The morning after my low sugar, Laurie and I wrote together, as we often do, and these were some of my thoughts.
It’s morning, just after 8 am. The light through the windows is twilight, as if the day has jumbled and rearranged itself in the wrong order. A big wind is expected. There are warnings of trees crashing through power lines. In rearranged time, the storm has already passed through me.
Yesterday morning, I had a low blood sugar, so low I imagined I was about to understand something of great significance. In 1969, I took a tab of acid with my girlfriend, and at a point she looked at me and said, “Don’t you realize yet?” Yesterday, the feeling was similar and the answer never came. During the acid trip, I wasn’t yet a type-1 diabetic, but now a low blood sugar—and I mean really low—can create the same sense of impending profundity.
Then you are gone, completely gone, and you wake up how many hours later? Laurie knows. I remember her urging me to swallow something, perhaps sugar, or chocolate, or dried fruit? I didn’t know you had to chew before you swallowed. I wake up shivering. Two EMS workers, our neighbors Lou and Mary, and Laurie are all staring at me. Above, she has told you about the way I “reconstituted” myself.
This morning, I’m wide awake and don’t feel any lasting effects. Laurie has saved my life, again, but says she did things wrong. She expected it to be like other times, but this one was different. We talk about what happened, but I don’t remember being angry, refusing to swallow, smearing drool on the walls, losing speech. Today, I’m remorseful in a way I can’t shake and also feels abstract. When the weather app predicts a big storm, I charge our phones and lanterns in case the power goes out. I always forget something important, like storing water. On the other side of a weather event, you feel relieved and you always regret you didn’t plan better.
Such an incredible account. What memories linger. Where you were about to go but didn’t get there. I’ve learned something and gained something by reading this. Stay well.
Well about how the acid trip and the sugar drop seemed so similar. Reaching for something profound but not able to grasp it. It’s so dreamlike, right? Also Richard’s feeling of remorse. Where does that come from? Of course I’m looking at myself. And in your piece, Laurie, I am going to go back and study the layering and jump cuts and try to tease out the emotional bits.
He feels remorse, which of course is absurd but we feel what we feel, because he finds out what he "put me through," as he would describe it. Also, he feels weirdly absent from the party, even if the party is a wrecking crew. It's weird to be at the center of something you can't remember or even vaguely taste.
I reread the comments people have made to this post and I'm aware of how many people have experienced the shock/terror felt by those close to people having similar experiences to my own. The experience of those dealing with such situations is rarely written. The experience of those who need help is hard to articulate, as they are soon "out of it." I have looked in vain for anyone writing about the almost cosmic state low blood sugars create for me. Over the years I've had several such experiences, they include a feeling that I would describe as obscure profundity, not to mention the feeling time was going backward. It did remind me of LSD experiences and think this is no surprise. There are altered states of consciousness in both cases.
Richard- I had a friend who was epileptic. If anything gave him a fright he would have a seizure, and he had to be caught so that he wouldn't fall. Of course many times he seized when nobody was there and fell and hurt himself. When he would emerge from a seizure he would be laughing and high as if he had just taken a massive hit of some drug. I often wondered what it felt like inside the seizure. A happy ending: he had brain surgery which cured his epilepsy.
I’m somewhat speechless, coming out of this post, which says a lot about this piece. Although I’m a little bit of a poet and was an English major, I’m not highly educated or intellectual, and my medications have a little bit of a dumbing down effect. That is, I don’t always have words or the right ones when I need them. But I can say how gripping this story about you is and that I admire your craft and that your Substack is such a bargain. Adding that to tickle you, but upon reading this post, I’m not sure I’m paying you enough. Please take that as a compliment. I’m so happy your beloved is okay now. Thank you for sharing all of this. I was also struck by this revelation about time being distance: I realized that I am out of touch on a daily basis with the fact that everything is in motion. Even when I’m feeling stuck and still, which is frequent, I’m riding a moving planet that is doing so in more than one way. Possibly taken for granted by some, but I feel like I’ve rediscovered this delightful aspect of reality.
