Do you know that feeling—waking at some ungodly hour and not getting back to sleep because your thoughts won’t stop? When it’s really bad, you can’t just roll over; your body’s locked, tense, your mind running everywhere.

It always hits between four and six a.m. What if it isn’t Parkinson’s after all? It doesn’t even seem like it. So why the tremors, the tics—and how many tests before anyone knows?

I think about my daughter and her autistic boy—how they’re coping, what we can do from this distance. He’s so hard to help, so wary of new people. She has her ward, at least. That network of people who show up with meals, who know what to do. I gave that up.

I think about my husband—when will he see how unhealthy it is to keep working like this, heart problems and all? What if the phone rings one day and they say—

I think about time running out—sixty-something now, and no idea what the next decade, or even year, will bring.

I think of my mother, gone this spring, and wonder if she made it to that heaven of eternal families they talked about in the Salt Lake temple—her best argument for converting.

And then, oddly, I think about my cousin—mostly irritation. Her messages, the same tired tone. I know that when I start down that path, it’s just a distraction from the real worries—and it only winds me tighter. Why circle back to the people who annoy me—politicians, family, even my husband sometimes?

And then I’m back to my husband. The heart thing. Why won’t he listen? I picture him at his desk, that pain starting in his chest—

So I wonder if I should try therapy. My husband wouldn’t like it—he thinks our church study groups are enough. His Church. The “Universal Church”. Great invention: I was fascinated when we met. I started the study groups. But now … they aren’t enough, not for me. Maybe I could just… not tell him what I want to do? Another secret to manage.

I’ve got my arsenal—pills, ocean-wave soundtracks, weighted blankets, the whole setup. None of it helps much.

And I pray, too—not to the fatherly God of my childhood anymore, just… something. After so many versions of faith, it’s blurred. I remember standing in that little chapel, back in our neighborhood in SLC, trying to explain to the bishop why I couldn’t feel anything during sacrament anymore. He told me to read more, pray more. I did. Nothing changed. Still, I keep praying. Sometimes it helps, especially with the pills and the waves; other nights my thoughts just keep spinning.

My cousin sent another message yesterday. I haven’t opened it. Why am I thinking about her again? It’s so irritating that everytime I get anxious I always think of what I can do to tell her off, her stupid self-righteous letters (yes, she still writes letters), and I know I am just focusing from one bad thing to another.

So I don’t have any good advice. I’m looking for it myself. Am I coming apart? Maybe the tests will show that too. The next tests will tell.

Maybe what I need is something else entirely. I even think about moving home—not to France, but to Salt Lake City. There’s still family there, all church members of course, but they have community, belonging. Here, I’ve lost that. My husband’s universal-church thing doesn’t speak to me anymore. And while he’s at the office, I just drift around this big house.

But is that the answer—to return to the place I fled fifty years ago? Would they even take me back? Could I believe again after—no, that’s not even the question.

I pick up my phone, the screen lighting the dark room. My thumb hovers over my daughter’s name. It’s too early to call, so I type: “Are you awake?” A tiny reach across the distance. But tonight, it feels like all I have.

DEBORAH, November 2017

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Photo by Greta Bartolini on Unsplash