The Slice

It was a long, boring week. We finally had a weekend off after three weeks straight of work, and they made up for it last week by barely getting any work to us. I taught the new folks amendments and reprints. I did another round of teaching to our backup crew who helps proof when they can. Almost every day, the majority of the typists were out sick. (At points in most of the week, we were without typists at all, a rare occurrence.) Still, there wasn't much to speak of in the way of exciting things happening. We're waiting on another deadline that will hit on Friday followed by first house passage on the 23rd, which is usually the worst deadline in terms of "Hey, it's 4 a.m. Please come back at 7:30 a.m." infamy we've had to deal with in the past. Given the ridiculous backlog of work we've had to push out in the shortest amount of time I recall in my eight years of working for the state, I can only hope that's not a trend that will continue the whole session, but I also have my doubts. I've never been as aware of the cadence of session and what lies ahead before as well as having so many opposing waves of worry and apathy. Perhaps having so many personal things going on at the same time has something to do with it.

Thursday, I got a text from my mom asking how I was doing. I knew she had dropped by after my dad's appointment at the VA to get a check from Mike, and Mike said she had mentioned that my dad might need spinal surgery. They had been awaiting MRI results on his back because his legs have been bothering him and he's been losing his balance and falling a lot recently, so I was a little surprised it might require surgery. They were also supposed to get an update on the new medication my dad has been taking for his memory for a few weeks, but Mike didn't say anything about that. Still feeling exhausted from the workweek, I finally got up and called her after exchanging a few texts and seeing that she was writing something for quite a while.

She said she hadn't wanted to bother me since she knew Mike was leaving for the final four trip the next day. (Did I ever mention he won that through work? Maybe not. Humph, I'm always a little behind, but it's pretty neat. He took his friend Nate, and a customer got to go as well.) Anyway, I wanted to know how the appointment went since she's been worked up about not getting the MRI results for almost a month. It turns out he has a few disks in his spine that are slipping near his tailbone, and the spinal column is narrowing, causing the nerves to get squeezed (or something? I only sort of understand). Since this means inflammation isn't the cause of his pain, the next step is they've been referred to a neurosurgeon to see if he needs surgery or if there are other steps they can take first. Also, my mom was able to convince him to get a walker for stability when he's out and about, and also, it qualifies him for permanent disability placards for the car, which is probably helpful since he seems a little wobbly when he walks now.

Regarding the medicine, she said, "You ever read 'Flowers for Algernon'? This kind of reminds me of that." I said I had but didn't remember how the story went. She explained, "Well, there's a man who gives medicine to a mouse, and the mouse's memory improves for a bit. So the man starts taking the medicine, and his memory improves for a bit. But then he sees that the mouse declines, and he knows his is going to decline again too."

My dad has Alzheimer's disease.

The doctor didn't give her a stage, but he said that's what the medicine is for. My mom says it has improved his short-term memory over the last couple of months, and his memory seems to be pretty stable. The medicine sometimes causes nightmares, but those have subsided. My dad seems pretty happy, she says. It's made him much more pleasant to be around, she says. He thinks it is a miracle drug.

My selfish first thoughts were, "What if we're finally able to have children, and he doesn't remember them?" followed by, "I should have seen this coming. Granny didn't remember me right before she died either, and that was devastating."

My parents have been in the process of trying to figure out some of his projects. She's been after him for years to sell the radio station and find someone to take over the Irish-English dictionary he's been working on for almost forty years, since we won't know what to do with it. He's supposed to have someone from the Irish government coming by soon to take a look at it and see if they're able to take the whole project off his hands, which would be the best place for it. They also have someone interested in the radio signal and station, even with its outdated equipment. He's also expressing interest in selling some of his ham radio equipment he doesn't use and is headed to a swap meet in Visalea next weekend to see if he can get rid of some stuff.

While I am somewhat relieved that they are taking care of these loose ends, I am worried that all of this happening at once is a bad sign of things to come. I asked my mom, "What is he going to do with his time if he doesn't have those projects to work on?" She said he still has his other hobby of framing computer components for his "museum" he keeps in the house. That'll keep him busy for a while, she thinks. He has to have something to do, after all. He can't fade that quickly, right? Really, who knows?