A very balanced and touching account and reflection on many things, including the way we become so deeply involved with those we love, the difficulty of defining that hazy concept except through an account like this, except through a story (and perhaps it is unnecessary to define it in so-called "normal" terms anyway), the weird shock of possible mortality, and the alternating intensity and tempering of confronting such situations and writing about, or in, them. Thanks.
Oh, god, Martha, this is about the best response I could have hope to stir in readers. Many many thanks for your clarifying words. xxL PS . . . have you attended any of the Zooms yet? We would love to have you.
This was so well written (I felt I was there with you) but harrowing too. I think I know the feeling you describe but for me it's a kind of dread that serves as an unwelcome confirmation that anything can happen at any time. The weird randomness of ... everything. It's the most frightening / bravest part of actually getting up every day, knowing this. Definitely, part of real love, yes. (And that gold ring appearance is SO freaky ...)
I found this absolutely terrifying. Which means you wrote it well, of course.
I remember Richard saying something like this in the first Zoom conversation I attended:
“I am a character in Laurie’s work.”
Of course I know he’s more than that. But like in any good book, I don’t want one of my favorite characters to die. I was scared.
You nailed how nebulous the word “love” is. But what could be a greater act of love than how you write about him? When readers like me love him, and we only know him from your words?
This is such a fascinating comment from many different directions. I have been thinking about how and when to write about whatever I write about in order to be able to speak about these things at the Zooms and with writers I am working with. I don't have easy answers that work for everyone. My thoughts keep changing, too. Thanks for loving Richard. He is quite lovable off the page too. xxL
Extraordinary piece, thank you. Wasn’t sure at first if it was non-fiction or fiction: it was so precise and clear and contained a whole world in itself the way a short story might. The line from Henri Bergson wonderfully pulled out the lens to something large. Thanks for it. And glad everyone is ok.
I think it’s interesting that you felt a question about the genre you were reading because the events are presented as dramatic narrative. There’s much to say about the techniques of writing this way. Please come to one of the Zoom conversations, where we talk about this form. Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment.
I think that it was the precision, rather than the narrativity. It has the feel of having created its own world that I usually only encounter in short stories. Thanks for it, and for the Zoom invite.
I think the point you are making here, that you felt you were encountering a piece of art, which is what I intended to produce and intend only to produce in this Substack, the fact that you were reading a piece of writing that brought you into its world through language, rather than reading a report that emphasized that something real had happened to real people, that I find notable and an interesting subject to discuss. What are the means people find "kosher" or perhaps relieving when they read a story about people who exist? I think the categories "fiction" and "nonfiction" aren't especially useful, at least to the work I am doing. Also, when you work this way, your aim is for the narrator to get out of the way of the reader's reaction, so the reader can have an emotional response, and in that sense the story isn't really about me or even Richard, it's about the kinds of experiences these people had. Ultimately, when a piece of writing works narratively, it ceases to be about "reality" in the way a documentary camera would record it.
Yes, precisely. Had it been fiction I wouldn’t have worried about the implications of “large” vs “abstract” because it would have been the experiences rather than the individuals. Your piece, it seemed to me, controlled its boundaries very carefully, the way fiction (and especially short story as a form) does: it created a space in which only the details that matter exist.
Exactly. And that is the aesthetic control that makes any stuff that happens to people vivid to readers, rather than an invitation for them to feel something about you, personally.
It’s so interesting — the combination of presence and distance. It’s the combo that one wants when teaching too: completely present, but also slightly impersonal. Controlling the feel of the space is central to that in teaching, but it’s not aesthetic control, precisely. That is, I wonder if the control that you are demonstrating here isn’t more than aesthetic alone.
