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nana and papa

Moments

Saturday 17 July 2021

Papa’s existence when the meds that keep him calm and sedated changes from moment to moment: There are lucid moments when he is just like the Papa we all know and love, there are moments enveloped in hallucinations, and there are moments that seem to fall somewhere in between.

This is a lucid moment.

He occasionally smiles while hallucinating, and it’s such a mischievous little smile that I want to catch a photo of it. Tonight, he smiled that smile, a little kid’s smile when he’s gotten away with something and yet is still just nervous enough to realize that he might not have in fact gotten away with it. An “I know you know I did it, but please don’t tell on me” smile. I didn’t have a camera ready, though, so I went downstairs and got our good Nikon. I was telling Papa about that smile and how much I wanted to get a picture of that smile, so he smiled for me. It’s not the smile I’d initially wanted, but it was a smile of intent, a smile of purpose, a smile to fulfill a request. A smile that said, “I know I’m having a lot of problems following instructions when you ask me to open my mouth or to roll over. Right now, though, I can do exactly what you asked me to even if I’m not sure why you want me to. I trust you and will do it because I trust you.”

Those lucid moments are rare, and they are increasingly rare with each passing day. The hospice nurses all say that they have never seen anyone with Parkinson’s progress this quickly. Every day is literally a new normal. Yesterday it became clear that he could no longer eat solid food because he didn’t chew it. He kept it in his mouth sometimes, partially chewed it others, and every now and then chewed and swallowed, each motion of his jaw a supreme effort. Today we gave him only pureed food, and in the morning he did a good job with it, but in the evening, it was difficult to get him to open his mouth to eat. He no longer can draw liquid through a straw, and when he does get liquid in his mouth, he almost chokes on it, so we bought thickener and we spoon-feed him his thickened water to keep him hydrated. Today we also stopped giving him pills to swallow: they’re all ground up own, sprinkled on spoons of yogurt. What tomorrow will bring is a complete mystery.

This is a hallucination.

He pulls threads out of thin air. He talks to people who over his bed, who sneak behind his bed and hide, who stand on either side of his bed. Strangers come to visit him as well as friends. Nana comes often. “Hey, babe! Don’t you think it’s about time we get out of here?”

This is the picture I hesitate to put on here, but this is the reality he’s suffering now. This is the reality that leaves us shaking our heads wondering how much one poor man has to suffer. This is the reality that creates new habits: I walked out of the room today just as he started saying something. I paused for a moment, then realized he was talking to a hallucination. I didn’t respond. I just continued out.

These are the moments when he seems most vulnerable, too. The hallucinations don’t frighten him: he once said he saw a hangman standing by his bed with a noose, but other than that, the people who come to visit him seem relatively harmless. He’s restless, though: he’s always been a mannerly man, a gentleman, a problem solver, so he wants to respond to all the things he sees around him, deal with all the issues around him (the threads that hang endlessly over his bed, for instance). In the past (i.e., earlier this week), when he started talking to these hallucinations or pulling at the threads, we did as the nurses advised: we played along and asked the person he was talking to to leave or took that threads ourselves. “Don’t worry,” we’d then reassure him. “We asked him to leave. Did you hear? Did you see him leave? He just walked out the door.” Now, he doesn’t engage with us when we say those things. That change has come in the last 36 hours.

This is a mystery.

Not hallucinating, not engaging with us — just there. Remembering? We don’t know. This might disappear tomorrow because it only appeared a few days ago. The way things change, “normal” is a fluid concept that can change within one day.

This is the only thing that seems to help these days.

This is what I feel guilty about neglecting with Nana: I didn’t realize how little time we had left with her once she came back from rehab. I didn’t realize how quickly she could go. I didn’t take the time simply to sit with her and to talk to her as much as I could have or should have. And now, so much that we say to Papa just goes unacknowledged. Perhaps because he didn’t hear. Perhaps because he didn’t understand. Perhaps because he was busy talking to someone else. But there’s one thing he understands.

