The Ups and Downs of a Senior Lady

Wesker’s bloodwork before Christmas was great and so was her check up, but her weight is now starting to become a problem. Always a bit on the lanky side, now she is slowing getting skinnier and it’s hard not to be in absolute despair over it. This happens to cats as they age. They lose some muscle mass. They can get boney and skinny. The solution is usually a careful monitoring of their diet and some nutritional supplements to make sure they still stay healthy.

But for some reason it feels so much worse than that. It feels like some kind of a disaster — almost like her initial kidney disease diagnosis was. However, it has been two years since then and Wesker has stayed healthy and stayed stable. Not every bump in the road means the end of the line. I just wish I could somehow convince my overanxious brain of that.

The Book and the Film

I’m going to start out by admitting that I have not in fact seen Derek Jarman’s Blue. It’s been on my watch list for a long time, but I missed it when it was showing on Criterion and am now waiting for it to cycle around again (if I don’t just break down and stream it somewhere before that). I was happy to see that there was a book to serve as a companion to the film and leapt at the chance to read it — even if I am fully aware that I probably have not gotten the full experience of Blue because it is meant to be primarily expressed with a visual medium.

That doesn’t mean that this slim volume isn’t valuable. Inside is Jarman’s meditations on his illness, AIDS, and the treatments he endures in an attempt to get himself more time. Partly prose and partly poetry, in Blue Jarman explores what it means to be in a body that is failing with mind that is still full of life and wonder. As a warning, this was not an easy read and if you are not in the mood for a study on mortality, then it’s a book best left on the shelf for now.

Death

Jarman relentlessly and graphically describes the breakdown of his body. From the sting of drugs delivered intravenously to the side effects these drugs cause. He does not try to paint a pretty or gothic picture of his approaching death. The reader is with him as he discusses his infections and what the disease is doing to his eyes. More importantly, the reader is with him while he longs for the life he once had and the places he could once go. He achingly paints a portrait of an existence made narrow, but it being the only one he can hope for now.

It’s wrenching and devastating and everything you want this narrative to be. It is the clear expression of a soul in pain but one that wishes to leave something behind. To be remembered through art.

Life

Despite this book being primarily about death and dying, it also manages to celebrate the small moments that make life worth living. Jarman has a very powerful gift for describing sensations like the warmth of sunlight or how a kiss feels on the lips. He also turns time passing into a tapestry of shadows both of an absence of future and in a bringing together of all the parts of the past.

There is a definite and poignant raging at the dying of the light, but also an appreciation of all of the components of that light. He rails at the invisibility of his illness, the way some treat it as a judgement or as an object of shame — the political situation, the mess the world is in. But it all pauses for a breath. For moments that he is still alive, even if those moments are difficult and waning.

The Ups and Downs of Worrying about the Senior Lady

It’s been very hard for me lately. The weekly weigh-ins have become something to be feared. It’s been hard not to hover and not to measure every kibble, obsess over every meal. But I have been trying to let go because I know that it’s wearing me out and I can’t get worn out because Wesker gets stressed out when I do. Letting go isn’t something that’s easy for me to — nor is accepting the reality that, yes, our senior lady is getting older and as time goes by that aging is going to get more obvious.

I have to learn to accept it. But it is so difficult because I love her so much, and I just want her to have the best quality of life she can have for as long as she can have it. I want her to sleep, purring on my pillow forever, and its so hard to know that time moves inevitably forward, and I start getting more and more scared of what tomorrow will bring.