small, dark room, but people I knew were also in there.
Exasperated, I left and ran into my wife. She was anxious to finish the day and wanted to know what was going on with the money. I explained the situation and reassured her, I’d get it done soon.
She and I then headed back to the main shop. As I reached there, I found that I’d folded my money with a note, and it was intact, embedded in the larger wad of cash. Problem solved.
With that done, I decided I’d help clean up. I went around with a spray and rag, vigorously wiping things down. My wife’s boss, the owner, a white woman with brown hair, came over and said, “It’s good to see you.” Going on to thank me for my help, she said, “You need to take care of your L energy.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
Pointing to a space on top of my head, she repeated, “Your L energy is right here.”
She got distracted and I moved away.
Later, as I finished cleaning and everyone else finished, the boss/owner made a little speech, thanking everyone for their work, calling out my wife in particular. Then she said to me, “And don’t forget to take care of your L energy.”
Dream end
Aging Reflections: the Balance.
A NYTimes headline scored my attention today:
5 Money Lessons From Readers in the Trenches of Elder-Parent Care
Regular visitors to my blog know that my family have been dealing with my aging mother for years. She’d been living a good life; a fall on some stairs changed that trajectory.
Mom fortunately had a good partner, Frank, as she moved toward her 80s. His drawbacks including increasing deafness, blindness, and being five years older than Mom.
We could see what was coming: Mom would need more and more care. The care would become more and more expensive. Frank would be less and less able to help Mom.
I spoke with Mom about it over the years, advocating to get someone in to help her clean and help her take care of herself. I also kept suggesting that they move into smaller place, such as an assisted living facility or a ‘senior’ community.
Mom resisted most of the suggestions. She didn’t want to leave her house. That home represented her life. She bought it on her own, then got her GED and went to nursing school. Mom opened her home to her grandchildren, taking care of them while my sisters went to school or worked.
I eventually convinced Mom to accept someone coming in and cleaning a few times a week. I paid for it, which helped Mom accept the help. She was also willing let that person in because it was a neighbor and someone she knew.
The arrangement ended when the cleaner suffered cancer and could no longer work. Worse, Mom was falling more often. Her recovery arcs were longer. Each hospital episode left her with more challenges. Yet her will to live was undiminished.
Things took a drastic turn last year. Frank, her partner, fell down the stairs. Hospitalized, he went into a coma and died, 95 years old.
This was devastating for us on multiple fronts and forced Mom’s health from concern to crisis.
Mom tried living alone when Frank was in the hospital and everyone hoped he would recover. Falling, though, Mom couldn’t get up several times and slept on the floor. Cooking was a struggle, so she took shortcuts such as eating sardines with crackers for dinner. She grew thinner and weaker.
My sister took her in. Sis set up a nice space for Mom. Perhaps the biggest drawback was that it was located in my sister’s finished basement. It started out fine but soon devolved into a cold war between Mom and everyone living there. Mom has been vulnerable to UTIs, and we think that was part of the problem.
Mom ended up making suicidal comments. She ended up hospitalized and then in an assisted living place where she does not want to be.
All this is just foreshadowing to me. I’ll be 70 in a few months. My wife is a year younger. One sister is two years older, and another is two years younger. The other two sisters are 8 and 10 years younger than me.
The thing is, even as Mom needs help, all of us are also reaching that point. While I’ve been hospitalized and treated for several issues in the last five years, I’ve rebounded. The same can’t be said for my wife, my sisters, and their husbands.
We’re all facing the same issues that others face in this article: how do we help our parents when we’re crossing the threshold into needing help ourselves?
This is the Silver Tsunami, a term many do not like.
I’ve considered moving to be closer to my sisters and Mom. There are many legitimate excuses for why that hasn’t happened. While our southern Oregon home is ideal for us, the location is not any longer. Just under 1900 square feet, the house is single storied with two bathrooms, and three bedrooms. One bedroom is the home office. This is where we spend our most time, reading, exercising, watching television, on the computer.
The area, though, has been enduring droughts. With the droughts have come water shortages, wildfires, and smoke. As those hit, the local economy has suffered. As a result, Ashland is facing a financial crisis. Adding to that crisis is that two major employers, Southern Oregon University (SOU) and the town’s hospital, Assante Ashland Community Hospital, faced their own crises. Those crises forced them to drawdown in significant ways, with more on the way.
At this point, the future is not ideal. As the article points out, we’re not alone in our problems, both with our own health and aging, but also with helping our parents.
What’s troubling me as much as anything is how the GOP has responded. Trump has cut social services to the aging population. He instead wants to spend more money on the military. Equally troubling is that the GOP goes along with this.
There’s already a growing rural hospital crisis in the United States. With Trump in office, madly spending, the national debt has crossed the point where it is now larger than our Gross National Product.
Yet, Trump’s spending priorities are geared toward bailing out countries, starting wars or using the military as a stick to threaten other nations. These do nothing to help our nation’s aging citizens. Trump’s policies have instead resulted in higher prices across the spectrum, which makes everything worse for anyone living a marginalized life. Including people like Mom.
Projections show that it’ll probably get worse, with more citizens requiring healthcare and living assistance. Natural supply and demand for personnel, food, assistance, and medical care will further drive up costs.
It’s a terrible spiral. As wealth becomes more concentrated in the hands of billionaires who care mostly for themselves and their businesses, the rest of us will keep sliding further into debt and crisis.
Sadly, that is Trump’s America. As it now stands, it’s the future for far too many.
Some may say that I’m being fatalistic. I reply, I’m just reading the news and watching the trends.
A Dream: Graduation
I dreamed I was at a sister’s house with other family members, getting ready to go somewhere. I never actually saw anyone but knew this and frequently spoke with them, but just in passing comments.
I knew my sister had decided to start a new business. I saw these large, clear plastic trays, made for transferring fluids, were dirty, so I stopped and cleaned them all, to help her out.
They were all in my sister’s car, waiting for me, a maroon vehicle. I then downloaded two computer things to her car: business planning software for her, and directions to my uncle’s house for me.
When I got in the car, my sister said, “There are two downloaded items.” I explained what they were.
She was driving. I got on the phone with my uncle for directions. I knew how to get there; I just needed the final address. (This uncle is deceased in real life.)
He gruffly asked me if I had pen and pencil. I didn’t but felt that wasn’t needed, and would just depend on my memory.
My sister dropped me off at a facility where I was to graduate. Others who were to graduate were also arriving, in groups. Most were younger. I got in line alone. Watching the operation, I realized that they graduated us in small groups in a building and not on stage.
As I reached the door and stopped, waiting to enter, I noticed the man behind me was trying to push me forward. I turned around and told him not to do that. He, a bearded white guy with wavy blonde hair and blue eyes, backed off.
I went into the room when called forward. I again had to wait. I noticed that they were providing mysteries to the people ahead of me. They were expected to solve them using math. I began trying to shift my focus to do better.
We went left, and then right, lining up. When I was second in line, a man helping with giving out the diplomas came to me to identify me. After he did, he explained that I was graduating at a higher level than the others, and things were a little different for me. He moved me to one side to wait.
After a little bit, he brought over a white sheet of paper and told me to hold onto it. I examined it and gathered that it was a summary of my achievements and records, but it was written in a small font and was often different foreign languages so it didn’t make much sense to me. There were also symbols, like the ‘eye on the pyramid’ used on US money.
Dream end
Michael Seidel, writer 