Night

Friday 16 July 2021

Night can be the most trying time with a Parkinson’s patient since the disease can throw all kinds of obstacles in the way of a simple night’s sleep. Of course, there are the hallucinations that plague one night and day without proper medication, and as the disease progresses, the dosage of that medicine needs to be constantly adjusted. With Papa and his lightning-fast deterioration, what was an adequate dose three or even two days ago no longer has the desired effect. So Papa can spend a lot of the night talking to his hallucinatory friends, reaching for hallucinated objects, and puzzling over imagined problems. It’s hard to go to sleep like that.

Parkinson’s also affects sleep: one of the 10 early symptoms of Parkinson’s is trouble sleeping.

And so some nights at eleven, when everyone should be in bed, Papa has been lying in bed for three hours yet he’s still talking to people who are not there, reaching for things not there, looking around the room at sights only in his mind, and in worst-case scenarios, trying to get out of bed — something that would be disastrous.

The frustration we all feel about this is ineffable.

Consolation

Thursday 15 July 2021

When Papa was in his late thirties or early forties (I can’t really remember), we had a family membership at the local YMCA, and he liked to play basketball. He didn’t like playing with men his age — too slow. He played with the twenty- and twenty-one-year-olds. It was hard and aggressive, and while I can’t really remember how good Papa was at basketball, I do remember how tenacious he was, how he never gave up.

One time he was breaking for the basket, forcing his way through a couple of defenders, when he leaped, shot, landed on his ankle at an angle, and fell in agony with a snap that everyone heard.

As Papa lay there on the floor, rolling about in agony, one of the other players leaned into the group huddled about him and said, “If it’s any consolation to you, sir, you made the basket.”

Tonight, L made a block that won the point but resulted in an ankle injury. A young lady on her team told her, “But L, you won the point.”

Beds and Bars

Wednesday 14 July 2021

Getting out of bed is so simple an act that we do it without thinking. We might sometimes want to stay in bed a bit longer, but the act of slinging our feet off the bed and hoisting ourselves into a sitting position — we don’t give that much thought.

When I had my hernia surgery some six years ago, I realized how much we use our abdominal muscles to get out of bed, and because those muscles were terribly sore after surgery, I thought very much about getting out of bed. It was painful, and I wanted to get out of bed quickly to lessen the time my muscles burned, but the act of getting out of bed quickly made them hurt all the more. It was a lose-lose situation. The decision to get out of bed, then, was always a reluctant one.

On the other hand, every time I’ve overslept, I’ve kept out of bed in a single motion, and it’s a conscious act: “I’ve got to get out of the bed as fast as possible and into the shower as fast as possible so I can get dressed and bolt downstairs as fast as possible to grab something to shove down my throat as fast as possible so I can get to work as fast as possible.”

Other than that, I rarely think about getting out of bed. The physical act is simple, effortless, and without consideration of its simple significance, a significance that doesn’t appear as such until the ability to do so disappears.

In two or three weeks my father has gone from being semi-independent (such that we could leave him alone for stretches up to eight hours) to being completely bedridden. I don’t think he’s quite come to accept that fact or even completely understand it. There’s still hope in his mind that he will one day be walking again. I don’t think that’s the case; the doctors don’t think that’s the case; and deep down, he probably doesn’t think it’s the case. Several times a day he tries to get out of bed only for us to remind him that it’s not safe for him to get out of bed. He says things like, “I can’t wait until I get out of this bed and get back to normal.” He doesn’t realize that this new normal is just that, nor does he realize that tragically this new normal will only last for some period of time (months? weeks? days?) before the next dip, the next drop in his condition, the next “new normal.”

Every new normal makes the previous one look like a paradise. Every new normal reminds us all anew that no matter how trying and depressing for all of us involved, it’s only going to get more trying and more depressing. Every new normal makes the old one seem eons ago. Every new normal quickly begins to feel like it will always be normal, that it will stagnate. That it has stagnated. And then another dip. Another episode. Another new normal.

And the bed he’s in becomes his whole environment, his whole world, his prison.

