It is a good break, a good holiday and a good vacation. I have dined with my immediate family and snacked and caught up with my three oldest friendships. Well, oldest continuous friendships…
It is mixed though…
I need to backtrack for some things, since I haven’t been so open in these entries of late.
Mostly: my dad. He has been between hospitals and nursing facilities since the family campout over labor Weekend. The nursing care is rehabilitation, both physical and occupational, so he can care for himself when he comes back home. I will have to offer more details about this later. I keep getting lost in his condition…
I am sleeping in his room. His room was an addition to their three bedroom ranch (circa early 1960s – our house was just like all those model train houses…) It has a handicap shower stall (thanks to my mom’s impressive foresight) and his bed, sitting furniture and big flat screen television.
His bed is a hospital bed. Yes, exactly a hospital bed. His cellulitis requires he sleeps with his feet elevated.
I suppose my odd mood flashes started on the drive home. It hit me that my life is coming full circle in how it interacts with the generations of my family. My dad needs to be maneuvered in and out of a car. I did it tonight bring him home with my mom, just like I did it all those times with my sisters for his mother when I was a teenager. It is a curious sensation to note this loop.
When I went back to his room for bed, it started sweeping over me, I was a bit creeped out from various directions. It is exactly a hospital bed. When I pulled back the covers and climbed in, the vinyl mattress cover creaked. As I pulled the covers over me, I was back in the hospital; central line running into my heart and chemo agents pumping into the line. My parents home faded away from me and the hospital room in the BMT ward replaced it. I wasn’t so unnerved as curious, like I was fully aware of both realities as they overlayed each other. I knew where I was, but my memories were play out over time of the reality of it. Once I fell to sleep, I was fine and got plenty of rest. Honestly, as awful as chemo was, I always slept well in the hospital… All those constant hums and vibrations…? They soothe me… my perfect kind of white noise.
From there, I was fine until the nursing home. My paternal grandmother’s last years were in one that left a clearing lasting mark on my brain. I have to keep all my walls up inside those places. So much comes at me at once. Very. Overwhelming. My parents want me to go back tomorrow for a visit. I want to spend time with my dad, but they want me to go upstairs and meet my dad’s former roommate that was just moved. It didn’t take me long to decipher the way everyone paused before saying “He was moved upstairs today…” “…upstairs…?” “Yes…. upstairs….”
Upstairs is the permanent assited living. there is no return home from upstairs. And he just got moved there. He had no idea he was being moved there. And I have no idea who this man is. And my parents want my to meet him. *sigh* It will take most of tomorrow evening to recover. This is an area that most definitely brings up my introvert. It exhausts me…
I had my typical panic just before the gift exchange. I know… we don’t do gift exchanges. Well, mom and dad get each of us something. And everyone still shops for the nieces. They are only teenagers. And every year when I breathe a sigh of relief that we no longer exchange gifts, I always forget the nieces… and then the holiday spiral begins. I am happy to say I recovered it nicely. I brought a lot of books with me this trips that I have bound at work – that I grabbed extra copies of as samples of my work there. We recently bound a children’s book, obvious for a younger audience than my nieces, but it is incredibly cute and involves green thoughts about living. As it turns out my sister and her partner just turned their house over green in a big way. So score one for the lucky-ass favorite uncle. (As a note, I have the on-going favorite uncle spot since I am the only member of the family big enough to still pick both of them up at the same time. They are 16 and 14. I always win points for the feat.)
In all, I had a series of moments I was not expecting at all. A few hit me but I recovered quickly and pretty wholly. Nothing at all was close to as typically devastating as I have allowed the holidays to be in the past.
Yay! for that.
gryphon's hole 