Another Week: Number 53
In the mornings, I try to be quiet to let Amy sleep as late as possible. I do laundry, run and empty the dishwasher, work on my laptop, pay bills, write emails, and read a little.
Amy wakes at 11 or noon and I help her with her toilet, getting dressed, morning meds and ice water, and maybe a little food but more likely an Ensure Complete shake.
Afternoons, we’ve had visitors every day — family, friends, a couple of small dogs who love Amy, a social worker, and a hospice representative. Socializing energizes and drains Amy at the same time.
In the evenings, she may eat a little and we’ll watch something on TV. Pretty soon I’m making our couch back into her bed, doing toilet, undressing, toothbrushing, and evening meds. Her head is typically on the pillow by 8:30, and I follow by 9.
My new bed is a nifty tri-folding foam mattress I found on Amazon. Christmas Day was the last time Amy tried to climb our staircase. After five steps I helped her back down. We now live in our living room, even more than we did during the pandemic.
Amy’s family peered in via Facetime late on Christmas Day when Amy was already horizontal. People wished us “Merry Christmas,” but our holiday was stoic at best. Amy did eat a decent portion of salmon, plus broccoli and quinoa.
On Thursday evening, Amy’s oncologist phoned and spoke with each of us to help guide the transition. She told him, “I just know I’m gonna miss you if I cut all this off.” Meanwhile, the NBC Nightly News ran an extensive roundup of 2023’s celebrity deaths on our silent TV.
On Saturday, we had the Lions-Cowboys game on, and the name of former Chicago Bear Kindle Vildor was mentioned after he forced a turnover.
Amy asked, “So they have players from The Lord of the Rings?
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Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)
Guillermo del Toro has a deep love of myth, legend, and fable — but he tends to get so enthralled by all the little gears and levers of storytelling that he fails to build a working machine. Instead, loose threads are left, wires get crossed, and although we all understand what his invention is intended to do, it’s never fully delivered. This was the case with Pan’s Labyrinth in 2006 and Nightmare Alley in 2021.
What del Toro does exceptionally well is create astounding visual worlds. He has a genius that allows him to reach deep into that bizarre dream that you had one Thanksgiving as a kid and bring its every rustle and crevice to life on the screen in rich color.
His reimagined, stop-action animated Pinocchio is currently streaming on Netflix and Amy chose it for us to watch on Christmas night. It’s a sumptuous visual feast that gradually wanders into the weeds structure-wise, incorporating everything from Mussolini to Moby-Dick before arriving at this consideration of death:
What happens, happens.
And then we are gone.
Gary Gulman: Born on Third Base
We were previously unfamiliar with comedian Gary Gulman, but we quickly grew to like him during this hour and six-minute special, newly streaming on Max.
His mischievous grin engages you, and then he starts gently poking at the ridiculousness of class in America, and pretty soon he wins you over to a sense of compassion and mutual respect for your fellow humans — all while being very funny.
We laughed quite a bit.
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