How anyone could watch how this man is suffering mentally and emotionally and believe that the god he dedicated his life to, supported fiscally (so to speak), and was eternally devoted to would turn his back on him in his time of need — how anyone could think in such a situation that a god like that could exist, and if that god did exist, how it could be considered anything other than capricious and evil, I just don’t know. Belief gives hope, apologists claim. Yet it also gives despair. “What have I done to deserve this?” Dad has asked in his lucid moments. “Why won’t God do something after I’ve devoted my life to him?” Nana pleaded. For both of them, I think, it’s not a matter of “Why doesn’t God heal me so I can go back to my normal life” but something more basic: “Why is God allowing me to suffer like this instead of just letting me die peacefully in my sleep tonight? Why do I wake up day after day to this same prison?”

He remains, as far as I can tell, steadfast in his faith. “I know where I’m going” is his general demeanor, and that might give him some comfort. But I can’t help but think that perhaps that comfort is not worth the anguish it also brings.

In the meantime, we try to comfort him in those admittedly-rare moments of angst, keep him calm throughout the day, and help him take each day in his bed one moment at a time. I don’t know that there’s much more we could hope to do.

L playing in the grass league this evening

The Other Sister

Tuesday 13 July 2021

Papa grew up with six siblings: four sisters and two brothers. The first sibling to go was his youngest brother, who was killed in Vietnam in 1972. I’m named after him but never met him. It was about thirteen years before the next sibling passed, Papa’s older brother, who had cancer and died in the mid-eighties. And then there three and a half decades before another sibling passed, followed by another sibling just a year or two later.

And so now there are three of them: a younger sister, Aunt D, who visited Sunday, and the first-born of the entire group of seven, who visited today. Aunt Y doesn’t get out much, and the last time she was at our house was for Papa’s birthday, probably close to a decade ago. We all used to meet at Aunt D’s house for Thanksgiving, but the last time we did that must have been five or more years ago. The last time all three of them were together was at Nana’s funeral. What a sad thought that that might indeed be the last time the three surviving siblings are together. But I guess that’s the nature of reunions as we all get older.

Gymnastics with Papa

Monday 12 July 2021

When Nana passed away a couple of years ago, I started going through all the pictures from their house. She’d gone through them herself a few years earlier and thrown out a lot, organizing the remaining pictures by year. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been scanning them and running them through Lightroom. They’re small pictures, and the resulting images are noticeably lacking in quality, but the idea is clear.

Gymnastics with Papa was a common theme when I was a few years older than E is now. One of our favorite tricks was the leg flip: holding my by my upper arms, Papa would flip me over his head, and I would land with a solid thump that sometimes jarred me throughout my body, though I never said anything.

When I was younger, the Steam Shovel was a favorite: pulling me over his chest to his head, Papa would lift me up, pause, then pop me over to his knees where I’d slide down. This was a favorite when I was very young; when I got a little older (like in these pictures), I didn’t enjoy it as much, but I never told Papa.

“Let’s do the Steam Shovel!” he’d suggest, and I’d willingly play along.

Then of course there was the simple benchpress. What was not to love about that?

I look at these pictures now, realizing that my father in these pictures is almost five to ten years younger than I am now, and I marvel at how young he is. How young and energetic, how strong.

Given how he’s suffering from Parkinson’s now and how rapidly it’s advancing, how it’s robbing him of his ability to move, his ability to think clearly, his ability to experience reality without the doubts of whether what he’s seeing is in fact happening, his ability to live in short — given all that, the man in these pictures looks like a different man entirely.

One thing that hasn’t changed is his sense of humor. He’s not able to get down in the floor and be goofy with E or L like he used to, but occasionally he’ll make a comment here and there that shows that goofy silliness is still there.

A Visit from Family

Sunday 11 July 2021

Papa’s sister and her daughter came to visit Papa today.

Step

Thursday 8 July 2021

One of the countless tricky things about Parkinson’s, we’re learning, is its complete unpredictability. With other diseases, doctors can provide a sense of scale and timing: you are here now; the next step will likely be this; that step will happen most likely in x to y time. With Parkinson’s, the next challenge isn’t always defined. The next step is always in the dark. The time it all takes is always a mystery. And so when a Parkinson’s patient has a bad day, it’s tough to know whether it’s just that or the next step.

“But I thought Parkinson’s was a slow, degenerative disease without sudden declines.”

