Set the time for seven minutes to write whatever comes to mind and see where it leads me.
Thought about the crazy people you meet online and how many you meet in person. Sometimes you are glad to make their acquaintance and sometimes you are less glad.
Maybe it is because the fool you have been arguing politics with is the neighbor from around the corner and sometimes it is for other more important reasons.
Been thinking about how to change the look and feel of this place, been thinking it is time to do some work but haven’t done it yet.
Maybe it is because the broken pieces aren’t ready to be buried and maybe because it is not a priority. Or maybe it is just a matter of asking the number one fan for insight.
Who knows.
Been thinking about the people that are a constant presence in our lives and how some may not have always been there but feel like they ought to have.
Not in the snarky way where you accuse them of not having been there, but in the timeless sense where it feels like you have known them your entire life.
There aren’t many, but they exist.
Did three miles on the treadmill and wondered if my diet is sabotaging my success or if I am just impatient.
Thought about the song below and how you can’t insert it in some things without people wondering and wondered if maybe that was incorrect.
Almost LA Bound
Rumor has it some people I know are LA bound and it seems strange to know they will be there while I am here.
The funny part of that is I feel so damn disconnected from LA and yet it is so much a part of who I am I can’t imagine ever really being disconnected.
Jerusalem has a different feel, but similar look inside my head.
I have been back to LA once since Dad wandered into the corn fields in search of the next stop and it was strange. Though I knew damn well I shouldn’t look for him I did so everywhere.
Sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously.
There were times I would run into him while we were out running our individual errands, so it is not so crazy to look.
Once or twice I thought I saw him in the not so far off distance. I mentioned it once to the kids and they told me the man was walking too fast to be grandpa.
I smiled and nodded my head, but they don’t remember the guy who could move at a much faster clip if he felt like it. They never got told to keep up and not to wander off or get lost.
It is ok, they know grandpa, but I knew dad.
*****
Some old friends and some less old are watching their parents slip away in a different way than we did.
Their memories are slipping and I don’t know what the cause of it is. Can’t say it if it is dementia or Alzheimers but it probably doesn’t matter. I see them facing a different kind of heartache than mine.
They tell me how mom/dad doesn’t always remember or recognize them and I can only imagine the pain that brings.
Two weeks or so before the end, dad started to fall asleep mid sentence, but it was a strange kind of sleep.
Strange because his eyes would close but his hands would move. Sometimes it was clear he was typing, or using a wrench/screwdriver in whatever dream he had.
The last time I saw him before the mad rush back to LA from Texas he looked at me and asked, “what the hell is happening to me?”
It is one of the handful of times I saw fear in his eyes.
There was more frustration there than fear and probably more exhaustion than I realized.
But still he fought and somewhere in the echoes of my memories I hear my paternal grandfather tell me he would fight for every last breath so it is not surprising his son did it too.
Time Is Almost…Up
The timer is close to the end of its run and it is my choice to acknowledge or ignore the bell. My choice to fight for one more line or to let go.
Forty feet away my service porch once held supplies for his dialysis and diabetes but now the cabinets are empty of bottles, attachments and devices.
Now they hold no evidence that he was here.
Instead the closet contains a few jackets that I took home and that is preferable to me. The kids say they don’t think of grandpa as having been sick and I am glad for that.
But I sometimes wish they could have seen their grandfather when he would work upon and around the house with me. Sometimes I wish they could have seen us pass tools back and forth or listen to him gripe at me about doing a better job or paying closer attention so that it was done right.
They’d recognize the words and the tone and ask why I didn’t tell them I sometimes speak using grandpa’s voice.
