Labelled

The man looked at Matt, our son, and asked, “What do you do?”

Matt gave his practiced answer.  I wish I remembered what it was; it was a really impressive answer and made me proud our son had such a great job description.  Marty and I made a good man…yes, it was all us, okay maybe Matt did part of it on his own but we loaned him DNA.

The guy looked at me and I knew he was about to ask me the same question.  I hate the question, I don’t have a real defining job or label and I don’t like any of my answers, they either seem trite, inaccurate or over involved. 

More than ten years ago, before the strokes, right before my corporate divorce from big business Marty had warned me, “Get an answer to the question, because people want to know what you do.”

She had been down sized, she had gone through the work identity struggle and while not having income from work is the worst, the second worst is that you lose part of your identity when your job goes away.

I’m prepared for the question, sort of.   Even before the man asks me what I do I am mentally sorting through my options:

“I’m a caregiver; I take care of my wife, she is a stroke survivor.  She had her first of two strokes almost ten years ago and that’s what I do now.  It takes a lot of time and there is a lot of anxiety involved and I’m not really a medical kind of guy but it is frankly the most decent thing I have ever done. “

This is not the answer I want to give.  It’s too long, too convoluted and the din and clang of the people and machines around me made a long answer too difficult, besides I don’t want to get the “aww, that’s too bad” response with the accompanying sad looks.

With this answer I also have to describe Marty’s life by providing her a label, a name, a reason for her existence.  She is not a stroke victim; Marty has never been a victim in her life.  In spite of the fact that Marty is my hero I have never been fond of the whole stroke hero thing.  Stroke survivor, yeah, not so much, stroke patient, not really…..I don’t know….I just call her my wife and she has had some strokes.  

Label, schmable…

The 2^nd option is to say I’m retired.  This is mostly true but frankly I don’t like that answer because I am much too young and handsome to be old enough for retirement and I don’t feel retired most of the time.  I clean up dog poop from a 17 year old incontinent dachshund, my life is directed by four care givers and a wife, and I manage the intricacies of a Marty’s major illness. My life vacillates between boredom and high anxiety and the whole thing is demanding and simply saying retired does not feed necessary parts of me, my ego and my id.

The last option and one I choose most of the time is to simply say, “Nothing.”  I laugh a little and say, “I don’t do anything”.  It’s short and sweet and just self-deprecating enough to get a smile and generally shuts down the whole idea of having to explain my existence by the way I feed and clothe myself.

Marty gets it.  On one of our trips to Dalhart U.S.A. to see Marty’s mother, her mom, before she quit talking, asked me what I was doing now.  Before I could answer, Marty, the two stroke survivor, chimed in, her sarcasm meter on high, and I quote, “He sits on the couch and watches TV.”

Now that’s not true at least not in broad daylight.

Marty was right ten years ago, you need an answer, we all need an answer to help people understand us and to help us with our own identity.  I’m really pretty cool with my new one; I’m comfortable being a care giver, being the husband to Marty and the other women who direct my life.  I’m cool with being the father to Matt and Erin, the father-in-law to Lyle and Sarah and the son to Bettye and Larry.  It really is where I belong.  

I just need a short answer for the question, it does come up and people really want to know. 

Bad to the Bone

“We were runnin down the road trying to loosen our load” back from the lake when Marshall Tucker, an early 70’s southern rock band came through Sirius singing, “Can’t you see, can’t you see, what that woman is doing to me.” 

 

I loved The Marshall Tucker Band; I had an eight track tape of one of their first albums until somebody stole all of my eight tracks out of my car.  I hope they all jammed in that person’s eight track tape player.  We also named our big, beautiful, slightly crazy Irish Setter, Tucker (who thought a dog was a good idea in a one bedroom garage apartment?).  I sang with the song, going back 40 years….”Can’t you see, can’t you see….”

Marshall Tucker Band Can't You See 

The next song on the Sirius play list…..George Thorogood’s Bad to the Bone.  Marty and I listened and I prompted her to sing along.  We used to sing with the radio all of the time, singing loud and proud and at least one of us….off key.   She never sings with the radio anymore, but this time, right in time with the music and the lyrics I hear Marty, in hear quiet voice “Bad to the Bone, B B B B Bad to the Bone”.  

 Bad to the Bone

It cracked me up and soon we were both laughing as we drove down Highway 84 out of Mexia singing “Bad to the Bone”.

I told Marty that the next time someone asks her how she was doing her response had to be, “B B B Bad to Bone.”  With Marty’s short term memory loss you have to practice.  We rehearsed as we were driving and we talked about telling Nykkie, our care giver in Waco, that Marty was “B B B Bad to the bone.”

I pulled into our garage and figured we should rehears one more time before unveiling Marty’s new catch phrase to Nykkie. I asked, “How are you today Marty?”  

She turned to her left, looking at me and without any thought at all said, “Fine and f…ing dandy.”

Me, “No Marty, you can’t say that.” 

 

This was not a new response; in fact, it was an old response, a response from many years ago.

Marty, “Why not, I’m fine and f…ing dandy.”

“You’re supposed to say B B B Bad to the bone, remember?”

“Oh yeah, but I am fine and f…ing dandy too.”

Yes she is.  She used to say that years ago when she wasn’t feeling great, when she was frustrated or angry or just a little out of sorts.  She still, on occasion pops up with that when someone asks about her situation, “I’m fine and f…ing dandy.”

I walked to Marty’s side of the car and put her wheelchair back together and pulled it up to her side of the car.  I unbuckled her and put her pillows in the back seat, chattering the whole time about Bad to the Bone.  I slipped my right arm under her legs and cradled her back with my left and swung her feet out of the car to the garage floor and she says, “I’m B b b bad to the bone.”

We stand up together and while holding her steady with my right hand I pull the wheelchair up with the left and ask her to sit, she sits.   I ask her how she is doing and she says, of course, “Fine and f…..ing dandy.”

“No not that, remember, B b b bad to the bone.”

“Right, right.” She says.

I push her to her room and Nykkie greats us and takes Marty’s chair and we move Marty to her bed.

Me, to Nykkie, “Ask her how she’s doing.”

 

Nykkie to me with a note of skepticism, “Why would I do that?”

“Just ask”

Nykkie, “Marty, how are you?”

Marty, “B b b bad to the b b b b bone’”

Marty, to me, “Don’t you owe me some money for that or something?”

I offer cash and ask her one more time, just because I like hearing her say it and I think she now has it down pat, “Marty, how the hell are you?”

“Fine and f….ing dandy.”

Without a doubt, she is both b b b bad to the bone and fine and f…..ing dandy.