Sleep Apps and Weird Dreams

I’ve been trying to improve the quality of my sleep. Nothing new here. I’ve played that game off and on for years. My latest attempt started several months ago when I gave up on my then new $129 Fitbit from ever talking to my android cell phone and I got a cheap $35 fitness watch that does sync properly like two old friends at a back street bar. I had an older model Fitbit that worked as it should with non-Apple products and every morning when I sat down to my computer I could view my sleep pattern on my monitor. Until I couldn’t anymore. Fitbit did a firmware update and there was no going back. Not only do the new Fitbits not work peacefully with computers but they don’t like androids cells phones. Trust me, I’ve investigated the depths out of that quagmire. 

Before I bought the second Fitbit I, of course, checked its compatibility with my android phone and supposedly it would work with an abbreviated app but pairing and syncing them up only works when you cross your fingers and toes during a full moon and you're headed south in a slow moving brown van. In two months of trying I was only able to do it three times. I hated abandoning that second Fitbit but it was time to call “Uncle” which I should have done before the cut off date to send it back for a refund. Yes, I’m stubborn; I hate it when tech stuff gets the better of me. It makes me feel old which I am but let's not talk about that. Let's instead bask in the glory of having a dependable sleep app back in my life again.

When I get up, the first thing I do is make my bed---well, it's the second thing I do if you count peeing as the first. Then I put on the coffee pot and walk to my office where I’ll open my sleep app and wait for it to download a night’s worth of stats. Last night, for example, I got up three times to pee, had an average heart rate of 65 and a stress level of 30. It took me ten minute to fall back to sleep after my trips to the bathroom and I got 4 hours and 48 minutes of light sleep and 2 hours and 44 minutes of deep sleep. My sleep quality score was 89 which was in the ‘good’ range and in the past 60 days I’ve only made it into the ‘good’ range four times---all with the aid of an ambient sleeping pill. In June I averaged 6 hours and 3 minutes of sleep a night and so far in July I’m up to 6 hours and 41 minutes a night. People who get less than five hours of sleep a night are twice as likely to get dementia according to lots of sleep studies like this one from Harvard. Sleeping pills aren’t the answer, either. You don’t get the right kind of sleep when you take them. I only take them when I toss and turn for more than two hours and haven’t fallen asleep yet.

Not surprising is that my longest stretches of uninterrupted sleep are towards morning and often times I wake up with a dream hanging around. Sometimes----like today----I’ll jot down a few notes before walking to the bathroom. (It’s the only thing that works to help you remember dreams and I’ve been doing it off and on since Kennedy was the president.) Today I wrote down: Tiny Don. Matchbox. Swamp. Boat. Map. College kid.  I was dreaming that I found my husband in matchbox where he was all eyes and grinning when slid it open, as surprised as I was at our reunion. The matchbox was on an old Army cot and the cot was in a cottage in the marshlands only accessible by boat. Last week I’d seen the movie Where the Crawdad Sings so it was easy to figure out why my brain came up with that setting and at one point in the movie the main character opened a matchbox just like in my dream. Her’s was empty.

They say the actions in our dreams--not the settings---are the important part, telling us something that our conscious minds don’t/won’t and if that’s true the fact that in my dream I didn’t take the box with my husband inside with me when I left speaks volumes. It’s a sign that I’ve moved on, right? Instead I promised to come back to visit. The dream ended when I got upset because I didn’t think I could find my way back through the marshland to visit but a college kid on the dock promised to buy me a map at the campus bookstore and mark the cottage’s location. That’s when I woke up. 

Sometimes I do miss my husband even thought he’s been gone ten years now. I think it's because there are couples here at the CCC who occasionally remind me of my caregiver days. Like yesterday a guy was trying to help his wife transfer into a car---she'd recently had her foot amputated---and I came close to saying he'll have to bite the bullet and trade that car in for something easier for her to do transfers in and out, but I didn't. When the time is right an occupational therapist will suggest it if one hasn't already done so. Watching them struggle brought back a day at a car dealership, trying transfers to find the right combination of seat height and grab bars for Don's transfers.

