{"id":2745,"date":"2024-11-16T01:40:39","date_gmt":"2024-11-16T01:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/?page_id=2745"},"modified":"2024-11-29T04:27:08","modified_gmt":"2024-11-29T04:27:08","slug":"tracy-robert-2024","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/tracy-robert-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracy Robert"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Losing Casablanca<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The year a comb-over demagogue ascended to the US presidency, the year Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico and the demagogue threw paper towels at the suffering masses, the year bees invaded the walls of our 1930s shingled cottage and wouldn\u2019t go away, and a bee expert told us we would have to caulk around every one of the hundreds of shingles to cure the infestation\u2014in that same year of the seemingly impossible, a neurologist at UCI Mind diagnosed my 66-year-old husband with a degenerative brain disease called Primary Progressive Aphasia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This diagnosis did not come unforeseen. For over a year, Andy paused during his spoken sentences, struggling for a word, almost always a noun in the position of object. \u201cI need to get a new one of those, you know, what you put on the end of a hose to direct the water?\u201d Nozzle. <\/em>Or \u201cI think we should put a different plant in there, maybe a, um, white flower, smells tropical.\u201d Gardenia. <\/em>Sometimes he would halt midsentence to put both hands over his forehead, as if trying to encourage or warm up his brain. On many occasions he settled for an inexact facsimile of the word, like bottle <\/em>for jar <\/em>or flat place where you store stuff <\/em>for shelf.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were both in our mid-sixties, and we and nearly all our friends of the same age had moments where words hid themselves from us. The name of the country western singer who was also a Rhodes scholar. The little Mexican restaurant with great pozole verde.  The substance in our tissues that can be good and bad and is supposedly a predictor of heart disease. Most of us, even Andy much of the time, could come up with the first letter or two of these nouns, but not the rest of the spelling. It took me an hour to arrive at the word cholesterol. <\/em>I kept thinking carbohydrate. <\/em>This sort of occurrence comes with advanced years, along with venturing into a room of your house with a singular purpose, like seeking a hairbrush, then forgetting what you intended to do until you\u2019ve left the room in frustration. Or forgetting where you put your wallet or car keys or cell phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took us an entire year and then some to concede his was more than an age-typical lapse in language fluency.  He cradled his head more frequently, even in social situations like parties and dinners. Friends and relatives begin to notice and ask about his health. On the recommendation of my brother and brother-in-law, Andy visited a clinic where he was evaluated for sleep apnea, and began to use a CPAP mask each night. We both noticed improvements. He did not grasp for words as often, and if he did, he found a suitable replacement with barely a missed beat. Walkway <\/em>for sidewalk. Cutter <\/em>for knife. <\/em> My brother\u2019s daughter <\/em>for my niece. <\/em>These substitutions were not perfect, we both knew, but they were an improvement over the abrupt, obvious breaks in conversation, palms to his forehead, and we held to the hope that apnea had caused his problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a few months, we floated along in our deluded bliss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, during a holiday visit, my brother and sister-in-law observed that Andy\u2019s word-finding ability had worsened. They hadn\u2019t seen him for six months or longer. They are trained in fields related to Andy\u2019s difficulty: Cathy is a linguist who specializes in language and literacy education, and Matt a speech pathologist. They did not live with my husband every day, and weren\u2019t accustomed to his spoken glitches as I was. Also, a friend and teaching colleague of mine made the same observation. She and her husband had a close friend recently diagnosed with early onset frontotemporal dementia. He\u2019d found help at UCI Mind. My friend recommended we seek a consultation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The adult daughter of an addict mother, I understood denial. It was like pressing your foot on the passenger-side floor and believing you\u2019d help the driver stop the car. There is something sweetly optimistic about denial, but it\u2019s still wrong. Andy is my third husband. When I met him I was 49, and had finally figured out that the best relationships are between two people who want the best for each other. Though I had wanted the best for my previous husbands, they were threatened by my ambitions, thus their feelings for me weren\u2019t mutual, and I was angry and thwarted. As soon as I met Andy, I realized what it meant to be a partner and to trust. He was funny and smart and sincere, and he could also call me out on my most egregious