. . .que otro estaba soñándolo.

I had a meltdown this morning, but the reasons for it are hardly worthy of the words I'd waste to describe why, and then to explain and justify that description. So, I'll say this: I have an incredible husband. I know he doesn't understand why I fall to pieces sometimes, but he's patient and loving when I do, and he holds me and tells me that I am not, in fact, a despicable being, flouting my insistence to the contrary. I know it worries him a little too much even though he tries not to let that shine through. He is good. Good. He holds me and tells me it'll be okay, which is often the most and best I could ask.

It would be somewhat deceptive to say there's a streak of mental illness in my family. Wide swath is more accurate. It picks and chooses, and it doesn't get everyone, but those of us it puts its finger to, it likes to pick at mercilessly. I think I do a decent job of wrestling my demons to the ground and keeping my foot on their throats while I go on with the rest of my life, superficially stable and sane, but I do wonder how late into my golden years I'll keep up that bit. Will I decide sometime in my sixties or seventies that it's not worth the effort anymore? Or will I hold out into my eighties, stubbornly sane until my last breath? If I threw in the towel today I'd probably have to just go on living with my crazy self for too damn long, and that's too much added stress when my plate's already overflowing with the grad school mess.

So, while I dutifully keep frequent mental tabs on my sanity and keep up the maintenance and mostly do just fine, there are days when I wonder, when I think about it a little too much.

I have always been a vivid dreamer, and it's always more heightened during a depressive or manic episode. In fact, it's one of the standards by which I keep tabs on myself; just how vivid are my dreams this past week, last night? If I have too many mornings in a row that I have to exert extra effort to coax my mind back into waking reality, I know it's time to give my brain some extra love. It's not that I don't enjoy the dreams, but they can be draining, and they're a portent of further mental unravelling. So, I do my best to keep them in line.

Yesterday we went to visit my grandfather at the hospital where he lives in New Mexico. He's in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's, and they keep him there so he doesn't wander. It's not one of those nasty old-age homes that smell like urine and look like a horror film set. It's a really nice place with an amazing staff. They take exceptionally good care of him there, and they are kind. We got lucky. But I digress. We got there in the afternoon, and he'd already fallen asleep on the couch. We couldn't rouse him. We tried off and for an hour, and our best efforts (and the staff's) couldn't get more than some muttering out of him. Just as well, because he's not always alert when he is awake. I mostly gave up try to wake him and settled for holding his hand. I could feel little twitches in his fingers, and it seemed to calm him to know that someone was there. I kept noticing his eyes, though, because there were periods in which his REM was clearly visible. Naturally I wondered what he could possibly be dreaming. What images and sounds run through an advanced Alzheimer's mind? I want to believe that in that unconsiousness, he has access to everything his brain denies him when he's awake, that he is lucid, that he remembers it all and is spared the frustration of needing to be reminded of own name. But I've seen the brains of Alzheimer's dead, thin plastinated slices of grey matter peppered with holes and gaps, empty vaccuous voids where memory used to be. Sleep is not such a magician that suddenly the synapses reach across that chasm.

What does and Alzheimer's patient dream? Why do the brain and body continue with such a seemingly empty ritual? Does he still get the seratonin-balancing effects of REM? Is he articulate and witty again in his dreams, or is he robbed of that at all hours? What's so good about sleeping and those dreams that he fights waking? Why do some parts of the brain keep chugging along as others decay away?

I know I am more than the sum of my genes, but in the back of my mind (mostly) I worry.

Don't get the impression that yesterday was a downer (that was this morning). I had a great mini-road-trip with my sweetheart, who got to meet my amazing Aunt Terese for the first time, and he met her father (my great-uncle) and got the nickel tour of the mini-museum he calls a living room. He showed us old family photos and told us stories and I caught up with my aunt. We went to lunch with them at an ancient restaurant down on the river, where he eats almost every day. The green chile alone is worth the four-hour drive. He took visible delight in introducing his "little niece" to all the cooks and waitresses, who all know him well and like to take care of him. I was relieved but also slightly disappointed that my husband didn't see him pinch any of the waitresses. He must have outgrown that in the past couple of years, finally. My husband was charmed by them, just as I knew he would be. They are good people, and some of them are far better than good. I've got that in my genes, too.