It’s a process of letting go in steps to see your spouse’s mental or physical health deteriorate. At least here, those caring for their husbands or wives are never far from supportive words or kindnesses shown. It might be just a brief meeting at the trash room or at the formal, monthly caregiver support group. I’d call it a blessing that they don’t have to experience the caregiver loneliness that I went through but ‘blessing’ is not really the right word. They chose to move here; it’s not divine intervention. They took control of what little they can control. And in at least one case, a terminally ill guy insisted on getting his wife 'settled in' where she could make friends before he left this earth. He lived a month here before passing away and our widows rallied around her just like he figured we would. ©

Remember Back When Obama Was President?

My first week of returning to eBay auctions went well enough. I listed five items, sold four for a grand total of $282.45. With the one that didn’t sale, I had calculated the shipping wrong, so the corrected listing should sell the item this coming week. That old can photographed at the top accounted for more than half of that $282.45 and many widows---upon finding that in the garage---would have thrown it away. It makes me crazy when I hear about widows who throw out all of their husband’s garage stuff without first finding out if there was a method to his madness. And tools alone deserve a garage sale, not a trash bin. But I can only sing that song so many times before I start sounding like a broken record. Now, I only have to repeat my first auction results two more times this month to pay for the spring cleanup and bark application in the yard. Then May’s auction should pay for my wrap-around deck to get stained. My financial life this summer will be like one big Monopoly game. I advance past ‘Go’, collect $200 then I land on a piece of property that just happens to cost $200.00. Funny how that works. I want to get the house power washed, the windows professionally cleaned and few other things that didn’t get done last summer when my sump pump failed during our record setting rains and the basement got flooded. Knock on wood that this summer doesn’t bring me another “Go directly to jail,” card “do not pass go, do not collect $200.”

One of my cousins used to administer tests to determine if someone could be declared legally incompetent to live alone. Twenty-one questions---back 15 years ago---was all that stood in between old people being shipped off to a nursing home or them being able to thumb their noses at a relative who doubted their mental facilities. She used to joke that she had all the answers memorized so that she could pass the test when the bell tolled for her. In the last few years of my dad’s life, I had to take him to a geriatric psychiatrist every two months for an interview and one of those twenty-one questions competency tests. His testing was required because he was taking part in a clinical drug trial designed to slow down the early stages of Alzheimer’s, a drug that has since come to market. I think of all those times I sat and listened to him struggle to come up with the names of politicians in office whenever I’m tempted to give myself a news blackout. You’ve got to stay current when you get old! It doesn’t matter that a good share of kids under 40 can’t name a Supreme Court Justice but if you’re 75 or 80 you bet your future on knowing stuff like that.

My dad was the wisest, most compassionate man I’ve ever known. Even so, sharing care of an elderly parent in their own home isn’t easy but I am proud of the fact that my brother and I was able to do it until a couple of weeks before he died. We would have made it to the end if I hadn’t taken a nasty fall, broking my arm in three places, and I had to have surgery. Then I spent twelve weeks in a turn-buckle cast. Try picking out clothing to wear to a funeral with one of those things attached to your body. As hard as those five years of caring for my dad were, I have many treasured memories that were generated during that time frame. Like the time the doctor asked Dad who the president was and he gave the wrong answer. When the doctor corrected him, Dad replied: “My daughter tried to tell me that in the parking lot but I didn’t believe her!” Caregiver humor seems to come along when you need it the most. Kind of like the darker form of humor that comes along during the first year or two of widowhood. What got me to thinking about Dad today was my hairdresser. She is at the beginning stages of having to oversee her aging mother. If it’s true that we can judge a society by the way we treat the elderly, I think there is much to be hopeful about in America. Most of us do step up to the plate when the times comes.

Some people don’t understand why some of us faithfully tend our blogs like spring gardens that need their tender little sprouts babied along, and I think the answer to that question can be found in this quote from The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield: “Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic. As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head.”  I think we write blog posts to preserve the voices that speak inside our heads and the memories that seem to want to crowd each other out as time marches us toward our graves. In my case, I like to think that someday when I'm too old to remember who the president is one of my nieces will occasionally sit beside me, like a mother reading a fairytale to a five year old, and she’ll read me a few pages from my blog starting with the words, “Aunt Jean, remember back when Obama was the president and you wrote this….” ©