bullshit. He once told me not to be such a teacher when I was speaking to him. That stung, because one of my myriad flaws is that I can easily turn into a bossy, finger-wagging lecturer. I come by it honestly; I spent thirty years as an English instructor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost a decade into our relationship we bought a cottage a block from the sand on the Balboa Peninsula, and three years after that we married, certain we wanted the rest of our lives spent with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, as we celebrated, in our denial, how many okay words he found to stand in for the words he couldn\u2019t remember, it was sweet. And also wrong. I recognized how wrong it was as we walked along the beach, and Andy said, \u201cLook, they moved that house thing away from the water and put it by the parking lot.\u201d The \u201chouse thing\u201d he referred to was a lifeguard tower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat \u2018house thing\u2019?\u201d I said, and hoped he\u2019d come up with the accurate noun phrase. He\u2019s lived at the beach over half his life, the guard towers fixtures in his environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looked at me for a bereft moment then said, \u201cI know what it is. I can\u2019t find it.\u201d He, a word puzzle and parlor game enthusiast, asked me to give him clues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right there on the boardwalk, I acted it out in charades. \u201cFirst word, first syllable. Sounds like,\u201d then I pointed to myself and my wedding ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMarriage?\u201d he said. I pointed more insistently at myself and my ring; eventually he guessed wife<\/em>, then life<\/em>, then lifeguard<\/em> came to him. But he couldn\u2019t retrieve what the actual structure was called.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSounds like,\u201d and I gave the Black Power salute. He latched onto the word power<\/em>, then went through the alphabet:  bower, cower, dower<\/em>, etc. but completely skipped over tower<\/em>. He said finally, \u201cLifeguard station. That\u2019s the best I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s correct. Just another way of saying \u2018lifeguard tower.\u2019\u201d But his face showed no satisfaction in landing on a merely acceptable turn of phrase. He looked pained. And I was equally stabbed by how he had, essentially, asked me to be his teacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UCI Mind is a bright, modern facility on the Irvine campus. The receptionists and assisting medical professionals are congenial; the doctors are researchers. They are experts in their fields, data- rather than patient-centered. Dr. J, Andy\u2019s neurologist, is both an MD and a PhD. His PhD is in Primary Progressive Aphasia. We were matched to him, I believe, after I wrote an email to UCI Mind describing Andy\u2019s symptoms. He was exactly the expert for us to be with, but now we had to learn to work with an expert, which is not as easy as you might assume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The small examination room was arranged so that Andy and I sat in stationary chairs at walls on opposite sides, with Dr. J on a rolling chair in the corner scooting out and between us. Educated in Tehran and Cambridge UK, he spoke with a precise English accent. He was slight, of average height, graceful in his movements. After greeting us and inquiring how long we\u2019d noticed symptoms, he administered a brief oral exam to Andy. First he asked Andy to subtract 3 from 100, 3 from 97, 3 from 94 and so on, which Andy was able to do without pause or error, faster than I could.  The doc recited a list of words\u2014face, church, velvet, car, red<\/em>\u2014then called on Andy to repeat 2 or 3 of them sporadically throughout the test; Andy only remembered one. Dr. J said, \u201cIf Jack was kissed by Jill, who did the kissing?\u201d  Andy had no problem with the passive voice construction of that item. Another question, \u201cIf I say Bill will be upset if Susan goes to Paris without him, who is planning a vacation?\u201d did not stump Andy, who then was asked to draw the face of a clock showing 10 past 2 o\u2019clock. He did that quickly and accurately, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first cause for alarm happened when Dr. J showed black and white line drawings of a rhinoceros and a camel, and asked Andy to name the animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andy could not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the test concluded, the doctor said, \u201cIt appears you have Primary Progressive Aphasia. It\u2019s degenerative, and there is no cure. You probably have five years before you\u2019ll need care.\u201d He excused himself to go get some paperwork for further testing, and closed the door behind him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We stared across the room at each other. Andy broke into sobs. I walked over to rub his back, wondering why the room was set up in a way that separated couples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The doctor returned with orders for an MRI, a PET scan, and blood work. He shared Andy\u2019s vitals with him, and Andy, trying to be chipper, said, \u201cWow, my heart speed has improved. It\u2019s usually much faster.