Secret History

I know you’ve all probably been missing my TV recommendations and wondering what we’ve been watching. We did have to take a break from Gomorrah mid-Season 3 because while I had Covid I just couldn’t overcome my mental fog enough to focus on why Genny or Ciro were trying to kill each other in that particular episode or who the villain(ess) du jour was. Max says I always have this issue, Covid or not, but it was especially acute and we agreed to hold off on the series for a couple of weeks after which Max will give me a crash tutorial when we go back.

On my own I watched Scotty and The Secret History of Hollywood on Hulu, which was great, really interesting and well-made, highest possible recommendation. Then I tried watching the new Hoarders on Netflix and found that really triggering. Toward the end of her life, my mother was doing a lot of hoarding, and it was very confusing and upsetting for our family. It was all part of her larger cognitive dysfunction and the physical symptoms that she both overfocused on and refused to pursue testing for.

For many years, my parents lived in two separate apartments either in the same building or within a couple of blocks of each other in New York City. It worked for them. They both needed their space. The last couple of years of my mother’s life, she became more and more garrisoned in her apartment and she would ask for things to be sent to her (clothes, cleaning supplies, small appliances) on an emergency basis, the Amazon boxes for which remained unopened and piled up in her apartment.

She had high blood pressure that she didn’t want to treat because she hated the side effects of medications or just distrusted them, and she was losing her vision as a result. She had Charles Bonnet Syndrome, which happens with the elderly when they lose their sight; the brain fills in missing information from the eyes and you have visual hallucinations, usually of insects and other unpleasant stimuli. Mom complained constantly of bugs in her apartment and bugs crawling on her skin and flying through the air. The super for the building came in countless times to exterminate the non-existent bugs, flush the drain in the kitchen, and repair the screens. She covered everything in her apartment with plastic trash bags to protect her things from bugs which didn’t exist, and collected samples of the “bugs” (lint, hairs, dirt) in jars to prove to the family she wasn’t crazy and this was really happening. Meanwhile, she refused to have cataract surgery that would have helped her to some degree. The worst part was her anger, her intransigence, and her paranoia about anything that would have helped her.

It was an impossible situation and very stressful. My father saw her every day and made sure her basic needs were met although she railed against him constantly. She was smart and still with-it enough to be considered self-managing. She could see through certain ruses, like my taking a jar of “bugs” with me after a visit and telling her I was submitting it to a top entymologist at the University of Maryland who would identify the genus of bugs and write a full report. I think she knew that was BS when I told her that the lab was shut down for Covid and the report would be delayed.

Sarah didn’t see her Grandma Lynn much during those last couple of years, due to Covid and Grandma Lynn’s inability to travel, but she loved her dearly. One of her favorite things was to have Grandma Lynn and Papa Vic visit, or our rare visits to NYC. She knew her grandmother was a bit of a character, but visits from Grandma and Papa meant presents, going out to dinner, and of course lots of attention. Max’s parents were deceased, so my parents were her only living grandparents. I’m so glad she had them.