There may be no characters wandering around in funny costumes, and
nobody singing "It's a Small World" (unless it's at the Tuesday sing-along), but I feel like I've accepted my regular
visits to Fantasyland and I'm sure that ultimately I will be much happier for it.
Now that I have given up trying to encourage my mother to do anything
at Atria, she is much happier because we don't argue any more, and, while not exactly
happy, I am at least glad that I don't have to work so hard any more.
When I arrived today, she greeted me as if she hadn't seen me in
weeks. I complimented her on her new manicure and the fresh flowers on her table and asked
if she had had a nice visit with my cousin Denise yesterday. She insisted that
Denise hasn't visited her for weeks, the manicure is old and she needs a new one, and the
flowers are the one I sent to her on her birthday three weeks ago. She also said
that Ned had been there yesterday for lunch.
But I know for a fact that Denise and her sister were there, that
Denise brought the flowers and gave her a manicure, and that Ned is coming next
weekend. But it's pointless to try to get her to remember because it only frustrates
her, so I play her fantasy game. Denise hasn't been there, nobody has visited her,
she hasn't had a phone call from anyone, and Ned came to have lunch with her yesterday.
We had a ten minute visit, but managed to stretch it out over an hour
and a half. She asks what I've been doing exciting, I tell her about the three shows
I saw over the weekend, she asks what I have coming up this week and I tell her
"nothing," then she tells me that she hasn't done anything exciting herself,
that she just sits there, that nobody comes to visit her, and then she asks me what I've
been doing exciting and what I have coming up this week. When I finally tire of
having the same conversation over and over again, I tell her I have to run errands and
that I'll see her in two days.
She does remember that she has 3 friends coming to take her
out to lunch tomorrow and it will be interesting to see if, when I go to see her on
Wednesday, she remembers that they were there.
Acceptance is a good thing. If you can't change a situation
(and obviously I can't change this one), might as well just accept what is and go
with the flow. I've never been good at that, but maybe I can learn. As my mother has
told me all my life, "this too shall pass" and I'm not in a big hurry for this
situation to pass.
DEXTER SPOILER ALERT
If you are a Dexter fan and have not yet seen the final
show, do not read what follows.
I actually have my DVR set to record Dexter on Tuesday, but
this morning on That's My Answer, the question was what people thought of the
finale (which aired originally during the Emmys) and I decided I'd better watch it quick
before people started talking about it on Facebook. I wanted to see it
before I saw discussions about it. I found in OnDemand and watched it.
I started a discussion on Facebook asking people not to give away
anything about the show, but to say whether they liked it or not. Overwhelmingly, it
seemed that people hated it. Someone posted this
link, which is an excellent discussion with producer Sara Colleton and
Jennifer Carpenter (who played Dexter's sister, Deb) of how the story ended and the series
in general.
I always thought the series would end with Dexter's death, since
obviously someone who has murdered so many people can't really be left alive. I also
started to think that Deb probably should die too. She's a good person but she did
kill an innocent woman and though she seemed to have come to terms with why she did it, it
would probably eat her alive and ruin her chance for a happy future. And, of course,
wrongdoers must be punished, as we have learned in all moralistic movies for decades.
But in losing the essence of Debra, when she had a stroke and would
never have usable brain function again, Dexter was forced to make her his last kill, and
then, like all those others he buried in the ocean, take her out in his boat and lovingly
dump her over the side. Interesting that all those bodies he drowned for so many
years were always wrapped in black, but Deb was wrapped in white, which kind of floated
gracefully around her, as she quietly sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
By faking his own death and somehow getting to shore and moving to
the Pacific Northwest, he has separated himself from everything he loves. Deb is
dead, Harrison is now going to grow up in Argentina with Hannah. Over the seasons,
Dexter, who starts the series saying that he does not know how to feel, has learned how to
feel and now must bury all of his feelings and not feel anything again. That is his
punishment.
Steve's friend Jason Hungerford offered this as the way he
would like to have seen the season end: Either
Dexter should have gone to Argentina and "lived happily ever after" so to speak
or he should have killed himself. I hated the last 10 minutes or so. Basically from the
point where he got Deb out of the hospital. I thought the dumping her in the ocean
was crude - he treated her like one of his kills (I know he blamed himself for her
condition) but I found it lacked the love and respect he had for her. But at the moment he
dumps her overboard I would have liked him to go over too. Perhaps injecting himself with
a tranquilizer to ensure he didn't fight to survive. But if he were going to fake his
death I would have liked him to be with his son. To do anything else I thought was selfish
and cowardly - despite the character's voice over protesting that he was doing what he was
doing out of love for his son and girlfriend. His character had evolved sufficiently
enough I believe that the audience could have accepted him being a family man and getting
a fresh new start.
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