Six Months

This is the six month anniversary of my last journal post. Exactly. Jan 13, 2012 to July 13, 2012. That's a pure coincidence, though.

I haven't had much to say, I guess. Or at least, wasn't motivated to say it anyhow. I'm using eyedrops twice a day to treat my glaucoma, and so far it seems to be working. At my last checkup the pressure in my eyes was down by a third, which is where the eye doc wanted it. I'll go back at the end of the year for another visual field test to see if there's any change. Ideally, there won't be any, and we'll just stick with the current regimen. If there is, we'll fiddle with it.

My father died in March. It was hardly unexpected. He'd been in home hospice care for almost two years, in a very slow decline. I suspect--well, actually I know, because he said as much when I visited two years ago when he first went into hospice--that he was ready for it to be over. He'd had open heart surgery for calcified valves, and was still suffering from congestive heart failure. He was weak, and seldom got out at first and then was confined to his home, and finally to his bedroom.

He said more than a few times over the years that he'd never expected to get this old. He was 77 when he died. I'm not sure why he felt that way. Anyhow, mom and my sister were with him when he died. Snippy and I flew back home to Virginia for the funeral. Snippy was a rock, taking good care of me all the while.

I had flown back to Virginia twice in the last few years, each time thinking it was the last time I'd see my dad. First when he had his open heart surgery. I still remember flying into Dulles the night before his surgery. I rented a car and drove to Lynchburg, speeding much of the way (and really flying along some of those stretches of highway not giving a damn if I got pulled over for speeding because I feared I'd miss a chance to see him if I got there too late that night). I was half-convinced he wouldn't survive the surgery. No good reason for it, just the fact that it was open heart surgery.

He survived it, obviously, and recovered. But he suffered from congestive heart failure, which they treated with drugs and whatnot until they concluded that it wasn't fixable, at which point he went into hospice. Hospice is typically six months or less, so I flew back again for what I thought would be (and was) the last visit I had with him, though he hung on for almost two years.

So I thought I was prepared for it when he died. My lovely and talented wife told me you're never really prepared, though, and she was right. It hit me harder (and in more ways) than I expected. It still does. My strongest memory of the trip is going upstairs in my childhood home after the funeral to find my mother leaning on their bed sobbing because she'd just buried the man she loved and had been married to for 55 years. I hugged her and cried a little myself, then closed the door and left her to it. That was the first and only time I saw her really cry during that visit. (She's not the only one to cry in private. I do too, like now.)

Snippy chronicled the high-stress couple of years we've had in her journal fairly recently, so I won't list all our travails. But it's been tough, and losing my dad didn't help. I had big plans for this year, which we both hoped would be better. I had been intending to write a lot, and publish. Instead I haven't written a goddamn thing this year. (Well, okay, one short story.) So when I get together with my mastermind pals (when and if) to see how we've progressed on our goals, I expect to be gently mocked for failing so big.

Still, I am finally starting to write again. So that's something.

(Long, long pause.) That's all I have for now.