Yearning for escape in Daydreaming on the Porch

It’s been two months now since I retired and yet I really can’t go anywhere or plan anything ambitious in the way of extended road trips and travel. My caregiving duties are now all concentrated here at home. I’m free from the anxiety of worrying about Mom while at work, but at home now her dementia is getting worse and I see no way out. I was up several times last night with her. I’m always on call, it seems. I don’t want to place her anywhere. I can’t imagine her not in her home.

She has out of the blue horrible, paranoid dementia episodes sometimes late at night or before going to bed that just about drive me over the edge, but then in the morning and all the next day she’s sweet and loving and so grateful for everything we do for her. She recognizes me, but it’s getting closer to the point where she’s not going to know who I am. She’s constantly asking me, “Who are you?” She often confuses me with her long deceased husband. That was unnerving at first, but I’m becoming accustomed to it now. It’s amazing what you must get accustomed to when around a loved one with dementia. She still greatly loves looking out the tall windows to see the crepe myrtles in her garden and the blue skies and puffy clouds on these hot summer days. She so enjoys the cut flowers we always have in the den for her to look at. So, I can take my cherished 3-6 hour day trips away from Charleston or shorter visits to the parks where I can walk and relax amid the natural beauty I love so much at those places. It’s amazing what getting away for just a couple of hours does. I feel briefly rejuvenated.

But despite the fact that we have caregivers and I can get away by myself or spend time puttering upstairs or relaxing and reading for long hours on the porch, I still feel a growing sense of confinement, of limitation, of loss of freedom. How many times do I look out to the street where many people pass by on the sidewalks since we are close to downtown and King Street. I feel like saying to them, “Wake up, do you even begin to realize how lucky you are to be able to walk anywhere, go anywhere you want, whenever you want?” I am so envious. But again, I don’t know any way of life now but this. Be assured, I am always grateful for the respite time I have, but it’s always fleeting and of short duration. It ends so quickly. I’m always looking at my watch, for the stroke of midnight is never far off.

I have some photos on the night table next to my bed of wide open spaces out west in eastern Oregon and southwest Wyoming taken decades ago when I was unemployed and between jobs and always traveling or driving somewhere it seems. The great drawback was that I had no job security, no place to call home permanently, and a feeling of being constantly adrift. The flip side of the coin was the most incredible, exciting feelings of freedom and possibility, all up the road somewhere, either literally or figuratively.

Here are three scenes from travels in the 80s and early 90s that symbolize that freedom. I often look at them and dream of days when I can hit the open highways again and play that favorite song of Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.” Ah, dreams....

Ham’s Fork River, southwestern Wyoming, 1984. I love those desert rivers that come down to the high plains from high up in mountains in the distance. Ribbons of blue in the desert.

The following photos are from a long weekend trip to eastern Oregon in 1992. Theses are of photos so the quality is not the best, but the main thing is to convey the feeling. Note the empty buildings, the sagebrush, a solitary hiker, and t he empty roads. The white car along the road is my trusty Nissan Sentra.