In Sickness, Health & Clutter

Some weeks ago – I have lost all track of time – I embarked upon an adventure with this year’s Not-the-Flu. Whatever it is. A bug you don’t want to mess with, that much I can tell you. One marker I do have: exactly two weeks and four days ago my good doctor – who assured me it was Not The Flu – estimated I was over the worst of it. Oh, well.

The Not-the-Flu means you skip the chills and aches and fevers of the Real Flu (count your blessings) and you probably won’t die. But you still have the existential horrids and wearies, a little cough, snuffles, sore throat, and mostly you want to pull the covers up over your head and feel very sorry for yourself. This is not easy to do if you’re a fulltime caregiver, as I am, which in my opinion entitles me to feel REALLY sorry for myself. The caregivee, for his part, has spent the past weeks saying – every time I saw a potential opportunity to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head – “Why don’t you do that?”

In between, since the Not-the-Flu saps your energy but leaves your brain functional, you are left with the question of what to do with yourself. Leaving the house is not an option except for utter necessities, because staying away from humankind is #1 on the recovery-plan list. That leaves you to read the newspapers – which can definitely make you sicker – and drink liquids and take vitamins. Boring. OR! You can dig out past, present and future writing projects and finish them all. Then what?

For me, the obvious answer is to de-clutter. A cleaned-out drawer is far more curative to this writer than a super-size bottle of mega-vitamins. So in an effort to keep myself from going totally stir crazy, I have now plowed through three formerly messy drawers, the box of Christmas cards – – – and my desk. This is not to say that orderliness, a virtue!, is an ongoing trait I can claim. Put stuff in drawers, close the drawer, most of the time I’m fine. But actually going through messes, throwing stuff away and neatening up – as we used to say in the old country – this is balm for my soul. And therefore, cure for whatever ails.

Not so the caregivee. My excellent spouse thrives on piles. Piles of clippings, notes, magazines, letters, papers, God only knows what is at the bottom of some of his piles. They are everywhere he regularly inhabits, a comfort and balm to his soul. So ever since I undertook to clear out a few piles (and okay, filing cabinets too) in the small formerly-office room into which we plan to install a day bed, it has been acutely painful for him.

The Not-the-Flu presented a tipping point. A few hours sleep, say, between 3 and 7 AM when the caregivee is not always quiet and still as a churchmouse, made the day bed (it’s on order) ever more attractive; confinement to the house increased my neatening-up urges about 300%. Today emerged a pristine corner, utterly cabinet/clutter free.

In retaliation, the caregivee did what probably any respectable partner so threatened would do: he came down with the Not-the-Flu. Oh, me.