Author: paulattinello
-
Wakened
Lying on the couch, supposedly finishing V.’s eulogy for tomorrow’s funeral, and fixing shoes, shirt, etc., but – instead – actually sleeping the evening away… well, I was sleepy all day, I didn’t get to bed until late last night then spent the whole day running around after students. H. called on my cel phone,…
-
Brighter
It’s that point in spring, at this northern latitude, when the days start getting longer startlingly fast, and I wake at 6:30 am with the day already begun and sunny; and the students cheer up. I predict a relaxed funeral for V. on Friday as a result – something more like a wake, which is…
-
A bit dulled
Last night: sitting around with D., V.’s husband and H., V.’s best friend. They were relaxing after a day of doing lists – lists of people not to forget to invite to the service, lists of music, lists of this and that. They are both in rather better shape than they were. And, fortunately, we…
-
Exasperate
This is actually the hard part: people stopping me in the hall, being sympathetic, saying how awful it is that V. has died. I always have lots of trouble with this part – actual disasters don’t faze me that much, but talking about them afterward in any but the simplest terms makes me a bit…
-
After V.
Change, time, sudden breaks, new landscapes. Familiar to me; but this now is after a long time of relative stasis. V.’s death coincided with finishing several things I’ve been working on for several months, and of course my increasing well-being over the past three months from the new medications; and considering, with increasing definiteness, moving…
-
End
V. is gone. Actually not gone, but – going – they have decided that there is enough brain damage that even if she could be awakened it wouldn’t really be her. They are turning off machines tonight; she may continue breathing for a few days, but she really died on Monday evening, when she had…
-
V.
Last night I got to hold V.’s hand for a long time – about an hour and a half, I guess. The experience is reassuring – her hands are clean and soft, and pleasant to hold, and there is movement from breathing (or perhaps from the respirator, but the effect is the same); the immediate…
-
In hospital
The last few days: explaining V.’s condition (clearly serious, but who knows the future?) to a variety of people, interfacing between her husband and the university. An hour and a half sitting with her, by her husband, in the ICU tonight – we talked, and talked to her, etc. Actually it was nice to see…
-
Real trouble
V. is extremely ill – a cardiac arrest in fact; she is unconscious in the ICU unit, and we don’t know whether she will recover. She has been, as it happens, ready for this – in fact she has had the most direct and unflinching ability to look at her condition and possible problems of…
-
Signs
[Los Angeles, 1992] The session chair is standing, the first paper is over, and through a long wave of applause intended for someone else I move through a labyrinth of aisles towards the stage. I’m wearing khakis, emblematic of the Eastern aristocracy, the conservative controllers who went to school with me; shoes beige and just…
Paul Attinello 