[Magdalen] update.

[Grace Cangialosi]

Re the Anna Experience: it occurs to me that the best thing might be to keep things just as they are. I have a number of friends who have discovered their relationship with their exes is terrific; they just can't live together.

> On Jul 4, 2016, at 11:02 PM, M J _Mike_ Logsdon <mjl at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> 
> Home yesterday.  The spark that is Mom is still there, but only rarely seen.  Meaning, she can send a perfectly coherent email, but in person if you try to communicate with her, synapses just aren't snapping like they used to, even from 1.25 yrs ago when I was there last.  A lot of "right angle turns" in conversation, as it were, and it's a coin toss where you'll end up.  She did, however, truly love the fact that Anna and I made the trip to visit her.  And her out-of-nowhere comments made for a little bit of "game show" thinking on our parts every now and then.  Her reference to "Cobra" in terms of my brother Kenneth was obscure at best, with me thinking she was referring to his black Corvette, but only when, at lunch with us all, I saw the underside of his cell phone where he has his address pasted with a clear "Cobra Dr.", did I make all the necessary connections.  He's a bit brusque (Mike? someone more brusque than you?), but his "Anna," -- he was talking to Anna, "I haven't 'talked to her' in a year, because it just isn't worth it."  Harsh, yes, and based on her inability to hear and process well.  But I've never witnessed Anna witness such stark talk with such understanding as then.  What I learned during my last visit with her on Saturday (Anna was at the hotel fighting a cold), was that with little to no external stimuli and a seating placement aimed strategically at her hearing aide, makes for an admittedly short, but sorta lucid, conversation.  Our good-bye conversation was nice, in other words.  During it, of course, I had to hear the litany of everyone who'd died, from her Texas aunts and uncles ("Mom, they died 40 years ago." "I know.") to her little brother my Uncle Jim and my own brother Denis... "And all that's left is you and Kenny."  ... "... Yeah, Mom. That's right."  (In my head I'm thinking, "And my you not bury yet another child, especially your baby.")
> 
> The Anna Experience was actually ideal.  Like marriage, but with two beds.  (I know, not exactly unknown in the real world.)  We got along great.  It was a bit cathartic, actually.  We actually shared quite a few laughs, both modern, and old.  Two nights at the Steakhouse Grill were the hallmark, with a waiter whose father was from the same town as Anna's father.  The overall experience of the trip, in its own way, rather strange.  But I can actually say, we both had something like a real vacation.  Not cheap, Nugget'ly speaking.  (Accepting donation$.)  But fun, in its own way.  I drove there, she drove back.  5.5 hrs never went by so quickly.
> 
> All next week, I'm alone at work.  Both good, and ... good.  Hee hee.  It's just nice every now and then to have a perfectly quiet office I can freeze with A/C as need be.
> 
> Signing out.  And wishing I was back at the Sparks Nugget, free of charge, though.  !