Here I am again, reading and commenting on the sixth post from Rat in the Walls, the blog I wrote during the final year of my brother’s battle with ALS. The post is titled “Empathic Alchemy,” and you can read it below the video.
Title: Empathic Alchemy
Blood is sometimes thicker than gold.
Posted in Caregiving, Video, Writing
Tagged ALS, caregiving, changing yourself, empathy, enduring, fatal illness, rat in the walls, sibling relationship, understanding, writing
Here’s the fifth Rat in the Walls post that I wrote about my brother’s battle with ALS. The post is titled “Gravity on Jupiter.” You can read the text of the post below the video.
Title: Gravity on Jupiter
Sisyphus had it easy.
He had control of his muscles. And he only had to push his rock uphill on Earth.
People with ALS don’t have that. It’s like Jupiterean gravity is squashing them flat.
Their rocks aren’t moving anywhere, up or down the gravity well.
Posted in Caregiving, Video, Writing
Tagged ALS, caregiving, gravity, Jupiter, muscles, rat in the walls, Sisyphus, writing
Here is the second video from Rat in the Walls.
For the original post (the second on the Rat in the Walls blog), look below the video.
Title: Body Blocking
His illness is written on my body.
Eating excessively for the past six months, I’ve gained forty pounds, accumulating layers of fat. I tie my intestines in square knots, turn my emotions into sausages, blocking, holding on.
As if I become heavy enough, weighty enough, I might anchor him in place.
Last night, I couldn’t sleep.
My brother died of ALS in February 2008, after blogging almost daily about his illness following his diagnosis in December 2003. I began blogging about caregiving in a companion blog during the final year before his death. I called my blog Rat in the Walls.
After he died, I stopped posting and let the rats fall silent.
In May 2014, I finally revisited the site for the first time since his death, and I posted this:
When I first started on Blogger, my handle was Ratty, maintaining anonymity so that in my Rat in the Walls blog I could write about my brother’s fatal illness without giving away his identity. Under that pseudonym, I could voice things I couldn’t elsewhere. Rats thrive in the dark. ::: Now, five years after his death in 2008, I’m coming out of the walls and reclaiming my humanity.
I didn’t reread any of my posts in 2014. Too soon.
Now, in May 2017, I’m ready to reread them.
So, here’s the project: as I open each post and look at it for the first time since my brother died, I’m going to make a video recording in which I read the post aloud and say something about it.
I don’t remember much about the posts, except the following:
Here’s a link to the video I made last night while looking at the first post.
The original blog post says:
Title: Knock Knock
Scurrying, nibbling, hiding. That’s the Rat in the Walls. Knocking about at night, avoiding the light, coveting the cheese.
You only see the leavings: the dry little kernels that trace Rat’s passage through your cupboards; the holes gnawed behind your stove. The fruits of your labor, tooth-marked, scattered.
The Rat lurks in your back brain.
May 25, 2017 in Life, Video, Writing
Tagged ALS, blog, caregiving, dying, grief, rat in the walls, video, video project