So did I, but that too is a variable. Mostly, if we’re talking about the termor dominant form, that’s likely the case; if they have the P.I.G.D. (Partial Instability Gait Difficulty) form, there can be, apparently, sudden declines. Papa, sadly, has the P.I.G.D. form. Each change, then, might be a significant change or just a bad day.

Father’s Day 2021

Sunday 20 June 2021

With Papa in the hospital, the simplest gifts are the best: a visit from the kids made his day.

Saturday

Saturday 19 June 2021

I see in the time machine widget at the bottom of the page that it was ten years ago today that I set the four-by-four posts in concrete to make the supports for our raspberry canes.

The canes are no more; the posts are no more; the carport is no more. Ten years and so many changes.

One week and so many changes.

The Week Ends

Friday 18 June 2021

We go from week to week without much thought most of the time. Monday comes, and we drag ourselves out of the bed and into work. Sometimes we’re lucky and have a job that we enjoy, and we’re eager to get to work. I’m fortunate that most Mondays, that’s how I feel. But no matter how much we love our job, the week grinds us down, and Friday evening brings a welcome release. We make the most of the weekend, try to recharge ourselves, and head out into the world the next week.

We go through these weeks week after week, again and again, and each week brings some progress to whatever our goals and adventures might be, but after a while, everything just seems to blend together. Week after week, no single week seems to be different than the one that preceded it, or the one that proceeded it. Weeks pass like days which pass like hours, which flow by like seconds, which make the steady stream we call reality.

But every now and then, we have weeks that change everything made up of days that are constant little shifts that are made up of hours that are utterly unpredictable. And the reality we start those weeks with is completely different than the reality that ends the week.

When Nana had a pulmonary embolism two and a half years ago, the week she spent in the hospital afterward was just such a week. She should not, according to the statistics, have survived that first night. But she did. And any time someone survives like that, the week that follows is a week that realigns the reality of everyone connected to the survivor.

This has been such a week for us, ending in a trip to the ER. We make it into a room at the ER but have to wait for a while: there is an arrest issue on the floor, the nurse explains, and I have to ask for clarification: cardiac or criminal? It is, of course, the former, and I feel immediately stupid for asking the question.

The doctor comes in and asks Papa some questions. He sits behind me and talks to me about what’s been going on. I show him some videos I shot. He’s suddenly as concerned as I am. He orders some tests and tells me he’s going to try to get the presiding hospital doctor to come in to see Papa.

While we wait, we hear a child outside crying as his mother tries to explain something he ate while crying at the same time. No one can really get the words out, but in the midst of it all, the mother is trying to comfort her son, calm herself, and talk to the doctor at the same time.

A nurse comes in and wheels out Papa as I reflect on the role reversal that’s been building over the last two years. I recall an ER visit when I was in second grade and got busted in the face with a football helmet face mask because the coach was letting me run the workout with the other players even though I didn’t yet have a uniform. Blood gushing everywhere, I required several stitches that evening. That was a week that changed a few things, but not everything: I refused to give up football even though my ability to practice was hampered. Curtailed even.

When Papa comes back in, he asks me where we are. I take his hand and tell him, giving his hand a squeeze and assuring him that we’ll all be alright.

It reminds me immediately of what I used to say to L when we were nearing an argument over some petty triffle: “Don’t worry, honey, you won’t be thirteen forever.”

“You always say that!”

“I’m not just saying that for your sake…”

Coming full circle in so many ways.

Memorial Day 2021

Monday 31 May 2021

Nana died on Memorial Day in 2019, which was May 27 that year. This year, however, it’s four days later. So the two-year anniversary of her passing was on Thursday, but today was the day we felt it. We spent some time this morning at her grave, cleaning her bench/marker, reminescing.

We spent the evening with friends.

All Saints’ Day 2020

Sunday 1 November 2020

We got a late start today, even with the time change. We weren’t home until so incredibly late that even K slept in a little

In the early afternoon, we went to Nana’s grave to clean a little and try to set some new candles. Of course, we didn’t have the proper candles that are ubiquitous in Polish florist shops this time of year, except for this year. The cemeteries were closed for three days, including today, in order to minimize the spread of the virus.

