Post-surgery Dad

The surgery went well.

Photo by Bon Appetit http://www.bonappetit.com/images/magazine/2011/02/maar_prep_how_to_break_down_a_chicken_01_v.jpg

They cut you open like a chicken, messed with your ticker and instead of stuffing you with orange slices, butter and herbs, they just sewed you back up. Now you have a funky scar down your front and your sternum is held together with wire. 

Personally, this is now my worst nightmare. If it ever happens to me, I think I'll gag.

You're recovering. Getting your strength back slowly but ...

You're still a pain in the ass.

Remember when just a few hours after surgery you insisted on getting up to pee instead making it easy on everyone and just peeing in the container? Yeah. That was nice for the nurses that had to help you and all your attached equipment into the bathroom just so you could take a whiz. I've never seen that nurse look so tired!

Then you keep up with the macho "get outta my way" crap even though you aren't so tough. Taking you to the park was an exercise in paranoia. If you had fallen.... Good lord.

I can only hope you've learned something from this. What smoking does to your body for example. What you having a heart attack did to the family - to mom. What the limits of your selfishness should really be.

I didn't say I had high hopes....

Bratty

Post Surgery

Dear Dad,

You're lying in a hospital bed with a tube shoved down your throat, totally out of it, buck naked with three IV's hanging by your bed. This is post surgery you. Five hours ago, in pre-surgery, you were pretty nervous. Now you're a breathing rock.

It's been a long journey to get here. A journey that never should have been taken in the first place. You've put the family through hell the past two months and now, lucky us, we get to deal with this too. If I could look you in the eye and say one thing, it would be "please don't do this to us again."

Thanks,

Bratty

Wild horoscope!

Tomorrow's horoscope from http://www.astro.com

Heightened intuition

Valid during many months: At this time in your life you are likely to change your objectives in a way that your friends may see as hopelessly idealistic and impractical, but to you it seems the only way to give your life real meaning. The chances are that both you and your friends are right to some extent, so your task now is to strike a balance between your spiritual and your material goals. No way of life will be good for you unless you can make it work in the real world somehow, although right now you may not be very concerned with the real world. Often this influence signifies a new interest in spiritual, metaphysical and occult subjects. You have a great need for deep spiritual understanding, and you may turn to religion, probably a mystical sect that emphasizes direct experience of the divine, rather than an orthodox church. The most positive effect of this influence is that it teaches you that you must get your ego out of the way before you can do anything good with it. That is, you have to learn to act without selfishness, to flow along with events as they happen without having a stake in a particular outcome. If you can do this, you will gain a great deal of wisdom from this influence without losing anything. Some persons experience psychic ability under this influence, and there is evidence that most people have some psychic ability. However, you should not expect to necessarily experience anything more than heightened intuition, which can easily be destroyed by too much reliance on your rational intellect. In fact, one positive truth that you may learn under this influence is that even at best the rational intellect is limited and cannot deal with every aspect of life. You will learn this through your own intuitive faculties telling you, if you let them, things that you could never possibly know through the rational mind. Looks like it's time to kick the rational mind to the curb. Reminds me of a Brian Eno and John Cale song....

Enjoy!

Bratty

You chose this death

Why do people make the choices they do?

Why is it they don't discuss their decisions openly? Maybe other people would like to have a crack at them!

Or maybe other people should just speak up.

"Hey Dad, why do you just keep smoking? Even when it's obvious you can't breathe?"

"You got some sort of death wish?"

I consider myself a not so subtle person. I can be pushy. I tend to push. It's not really from a perspective that I'm right and everybody else is wrong. It's more from a perspective of nagging caring. Or else it's determination mixed with common sense. 

*If I can't get my way with charm, look out!* 

I'm far above using brute force to obtain my means. But if the issue is important, I'm not averse to a few nasty looks, some evil glares, and a good old fashioned tongue lashing.

So what stopped me in the case of dad? I could have nagged him to quit smoking. Everybody tried once or twice. We all did. But dad would just keep smoking. And getting weaker. And staying just as crabby as he always was.

And now that I look back, I wonder why we didn't make a bigger ongoing stink - besides the obvious that he'd be one cranky unlovable bastard without his ciggies. Was it the fact that we presume FREE WILL is the person's own personal decision and there's only so far one feels comfortable intervening because there's only so far we'd feel comfortable with someone intervening in our life?

Or is it laziness? Or the false security that comes with an ongoing sense of time. He can do it tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

The bottom line is though, he chose this. He chose this death. Be honest. Anyone who keeps smoking despite the risks is not doing it with an eye towards longevity. Denial maybe. Stupidity I hate to suggest since the reasoning here is fairly simple; cigarettes =bad for you. Duh.

So the bottom line is dad had a death wish. Well now he doesn't.

Too late to change. Too late to undo. Too late to roll back the clock.

Too late to change your mind, dad. Sorry.

Dad didn't listen to Yul Brynner

I remember this commercial. Do you?

 

Why is that nobody listened to Yul Brynner?

Are humans are daredevils at heart, or simply very good at denial and wishful thinking?

I think I know the answer. It's delusion.

Bratty

Dad update

Dad,

You're feeling a little better today. You've been transferred to Transitional Care, where they'll get you "stronger" so you can go home. And probably fall. Or have another heart attack. Or just get weaker again.

