Talk about corrosive. How many good intentions are derailed by the lust for celebrity, a chance to be in the limelight?
I’m reminded that my mother, whose presence in my life lasted 64 years, held it against her mother that she had friends whose social status was less. It was something I simply did not understand. Her claim to have sought out important friends didn’t compute for the simple reason that, in the long run, she had none.
‘Tis not a complaint, but in the last years of her life, new acquaintances were confused by her reference to me as her “nurse.” A disappointment as a daughter, I was transformed into a status symbol.
Status seems to be associated with the brain stem. After languishing for some time in a semi-comatose state, four days before her eventual death, my mother seemingly roused herself to address me and the spouse at her bedside, as if she were dismissing us from her employ. She thanked us for our service and then sank back into unconsciousness, albeit not necessarily silence. Indeed, she voiced incomprehensible babble for hours at a time, which also suggests that speech emanates primarily from the brain stem, rather than the cognitive centers. Perhaps it is the brain stem which reprograms itself while we sleep. That would explain why individuals whose cognitive centers are severed have no awareness of dreaming.