Which led to the circulation of an amusing joke: “For everyone planning on jumping the fence to the cemetery for All Saints’ Day, please remember that the hours of six to eight are reserved for seniors.” Translated as best as I can recall the original.

We had our own adventures at the site, though: we’d planned on giving the marker a good scrubbing, but then left all the supplies at the house. Sounds about right.

In the afternoon, a family meeting to help L make a big decision: she got accepted into two volleyball clubs, and in each of them, she’s being recruited into the highest-level teams. She tried out for Carolina One again this year, and she’s leaning away from their offer for a number of reasons. One of them: they didn’t choose her last year.

“Typical thirteen-year-old logic,” K and I laughed, acknowledging, though, that it’s ultimately her choice.

Covid-willing that is. There’s a high chance, I think, that everything will be canceled before it starts, with rising numbers everywhere but especially here in Greenville. The teams all have very strict covid protocols in place, but things might reach a point that even that is impossible or impractically dangerous.

From the Past

Sunday 6 September 2020

It doesn’t seem so long ago — we always say that, and we always will.

Discovered Treasures

Thursday 3 September 2020

I was going through Lightroom folders when I found one called “100CANON_fromPapasCamera” from 2013. It was, as the name suggests, from Papa’s camera.

Lots of pictures I don’t remember seeing.

1991

Saturday 29 August 2020

Papa’s Parents

Friday 31 July 2020

I found this scanned picture while going through copied files to make sure that I’d moved everything from the old to the new computer. They’re quite younger in this picture than I remember.

Day 73: Changes and Changes

Wednesday 27 May 2020

Changes I

K has moved into real estate, though she hasn’t quite working part-time at her old job. She likes the security it provides. I tell her that things are going fine with real estate: she’s just helped a client buy a house, she’s got two other clients she’s helping, and one of them might be completing two transactions using K’s services. “It’s all only potential earnings,” seems to be her mantra, and that’s why she’s reticent to quit her hold job completely.

It was a little ironic, then, that one of the memories that popped up in the Time Machine widget at the bottom of the page had to do with our first day out house hunting.

Criteria, Part II

I read through what I wrote then and realize that neither K nor I really knew what we were doing. That’s to be understood — it was the first time we’d bought a house. Still — were we really so green?

That’s one of the reasons I continue writing this thing — evidence of how much things have changed.

How E and I play-build has changed. It used to be something we did almost exclusively in his room, using blocks and Legos and Tinkertoys and whatever else we could find. It still is, to be sure.

But we often find ourselves outside building something more substantial. Or at last more in the Boy’s mind’s eye, that’s what we’re doing. His plans are often overly-ambitious, as every eighth-year-old’s plans should be. But as we begin working, more realistic goals form.

One thing that will never change is the sadness we feel on May 27 from now on — the one year anniversary of Nana’s passing.

I look back on that day and remember very little about it. I know took the dog for a walk around lunchtime and listened to Mozart’s Requiem. I know Papa and I had a scotch on the back porch that evening. But it was Memorial Day — it slowed the pace significantly, which perhaps was a good thing.

And what of today? A year on? Papa still gets blindsided by it occasionally. That’s to be expected; that will never go away. I do, too. Also to be expected.

Changes II

I was going through some pictures from 2003 around K’s family house at Easter. I hadn’t realized how much things had changed.

Those saplings in the neighboring lot — they completely hide the house now. That pad of concrete with an outdoor oven on it — enclosed and roofed. (That was done long before we left, though.) That fence to the left — hidden by a taller fence of wood to hide the field behind it. But the house itself, the one in the background still under construction — exactly the same.

That little baby, K’s nephew — a seventeen-year-old high school student. The field behind the happy family — storage for a building materials company. But the swing — still there, still exactly the same. The wooden seat has possibly been replaced, but who knows. Maybe it’s still the same one.

One more change — the most significant:

Day 72: Reflection and Time Together with a Tripod

Tuesday 26 May 2020

Reflection

I titled the post “Heading Out.” It comprised one single picture:

The Boy and I were going out for a Sunday-morning ride. We rode about our neighborhood, the neighboring neighborhood, up to his school, back — a typical ride for us. If there were any puddles I would have had to tell him not to ride through them.