My brother called last night and said my mom had told him. He then launched into all these things that he should be doing now that dad's on "borrowed time." He said realistically, there's probably about a year before dad declines completely, and it was probably up to my brother to start cataloguing stuff for my dad's museum. He expressed sadness that he didn't spend more time with him before now and said he'd need to do more.

I got angry at him immediately. I told him to stop.

Yeah, I get it. I really do. It's a scary prospect to think that one day, Dad won't recognize us. It's terrifying to wonder about the future and how things are going to change. I had my own selfish thoughts. I had my own wonders about where my mother has been now that she's decided to be my dad's advocate when she hasn't even really seemed to like the man in many, many years. (And Mike's right here too. When I said this, he said, "You can't blame her. At least she's here now.") I've thought about how much life has changed since we've left home, and even now as I sit here, I wonder why I didn't go out to eat with him more often like he always said we should.

Still... As I told my brother, we can't change what we've done in the past. We can't predict how long we have left. No one knows that. We don't know how his memory will go or what kind of quality we'll have or the length we'll have before it's all gone. Don't put a timeline on it. Don't stop living your life. Things are changing, but it doesn't mean life is over already. Dad's still here. His memory is still here. It could be years before it goes away entirely. Live in the present. Do your best going forward. That's how life goes.

I say these things to him hoping I'll remember them myself when times are dark and when hope seems lost. Live for today. It's all we have.

It has been a rough six months. Friday, I was elated because we had finally gotten everything we need to finish codification, a project that has unfathomably taken longer than the eight months it took us last cycle, and I was preparing to work this weekend to see where we could get on the last few documents before Monday. With a little over two hours left in the day, I heard my phone vibrate with an incoming call from my younger sister, who hardly ever calls unless she needs something.

The call was short. She said Stephanie had called. Grandpa Gabby had died. No further details.

I tried to keep it together but couldn't. I made arrangements with my boss. I apologized and said goodbye to Heidi, since it was her last day and we were having a going away party that started in ten minutes. My boss said we were in good shape and not to worry about the weekend since they weren't going to make it mandatory to work. "It'll be okay. I'm sorry you're hurting."

Still, I left feeling guilty. Also devastated. Numb. Shocked. Full of regret. I hadn't called on his birthday in April. Why couldn't I get myself to do even that? What had we talked about the last time we called anyway? Oh right. I couldn't understand what he was saying because I had woken him up or he was drunk or something. Grandma said he had fallen recently and been in the hospital, as had she, but they were out now. She asked if I had put in an order for a baby.

Right... That's why I didn't call often. He was usually the one who couldn't go one phone conversation without bringing that up, or he'd start teasing me about something though I'd asked him multiple times over the years to stop. There were consequences to these calls, and it was easier to avoid them if I could.

Still, what kind of justifications are those now that we'll never speak again? How had I managed to make things so complicated?

We grew up across the street from them. They basically helped raise us from the start. My whole childhood, they were there, and they didn't move until I was in college or just fresh out. Every time my mom needed someone to watch us, they were there. For every major event, they were there. I can't express how intertwined our lives were or how many happy memories I have alongside the not-so-great ones that seemed to increase in the past decade. That's what happens with people who you're closer to than even your actual grandparents. How do you even begin?

One of my earliest memories of him is the smell of pipe tobacco. To this day, I only associate that smell with him and my mother's father, though he smoked straight cigarettes up until the time he was put on a ventilator. I remember his row of pipes on the mantle of their fireplace, though I'm still not sure when he stopped smoking completely. He was the only man I've ever seen smoke a pipe, which seems relegated to the past and whoever grows a hipster handlebar mustache and insists it tastes better that way.

Then there was the food. He grew up in the depression era and had so many stories. One about how he used to love mayonnaise when he first got to Texas and once ate a whole jar of it as a kid. After that, he said, he didn't like it as much, and I never saw him put a lot on sandwiches. They used Miracle Whip, though, which I never really liked either. No matter what, whenever we'd drop by, he'd ask if we were hungry and load up a plate of whatever Grandma had around: fideo or conchitas with lots of hot sauce and pepper, carnitas, tamales, homemade tortillas stuffed with refried beans and cheese or eggs or cheese or peanut butter and jelly or straight up melted butter. The food was almost always homemade, as they had owned a restaurant in Arizona before moving here. Anything put on your plate had to be eaten or you were wasting it, even if you weren't hungry to begin with. Food was love, and that was that. I still dream about their food and miss it fiercely.

