I wrote something else, too much keen and mew, bitch and whine, shit and piss (turns out to be literal). My dad is quickly deteriorating and it’s been a bad couple of days. So I let that half written thing marinate and did other things. It left a bad taste in my mouth so I tossed it.
A quick note on taste --- I find myself smoking e-juices that in a cigarette would have had me laughing my ass off or making the sign of the cross. Raspberry lemonade, dragonfruit, keylime, Ginger (actually I might have tried a ginger cigarette if offered one). Thing is most of the ejuice manufacturers seem to have a hard time with tobacco flavors. I mean even the good ones, there’s a lot of shitty ejuice on the market too. Smoking key lime is even further removed from smoking a cigarette than Nicorette gum.
My future is even blurrier today than it was yesterday. Not like I’m a planner or anything, I mean who ever has a good answer for the interview question “Where do you see yourself in five years?” It’s not a real question, they don‘t expect a thoughtful answer, it’s a question about time management. I’ve said everything from “I expect to grow with this company and be rewarded with growing responsibility” too “Laying on a beach with half naked women and a drink with an umbrella in it.” Can’t even remember if I got either or both of those jobs.
It’s just I have no plan for the future; I’m here because my folks were having a rough time on their own, and, for better or worse, they would never have made the call on their own, the I-can’t-do-this. My little sister used to say, semi privately, regarding my dad still have a driver’s license (which he actually used up until I came and hid his keys) that my mom will complain but then shrug and ride shotgun being perfectly ok with joining him and a busload of kids to their fiery death. Hmmm, that’s a paraphrase; just that between the two of them they knew my dad shouldn’t be driving and yet there they were.
The question today is can he walk. I don’t have an answer for that. I wrote a long keen and mew, bitch and moan, piss and shit (literally) about it, but it tasted bad. The home health care people sort of suck and none will commit to an answer and asking my dad is impossible. For a while today he was insisting he was dead. It wasn’t to be spooky or even a way of saying “Leave me alone” it was way to evade “Can you get off the floor?” where he’d been since midnight. Without the keen and mew, bio-mechanically the floor was the best place for him; can’t fall and can stretch out and legs aren’t below the heart.
In between the dumped keen and mew and this, while I was on the phone, the firemen came and lifted him into his chair and a home health care nurse cleaned his ass, and I’m washing pissy blankets. The bitch and moan part was a lot of how much I had to do that fucked with my shoulder and back. Not worth repeating but worth mentioning; my last good nerve is frayed and my patience as thin as an anorexic Ethiopian.
I’ve been chain smoking e-cigs. As far as nervous habits go it beats the hell out of chain smoking cigs and cigars and pipes are just not the same thing. I mean they last a lot longer but they don’t give you that sharp rush. I’m still too early in the nonsmoking thing to honestly think a cigar or a pipe is something I could take or leave. I also haven’t given away my high end cigars or even considered selling my pipes. I don’t have cigar smoking friends here and whether I smoke them or not I’m not sure I want to sell my pipes; most of the ones I’ve kept are either pieces of art or have a strong sentimental value to me or both. I probably am safe smoking a pipe, still not worth the risk.
That last paragraph was a distraction. The cold hard truth is the decision to place dad out of the house is looming. If I had answers to direct questions I’d know for sure and perhaps there aren’t answers yet, though I rather suspect the home health care staff haven’t dug very deep. I didn’t come here because I’m good at managing home health care, without other services in place if he needs picking up I can’t do it. Hmmm, I guess there are some facts in the keen and mew that got tossed with the bath water; still, that’s the question. Right at the moment he can’t rise to feet unaided. The question is the duration of the moment.
If I thought hard about it I guess I came here so he could die at home, I mean it’s unlikely that I didn’t picture that entire scenario. I’d use words like dignity but that’s a bit of a subterfuge. It’s more like habit. I don’t understand this place as comforting, and yet he moved here, already with one child in tow, and has stayed here since the mid-fifties and in this very house since six months after my birth, damn near 54 years ago to the day. It’s where he’s made his soft stand and if he could articulate it I believe it’s where he expects to die.
I had the talk with my mom this morning. She’d just as soon she didn’t go into assisted living. I’m ok with that. Cold as it may sound it’s true; if it were just my dad I probably would not have come. Get a PysD, set up an office and set aside six months , and I probably still won’t tell you ----
Shit, interrupted again, it’s pushing sunset now, the gray will go a darker gray and then a backlit yellow like home-made meth. A day almost over with so many half-finished, almost was’s --- it’s, I don’t know, like waking up with the TV on. Courage isn’t for sprinters.
Sometimes during the snatches of time to kill (and yes, killed with malice of forethought, pre-meditation, killed with forty some odd stab wounds like someone was really angry at time) I stopped by OD to see if I could get on, if it was still up. The front page entries were what you’d expect running the archetypal OD gambit from angry to maudlin, inarticulate, sentimental, Polly Anna, long run on sentences about indifference. No one expected it to die with dignity anyhow. Perhaps the consistency is reassuring. It’s a bit like a neighborhood seven eleven closing; yes it’s your neighborhood, yes you knew the employees, but it’s not like they owned it or like every other seven eleven is almost identical. Whatever uniqueness OD had travels with its participants. When your neighborhood 7/11 closes slushies are not gone forever. I know it’s a tad more complicated hell I was there for damn near thirteen years. I moved away from my neighborhood 7/11 which I had frequented for almost 22 years. There are bigger things to miss about those 22 years.
Ok, enough. I’m spent, way past spent. Be nice to one another.
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