I'm not mad at you today, but I do still view your problems in a negative light. Wish I could say I didn't lay the blame for your current condition on your refusal to quit smoking, but I do.

And I wish I had a way not to blame you for probably leaving my mom alone - this year - but I do. I'm just too sick and too tired to be angry at the moment.

It's going to be a long year.

So, here's some music that might cheer me up:

This song always makes me want to dance Flamenco!

Bratty

The day Dad had a heart attack

The day Dad had a heart attack
angels squealed in terror
dolphins roamed lost in circles

somewhere, in the suburbs, a mother cut into a tomato
In the Amazon a tree fell
Nobody heard the bark of a lost dog
and the wind howled through the banyan trees

The day dad had a heart attack was probably Thursday
the high that day around 40
the low about 25

Nobody knows for sure how or why the tsunami hit
or the depth of the destruction
but the lasting legacy
the tolling bell, remains

Goodbye, Dad, goodbye
the beginning of the end is here
call me a pessimist
call me a lousy daughter
but I hear your wheezing on the wind
I sense your resignation in your sighs
I fear you'll soon give up and leave us stranded on the shore
or, more specifically, i don't fear
i inwardly know
i imagine
i see
even as i push away the thoughts
and consign myself to another day of hospital food
they linger
like a breath
or a bad lung full of  air

a lifetime of smoking can't be undone
with a few days of sunshine
I wish it could be so

but at the same time i know better

More French things: Maurice Chevalier

Okay, I admit it.

Listening to the "Run rabbit run" song on the rabbit sheep-herding video made me long for some more French tunes. And who better to deliver than.... Maurice Chevalier?

Who indeed!

His famous hit "Louise" is an all-time favorite:


He had an interesting life, too. Born in Paris in 1888, his contemporaries were Van Gogh, Toulouse LauTrec, and Monet to name a few. I always rather liked Seurat, whose Pointillism seems precognizant of today's dpi-style images.

Seurat - La Seine a la Grande Jatte, 1888

And there you have it. The French really had it going on!

Next: psychiatric asylums!

Bratty

A binky?

My Rob Brezsny horoscope for this week is a little... well...

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Do you know what a "binky" is? It's what a 
rabbit does when it gets so crazily happy that it exuberantly leaps up into 
the air, stretching and twisting its body as it flicks and flops its feet. I'm 
not sure if lexicographers would allow us to apply this term to humans. 
But assuming they might, I'm going to predict that you'll soon be having 
some binky-inducing experiences. You're entering the Joy and Pleasure 
Season, Libra -- a time when abundant levels of fun and well-being might 
be quite normal.

A binky from http://justanotherstaticheart.blogspot.com/2012/05/bunny-language-binkies.html 

So I'm hoping this is some sort of internal, spiritual binky? 'Cause the world around me gets crazier every single day.

This is also a good time to remind ourselves of the sheep herding rabbit, just so we don't forget:



This is especially fun to play at Taco Loco, during a crowded lunch hour. It helps to sing along.

Bratty

Year 2013 look ahead

Dear Bratty Friends,

With this just in from Rob Brezney, I thought I'd pause for a moment and consider goals for the new year:

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Back in 1830, it was expensive to stay up and do things in your room after dark. To earn enough money to pay for the whale oil that would light your lamp for an hour, you had to work for 5.4 hours. And today? It's cheaper. You have to put in less than a second of hard labor to afford an hour's worth of light. I suspect that in 2013 there will be a similar boost in your ease at getting the light you need to illuminate your journey. I'm speaking metaphorically here, as in the insight that arises from your intuition, the emotional energy that comes from 
those you care about, and the grace of the Divine Wow. All that good stuff will be increasing. 

An increase in light and love certainly sounds fabulous. I feel as though I'm already on my way there. How this will all shake down might come as a surprise though, and that's just part of life. I'm hoping for no super-nasty surprises in 2013 like death of a loved one, more horrible local fires that fill the air with choking smoke, and health challenges for friends and family.

So what am I hoping for in 2013?

1. Eventually, leaving the 8-5 world behind and being able to work from home. This might be a multi-year goal. It involves following literary pursuits and god knows what else. It may even include guitar, so a new guitar is a goal.

2. More yoga!

3. More hiking!

4. A lot more meditation/self exploration. Although yoga and hiking are certainly good ways to prime that pump.

5. More savings, more money. More savings might seem like an odd goal, but to me, it's a matter of fiscal responsibility. No Fiscal Cliff for me, folks! Unless you count the desire to obtain a Subaru Forester as a fiscal worry. I say it's about time to give the Kia a heave-ho!

6. Lastly, I would say reach out more to my friends. This year they've all certainly needed it. I think it would be wise to bank some loving kindness now, 'cause you never know what's going to happen.

7. Be flexible. I may not get what I want, when I want it, the way I want it. (My inner bitch is already sharpening her knives on that one!) As a whole, I'm fairly unflappable compared to most, I tend to roll with the punches and I'm good in a crisis. But there's a part of me that accepts no compromise. It's the part that says hitting small kittens is wrong, and will not be tolerated. The trick is not to let that part ooze over into the zone of personal relationships. Yes, we knows what we want, Precious, but let's not make it a mandate from hell!

More 2013 horoscopes to follow....

Bratty