Usually whenever we'd be there, the TV would be on. Reruns. Talk shows. Nascar. Boxing. Disney shows for the kids, like "The Three Caballeros". He'd sit in his easy chair or on the floor and ask us to do things for him. Or crack his knuckles and grab your bare toes and pop the joints. (I hate this to this day. That's how I found out I hate anyone touching my feet.) He'd lay on the floor and ask someone to walk on his back to relieve the pressure. He'd ask if you wanted a knuckle sandwich then show you not to put your thumb inside when making a fist because, "You'll break your own thumb when you're punching someone." He'd laugh and tease, saying how pretty and ugly you were in the same sentence or how smart and how much he loved us. He gave me the nickname "overqualified" in later years after I was valedictorian and got my bachelor's degree. He always asked if Mike (or whoever I was dating) was treating me right, echoing the refrain of "Boys are stupid" that he'd said my whole dating life. He'd tell me not to put up with anyone calling me names, hitting me or mistreating me in any way, which is a little ironic.

He called popcorn "parcan". Also, Pepsi was "Pexi". My siblings and I would try to correct him, and he'd say it several times before getting it right only to say it the other way again later on. I always chalked this up to him always joking around and a little bit to a language barrier, that the Spanish he also spoke got in the way somehow. I didn't know until my mom mentioned it a few days ago that this is why they called him "Gabby" though his name was Savino. She said that he had trouble speaking and they were making fun of his speech impediment he'd had since he was a child growing up around migrant workers.

His birthday was on April Fool's day, and I remember him tricking us multiple times on his birthday, turning out all the lights in the house and saying the power was out only to laugh when we'd go and try the light switches. There were candles that wouldn't blow out. Cards that wouldn't open. All the usual pranks. One year, my mom frosted a brick and gave it to him as a birthday cake. We all laughed as he tried to cut it, and she eventually brought out a real cake. I don't know that I ever actually wished him a real happy birthday without some sort of trick to it.

He had a primitive snake tattoo that curled up his arm, one he gave himself with pen ink and a needle but always said he wouldn't recommend anyone doing that. He always had family around, with his three biological kids along with one adopted runaway. Their grandkids were our friends and near cousins. We met many of their actual cousins as Grandma and Grandpa babysat us and took us to many meals and ice cream the next town over, places to visit, parades to watch, people to see. They had two adopted cats named Bimbo and Stinky, so-named because they found her at the dump. He worked landscaping for my mom while Grandma watched us and translated for the local court.

So many memories. Grandpa used to smile and say in later years while they still lived in Smith, "Thank God for Jeane and Patrick. Otherwise I don't know what we'd do." I wouldn't understand the context of that statement, or his daughter Mila turning to my mom and saying, "Thank God you will take care of them," at the 50 year anniversary party they threw, for a really long time. Grandma would say they needed to watch the house whenever we were gone. Even as teenagers, they didn't want to leave us alone and said they'd watch us whenever. It all seemed cordial and mutual, though my mom griped over the years about grandpa overwatering or Grandma not letting us go outside when it was hot.

It wasn't until I was an adult that it entirely went south between them and my parents. My parents owned the house Grandma and Grandpa lived in across the street, and for many, many years, they had traded babysitting and landscaping services for rent money. My mom did the math and said they hadn't paid the rent in years though we'd been out of the house for a long time and landscaping services had slowed since Grandpa's knees and health weren't stellar, so she asked for it. That one is not my story to tell because I know it's much more complex than I'm making it seem, but I know not too long after it all was settled, Grandma and Grandpa made arrangements to move back to Arizona, where they'd lived before moving to Nevada and so they could be closer to other family who had moved there.

