Like a person who has had a wall of her house blown off ..

Haushofen, The Wall (film adaptation with Martina Gedeck, Julian Polsner director)

Since Lewes’s death, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) had been ‘shivering like a person who has had a wall of her house blown off — Henry James in a letter

Gentle reader, that’s how I feel.

Two mornings ago now I spent a useless 2 hours trying to stop a couple of vulture medical groups from charging me twice for things done for my husband ($248); I get new clipping charges now and again from Kaiser too ($100 here, $100 there). It never ceases. I remember telling the Admiral when I met him and had a nervous breakdown (or collapse as it’s called in the UK) in November 1968 and was sitting there in one of these unbearable states, that in a decent society you could call a doctor for, but in the US one never goes to the doctor if one can avoid it, and he said (so long ago) “That’s absurd!” well in the US of A it isn’t. By the time we were in our later 20s and he had lived in the US of A for some 9 years he too kept away from doctors and hospitals so as not to be hounded for sums of money. I am so relieved I had the sense not to go to the hospital the night of the accident — as it is I get forms to fill out to say nothing happened so as to absolve this or that group of paying (or charing) anyhing. I saw yesterday that many of those (far too many for the websites to cope) are beginning to be overcharged who changed their insurance: they did not understand how much they would be charged as it was ‘mice print.”

The ACA (Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare) does nothing to stop this; in fact it makes the commercial part of the US medical establishment the central place you go for insurance; the gov’t will help you pay if you cannot; you have a right to have it as an existing human being (no supposed pre-conditions can allow them to refuse you). You don’t have to have a job to get insurance. It’s a step in the right direction. But let me tell you those who sign up and begin going for the first time are in urgent need — or they would not go.

I was duped out of $415 by Enterprise Rent-a-Car. They asked me if I wanted insurance for collision for their car, implied I needed it. I heard yesterday I was at another car rental the clerk imply the same thing to another person, but she was savvier than me and knew GEICO already covered it.

I am still going through the car harassment too: I had a phone call (not snail mail) from a woman with triumph in her voice that my license has been suspended until May 17th: it seems she was someone who had just emerged from Medical Review Board. It is now to me ambiguous what the letter I got on January 13th meant: it said that my license would be suspended unless I satisfied all demands; well, I sent in the answers to the demands (the doctors himself faxed them); or was it ambiguous and these are just part of their “demands.” Two of them you recall were trumped up: he had dated the accident and said there was no medical condition. Well, it seems that I will receive forms and doctors have to sign and then I will (she hinted) get it back. No word when this comes. No document has arrived. I heard triumph in her voice when I asked “on what grounds,” “You blanked out.” I said, Did you read the doctor’s forms. No answer. I said to something she said, my husband had just died, and something about what I had experienced for the 3 months. She didn’t acknowledge that – nor the statement I wrote out (probably used against me). 34 years of driving with no accident and two tickets for making an illegal turn didn’t count. I said (losing it) “this is outrageous, I’ll get a lawyer.” Then the smooth enjoying voice, “You’re of course welcome to do that.” I hung up. I should not have but could not take it. If I knew someone, was somebody, had a friend, this would not happen.

Yvette, rightly, very concerned about the ambiguity of this. I had taken her to a doctor a week or so again for a needed minor procedure. We were in the doctor’s waiting room when the phone call came in by cell phone. These people can find you out … She wondered about their criteria and if they had any limitations. She is so aware of how disabled people are just erased as unimportant (or unreal).

In the meantime how are we to shop? We can walk to the supermarket (and have purchased a NYC style shopping cart), but the things are heavy, and many things we enjoy will become an ordeal to get to and some necessary ones. “Immobilized” my friend Cheryl called this. Today I was planning to go the Washington Area Print Group to hear a lecture on 19th Century American picturesque illustrations. Just what I’d love. With the car it’s an hour all together (car, park, train). Without a car a long trek there before reaching train and back. I remember thinking out ridiculous it was that people outside the UK were allowed to drive with licenses from countries where one drives on the right and yet passing a license test in the UK is stringent; how many people drive everywhere I see who are aggressive, speeders. Yvette will miss her social club this weekend; a rare and uncommon opportunity for her to be with others of her age. Take a cab? for this? $20 each way? or more. Wait for a bus for say half an hour, an hour’s ride, and then wait again and home. It’s not worth it.

Well my good local friend whose sister is a lawyer was able to give me the name of two lawyers to call one of whose specialities is the DMV – and a website; I went to said website, and phoned and was almost immediately asked to tell my story, but before way before I could finish, the woman I was speaking to (either a secretary or another woman lawyer) said, “okay, when can you come in?” I then mentioned that I had a Category II disabled daughter, that this was a real hardship as she cannot drive anyway. Maybe that clinched it. Hard to say. It seems my case is certainly worth pursuing and I am being treated unjustly. I have an appt this Wednesday.

It is terrible to be a widow, especially an older one. It is terrible for the loneliness. In her Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman long ago pointed to the way a woman’s whole life is structured, patterns of socialization and reasons for, places her “naturally” (an ironic word in this book as is the phrase “laws of nature”) in isolation — and the difficulties struggling against this. It is therefore terrible because of your vulnerability. What happens to those widows left without ap pension? a house? I am actually lucky in some ways. But a wall has been blown off. I have lost my middle-class well-educated well-spoke older white male husband. I am a standing target.

The DMV couldn’t care less about its victims — I don’t for a moment believe they do this to protect me or anyone else. It reminds me of Isabella’s utterance from Measure for Measure: man proud man in his petty authority &c&c.

Could great men thunder
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne’er be quiet,
For every pelting, petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder;
Nothing but thunder! Merciful Heaven,
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt 880
Split’st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape, 885
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

Next blog: The Widows’ Handbook: Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival, ed. Jacqueline Lapidus and Lise Mann. The foreward is by Ruth Bader Ginsburg: you will not be surprised to learn that her husband, Martin, was cut off from his career as a lawyer (taught at Georgetown) by testicular cancer which metatasized. The cover looks like one of the often reprinted stills from Marlen Haushofen’s The Wall, standing there, alone but for her dog (who a man shows up and kills):

Sylvia