Dating, Dreaming and Firemen

I’m a person with a high tolerance for being alone but I’m so sick of my own company right now I’d like to scream. The snow was keeping me trapped in a cycle of shoveling and more shoveling broken up with periods of sleep and playing on the computer. I’m bored! And I’m seeing Don more frequently in my dreams again. Last night I was back in high school cuddling with a guy while watching a football game and Don was off selling peanuts to the other people in the bleachers. I hate football and I haven’t thought of the kid I was cuddling with in fifty plus years. He was nothing special to me back in those days, not a boyfriend or crush or even close. He was just a kid who grew up sitting behind me all though grade school and he got in trouble more than once for dipping the ends of my pigtails in his ink well. I suppose the dream has something to do with an essay I’d been working on about widows falling in love again. But I’ve been working on my taxes, too, so why wasn’t I dreaming about dating my accountant? Now there’s a macho guy worth having an imaginary cuddle-fest with while the whole world is watching. The widow is out on a date with a handsome, young guy! Bets are flying back in forth in the bleachers as people try to decide if he’s a grandson or a paid escort.

One of my sister-in-laws asked me if I’d like to fall in love again which is why I was trying to write about the concept. She was widowed a few years before me and she thinks it would be nice to have to a man to go out to restaurants with and I told her guys in our age bracket are only looking for good cooks and caregivers. “Someone would have to take us both as a matched set,” I told her, “to get both of those qualities.” It was a toss-away comment but if I was going to be truthful, I’d say the whole idea of dating again makes me sick to my stomach. And I hate the taste of Pepto-Bismol. Call it a selfish attitude but after years of being a caregiver I’m still worn out from the responsibilities that come with love, and I feel like a bear coming out of hibernation in the spring, still sleepy and looking around for what to do next. Love again? I'd rather have a bar of dark chocolate, but thanks for asking.

Besides, senior citizen dating sucks! During the years after we took my dad’s car keys away, I had to chauffeur him and his girlfriend of ten years around on dates. Their dating destinations were dictated by which fast food joints had the best coupons in the Sunday paper or which town near-by was having a VFW or lodge dinner or a sale on all-bran cereal. And who wants to go dancing at 10:00 in the morning? Apparently a lot of people do because that’s when they hold senior dances at a near-by fire department. When Don was still alive I couldn’t get us up and out of the house early enough to check those dances out. Now that I don’t have that excuse, I’m still thinking it’s too freaky early in the morning to polka or line dance or whatever it is they do down there. The band is made up of firemen and if they get a call, they’re out the door and you’re left dancing to a jukebox…or so I’m told. I suppose I should go see for myself for no other reason than I’d get a few images of hunky firemen stuck in my brain. Who knows, that might make for some sweet dreams at night. Jeez, I’m starting to sound like a cougar and I’m not even a cat person!

Before anyone else says it first, I know that not everyone in the septuagenarian and octogenarian sets go on dull dates like my dad and his friend did. I guess it means something that I don’t want to acknowledge my older brother and his lady friend would need tracking devices implanted if we wanted to keep up with their love life. They are literally all over the U.S. and Canada. It probably means I’m not bored or lonely enough yet---Yet? Gag me with a spoon!---I'm not going to roll the dice and gamble on another human being changing my life as I know it. It probably also means I’ve said everything I’ve got to say on the subject of falling in love again and it’s time to shovel some more of that relentless snow! Spring, where are you? ©

Shopping at the Widowhood Village Grocery Store

At the grocery store today an old guy was checking me out so I examined my shoes to see if I was dragging toilet paper from the bathroom where I’d just been. Nope. Maybe my hairdresser was right, I thought. Low lights in my hair really are old geezer magnets. Well, she didn’t exactly say that but she did say they make me look younger. But as quickly as that thought came and went I realized I was wearing a red sweatshirt to show union solidarity against our governor’s Right to Work legislation and so was my ‘admirer’ who, as it turned out, really wasn’t one at all. I smiled. He nodded back. And now we were union buddies who’d just exchanged the “secret handshake.” So much for flirtatiousness in the septuagenarian set. As I walked away, though, I decided it was much better to be admired for my political action participation than for my hairstyle.

Have you ever been shopping and spotted something that you knew would change your life if you could just take that item home? And, no, I’m not still talking about the bench-sitting guy at the front of the grocery store. I’m talking about a product. A new product---well, new to me at least. I’m talking about Weber Beer Can Chicken Seasoning for “grilling enthusiasts.” Oh, my! I don’t know why it was love at first sight. I don’t drink beer and I gave away my outdoor grill a month ago, but having a spice to give a “robust punch” to the chicken I rarely cook---well, like I said, I just knew my life would be perfect if that bottle of spices jumped into my shopping cart. Maybe it was the design of the cap that makes it easy for arthritic or clumsy hands to open that made me fall in love. I like good package designs. Whatever the reason, $1.89 for a few minutes of entertainment in a grocery aisle is pretty cheap.