I've seen them only a handful of times since then, and I've never gone down to visit. I've never had time or made the time. It'll be awkward, I reasoned. I don't even know the family much outside of facebook, and there have been slights on both sides, I've said. The last time I saw them together was our wedding, and as happens at weddings, we were only able to talk for a little bit before being pulled away for other things. I didn't know that would be the last time I saw him entirely. I didn't know the last conversation I'd have with him, which I avoided as long as I could after the miscarriage because I knew what his questions would be, I'd barely understand. I didn't know.

My mom said she found out from talking to Stephanie that he had Bell's Palsy the last few years, and my not understanding him suddenly makes a lot more sense now. Being partially paralyzed will do that to you. I feel bad that I assumed he was just tired or drunk when I talked to him and didn't get what he was saying, though he also liked to talk about whiskey and tequila and ask if I was at the bar. I didn't know. After his birthday in April, I got an invite to a last-minute surprise birthday party for his 80th birthday being thrown by his daughter. I declined because I had other plans that weekend, but my mom said that Grandma had found out about the party and shut it down because his health was already declining and he was not himself then. She said she's heard that he had an infection in the time since then that they weren't sure they could clean out or operate on or something. He had been in the hospital but had been moved to rehab and was doing better for a few days before his blood pressure dropped. They took him to emergency and said it might have been a stroke. Details are spotty, but he died there. He's gone now. Probably out of pain and in a better place.

I keep feeling waves of emotions: guilt over the things I couldn't make myself do, sadness over his passing, numbness in between. Memories keep washing over me, and I realize that I'll never hear him sing "Happy birthday, mijita" seguing into "Gloria, gloria halleluja" again. I know I told him I loved him last time I talked to him because we always ended the conversation that way, but I wish I was able to hug him one last time, to let him know I really meant it despite everything that's happened over the years.

I don't know how to end this entry, so I'll copy what I wrote after I found out:

Time sure moves fast, even faster than it feels sometimes. The older we get, the more it seems to speed up. One day out of the blue, something happens where you'll realize while looking through old photos how few you have with people you love, how much you would have liked to spend more time with them but kept making excuses, how even when it's hard, you should have made time because now there isn't any left. I'll cherish the many happy memories I have, but I also have a few regrets.

Maaaan, if I don't at least try to start this, I'm not sure when I'll get to it.

ICELAND TRIP (Insert fanfare here)!
( Read more... )

Whew, this is definitely a work in progress, and I'm a little tired and sore at the moment. I will be back with more hopefully soon.

I found out Olive's test results Wednesday. I just haven't gotten myself to write about them because I don't want to get too worked up about it.

Doctor called and said that the medicine Olive is on has reduced her thyroid levels back to normal, which is very good news. The only thing the vet said is she would have expected Olive to gain weight in that time, since hyperthyroid causes cats to lose crazy amounts of weight while the medicine is supposed to reverse that, and Olive basically just maintained her weight. (It went down like .1 of a pound.) Because she hadn't gained weight, the vet worried that something else could be wrong with her that hasn't been tested for yet, like cancer. However, her non-weight gain or loss could just mean she's one of those cats who stabilizes and stays that way. It's hard to know one way or another.

The doctor gave us three options at that point. We could wait a few weeks to see if she gains weight over the next few weeks to rule out other issues. We could do some ultrasounds and x-rays to determine if she has lymphoma, like Kiki had, or any other cancers. Lastly, since we had no other indications that she had other issues, we could proceed with the surgery she needs to fix her teeth, which the vet says are really painful for her, and to remove the benign mass on her leg, which is only going to get bigger.

I chose option number three, and when I ran it past Mike later, he agreed. The vet warned me that if Olive does have underlying cancer, the surgery could kill her, which is very worrisome, but the way I figure it, if it's Olive's time to go, she will go. Otherwise, this is a surgery that she needs, and it does us no favors to delay it just to make sure she doesn't have yet another illness that will take her anyway. At this point, I'd rather not know. I certainly hope she will make it through (and have a good feeling she will given her difficult life before she came to me), but you can never know. Any surgery has the potential for complications, and we're taking an extra roll of the dice because of her advanced age here.

I say all this because I get to drop her off for surgery before work tomorrow and will be on call all day about it, so I'm pretty nervous about how it will go.