I think both Richard and I are practicing a form (we also teach) of "writing from life" that uses the techniques of fiction and strenuously avoids the standard forms of memoir, which are "summary" and "analysis" or that involve plot arcs with uplift or a lesson. To me, it all comes down to writing that seduces you, because it opens up a world inside the reader, or writing that doesn't seduce you because it asks you to approve of its values.
I remember so well your fears when you were in New York and Richard was in Arizona. Those were scary moments, but who ever said true love was going to be easy? It's so lucky Richard has you . . . and vice versa.
Thank you. I’ve been in that same edge four or five times with my spouse in the last year. I have not been able to find the words for the experience yet. I think i need distance to write. And now that I have your words, maybe I don’t need to write about it! :)
Oh, I think you do. I've touched on R's lows in the past, but this time I couldn't bring him back. When type 1s come back, the fear and annoyance drain, and it's as if it didn't happen. This time, I returned to the intense feeling, even though it was fleeting and drained quickly. At first I didn't want to stay with it, and then I thought, well, really, that is the thing to look at and see what happens to the sentences when you do.
Wow, what a saga! Like a Krishna saga - creator/destroyer/creation/destruction - out of your saga comes this wonderful writing, clear and full of emotion. Amazing how life hands us the best juice.
Brava. May you both live long with tons more juice.
Sublime — “…When We Talk About Love”. Married to a late-onset diabetic, your harrowing experience with Richard is so alive with care and fear. It serves as a beautiful cautionary tale for me and any of us who find ourselves in another. Thanks again Laurie 🙏🏼❤️
Thank you for these beautiful and supportive words. As I know you know, I am generally jumping out of moving cars when I write. Best of luck to you. xxL
I am reading this with shared horror as I am married to a diabetic (he's had if for 25 years and our entire lives revolve around his need to eat small meals multiple times a day.) But he also has low blood sugar episodes and it scares the hell out of me. I was right there with you and Richard in every moment of this provocative piece. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks so much, Amy, for your response. The writer in me is maybe pleased the piece stirred strong emotions. Also, I could only write this way because the story has a good ending. Sending warm wishes to you and your husband. xxL
Thank you for this. We have been together 40 years and the past year has been fraught with serious health challenges. Most have been manageable but last week there was an urgent need for me to deliver him to the hospital only five minutes from our house. It sharpened my mind like nothing else and for a couple of days I was a bit traumatized by it. We were both very tired and reading your much more precise account I begin to understand why. It is almost impossible to contemplate a time when our beloved will no longer be beside us. Take care.
I am so sorry to hear about Richard's low blood sugar episode. The huge positive is that you were both at home and you check in with each other throughout the day. So you got to him in time and I am so glad all is now well. And it is so good that you both enjoy being at home together doing what you love with someone you love.
I’ve just read this a second time and my heart is still leaping to my throat. My stomach is in knots. I feel a tiny connection knowing Richard from the zoom sessions. But of course I put myself in your place and saw my Larry in Richard’s. You describe organized panic in which you knew what to do logically and emotions were stored somewhere else for another place and time. My emotions soared.
And also, we are watching Resident Alien because you mentioned it last week. My first thoughts? Northern Exposure! We love it on many different levels.
I think you have nailed beautifully the feeling of acting and also feeling things are out of control here, or are they? "Resident Alien" is pure joy. Stay with it. Alan Tudyk is now my role model. Ah, the tragic horror of being infected by humanness!
The morning after my low sugar, Laurie and I wrote together, as we often do, and these were some of my thoughts.
It’s morning, just after 8 am. The light through the windows is twilight, as if the day has jumbled and rearranged itself in the wrong order. A big wind is expected. There are warnings of trees crashing through power lines. In rearranged time, the storm has already passed through me.
Yesterday morning, I had a low blood sugar, so low I imagined I was about to understand something of great significance. In 1969, I took a tab of acid with my girlfriend, and at a point she looked at me and said, “Don’t you realize yet?” Yesterday, the feeling was similar and the answer never came. During the acid trip, I wasn’t yet a type-1 diabetic, but now a low blood sugar—and I mean really low—can create the same sense of impending profundity.
