The Loss of Identity

 

     I knew this day would come. The day when I'd be writing my final post from this house. I just honestly thought it would be on my terms.

    I'm now doing things for the last time that I'd taken for granted, things I'd done hundreds or thousands of times before. Yesterday was my last mail delivery. I'd already paid the gas and electric bills for the last time. Last Friday I did laundry at the local laundromat and shopped at the supermarket for the last time, deposited a check at the bank for the last time. I'm eating my last lunch here as I write this and later tonight, if I have time, my last supper before sleeping in my own bed for the last time after taking my last shower. My old friend Diane is coming by in a few minutes and we'll see each other for what might easily be the final time.

     This is how my apartment looked almost exactly 15 years ago. It was just before I got the kitchen table and the rest of the furniture I'd acquired from a Brazilian family moving back to the Old Country. This would've been right around the time that Barb and I had first discovered each other online through the Rude Pundit's blogroll.

      The living room would be the scene of much joy, especially during Christmas where we'd opened our presents every year, often with the blessing of family. The kitchen was where we'd enjoyed countless good meals. especially during Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's and Easter. When Barb was still with it, we'd have very deep and profound conversations and the Scott Carson series was midwifed into being right there at our kitchen table. The bedroom was where most of The Doll Maker and all of Hollywoodland was written and where, at bedtime, we'd both read many wonderful books by other authors.

      Now I find myself giving things away. I cleared out the van of anything I felt might be of value to my son and he gratefully accepted the gas and gas cans, jumper cables and booster pack I'd given to him. My friend Nick at the Shell station, already the recipient of the Carson trilogy, got a blank journal a few nights ago, for which he thanked me again via text message. Friday, I gave my son two or three books, one of them my own Gods of Our Fathers.

      In a way, it's akin to a death or an impending one. I've heard stories of people who know they're about to die and begin giving away their belongings. As far as Hudson, MA goes, I was a townie for over 30 years and Barb was one for nearly 14 of those years. We loved seeing the same people all the time, eating at our favorite restaurants. Yes, we were townies,. We leaned into it. It was part of our identity.

      Being forced to leave Hudson involves a certain loss of identity. I went through that when I had to put Barb in the hospital a little over a year ago and again when she died six months ago on Friday. And a loss of identity is a certain form of death that's difficult to explain to those who've never been forced to walk in my shoes.

      I couldn't stop crying at the laundromat knowing I'd never do my laundry there again. I thought of all the countless loads of wash Barb and I did there. When we did laundry, usually on a Tuesday, I tried to leaven the dreary experience by having fun. Go to the local Honey Dew and get some sandwiches and coffee, to the Petco and look at the parakeets and reptiles and see the occasional dog, maybe shop for our favorite foods. I did shopping at the supermarket next door knowing I'd never shop there again. I knew I'd never do banking at my bank again. Friday was my sad little farewell tour. Dead man walking and all that.

      And, of course, Friday I had to watch the van get towed off, the same van that Barb had traveled in with me more times than I can possibly count. My favorite poet Keats once referred to this kind of uncertainty as "the wide arable land of events". Of course, when he'd written that to his siblings, he was talking about a dark doom that awaits us when we least expect it and it was written in the spring of 1819 on the cusp of his annus mirabilis. It was nearly after a year after he'd begun to present the symptoms of the tuberculosis that would kill him and that had already killed their youngest sibling, Tom, the previous winter.

      And I'll be fucked running if I know how to get my identity back. I used to be a writer until Barb's condition began to worsen and I had to devote more of my time and energies to her care. Then she was forcibly abducted from me and my identity as her caretaker was also taken from me. I don't know what awaits me in "the wide arable land of events" that Phoenix presents with the looming presence of a dead force. But I don't like this unsettled feeling nor should I be expected to like it. The past, to me, offers much more solace than the future. And I make no apologies for that.

     Preteens go through the famous "identity crisis" and there's something to that, sure. But no one has ever ventured a phrase for the identity crisis that people my age go through when we lose our agency and autonomy, our freedom and independence that we'd worked so hard to earn and keep. What's the phrase for the unique identity crisis that faces almost all seniors? There simply isn't one any more than there's one for parents that lose children.

     Like Jim Morrison said, "the future's uncertain and the end is always near", especially when you don't have a fortune to ensure and firm up what future is left to you.

     So, whenever I get to where I'm going, and it'll involve three different states or more, the punditry will continue, the cartoons may continue. But it won't be the same. You'll know it and I'll know it. All but the first eight months of this blog's existence happened at Casa de Pottersville right here in Hudson, MA. Starting tonight, I'll likely be going radio silent, not that many will care, because I'll be restricted to my cell phone. The internet's getting shut off tomorrow since I'll be leaving at 10 AM tomorrow.

     It was a hell of a ride and I often had a lot of fun writing for you guys, starting with Barb.