Had a nice enough weekend otherwise. I got to either talk to or hang out with the majority of my immediate family (Mom and siblings), and otherwise I've been doing a lot of cleaning or hanging out or nothing of note. Both Mike and I are pretty tired, so that's about all. Woo, I lead an exciting life. Maybe I'll have more to relate another time.

I had a dream a few nights ago that woke me from a very deep sleep. What is it about people who have been gone ten years or more? How do they pop back in every once in a while and set the whole town ablaze only to vanish again? I don't even know what you look like anymore. I am long over all this. I am over wanting to mumble apologies and have them misunderstood, igniting the pain all over again, but that's what I do in my dreams. I face it without actually doing anything. It's anxiety I neither want nor need. We were never good enough together anyway.

I am worried about the cat again. She's sneezing. It is getting harder to get her to take the steroids, which yes, I wouldn't want to take either if I were her, but come on. Her eating seems to have slowed, and she puked while eating a little while ago. I'm sure it's nothing, but I am frightened anyway. We shall see.

Mike is out of town again. He was in Livermore Sunday night through Tuesday night for his monthly meeting at his home office. Tomorrow he has a food presentation he was asked to help with in Sacramento, and he has to get up really early. He is in another chat window I have open, but I am not being very good company right now. I don't know why I can't just... be okay, I guess.

Work is okay. Frustrating in certain ways. Still waiting for the work that's going to push us over the edge in this codification project. Still not quite getting anything else done except in fits and waves whenever there's a panic. This has been going on for too long, but apparently it shows no signs of stopping. There has to be an end. We have other things we need to do in the interim before session work arrives again sometime in the fall. We have no control, though. I think too damn much. I need to let it go.

I'm not making any sense really, stringing together words for the sake of it. Sorry. I'm feeling kind of down, and this isn't really helping. I'll try again later. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Because in your heart, it's loud. Oh...

[Error: unknown template qotd]Uh.... a big 10-4 there, good buddy. My room was filled with stuffed animals as a kid. Because my dad still lives in the house I grew up in, I think the closet still is. When I was really young, I thought they were alive and talked and did stuff when I was out of the room. I also took special pains to not make others jealous when I was spending a lot of time with a particular stuffed animal.

(Toy Story came out when I was 12, if you're curious. That movie's not the reason I felt that way, though I did identify with that movie a lot. Haha.)

I wouldn't say that I had an absolute favorite. Different times in my life, I was obsessed with different toys. For example, when I had hernia surgery in the second grade, I took my bear Nyla with me. (I remember the nurses put a mask on her and gave her "anesthesia" as well.) Another year for Easter I think, I got a white rabbit in a green velveteen suit that I loved. (I really enjoyed The Velveteen Rabbit as a kid, which is probably more accurately the place I got the idea that toys were real. I think I won the book in a contest at school or the library. That was probably around that time.) A different Christmas, my mom had seen me eyeing a bear that was a chimney sweep named Sooty Sam. (I like Mary Poppins, but I'm not sure why I was so obsessed with this bear in particular. I must have really annoyed them with my screeches about "Sooty Sam!" that year.) When I was a little older, my parents brought back a bear that was wearing a shirt collar and tie. I then became obsessed with finding him a wife. (Not sure why. I was never wedding crazy as a kid. I just didn't want my animals to be without friends and mates.)

And along with all this, there were too many cat stuffed animals to count, some of which I even sewed myself. I'm pretty sure there's a row of them still in the closet at my parents' home because I organized things like that. I could probably still tell you all their life stories. Weirdo.

Do I still enjoy them as an adult? Uh... I don't have a guest room filled with them or anything. I don't talk to Mike with my squishible mini t-rex and the other dinosaurs plus various other characters I own an annoying and unhealthy amount of the time. (Wait, I do. Oops.) Not to mention I bought him a police officer puppet named Cyrus who is a filthy, dirty cop on our honeymoon who likes to talk about drugs and whores and who has since had a barely legal (or illegal?) teen puppet in a cheerleading outfit named Megan join him. (Mike generally voices both of them, though he insists my voice for him is creepier.)

Ah, anyway, I probably have more animals than a self-respecting 32-year-old should have, but there you go.