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. J looked at me. \u201cYou see, he said \u2018heart speed\u2019 instead of \u2018heart rate.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I nodded, and felt like a traitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andy felt dismissed, and said so on the drive home. \u201cHe spoke to you more than me, as if I\u2019m already gone. I\u2019m just a case to him, not a person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I caught his point. Dr. J had made more eye contact with me and directed more statements and questions my way, except during the test. But Andy had previously visited at least a couple of erstwhile neurologists who examined him for strokes or mini-strokes and threw up their hands, claiming he seemed fine. This doctor was an authority, who knew that amyloid plaque deposits\u2014the same type that cause Alzheimer\u2019s disease\u2014cause Primary Progressive Aphasia, the logopenic variant, which Andy has, only they reside in the language center of the brain. Stroke victims can recover from the aphasia they suffer. PPA patients cannot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWouldn\u2019t you rather be with a doctor who knows this stuff intimately, than someone who doesn\u2019t?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot if he treats me like a statistic,\u201d Andy said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thereafter he contacted his cousin who is a pulmonologist with some sway at UC San Francisco. The cousin procured a little-known phone number that would put Andy in touch with the UCSF Center for Memory and Aging. As far as I could tell, it was a sister program to UCI Mind, and they shared research developments, but Andy believed UCSF would be better than the center we could drive to in twenty minutes. It\u2019s a seven-hour drive on a good traffic day from Newport Beach to San Francisco. We haggled over these considerations. I asked him how much time he wanted to spend traveling to and from these appointments, and how different one UC research center would be from another. This line of questioning angered him. \u201cI want to make the best choices I can. This is my life. Wouldn\u2019t you want to see what\u2019s available?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could not contest those words. I\u2019d want to investigate the possibilities, for sure. I told him, though, it would be his responsibility to follow through on his quest to be accepted into the UCSF fold. I would find an elder law firm to help us draw up a family trust with medical and financial directives. Dr. J strongly suggested we do so. He understood Andy\u2019s desire to look into other programs, but added UCI Mind\u2019s position was that extensive travel for medical opinions and attention \u201cis not good for our patients, in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hard-to-get number the cousin gave Andy connected him to a recording with detailed instructions of steps he needed to take\u2014including gathering medical files and information\u2014in order to be considered for the UCSF Center\u2019s program. In the twenty-plus years I\u2019ve known him, long before his diagnosis, Andy has not been stellar at methodically completing work. He needs the pressure of imminent deadline. We\u2019re almost five years into this journey, have signed on with UCI Mind to participate in their research (with the understanding it\u2019s voluntary and he can drop out at any time), and I have no idea where Andy is in the application process to UCSF. It irritates him when I ask, so I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, however, when we meet with Dr. J and\/or other expert researchers at UCI, we arrange the chairs in the room to make sure we sit beside each other. This simple act of feng shui has made a difference; we are addressed, by and large, as a team rather than as separate well and unwell individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two days after Andy\u2019s initial diagnosis, bees infiltrated the wall outside our stairwell, crowding in through gaps around exterior shingles. We heard their insistent hum as we went up and down the stairs. Some of them found a way inside our home via an opening under the kitchen sink, which we quickly stuffed with newspaper.  They stung our dog Gus only once before we blocked them, and we remained unscathed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting rid of the infestation was fraught with miscalculation. We called a bee removal service of local repute, and the bees came back in force ten days after their removal. The job was guaranteed for a month, so we called them to request what was promised us. The bees returned two weeks after the second removal, and the service said they\u2019d have to charge us for the next. We balked and called The Bee Guy who had better Yelp reviews. When he examined the evidence, he showed us pollen deposits that indicated the bees had been present long enough to make combs inside the walls. He drilled a dozen holes through the plaster of our interior stairwell, but could not locate the comb paddles. He assured us they\u2019d