I haven't posted anything in almost two months: a record, I think.
My partner's situation is up and down. One hospice nurse came to see her (she perked up pretty quickly after taking the antibiotics that she had been prescribed for the UTI) and said that they don't put dementia patients in hospice if they are eating and talking. But when the doctor came back to see her about six weeks later he said we should try again with another hospice. He thinks she is continually getting worse. I don't see her physical situation declining; she is eating small amounts (and mostly prefers sweets and liquids) but she has been eating that way for several years. But the doctor seems to think that she is getting weaker and frailer. Her legs have totally atrophied now, for example. Mentally she continues to get worse. I suppose that is what I was referring to as a situation that is both sad and sweet. I miss her intellectual companionship so much: talking about art and movies, for example. On the other hand, I have to remember that a lot of our seemingly innocuous talks would end with her accusing me of "arguing" when I thought I was just talking. So in a way it is sweet to be with her in dreamland. She is like a young child. She asks for her mother and "daddy", thinks she is in a hotel, assures me that we both have just gotten back from a vacation. A nurse who called about something asked me what her favorite thing to do was and without any hesitation or embarrassment I said "snuggle".
As for my singing, life goes on. I sang an aria from a Bach cantata ("Es halt es mit der blinden" from BWV 94) this morning at church and it went really well. I got a lot of compliments on it. The church was largely empty because of the lack of air conditioning and the lack of subway (the MTA shut down the entire Upper West Side line) but the people who were there were important because they were there.
And the Music Director gave me a sheet of paper that made me feel really honored; as if I had "arrived". It was a list of all the Sundays through the end of the year indicating which ones have choir and which ones have empty anthem spots. He asked me to pick something!!! Wow! So I told him I had a piece that I wanted to do on December 29 (that's usually one of my regular solo dates). It's something a dear friend (who is a voice teacher and lives in Michigan) picked out: the "Lullaby" from The Nativity According to St. Luke by Randall Thompson. I also see that Advent 1 is open so I may offer to sing "Bereite dich Zion" from the Bach Christmas Oratorio. One really lovely add-on to my solo this morning was that someone played the viola da gamba, so I asked him if he could play a cello line and he said yes. So I am going to email him a copy of "Hochster mache deine Gute". That was the piece I recorded for a friend's film. Sadly, it ended up on the cutting room floor, but it's still a lovely piece and it has a cello accompaniment. The Music Director can tell me what Sunday it might be suitable for.
Lastly, I now have recitals coming up in September and October. The featured number will be the Bolena duet. I sang through the two most difficult phrases a few days ago (one has a high A that you hold for 8 counts) and it all went smoothly. Of course it helps that I don't have asthma. It seems to arrive after Christmas and disappear after tax day.
And after that I'll start planning for the Spring of 2020.
