Ms. Muddle

"My dear, I am worried about you. It seems to me that you are in a muddle... Take an old man's word; there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror--on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle."
(Mr. Emerson to Lucy Honeychurch in A Room With a View.)

I haven't been writing here much lately because, honestly, I'm in something of a muddle. I thought I'd sort things out, get through it, and be able to start writing sensible and thoughtful posts again, but it seems to be a fairly big muddle I'm in. The kind of muddle that is so deep that getting out of it changes who you are. So here, because you are all so sweet and deserve an explanation, are the basic issues I'm trying, inadequately, to sort out:

1. Lately, my husband has been more fatigued than is normal for him. Finally (after much hounding from me) he went for a check up. The doctor said that his liver function is somewhat compromised because of lack of circulation. Which means that, down the pike, we may be facing a liver transplant. When K. was first ill, we spent a lot of time in the transplant clinic, in waiting rooms full of transplant patients. Most of them were either desperately sick from organ rejection or bizarrely bloated from steroids. It's not a road I want to go down, but of course I will if I have to.

In three days we will have been married for twenty-five years. He is the pillar that holds up my sky, and all I want is another twenty-five years with him.

2. My mother is, it's clear to me, in the earliest stages of alzheimer's. She is still functioning pretty well, but I see that in the not-too-distant future she won't be able to live independently and will need to come an live with us. Which is as I want it to be, but it's a big change, the idea of caring for the parent who always cared for you.

3. My special-needs daughter is going through a seriously rough patch, crying and screaming a lot. She's gone through worse, and she always comes out of them, but it's exhausting when you're in the middle of it.

There I am in a nutshell (emphasis on the word nut). So if I'm writing less, calling less, visiting you and/or your blogs less, and am just generally not my usual peppy and voluble self, I hope you'll understand that it's not you. It's me and my muddle.