be gone for months, but would be back once they smelled the honey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They returned after six months. The Bee Guy eradicated them, but said they\u2019d keep coming back until the paddles were removed, or every shingle gap caulked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next time, he said, he\u2019d bring his heat detector to determine the precise location of the honeycombs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When The Bee Guy left, I joked, half-heartedly, about the plaque and the plague being visited upon us. Andy smiled but did not laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I write. I\u2019m a word person. Andy is a word person, too, and has been the first reader of my books and his brother\u2019s books.  For one of our early dates, Andy invited me to a party at his house where we played word games with his friends: Password, Fictionary, Catch Phrase, and finishing the fifth lines of limericks. We\u2019d met online and fallen for each other, sight unseen, corresponding over a month or so, absolutely enthralled by the way the other wrote. If someone told me then that this man would within twenty years be afflicted by language impairment, I would have said they were out of their fucking mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he has been afflicted. It is the reality we wake to every morning, and surprisingly enough, I\u2019m getting used to it. I haven\u2019t yet completely accepted the diagnosis, but I am learning how to work with it. When I don\u2019t understand what Andy is saying, which happens with greater frequency, I ask questions that will clarify like a slightly modified game of Password. I try to remain patient rather than anxious, convinced each slip is evidence of a radical downhill slide. If he can\u2019t come up with a word, and asks that I not tell him, I give him clues, usually with rhymes. But what helps me most, surprisingly, is that I am developing a sincere appreciation of the mistakes he makes when scrabbling for what he needs to say. I mean this without condescension. His new fractured word plays are often hilarious or poetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~One summer, after a cold wind moved into our neighborhood, he searched for a pair of pants to change into. He said, \u201cI\u2019m looking for a pair of long-sleeved shorts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~He pronounced the national park that graces our state Oh-sem-i-tee. <\/em>It sounded more like the anthem and prayer the glorious park deserves rather than the correct Yosemite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~A friend of his phoned him accidentally. \u201cHello, hello, Rainer?\u201d Andy said a few times before hanging up. Then he turned to me and said, \u201cRainer just butt-fucked me.\u201d I raised my eyebrow at him, and he said, \u201cI knew that didn\u2019t sound right.\u201d Of course, he meant butt-dialed<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~On our way to an outdoor concert, he drove backstreets to avoid traffic. When I commended his smooth re-routing, he said, \u201cI really know my way around this neighborhood. I don\u2019t mean to sound like a show-it-all.\u201d That expression worked just as well if not better than the intended know-it-all.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

~When he was clearly sulking, I asked him what was wrong. He said, \u201cI\u2019m in a dark moon.\u201d Definitely more effective than dark mood.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

~I came downstairs to find him eating lunch. He offered me a bite of the Hatch chile chicken sausage, which was superb. \u201cI just cooked it in the Microsoft,\u201d he said, meaning microwave.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

~He called an elite gated community in our town Big Onion instead of Big Canyon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~Recounting a particularly thick patch of fog that made him have to pull the car over, he couldn\u2019t remember the word fog, <\/em>and stopped in frustration. I asked him to describe it. He said, \u201cWhen the sky goes all the way to the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andy\u2019s disease, at this stage, affords appreciation and laughter. It won\u2019t always be so, but for now I\u2019ll savor that it can be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple years back, Andy and I and another couple participated in the March for Our Lives in Santa Ana. Karen is a close friend of mine; we\u2019ve known each other a quarter of a century and seen each other through births, deaths, triumphs, tragedies and betrayals. We were furious with the demagogue\u2019s administration and its refusal to care for the most vulnerable, all the while championing the NRA. Scott and Andy know each other, though not well, and made small talk to learn more. Scott discovered Andy and I belonged to a film salon, and continued that line of inquiry, asking Andy what his favorite movie was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I glanced over at my husband, who carried an OMG NRA WTF? sign. He hadn\u2019t slept well the night before from worry over his 92-year-old mother and combative stepfather. Lack of sleep and stress are bad for anyone\u2019s brain, and Andy was quiet that day. He resorts to listening and simple replies when he has word trouble. And right then I could read from his face that he wasn\u2019t going to grab from the storage bin of his language center the name of his favorite film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCasa\u2026,\u201d <\/em>he said, and looked at me. The expression he wore was anguished. Something he loved had been taken from him, or, at least, the word for it had. I widened my eyes in encouragement. \u201cCasa\u2026,\u201d<\/em> he said, followed by another massive pause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott was kind and said, \u201cOh, Casablanca, <\/em>yeah. I used to like it. Might be too tame for me now.