Then you are gone, completely gone, and you wake up how many hours later? Laurie knows. I remember her urging me to swallow something, perhaps sugar, or chocolate, or dried fruit? I didn’t know you had to chew before you swallowed. I wake up shivering. Two EMS workers, our neighbors Lou and Mary, and Laurie are all staring at me. Above, she has told you about the way I “reconstituted” myself.
This morning, I’m wide awake and don’t feel any lasting effects. Laurie has saved my life, again, but says she did things wrong. She expected it to be like other times, but this one was different. We talk about what happened, but I don’t remember being angry, refusing to swallow, smearing drool on the walls, losing speech. Today, I’m remorseful in a way I can’t shake and also feels abstract. When the weather app predicts a big storm, I charge our phones and lanterns in case the power goes out. I always forget something important, like storing water. On the other side of a weather event, you feel relieved and you always regret you didn’t plan better.
Thanks for posting this from the other side of the rabbit hole. xxL
Such an incredible account. What memories linger. Where you were about to go but didn’t get there. I’ve learned something and gained something by reading this. Stay well.
I will be interested to know another time what you feel you learned . . . unless it's in the other comment.
Well about how the acid trip and the sugar drop seemed so similar. Reaching for something profound but not able to grasp it. It’s so dreamlike, right? Also Richard’s feeling of remorse. Where does that come from? Of course I’m looking at myself. And in your piece, Laurie, I am going to go back and study the layering and jump cuts and try to tease out the emotional bits.
He feels remorse, which of course is absurd but we feel what we feel, because he finds out what he "put me through," as he would describe it. Also, he feels weirdly absent from the party, even if the party is a wrecking crew. It's weird to be at the center of something you can't remember or even vaguely taste.
I reread the comments people have made to this post and I'm aware of how many people have experienced the shock/terror felt by those close to people having similar experiences to my own. The experience of those dealing with such situations is rarely written. The experience of those who need help is hard to articulate, as they are soon "out of it." I have looked in vain for anyone writing about the almost cosmic state low blood sugars create for me. Over the years I've had several such experiences, they include a feeling that I would describe as obscure profundity, not to mention the feeling time was going backward. It did remind me of LSD experiences and think this is no surprise. There are altered states of consciousness in both cases.
Richard- I had a friend who was epileptic. If anything gave him a fright he would have a seizure, and he had to be caught so that he wouldn't fall. Of course many times he seized when nobody was there and fell and hurt himself. When he would emerge from a seizure he would be laughing and high as if he had just taken a massive hit of some drug. I often wondered what it felt like inside the seizure. A happy ending: he had brain surgery which cured his epilepsy.
Thanks for these additional thoughts, super interesting this post has produced such lively commentary.
I’m somewhat speechless, coming out of this post, which says a lot about this piece. Although I’m a little bit of a poet and was an English major, I’m not highly educated or intellectual, and my medications have a little bit of a dumbing down effect. That is, I don’t always have words or the right ones when I need them. But I can say how gripping this story about you is and that I admire your craft and that your Substack is such a bargain. Adding that to tickle you, but upon reading this post, I’m not sure I’m paying you enough. Please take that as a compliment. I’m so happy your beloved is okay now. Thank you for sharing all of this. I was also struck by this revelation about time being distance: I realized that I am out of touch on a daily basis with the fact that everything is in motion. Even when I’m feeling stuck and still, which is frequent, I’m riding a moving planet that is doing so in more than one way. Possibly taken for granted by some, but I feel like I’ve rediscovered this delightful aspect of reality.
This is beautiful. Thank you.
A very balanced and touching account and reflection on many things, including the way we become so deeply involved with those we love, the difficulty of defining that hazy concept except through an account like this, except through a story (and perhaps it is unnecessary to define it in so-called "normal" terms anyway), the weird shock of possible mortality, and the alternating intensity and tempering of confronting such situations and writing about, or in, them. Thanks.
