The Sad Situation I’m Not Writing About
I may mention it in a later post. For now, although I am well aware of The Circle Of Life © and all, there is a massive sucking sound coming from my chest. It’s my heart, sinking in the muck of anxiety arising from the fact that someone near and dear to me is helping someone near and dear to him navigate the end of life.
(from my 9-4-15 blog post )
The someone I referred to in that post was my husband [1] watching his beloved father fade away.
MH’s father died at home in central Florida, after living with Parkinson’s disease for many years and having, in the past several weeks, been stricken with what physician Atul Gawande refers to [2] as ODTAA syndrome. [3] After bouncing between hospital and rehab facility, enduring procedures and attempts to “fix” one problem which in turn caused a cascade of other problems, MH’s father’s most recent ODTAA prompted a second opinion physician to recommend hospice care.
The day before we were to drive up to Tacoma to take our daughter Belle to her sophomore year in college, MH’s father took that proverbial turn for the worse and received the hospice recommendation. I moved Belle into her campus housing and returned to Hillsboro while MH flew to Florida to help his mother arrange for hospice care in their home. MH intended to stay at his father’s side for the duration, and would have, save for a sudden, dramatic wobble in our family planet’s Circle of Life rotation.
Excuse the El Stinko analogy.
* * *
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
Gil Scot-Heron, American Jazz musician-poet
The revolution, of course, has been televised. And sanitized and commercialized and commod-i-fied and turned into fodder for many an HBO series. But the afore-mentioned “wobble” will not be blog-i-fied right now, by moiself, save to say that it was a family medical crisis that caused MH to have to bid goodbye to his father [4] and get on the first available plane back to the west coast.
I need a baby-sloth-in-pajamas picture. Maybe you do, too.
* * *
May you and yours realize that life is good even when it seems to suck,
and hold on to the fact that the hijinks will, eventually, ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
[1] My husband, as loyal readers know, is oh-so-cleverly referred to in these “pages” as MH.
[2] In his amazing, compassionate book that everyone alive must read, Being Mortal.
[3] One Damn Thing After Another.
[4] Who died Monday evening, an hour after MH left for the airport.