We got back sweaty and satisfied, and after a shower, we had lunch with Nana and Papa and then I headed out to photograph a special ordination Mass for a deacon in our parish, Deacon Richard — now Father Richard.

At some point during the afternoon — I don’t remember because I wasn’t there — Nana went to sleep. K must have texted me about it because I remember thinking, “Well, we gave her an opioid — she always goes to sleep after that.” The Mass ended and the reception began, and after an hour and a half of the reception, K texted me that I should probably come home. “It doesn’t look good,” she texted.

Still, I wasn’t worried. “She’s just asleep. The opioid’s effect will wear off and tomorrow morning she’ll be just as good as new.”

That was May 26, 2019. She passed away sometime in the early hours of May 27. We’re not exactly sure when even though the death certificate has the time the hospice nurse came and checked: 7:30.

“Tomorrow morning she’ll be as good as new.”

I’m not sure how I could have been so blind other than to suggest it was self-deception out of a sense of self-protection. A lot of “self” in that.

“Can we have some time together?”

The Boy asks me every day, “Can we have some time together?” On the one hand, that makes it sound like I don’t spend a lot of time with him. “Poor kid — has to ask his father to spend time with him.” It sounds positively Dickensian. On the other hand, that shows how conscientious he is about spending time with me: he wants to make sure the day doesn’t slip by without us doing something together, and that has happened.

Today, I had some work to do, though, after I completed my school responsibilities (only three more days) and before I could play. The Boy is always eager to learn how to do something, so I invited him along.

Spraying for pests suits him, I think.But then again, you do have to be somewhat systematic — follow a pattern, a plan, a path. You can just spray here, spray there. You have to make sure you have even coverage over the whole area you’re hoping to affect. Much like with mowing, then, I let him work but often took back the equipment to hit a spot he’d missed.

After the work (“Is this our time together?” the Boy asked, concerned), we went back to our favorite spot in the creek and discovered, much to our surprise, that the island we use to assist in crossing the creek was gone. The last flood must have washed it out completely.

We also started planning our next fort. We might get a little less primitive this time. We might even use some 2x4s.

Tripod

I took the camera and tripod out with us today and set the camera to take a picture every minute.

Why didn’t I do that before? I don’t have many pictures with the Boy when we go on these adventures. It’s a simple way to solve that problem.

One can also reverse-mount the tripod and take some pictures otherwise impossible: three-second exposures at water level. That type of thing.

Day 56: Mother’s Day and Conspiracies

Sunday 10 May 2020

Two radically different thoughts that rattled around my head today, completely unconnected other than the fact that I thought about them during the same 12-hour period…

Mother’s Day

It’s the first Mother’s Day without Nana. A year ago, we were just about ready to move Nana and Papa into the almost-completed living space, and we had a Mother’s Day dinner at Nana’s and Papa’s. We all sat around Nana’s bed as we ate, and L and I gave her a small succulent that was small enough to sit on her bedside table. I don’t remember what we ate; I don’t remember what we talked about. Had we known then that it was our last Mother’s Day with her, we probably would all remember those details, but that’s the problem with most lasts — we don’t know they’re the last this or last that.

It reminds me of how a priest once explained how he avoids becoming complacent and (did he say this? He might have used this word) even bored with the Mass, saying the same thing day in and day out, over and over again. “I try to treat every Mass as if it’s the first, last, and only Mass I’ll ever celebrate.” When we know it’s the last time we do something, we tend to slow down and savor it.

I used to get very upset at lasts. I wanted, as Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz sings, “to hold on to these moments as they last,” and when it’s the last one, it doesn’t last long. (That’s an odd little thing, isn’t it? “Last” as a verb and “last” as an adjective. “How long does the last one last?”) When I knew the last moments of some experience were approaching or the last time I would do something was nearing, I always grew just a touch melancholy.

The last day of school, for instance, used to be a little sad because I found myself thinking that I’d never see these kids in whom I’d invested so much. I’d forged relationships with them, some of which were hard-won and very frustrating as they developed. It had taken me a long time with some of them to convince them that I was, indeed, on their side, that even when I was giving them a hard time about their behavior, doling out consequences that they felt were unfair, I was still on their side.