Shopping is sure different without Don. I’ve had eleven months, now, to get used to shopping in the Widowhood Village grocery store compared to twelve years of shopping in Caregiverville. Anyone who’s done that knows you don’t have time to read labels and fall in love with products with handy little tops while shopping in Caregiverville. Nope. It was hurry up so I didn’t have leave Don too long at the front of the store, sitting in his wheelchair next to the bench were the man in red was perched today---the wife-waiting department. Don would drink Starbucks, people watch and thoroughly enjoy both and I’d have to get my shopping done before he needed a trip to the bathroom which he couldn’t do on his own. Flossie and Fred in the handicapped bathroom stall---if you don’t catch the dark humor in that reference you’ve never read The Bobbsey Twins in a Radio Play or The Bobbsey Twins in the Mystery Cave or any of the other 135 books in one of the longest running children’s series ever written.

Flossie and Fred Bobbsey and the other set of twins in the family, Bert and Nan, will go on forever. Too bad life doesn’t follow the same path as fiction. When Don and I was doing our Bobbsey Twins routine, though, one thing could have been written in stone. Don would have enjoyed seeing the guy on the wife-waiting bench checking me out. He would have thought that man had good taste no matter how gray and old I look. I miss being loved like that. ©

The Dark Side of My Grief

For some reason the dog decided to sleep in the living room last night instead of on Don’s side of the bed. I’d gotten so used to him being there whenever I glanced over that his absence took me to a very dark and lonely place, a place where I couldn’t stop thinking about all the changes that I’ve been through since Don death. I missed Don terribly and not even taking an Ambien could sweep those thoughts away and replace them with the sleep I craved.

I wandered the house by the glow of the night lights in every room, I attempted to let the computer distract me with a boring game of chess, and I even thought about physically forcing the dog to leave the comfortable little cocoon he’d made for himself in my chair and lock him in the bedroom with me. That latter thought made me feel even lonelier. When your dog---the one without opposable thumbs to open up the bags the treats he craves morning, noon and night are in---has to be forced to spend time with you, that’s pretty sad. Darn dog! Why did he have to pick last night to demonstrate a streak of independence?

Yesterday I got another letter from a volunteer at a local widow’s support group. She was inviting me to call if I want to talk to someone “who has ‘been there’ and knows how it feels.” The first four letters---one a month---got thrown away. I was doing okay, getting my ducks in order, handling things just fine, thank you very much. But for some reason this fifth letter got set aside to reread. I AM doing fine but the loneliness is starting to sink in, feel more permanent, and I know I have to do something to change that. My brother had been to a few meetings with this group but he had a typical guy reaction and said “he couldn’t take all that crying.” Then he joined an exercise class instead. I guess the main reason I haven’t checked out this widow group is because I’m kind of afraid I’ll end up being the one with the shoulder that others cry on. Been there, done that in caregiver circles and I’m tired of being the strong one who has to weigh every word because someone is looking to me for guidance.

It’s funny I could write that last sentence because this past week I discovered that a website I used to hang around a lot before Don’s death to debate politics has added two new forums: one for ‘Caregivers’ and one for ‘Grief and Mourning.’ Since these forums are not connected with traditional support groups, and people who have no experience with either state of being can chime in, I’ve been shocked at the hostility and lack of empathy going on. It’s like watching a train wreck about to happen to read through the topics. So as quickly as I made this discovery I’ve checked these forums off my list of places where I want to spend time. Caregiving and grief are both too fresh in my mind for me to stand by while bullies pick on people traveling down those roads. So, for my own well being I must stay away. I need to seek out peace, not turmoil.

According to the calendar it has been almost five months since Don passed away. Don: if you can hear me, let me tell you that not a day goes by that I don’t feel your love still wrapped around me. Not a day goes by that I don’t thank you for everything we shared. You and I both know that I will survive and thrive again in time---even if I have to resort to locking our derelict of a dog in the bedroom with me each night until the loneliness of your absence goes away. ©