Gerard Sarnat
Memoriousopathy
i. REBROADCAST SMC ALERT SYSTEM
10:18 AM 23 May 2019
San Mateo County Sheriff Office's is seeking Gerard Sarnat, a 73 y/o retired physician with dementia.
He was last seen driving on southbound US101 at Ralston Avenue at approximately 4:00PM yesterday.
Gerard was driving a black colored 2010 Lexus IS250 with California license plate number 6NEJ501.
Our Facebook page has photographs -- San Mateo County Sheriff's Office, San Carlos Police Bureau.
3:08 PM 23 May 2019
The San Mateo County Sheriff's Office is cancelling the earlier missing person report.
The subject, Dr. Gerry Sarnat, has been located and checks out okay.
A local son says his father was distraught learning that his twin sister,
who has become remarkably changed—
forgetful, repetitive jumbling her words, unreliable taking meds, stopped going out, no social contacts, watching TV all day and night
—recently was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at Wake Forest University.
Her husband did not feel she would be able to travel to a nephew's wedding in Carmel this weekend.
Learning that, Gerry said he so sad but was going to drive to North Carolina to see her.
Thank you for your help.
—San Mateo County Sheriff's Office, San Carlos Police Bureau.
iii. RIP After Nearly 103 Years
Morpheus droppered in to visit
my mother's mouth, makes maiden
named Rhoda Elaine Gerard's dysphoric
cri de coeur, "I want to die and go home now!"
resolve for at least as long as that narcos effect lasts.
It dissolves jumping-out-of-skin anxiety into almost calm
as well as relieves difficult breathing caused by pulmonary edema.
I FaceTime not only her most important caregivers who've gathered
in the condo all hands on deck with our eldest daughter, also a physician,
but toward the end, right before I board the short Southwest Air jaunt down
to LA from San Jose, Mom is cogent enough to recognize me, smile dreamily.
Will I arrive before she dies? My fine wife missed this same final flight of the night
by less than a minute when crew closed the doors…and has never ever forgiven them
or herself being AWOL for her dad's demise since he passed an hour before she arrived.
I got a ticket and made it into the cabin, bad news is I'm C-58 middle seat back of the plane.
Good news is a week ago I found my only remaining suit which was meant for a first cousin's
grandson's fancy bar mitzvah in the Midwest where I was born, raised plus won't be revisiting
on Saturday when odds are strong that by then I'll have joined all my friends who're already orphans.
Dementia of the Preoccupied
i. Dementia Praecox
Jewish Home For The Aged staring us in the puss,
it's good to gaze back in ways which look forward…
Did some nebbish kindly suggest my memory circuits
were not so much impaired as overflowing their brims?
Shrink Kraepelin popularized Dementia Praecox
to apply to Victorian girls' and boys' premature ejaculations
of madness: Emil woulda crapped his shorts if he knew
that after decades of personal mother-in-law research
her daughter's hubby coined a derivative phrase
for when Dementia Postcox is diagnosed in digitally distracted
multi-tasking in-out-in-out impotent elderly putzes
whose once hardcore acumen's become soft as tissue paper.
ii. School Of Hot Rock Rehatches Humpty-Dumpties As Better People
To a person, my men's group is yoked so we become higher-quality explorers.
Whether it's due to stone-cold character or inability/ unwillingness/ lower priority,
many of us who have fallen off during up to about 25 mostly loving intimate years together
(our last living and first original group member now suffers from dementia, has iffy attendance),
didn't commit to still deeper dives through albumin toward yolk that this matched set
of survivors finds in our hearts to own. When rare meetings can feel like padded
incubators, chicken vs. egg on face, does nurture +/- core nature rule the roost?
With A Sense Of Urgency I Want You To Read Below Before I Leave*
Full throttle guy sashayed through life,
this mid-septuagenarian gradually is hit by
shitstorm mountains of descending darkness
which they say and I accept as nothing less
than at best middle-stage Alzheimer's rot.
I know I know I know since writing today
does not appear to be too compromised,
you would like to believe that he's really
pretty much normal—just as we all are.
But underneath reality begins to sink in…
difficulty organizing everyday tasks, losing keys plus getting lost cops gotta bring home,
even forgetting where and whom I live with,
social withdrawal
(though family maintain the veil it's to allow me to concentrate fully on poetry),
increasingly disrupted sleep.
Surely there's nada problemo telling us everybody creative peaks at twenty-eight
then downhill
despite live-hard-play-hard
attempts to compensate for God's Plan of Declining Synapses
—simply ask what's-his-name quirky musical dude with powdered wig composed The Magic Flute?
A mentor just emailed me about his 65th high school reunion this past weekend,
"Of 200 classmates about 33 came, many somewhat out-of-it, others with spouses
somewhat out-of-it.
Then of course physical impairments on top of the mental.
Gerry, listen up with a sense of urgency.
Hourglass almost empty, love, Hugh"…
So maybe cocaine or binge-eating made coronary disease worse
so maybe feeling an anvil on my chest every time I limp upstairs's inevitable as worldly constriction
so maybe I'm currently incapable of all those productive things everybody takes for granted
so maybe past's falling away along with regrets for doing some messy stuff with a closed heart
so maybe now's when I am meant to become more free-spirited in our peaceful Santa Monica bungalow
so maybe here's a blessing allows expansive possibilities to love rather than profane
recriminations distorting bitterness
*thanks to Mark Singer's David Milch
(Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, Deadwood)
"Hello, Darkness" PROFILE in 27 May 2019 New Yorker.
About Gerard Sarnat
Gerard Sarnat is a physician who's built and staffed homeless and prison clinics as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. He won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is published in academic-related journals including University of Chicago, Stanford, Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Virginia Commonwealth, Arkansas, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Wesleyan, Slippery Rock, Appalachian State, Grinnell, American Jewish University, Sichuan University, University of Edinburgh and University of Canberra. Gerry's writing has also appeared widely including recently in such U.S. outlets as Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, MiPOesias, poetica, American Journal Of Poetry, Poetry Quarterly, Poetry Circle, Every Day Poems, Clementine, Tiferet, Foliate Oak, Failed Haiku, New Verse News, Blue Mountain Review, Danse Macabre, Canary Eco, Fiction Southeast, Military Experience and the Arts, Poets And War, Cliterature, Qommunicate, Texas Review, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review and The New York Times. Pieces have also been accepted by Chinese, Bangladeshi, Hong Kongese, Singaporian, Canadian, English, Irish, Scotch, Australian, New Zealander, Australasian Writers Association, Zimbabwean, French, German, Indian, Israeli, Romanian, Swedish, Moscovian and Fijian among other international publications. Mount Analogue selected KADDISH FOR THE COUNTRY for pamphlet distribution nationwide on Inauguration Day 2017. Amber Of Memory was chosen for the 50th Harvard reunion Dylan symposium. He's also authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), and Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry's been married since 1969 with three kids, five grandsons with a sixth on the way and looking forward to future granddaughters.
Find him on the web at gerardsarnat.com.