From K’s iPhone

But endings are often beginnings. I think of Eliot’s “East Coker,” which ends, “In my end is my beginning.” It is, of course, a reference to the afterlife, but all endings are also beginnings — an old, time-worn truth. The end of every school year promises the beginning of the next.

That is where I differ from the rest of the folks in our household: they all believe that Nana’s end was her beginning; sadly, I have my doubts. It’s a lovely thought, and one that of course I hope is true in a sense because Papa, for instance, has so much invested emotionally in that idea. But if I’m right, we’ll never know; we’ll only know if I’m wrong.

It was with all these thoughts in my head that I drove the family to visit Nana’s grave today for Mother’s Day. Papa bought a couple of new bouquets of artificial flowers — lovely ones of multiple shades of blue with yellow and white roses to off-set the sea of blue. Nana would approve, no doubt. Blue was her favorite color, and there are enough shades of blue in the bouquets to fill the sky.

Conspiracy

I’m currently reading Stalin: In the Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore, a book about Stalin’s Great Terror ( I love the Russian name, Большой террор — makes me think of the ballet!). At its heart, the Great Terror was unimaginable without Stalin, but it was also impossible without others. Many others. How do you get so many people to go along with that? Simple: conspiracy theories.

Today it seems impossible that virtually every factory and railway line was being sabotaged by Trotskyite terrorists within their management, but Soviet industry was riddled with mistakes and cursed with thousands of accidents thanks to poor management and the breakneck speed of the Five-year Plans: for example, in 1934 alone, there were 62,000 accidents on the railways! How could this happen in a perfect country? “Enemies” among the corrupt elite had surely caused the failures. The arrest of saboteurs and wreckers in the industrial factories and railways spread.

By the time the Terror turned to the army and the Party itself, Stalin was most definitely in complete, unquestioned control. At his word, people lived and died, and very few people questioned his decisions.

Reading this got me thinking about the current situation in America and the conspiracy theories that seem to be popping up like mushrooms are growing positively dangerous.

Some people belittled her, others suggested she was a paid actor or was a healthcare professional who had no direct involvement with the treatment of Covid-19. Others accused her of being an abortion doctor.

“It was heated, people were very fired up about what they had to say,” she told CNN. “A lot of the top comments we got were about us being fake nurses, there was a huge majority of them that still believe this virus is fake, that it’s a hoax and not real at all. They were convinced that we’re fake nurses and that’s why we weren’t talking.”

Quite the opposite of a fake nurse, Ms Leander volunteered to work at her hospital’s Covid-19 unit full time, and has been on the front line working with infected patients for the past month.(Source)

I saw footage of this on Now This but can’t find it now. There is a definite political element to this: all the protestors were wearing “Trump 2020” paraphernalia, and I would bet that every single one of them believes the Deep State conspiracy nonsense. So I read the passage in Montefiore’s book and started wondering what it would take for something like that to happen in America.

Could these people support wholesale executions of people they see as participating in anti-state conspiracies? I don’t know.

We all want to say, “No, no — we’re better than that.” We think about our neighbors and even those nameless faces we see in our own towns and think it impossible. Would Vasili Blokhin’s neighbors or acquaintances have thought he was capable of the acts he committed? He was a prolific executioner who killed many during the Great Terror but most infamously executed over 7,000 Polish officers personally in 28 days in the forest of Katyn.

Just as we never know when an end of this or that is coming, we never know how current events are going to play out. COVID-19 was a problem in China, over there, far away until it wasn’t. With quarantines being lifted around the country before we even really have adequate testing capabilities in place, it’s not inconceivable that we might experience a sharp increase in the number of cases, forcing states to decide whether or not to reimpose restrictions. What will these protesters do then? We’ve already seen armed protesters storm the Michigan statehouse; what else are they capable of? If something happens that results in bloodshed, how will protesters (i.e., rabid Trump supporters) react in other states? We already see signs reading “Give me liberty or give me COVID.”

That’s not a far cry from the original formulation that encouraged revolution.