5/25/24

 Saturday, May 25, 2024

At 6:26, as I eat my oatmeal and digest my prednisone, the sun is at an elevation of 11°, heading 71°ESE, shining directly on our sunroom glider and into the dining room up to the sunroom.  It's the first day of the Memorial Day weekend, the one the weatherman says is the "pick day" of the weekend, sunny, warm, calm, and dry.  A good day to visit Wood National Cemetery, pay my respects, enjoy its quietude, its simple, elegant symmetries, and its trees.

Prednisone, day 13.  I declined Geri's thoughtful suggestion that I try sleeping in my bed last night and stayed in my recliner with insomnia until about 2 a.m. when I fell asleep until about 4 and then repaired to my bed, where I slept until a little before 6.  I had no significant shoulder pain and no significant difficulty getting out of bed, but I was surprised that I had hip discomfort.  I can't remember whether it was in both hips or only one.  Tonight I should try sleeping the entire night in bed.

Major accomplishments: (1) Sleeping the last part of the night in bed rather than on the recliner. (2) Lymphedema reduction after days of wearing compression socks again plus more walking. (3) I moved my Cuban oregano potted plants outdoors to breathe and get some real sunshine, a seasonal rite of passage. (3) I took a regrettably short walk with Judy but struck up a long conversation on the street with my Lebanese-American neighbor, Ghassan Madjalani, married to his Scottish wife, and walking his bull mastiff Athena.l  I'll have to find out how to spell his name on the village tax rolls.

Yesterday marked 6 months since my last cup of coffee, glass of wine or any alcohol, and any carbonated drink.  The abstinence was occasioned by my trip to the VA emergency room in very severe pain, with Andy driving me and accompanying me there for hours,  I thought it must have been a kidney stone or perhaps a particularly bad UTI, but no, after blood and urine tests and a CT scan, it turned out to be "a flare" of my long-term interstitial cystitis.  A later cystoscopy revealed the recurrence of Hunner's lesions in my bladder, fulgurated in the VA outpatient surgery on March 5th.  Since the surgery, all my chronic pelvic pain has disappeared, for almost 12 weeks.  For half a year, my fluid intake has been restricted to water, an occasional cup of herbal tea, and some milk in my cereal.  Do I dare have some coffee in the mornings, some wine in the evenings, or a Coke or ginger ale during the day, after the 6 months of abstinence?  Or would that be reinviting stress and insult on my bladder lining?  Could I just enjoy these beverages in moderation, or am I fooling myself?  I was a coffee abuser and a wine abuser most of my adult life, enjoying several cups of strong coffee every morning to perk up, and usually a couple glasses of wine (or more) each night to wind down.  An oenophile or just another alcohol abuser, like so many men in my family, especially the war veterans, my Dad and me in the Marines, Uncle Jim in the Navy, Uncle Bud in the Army and the Manhattan Project, and Uncle Bim in the Army Air Corps in Europe.  All of us drinkers, though Aunt Marie forced Bim to become a teetotaler.  Even my strong coffee habit I developed from my time on the USS Coney, DDE 508, on the North Atlantic, coping with sleep-disrupting at sea midwatches, etc.   Surprise, surprise - my bladder lining developed ulcers.  My bad.  Should I wait until my next cystoscopy to see if any of the lesions remain or recurred?

One of the wrongest thoughts ever thought. This afternoon  I started to watch the inaugural Hennessy Lecture by Professor Sir Simon Schama, "Bad Chaps, Jews, and the Failure of British Decency: Antisemitism in Historical Perspective.   In his introductory remarks, Schama noted that "For Sir Thomas Carlyle, the damning symptom of the Jews who were, in Carlyle's words, a people terrible from the beginning, was that they lacked a sense of humor.  Of course, Carlyle's own joke book was on the thin side."  Schama followed with this question to the host who introduced him.  "What's the difference between a Jewish pessimist and a Jewish optimist?  The Jewish pessimist moans 'things couldn't possibly get worse'  The Jewish optimist replies "Oh, yes they can!" Quaere: how could anybody purporting to know anything at all about Jews say they have no sense of humor?  What does it say of Carlyle himself?

Why am I drawn to cemeteries?   I made my now customary Memorial Day weekend visit to Wood National Cemetery today.  There were only 4 people in the cemetery other than me, 3 folks apparently visiting a particular gravesite plus an old Army veteran, perhaps a resident of one of the VA domiciliaries in the Old Soldiers Home.  We easily chatted a bit and wished each other well and I was reminded once again of the sense of relationship, almost a kinship, that so many vets feel at this huge VA complex on the rise west of the Brewers' ballpark.  There are more than more than 35,000 gravesites in the cemetery and on Memorial Day, every one of them has a little American flag planted in front of it. by a volunteer.  35,000!  Also, the very few roads within the cemetery are lined with flagpoles supporting larger flags.  It's quite a sight to see and always impresses me.  I'm not a flag waver myself and in fact, I have a real antipathy to flag waving.  To probably most of my fellow citizens, the flag symbolizes, as it did for Superman, 'truth, justice, and the American Way," democracy, freedom, Iwo Jima, and all that.  To me, it has come to symbolize Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the protection of markets and natural resources, and imperialism.  Nonetheless, it warms my heart to see the effort by so many volunteers that went into planting 35,000 little flags in front of the graves of former soldiers, Marines, sailors, airmen, and Coast Guardsmen (and women!)  There are veterans of all American wars since 1812 in the cemetery, including of course Vietnam.  If the cemetery were still open to new interments, I would choose to be buried there, but it's not.  Last year I was at the VA Medical Center on average twice every three weeks or once every 10 days.  On almost all of those visits, I came to the hospital through the cemetery rather than through the main entrance.  Why?  Why has it become such a special place for me?  For that matter, why am I so fond of little country cemeteries which I find all over SE Wisconsin.  St. Finbar's cemetery, the bedraggled little cemetery on County O north of Saukville, the little graveyard in River Hills, tiny graveyards sprinkled here, there, and everywhere.  I have found out that there is a name for people like me: taphophiles.

I don't think my interest in cemeteries is morbid or macabre.  They don't make me sad or fearful or beget negative feelings.  I think I'm drawn to the quiet majesty of them, to a serenity I feel in them, to the sense of history and transience, maybe to Proust's recherche du temps perdu or Remembrance of Times Past,  and a gentle reminder of memento homo et quia pulvis es.  These country graveyards and national cemeteries are also testaments that someone cared enough for the decedents to mark their final resting place.  In the larger cemeteries, we find in addition to simple markers and headstones, mausoleums and stately tombs for 'the swells,' for captains of industry and possessors of great wealth.  Forest Home Cemetery where my unembalmed remains will be buried in a cardboard box is filled with magnificent tombs, and mausoleums of the Uihleins (Schlitz),  Melms & Pabsts (Pabst), and Blatz's,  Alexander Mitchell, Charles Bradley, Pfisters and Vogels,  Harnischfegers and Falks, the high and mighty.  In the national cemetery, all the headstones are in the same modest style.  "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, / And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, / Awaits alike the inevitable hour. /   The paths of glory lead but to the grave."