Memoirs - Simon Are you Still Mine?

 

SIMON, ARE YOU STILL MINE?  

Simon and I were strange bedfellows. We should not have lived together, but we did. We met at a New Directions meeting. The minute it was over, this lethargic man fairly trotted over to me with plans of his own. Like a fly in a Venus Fly Trap, I fell right in. We stayed together for five years. He was very astute, a computer genius, but he had no feelings. Not for me nor for anyone. It was the lousy combination of medication he took. No wonder people fight taking meds. His wife and the mother of his three children had just kicked him out of the house on Palomino Drive. The man had nowhere to live, so why not live with me? I have written a novel about him called “The Redemption of Pulaski” and published it online.

           He was a handsome man when we met. White hair and a swashbuckling black moustache. Never would you know that he had a mental illness. Every single member of his family, but one, had a mental illness and everyone was named after a saint. Dorothy, Anthony, Margaret. The mental illness came from his mother, the sainted Genevieve. The father, Anthony the First, was a tyrant who worked constantly and had no time to love anyone.

There was no sexual abuse, only emotional abuse. Only. Hah! The dad died young. My Simon had gotten a full scholarship to Saint Joseph’s University on the Philadelphia Main Line. It was fully withdrawn when it became know Simon had a mental illness. Schizophrenia. Everyone else had bipolar disorder. But his psychiatrist, Dr. Hoffmann, was promoted so Simon got a new one. A Doctor Peter Ganime, still in practice in New Jersey.

            “You can’t get to the top of Northrup Grumman if you’re schizophrenic,” said Ganime. “You have bipolar disorder.”

            Simon had sat at the beautiful sculptured desk of Hoffmann, who served as a mentor. He always offered him a cigarette. Simon smoked constantly.

            “If I could, I would kill him,” Simon told me.

            Since he and his brothers were deer hunters, Simon thought of smuggling in a deer rifle to kill Hoffmann, but it was impossible.

            Good thought, though. Showed that Simon had some aggression. Or built-up anger like explosions in a pressure cooker.

            Simon would get into these “funks” and call me up.

            “I’m sitting here with the rifle in my mouth, ready to shoot myself.”        

            I had finally kicked him out of the house when my son, Daniel, was moving in for a while, while he and his girlfriend, Nicole, saved money to buy a house.

            Simon held many stocks and bonds. Remember these were not stupid people. He would leave me in his will. With bipolar disorder, you still get your ups and downs. Simon had bought a new blue house in Bensalem, PA, and I visited him several times. He had not consulted me when he bought the house. My former boyfriend. He had absconded with some important furniture I owned, such as my Aunt Ethel’s two straight-back chairs with comfortable cushions on the seats.

            They were never seen again. He also began to buy foolish unnecessary items, like the trailer for a boat. He didn’t even own a boat. Also the face of an angel made of concrete. Sweet. I put that in my novel. He also planted “flags,” another name for iris. One of his sons gave him a Jack Russell Terrier, who was the new love of his life. “Tarzan” was his name.

           One day when he was not home, his coin collection was stolen.

            Ten-thousand dollars. His little dog didn't even bark. 

            I would drive over to his house when I got suicidal, and we would go to the “fleas” together. How I hated them. But I needed to save myself. I would follow Simon, who was very popular and very tall: six foot six. I was happy for him but in an abstract way as I was in an agony of suicidal thinking.

            The flea market was brilliantly set up. Items were in tents or out in the open. Simon was a nickel and dime man. His “Awesome Wheels” website sold a variety of engines – steam engines, Monod engines, several of which I had in my front window at home.  When Simon moved out, so did the tiny engines.

            I remember buying fresh whole eggs in a yellow Styrofoam carton - they last for months I was told and it was true -  and many baseball caps, such as the Cleveland Indian’s cap, when they were allowed to be called Indians. We would walk and eat hot dogs with mustard on them. We rarely stopped to talk.

            I suffered from “the urge” to commit suicide. You cannot stop it. Dr. Laszlo Gyulai had told me that. I knew most of the good psychiatrists and what they believed in. And I’ll tell you right now. Simon did not end up killing himself. He was too tough for that. He was the toughest man I ever did meet. I am not sure, though, if I truly loved him, because I do not know the meaning of love, other than loving my two children, Sarah and Dan.

            Tonight I had a hankering to get in touch with Simon. Tonight when meteor showers would be blanketing the earth. I stood outside in the darkness. I leaned against my grey Nissan Sentra and looked up in the sky. I was focusing on Simon. My bipolar disorder had vanished but certainly not my feelings of aloneness.

            According to the Internet, the moon’s current phase is a Waxing Gibbous. Waxing, we remember, means “growing” while “waning” means diminishing.

            Why was it that Simon walked with a strange gait? Like walking on his tip-toes. What was wrong with the man? I drove Simon to neurologists Wagman and Diamond at Abington Hospital. They took one look at him and said, “Take him to the hospital!”

            For several years he had suffered from diabetes but refused to pay attention to it.  When he lived with me, he ate anything he felt like. There was nothing I could do to stop him. We would order pizzas from Bonnet Lane Diner over the phone, along with a huge plastic container of Coke. I would eat most of the pizza but avoid the terrible plastic taste of the cola. Or Sprite. With straws, please. I would take one taste and spit out the rest. His feet, he told me, felt like they were on fire. Unimaginable, dammit!

            Simon died from the same thing as my father: lung cancer that metastized to his brain. What was it my late friend Judy Diaz said about the dying body? Whoever has it in his or her possession is in charge of whatever happens, whether they know what to do or not.

            I tried to visit him at the home of his son and daughter-in-law. They would not let me in. Finally I just walked into the house, ascended the stair case, and listened to them talking.

            “So, then, I just have a few days left?” Simon said in a weak voice.

            The two kids nodded yes.

             They showed nothing but disdain for me. 

            I had been in touch with his caregiver, a nice man named Donald, who let me know what was going on. When it came time for the funeral, my sisters Donna and Ellen accompanied me to the Flueher Funeral Home in Richboro, PA.

            Terribly sad! We still talk about him.

            Years later I looked up his wife, Kate. She had died. As an Irish-American, she had too much iron in her blood. The things we learn! Hemochromatosis: The Danger of Too Much Iron in Your Blood.   Excess iron in vital organs, even in mild cases of iron overload, increases the risk for liver disease (cirrhosis, cancer), heart failure, diabetes mellitus, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis.

            As a genetic disease, I wondered if the grandkids might get it. Women are hit disproportionately.

            Jesus Christ, what a world we live in!