\u201d Karen chimed in with her appreciation of the film classic. Andy was crestfallen, and though I put my arm around him, the gesture gave no comfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, it\u2019s not all poetry and hilarity when your brain loses words like so many safety pins. You believe you know their precise location until you really need one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We still dread the fourth visitation of the bees. We know the expert to call and will remind The Bee Guy to bring his heat detector so we can get at the source. But we at some point heard through our ceiling vents the gnawing of unidentifiable rodents\u2014rats, mice, squirrels or perhaps the marsupial opossums, or a combined effort of all\u2014and crossed our fingers that they devoured the comb paddles. The demagogue continued to surpass my expectations of awfulness until he was deposed and beyond. I wonder why we aren\u2019t outside his Florida manor objecting daily to the fallout of his chaotic treachery. But we have a Congress as well as judges, courts, and a Justice Department, and expect they will unravel the web of deception and double-dealing. Andy is in a research program that, thus far, offers no strategy to resist the plaque waging a hostile takeover of his brain. Right now, the attacker can only be studied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m left thinking about baby books, of all things, the opposite of decline and demise, those puffy catalogs of pastel satin, ribbon and hope our mothers dutifully kept for us in the 1950s. They glued snippets of our infant hair to the pages, recorded the dates of our first tooth and first smile. There were black and white snapshots of us taking first steps, or eating our first solid food, and lines on which our mothers wrote down our first complete sentences, our first words. The baby books are lost, or crumbled with age, or packed away in dusty boxes stored in garages, but the making of them was an act of affection no matter what became of the books themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m charged with bearing witness to my husband\u2019s loss of words, down to perhaps the last one. I can\u2019t help but wonder, with curiosity born of love, what that word might be.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Solemnity (an update)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Last summer, we had our annual evaluation appointment at UCI Mind. I mean to use we: <\/em>the two-day appointment not only involves voluminous cognitive tests and physical scans for Andy, but requires my input regarding his areas of stasis, loss or gain. It may seem illogical to mention gains with regard to degenerative brain disease, but often patients do develop new pastimes or interests. In the seven years since his diagnosis, Andy has become quite handy around the house, repairing long ceiling cracks, affixing loose moldings, even replacing a damaged toilet. He once said, without meaning to insult anyone except himself, \u201cI had to get stupid before I learned how to do stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mostly, though, what I report isn\u2019t pleasant news. In July of 2023, I sensed that my interviewer, a nurse practitioner I\u2019ll call Elizabeth, was far more tuned in to my answers than any former questioners had been. There was nothing wrong with those interviewers; Elizabeth simply approached her task with more solemnity. She listened closely and took notes on a tablet as I spoke of his loss of important names, including that of his late and beloved dog, Orejas. His loss of weight, despite eating three square meals a day with cheese and ice cream in between. His problems with managing appointments to the degree that I asked doctors\u2019 offices to send me the reminders. His inability to do simple banking, making it necessary to merge our accounts, which had previously been separate, so that I could now keep track. My horror at discovering he, who was once a tech wizard, no longer remembered how to access emails, insisting they were the same as text messages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elizabeth looked up from the tablet keyboard at me. \u201cIs Andy aware of how his difficulties are affecting you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, absolutely,\u201d I said, without pause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd how do you know that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause he often says to me, \u2018Tracy, I\u2019m so sorry I\u2019m putting you through this.