Sad news from Ann posted elsewhere.
9/11/11
Dear Patient and Accepting Tribe Members,
Yes -- the tape of Sasha lecturing. I played only the first couple of minutes of it, after discovering it in a box (everything in my life -- and Sasha's -- is sitting in a box somewhere in the house waiting to be rediscovered) then turned it off and sat for a moment, thinking about playing it for Tania and our Tibetan ladies, and Sasha himself, and what it might cause in Sasha, particularly. The women, of course, would be delighted. Tania would be feeling a mixture of pleasure and sadness, because she's known him for many years, and saw him at his best and brightest. She suffers from this -- (expletive deleted) -- dementia thing, in some ways, more than I do, because her memory of Sasha as he used to be is clear. My psyche has blessed me by removing most memories of the way he was "before," so I can be with this present reality without comparing. Of course, the memories of the past are there, closed off but available, should I really need to experience them again, but I won't need to do that until I get to work in a serious way -- with a serious schedule -- on Book Three.
Maybe that's one of the reasons I find it so hard to get back to the book, always finding writing jobs I have to finish before I can pick up where I left off on it. I'm going to have to work that one through, because Book Three needs to be continued and finished, and it's going to take at least the best part of a year, working steadily, to do it.
Back to the tape. Our Tibetan women will find it an extraordinary experience, seeing Sasha at a blackboard, talking rapidly (he was always being asked to "slow down," during talks, which he found hilariously funny), bright and sparkling (his hair, that day, was at its psychedelic best, clouds of white substance shooting out from his head, obviously alive and engaged), and they will laugh and nudge Sasha and say things like, "That's YOU, Sasha! Look, look! Can you see?" Sasha's sight works mostly on the periphery of the visual field, since macular degeneration has destroyed much of the center. He will probably not be able to see himself on the screen, but he'll be able to hear what's being said. Will it hurt him? Will he have one of those moments that we dread, when he's aware of what he used to be and isn't any more? If so, then I'll have to stop the tape and play it later for everyone else. But how to tell ahead of time? It's not inevitable, but why take the chance?
I'm going to think about this a little longer.
By the way, the weakness in the right hand was there again this morning (and yesterday morning), but it seems to repair to a great extent during the day, though not entirely. The ladies are putting him through his paces with the arm and chest exercises, just in case that helps. The weakness itself appears to be improving slightly each day, and I'm not going to report it to Dr. Abramson until we've watched it for a few days and can get a general idea of what direction it's going in.
Sasha's core Self is loving and warm and very inclined to be funny, especially with word games and word twists. He gets irritable, but not often, and always for good reasons. In the lab with Paul, he seems happy and engaged, and his remaining chemistry brain-cells get activated. He gets tired after a couple of hours, but that's to be expected.
He is frail, though. It's hard to be sure, when you're with him every day, but the frailty is quietly increasing, tiny bit by tiny bit. Our girls keep him walking several times a day, and spoon feed him only when he gets forgetful about feeding himself. They are great cooks, and can turn out extraordinary meals -- mostly Indian cooking -- without looking at any kind of recipe. Sasha is being fed amazingly healthy food, thanks to Chime and Dechen. May their tribe increase (and may their descendants reclaim their country -- Tibet is for the Tibetans, damn it!)
That's it for today, unless I think of something vital.
And thank you all for what you are and how you've been helping us. Without you, I truly don't know what we would have had to do to keep Sasha safe and as happy as possible. Thank you very, very much.
Love and Blessings ------- Ann
