My old friend called last night .....

My old friend called last night and we had a conversation. I will try and repeat it, leaving out some details so as not to embarrass him. He doesn’t use a computer so he can’t see it but it could get back to him.
“Arthur, how are you?” etc. We go on……….. ”I keep hearing about Canada on the news. It’s very controversial. All that stuff about the oil shale…….”No, I say, you mean oil sands.” Oh yeh, that’s it, oil sands. What’s all that about? It’s all we hear about here (in the states).” (He must be listening to NPR news, because it’s a liberal cause and he listens to the radio a lot.)

“I don’t know, it’s not much of a controversy here. I mean there are those opposed to it, but lets look at how the Mid East gets its oil out of the ground. Do they use slave labor? Is it clean? Who knows?” I say.

He is confused by all this as it’s not a big thing where I live (it may be in Alberta among both liberals there). He has asked me about this for four consecutive phone calls so I’m less than amused by the need to respond.

“The real reason I called was to tell you that Andrew is dead”, he says.

“I know”, I say,” because I’m the one that told you about it the last time you called. You had asked me if I knew where he was, as you called up his phone number and his wife told you he had a disease but you couldn’t remember the name of it”. “Alzheimer’s”, I said, “and you said “that was it.” (I never met Andrew but that was a hard concept). I Googled his name and told you that he had dieg two weeks ago.

“I just got a book about the school history and it was awful boring”, he said. This was the third time I had heard that book story so I wasn’t that interested.

I got a call from my son as we were talking and thank God, I was able to take it on call waiting after excusing myself.

Next week he will call me to tell me about oil sands, school history and probably about Andrew’s death.

I feel the need to respond, and I am concerned about my growing hostility toward these conversations. I don’t know if I’m irritated by his memory loss, or fearing my own.

This is not new for him, and is caused as much by life long drinking rather than recent dementia.

So, in some ways it makes me laugh, and some times it makes me very sad. I am ambivalent about my response.

I hope I remain coherent. If you don’t understand this post, I may be losing it myself.