Oh, god, Martha, this is about the best response I could have hope to stir in readers. Many many thanks for your clarifying words. xxL PS . . . have you attended any of the Zooms yet? We would love to have you.
This was so well written (I felt I was there with you) but harrowing too. I think I know the feeling you describe but for me it's a kind of dread that serves as an unwelcome confirmation that anything can happen at any time. The weird randomness of ... everything. It's the most frightening / bravest part of actually getting up every day, knowing this. Definitely, part of real love, yes. (And that gold ring appearance is SO freaky ...)
Thanks, dear Sue, for this incisive comment. There is a stack post about the ring. I think it's called "Ring." If you can't fine it, let me know.
I found this absolutely terrifying. Which means you wrote it well, of course.
I remember Richard saying something like this in the first Zoom conversation I attended:
“I am a character in Laurie’s work.”
Of course I know he’s more than that. But like in any good book, I don’t want one of my favorite characters to die. I was scared.
You nailed how nebulous the word “love” is. But what could be a greater act of love than how you write about him? When readers like me love him, and we only know him from your words?
This is such a fascinating comment from many different directions. I have been thinking about how and when to write about whatever I write about in order to be able to speak about these things at the Zooms and with writers I am working with. I don't have easy answers that work for everyone. My thoughts keep changing, too. Thanks for loving Richard. He is quite lovable off the page too. xxL
Extraordinary piece, thank you. Wasn’t sure at first if it was non-fiction or fiction: it was so precise and clear and contained a whole world in itself the way a short story might. The line from Henri Bergson wonderfully pulled out the lens to something large. Thanks for it. And glad everyone is ok.
I think it’s interesting that you felt a question about the genre you were reading because the events are presented as dramatic narrative. There’s much to say about the techniques of writing this way. Please come to one of the Zoom conversations, where we talk about this form. Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment.
I think that it was the precision, rather than the narrativity. It has the feel of having created its own world that I usually only encounter in short stories. Thanks for it, and for the Zoom invite.
I think the point you are making here, that you felt you were encountering a piece of art, which is what I intended to produce and intend only to produce in this Substack, the fact that you were reading a piece of writing that brought you into its world through language, rather than reading a report that emphasized that something real had happened to real people, that I find notable and an interesting subject to discuss. What are the means people find "kosher" or perhaps relieving when they read a story about people who exist? I think the categories "fiction" and "nonfiction" aren't especially useful, at least to the work I am doing. Also, when you work this way, your aim is for the narrator to get out of the way of the reader's reaction, so the reader can have an emotional response, and in that sense the story isn't really about me or even Richard, it's about the kinds of experiences these people had. Ultimately, when a piece of writing works narratively, it ceases to be about "reality" in the way a documentary camera would record it.
Yes, precisely. Had it been fiction I wouldn’t have worried about the implications of “large” vs “abstract” because it would have been the experiences rather than the individuals. Your piece, it seemed to me, controlled its boundaries very carefully, the way fiction (and especially short story as a form) does: it created a space in which only the details that matter exist.
Exactly. And that is the aesthetic control that makes any stuff that happens to people vivid to readers, rather than an invitation for them to feel something about you, personally.
It’s so interesting — the combination of presence and distance. It’s the combo that one wants when teaching too: completely present, but also slightly impersonal. Controlling the feel of the space is central to that in teaching, but it’s not aesthetic control, precisely. That is, I wonder if the control that you are demonstrating here isn’t more than aesthetic alone.
Which is really interesting and rather extraordinary.
I think both Richard and I are practicing a form (we also teach) of "writing from life" that uses the techniques of fiction and strenuously avoids the standard forms of memoir, which are "summary" and "analysis" or that involve plot arcs with uplift or a lesson. To me, it all comes down to writing that seduces you, because it opens up a world inside the reader, or writing that doesn't seduce you because it asks you to approve of its values.
