Reason not the
need
Reason not the need,
says King Lear. Reason not the need, he says to his daughter
when she questions the size of his entourage. What does an
elderly man need? What, even, does an elderly king need?
Not a hundred knights, not fifty, perhaps not even one. You
make your home with me, says the daughter. Make your home a
chair by the fire. A chair, a bowl, a bed - an elderly king
needs no more than a monk, no more than a child.
Today, my mother- and
father-in-law find themselves in one room. One nursing home
room, down from two which caused negative cash flow and could not be
sustained unless they took the prudent step of dying within a year.
They chose to buy time and move to one room. But now the desk
is gone, the shelf of books is gone, the easy chairs gone. What
was the need of these things? Is one not a person still?
Maybe a person but not a personality. I don't know.
Without the desk, without the shelf, without the fifty knights, are
we someone different - not who we were?
We are traumatized or
liberated, or perhaps without the luxury of noticing. That I
suppose would be a blessing, not to notice. My mother-in-law
notices her shelf is gone. She wonders what became of the key
to the safe deposit box that was in the drawer of the desk, now
gone. Gone where? My husband reassures her. They
just charge you a little more to get it open, he says. They
drill open the lock on the box, and charge you a little extra to get
into it. You mean they won't send us to jail? she answers.
She is making a little joke but she means it too: are we safe, are we
to blame, will money really solve our problems?
-Deborah
Lockwood
Friday
workshop, Spring 07
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