\u2019\u201d My voice caught and I began to cry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Elizabeth began to tear up. \u201cHere I am trying to update the record, and I\u2019m crying along with you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She asked me if I\u2019d sought out support groups through the Alzheimer\u2019s of Orange County organization. I said I\u2019d considered it, yet a sticking point with me was that his case wasn\u2019t straightforward Alzheimer\u2019s but a rare presentation of it with progressive aphasia in the mix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think I know a group that\u2019d suit you.\u201d She wrote the group leader\u2019s phone number on her card, and a few weeks later I logged onto the group Zoom session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would have been skeptical about a support group on Zoom had I not revisited therapy on that platform during the pandemic after I found myself cursing at God for what was happening to Andy. At the age of 71, I claim a few crumbs of wisdom, one of them being that bad things happen to good people every single day because we\u2019re imperfect and mortal. The God I\u2019d prefer to believe in has bigger issues to monitor than a woman lucky enough to live into her eighth decade carrying on about her declining spouse. Zoom therapy helped me stop blaming a deity and focus on how to bolster myself and assist my husband here on earth. Plus, Zoom was easier to get to and cheaper than office therapy visits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zoom works even better for a group of folks caring for loved ones debilitated by combinations of neurodegenerative disease: Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer\u2019s, primary progressive aphasia, Parkinson\u2019s. Many members of the support group cannot physically leave their home for fear of what might happen in their absence. Many can\u2019t afford the exorbitant costs of in-home assistance or memory care facilities. All are worn down by what\u2019s wearing me down: witnessing someone I know and love lose the essence of who he is in continual increments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019d think we\u2019d all be so traumatized we wouldn\u2019t have the energy left to support each other, yet exactly the opposite is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is great comfort sitting in a room (in this case virtual) full of care partners who suffer the same bit-by-bit disappearance of a loved one. We listen when others confess to impatience, anger, hopelessness, loneliness, exhaustion. We nod our heads in recognition. We suggest resources and temporary fixes. We affirm that we are doing all that\u2019s humanly possible to keep our declining loved ones safe and comfortable. We encourage each other to seek respite for ourselves in walks, hobbies, visits with friends and family, staycations, or brief vacations so that we don\u2019t lose ourselves as we are losing our loved ones. We are grateful to the participants whose loved ones have already died, but who nonetheless remain in the group because it helps them to help us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few meetings in, I discovered Elizabeth\u2019s face on the Zoom screen, a member because of her spouse\u2019s combined neurodegenerative diseases. This accounted for her solemnity as she documented my spouse\u2019s decline. It was empathy, balm for human need and suffering, the bond shared by the care partners who appear in digital thumbnails on my laptop every first and third Tuesday of a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We basically stare into the abyss together, but we lock arms to keep each other from falling in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tracy Robert is a native of Southern California and has taught writing for four decades. She won the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Prize for Fiction (novella), was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and has published in various periodicals and anthologies. Her book of linked novellas, Flashcards and The Curse of Ambrosia,<\/em> released in October 2015, was winner of the Many Voices Project Prize at New Rivers Press. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Losing Casablanca” is reprinted with permission from Angora Panties: The Afterthoughts of Loss<\/em>, published by Choeofpleirn Press in 2024. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Losing Casablanca The year a comb-over demagogue ascended to the US presidency, the year Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico and the demagogue threw paper towels at the suffering masses, the year bees invaded the walls of our 1930s shingled cottage and wouldn\u2019t go away, and a bee expert told us we would have to caulk … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Tracy Robert”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2745","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2745"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3156,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2745\/revisions\/3156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}