There is information on the post about the Zooms. Let me know.
*large: wrong word. Abstract, maybe.
I think large is the right word. I hope nothing I write is abstract. xxL
Yes 😊. Just didn’t want to seem to be minimizing the rest.
I remember so well your fears when you were in New York and Richard was in Arizona. Those were scary moments, but who ever said true love was going to be easy? It's so lucky Richard has you . . . and vice versa.
We are super lucky. xxL
Thank you. I’ve been in that same edge four or five times with my spouse in the last year. I have not been able to find the words for the experience yet. I think i need distance to write. And now that I have your words, maybe I don’t need to write about it! :)
Oh, I think you do. I've touched on R's lows in the past, but this time I couldn't bring him back. When type 1s come back, the fear and annoyance drain, and it's as if it didn't happen. This time, I returned to the intense feeling, even though it was fleeting and drained quickly. At first I didn't want to stay with it, and then I thought, well, really, that is the thing to look at and see what happens to the sentences when you do.
You have inspired me to take notes in the present moment.
That’s right, and you’ll do something else with them as you move forward in time.
Wow, what a saga! Like a Krishna saga - creator/destroyer/creation/destruction - out of your saga comes this wonderful writing, clear and full of emotion. Amazing how life hands us the best juice.
Brava. May you both live long with tons more juice.
Thanks for this wonderful comment, and long life to you dear Dian. xxL
Sublime — “…When We Talk About Love”. Married to a late-onset diabetic, your harrowing experience with Richard is so alive with care and fear. It serves as a beautiful cautionary tale for me and any of us who find ourselves in another. Thanks again Laurie 🙏🏼❤️
Thank you for these beautiful and supportive words. As I know you know, I am generally jumping out of moving cars when I write. Best of luck to you. xxL
I am reading this with shared horror as I am married to a diabetic (he's had if for 25 years and our entire lives revolve around his need to eat small meals multiple times a day.) But he also has low blood sugar episodes and it scares the hell out of me. I was right there with you and Richard in every moment of this provocative piece. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks so much, Amy, for your response. The writer in me is maybe pleased the piece stirred strong emotions. Also, I could only write this way because the story has a good ending. Sending warm wishes to you and your husband. xxL
thank you for adding your fear to the story. diabetes can be very scary.
Yes! The fear was in the first version, but in the second version, I knew I needed to start with it and stay with it a while longer. xxL
Thank you for this. We have been together 40 years and the past year has been fraught with serious health challenges. Most have been manageable but last week there was an urgent need for me to deliver him to the hospital only five minutes from our house. It sharpened my mind like nothing else and for a couple of days I was a bit traumatized by it. We were both very tired and reading your much more precise account I begin to understand why. It is almost impossible to contemplate a time when our beloved will no longer be beside us. Take care.
Thank you for your comment. I hope we are both lucky and keep going with our partners!
Me too!
I am so sorry to hear about Richard's low blood sugar episode. The huge positive is that you were both at home and you check in with each other throughout the day. So you got to him in time and I am so glad all is now well. And it is so good that you both enjoy being at home together doing what you love with someone you love.
Yes, dear Julie, so well said. See you soon. xxL
Thought provoking and wonderful. Thank you.
Thank you.
I’ve just read this a second time and my heart is still leaping to my throat. My stomach is in knots. I feel a tiny connection knowing Richard from the zoom sessions. But of course I put myself in your place and saw my Larry in Richard’s. You describe organized panic in which you knew what to do logically and emotions were stored somewhere else for another place and time. My emotions soared.
And also, we are watching Resident Alien because you mentioned it last week. My first thoughts? Northern Exposure! We love it on many different levels.
Xo and my best to Richard. And you! Hero.
I think you have nailed beautifully the feeling of acting and also feeling things are out of control here, or are they? "Resident Alien" is pure joy. Stay with it. Alan Tudyk is now my role model. Ah, the tragic horror of being infected by humanness!