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I've Lost the Light... I Don't Know Where

March 18, 2020

Some dude on Bumble (because I am that idiotic hopeless romantic and can't hold onto my resolve any better than I can hold onto a dollar bill): Your blog made me laugh. Kind of wondering what I have to do to be a subject.

Me: My blog made you laugh? That's good because I've been feeling like it's been dark lately. To be a subject? Surprise me.

So apparently, all he needed to do was say Picky made him laugh. Except he's not really the subject here, though it did surprise me that I'd made him laugh. I reread the most recent posts the other day and couldn't find much of it amusing.

There is such darkness in my world, and it's gotten darker still.

My father's in the hospital. He didn't want to go. He's not in favor of extreme measures and has the paperwork to prove it. He went to a cardiologist a week ago yesterday, who ordered blood work to be done that Friday. Cardiologist had forgotten something in his office and went back up on Saturday to find my father's lab results on the top of his desk and was alarmed to see how low my father's hemoglobin was. He called to ask my father to come to the emergency room to have the test redone because he thought perhaps there was an error in its execution.

My father didn't want to go. But I wanted him to do so. My mother did. The cardiologist did. I thought it would be in and out fairly quickly. A retake.

It wasn't.

He's been on high blood pressure medicine for quite some time, has been routinely checking it, as well as his blood sugar because his father was diabetic. He's been coughing, badly, for about two years now. Probably more than that. As though his allergies are heinous and he can't quite get the mucus out of his chest.

Because it was fluid, not mucus. He's got aortic stenosis, which means the aortic valve is flapping in on itself or something like that. His heart's overtaxed because he's losing blood because there's something wrong with his digestive system... probably his kidneys. His sodium levels are insanely low, which you would think wouldn't be the case because he guzzles carbonated beverages like they're water. So he's bleeding somewhere... most likely has been for quite some time.

And maybe all of this could be fixed, but hospitals aren't performing surgeries unless they're caused by life-threatening conditions. And hospitals closed to visitors yesterday, so this seventy-eight-year-old man who'd rather be here with us, sitting in his chair watching Fox News and eating my mother's cooking and bitching that he can't hear the television because my mother and I keep talking over the commentators...

Yall, he could barely walk, could barely move, could barely speak. He is positive he's dying.

We made him go. And I'm beginning to think my father's going to die alone in that hospital, and I won't get to say goodbye to him. And all I want to do is curl up in his lap like I did when I was a toddler. I can't because we made him go.

And I keep thinking of when my brother died. Of how he died alone in the dark. How I didn't get to say goodbye. How I had no one upon whom to lean to grieve.

I don't want to do this again. I don't want to have to suck up my sadness so I don't burden my mother and my brother and God knows who else...

I want my father home.

I want someone to make these shadows go away.

* * *

This morning Mom told me his kidneys were failing. I was more concerned that he would die. I texted him and asked him again if he wanted me to bail him out. He didn't respond right away, but hours later, I got a text from him saying not yet. I called my brother on the way to work to ask about his opinion of the situation. Both Mom and he were on the side of hospitalization. I went to work. 

I called my father on the way home and asked again if he wanted me to come get him. He said no.

When I got home, I watered his rather impressive cactus garden. 

Not long after finishing that, Mom came home to announce that he was coming home. Still very sick. Still lots of doctors' care required, but they could do it from our home. He'll be here this afternoon. I am somewhat relieved.

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