My mom has cognitive decline. She’s also widowed and lives alone. Every day, I call her between 5 and 6 to check in, even if I’ve seen her or talked to her that day.
Needless to say, there’s not a whole lot to talk about. The weather is a huge preoccupation for her.
“Crazy weather,” she says, whether it’s a mild and sunny 50-degree day, or a truly bizarre bomb cyclone bearing down on us. Then she quickly follows that up with, “But what are you gonna do?” As much as she hates rain and snow, cold and wind, she shrugs after complaining about them and repeats, “What are you gonna do?”
Over the past couple years of taking on more of her care, I ask myself the same thing.
She is lonely, her mind is going, and her body seems to be strong. There are days when I panic about her safety, when I’m filled with dread about the future, when I visualize her shrunken up on a hospital bed, the way her father, my grandfather, wound up, ravaged by Alzheimer’s. Watching someone you love suffer mental decline is a shit situation.
I try to micromanage her limited savings, pump her with the right vitamins, encourage her to drink water and visit the library and do the things that are supposed to keep her body and brain as strong and healthy as possible for as long as possible. But more and more, I end up asking, “What are you gonna do?”
This is all against the backdrop of my own midlife quandary. My three-decade-strong career in advertising seems to be sputtering towards a finish line. With the commotion of AI and consolidation of agencies and uncertainty of our entire political future, I am trying to figure out: what’s next? Is there an adjacent writing path I can pursue, or is it “time for a pivot,” in the language of LinkedIn, which I have come to disdain along with every other social platform. I spent months last year, wringing my hands, banging my head against the wall and other anatomical metaphors. I continue to whiplash between feeling copacetic and despair. And more and more, “What are you gonna do?”
And let us not forget the fascist oligarchy. The hypocritical grifter and predator in the White House and his pathetic army of ‘yessirs’ who are letting him dismantle the Constitution. Not even starting wars, not even killing citizens, not even being a rapist and a racist is enough for our elected officials to dig deep for some form of morality.
What are we gonna do?