I had a dream that I was back in college and dating Chris again, only I figured out later I'm married and felt really bad about it. My dream self then decided to debate who was the best out of him, Austin and Mike, and of course, Mike came out on top for several reasons, which made me feel even worse for kissing and having feelings for someone behind his back.

I woke up alone. Of course. Mike's in Livermore.

I realized today that it's been close to if not exactly ten years since I've seen Chris. If I felt like digging, I could figure out the precise day, but it doesn't really matter. As far as I know, he's long gone from here. Not too many months after that, I started up with Austin, and that relationship remains the longest I've ever been in, but not for too much longer. (May of next year will crush that record if you're curious.) Austin lives closer to me, but I haven't seen him in maybe four and a half years? Just after I started working here but before I moved, I think.

I've known Very Pretty for almost fourteen years. (How's that for weird, eh college roommate?) Certain other friends have come and gone in that period. Before her, my longest friendship lasted twelve years before I severed ties. Most of the people I grew up with I either don't talk to or don't know anymore outside of facebook, and that's okay.

Recently, I've been downsizing my friend's list there. I had a strong reaction to seeing pictures of someone I went on one pseudo date with after breaking up with Austin which didn't go anywhere because he had some derogatory things to say about gay people at the end of it. I literally know more about him through his facebook than I do from the time I spent in real life with him, and I decided I didn't care at all about him. Then I looked around and decided I didn't care about a lot of people, and suddenly I was below 120 friends on facebook.

I've probably spent a little too much time thinking about how social contacts used to work. I seem to recall in pre-internet times being able to entirely fall out of touch with someone over the course of your life, to the point where you hardly (if ever) think about them if they didn't mean anything to you. Also, it was a lot harder to look someone up if you ever had a passing whim about them, let alone a search engine at your fingertips begging you to find out, hey, that person lives this sort of life now! Isn't that interesting and not at all ultimately useless? Perhaps this sounds cruel and weird of me, but I've been feeling like that antiquated process would be preferable to the many slow deaths of relationships you experience over social media--people ghosting out of your life instead of reminding you every once in a while what they ate for dinner and how much you've both changed and disagree now. Lives coming together then drifting apart. The same old story told by different players.

I guess I'm mostly tired of caring about people who wouldn't notice if I suddenly disappeared. Yeah, I guess that makes me an asshole.

My dad was here yesterday and looked at one of the paintings I have on my wall. He said it was amazing because my Uncle John painted one almost exactly like it, down to the circles and color scheme. My mom said I was my uncle's niece. I wish I could have gotten to know him as an adult. He's been gone for fourteen years. I miss him.

But here we are, and time is short. It seems to be getting shorter all the time.

Things I've learned in the past year:

Breaking stuff can happen really quickly, even if you're healthy and have never broken anything like it before.

Stairs are terrifying.

Handicap services are totally helpful when you need them.

Muscle mass is easy to lose and much harder to get back.

You can lose joints in your foot via surgery just so you can walk sometime again.

I used to walk really fast.

People notice a lot more than I give them credit for.

It's possible to have an infection for a long time without realizing what it is.

You can breathe without feeling constantly congested. It just might take surgery.

Also, a carryover from last year: Don't blow your nose after you get your wisdom teeth out. You could cause yourself a rare problem that messes up half your year.

My mother and new family members are very supportive.

Marriage is different than I thought it would be. It's much harder but also more fulfilling in ways I didn't know existed.

I married a decent man.

I have forgotten what it's like to live alone. I'm okay with that.

Sometimes, even though it seems like a diagnosis fits, your cat is just a jerk.

Even if you've been through something multiple times, you can feel totally unprepared for what's ahead.

I thought I had more to say, but I'm going to leave it there. Happy 2015.

Dumb poetry time:

Fie, wretched woman
At thee, I bite my thumb,
who spoke of toothsome treasure, then ate
said ambrosial wonder, leaving her mate
the tenderest of crumb

(Translation? My mom came to visit me on my break and gave me a slice of homemade banana bread. I told Mike about it via text message then proceeded to eat it before I even got home even though he very sweetly brought home pie from work. Haha, I'm the biggest jerk.

EDIT: He said the joke's on me because he already ate some pie. LOLz. I'm still the worst.)

Unrelated, I got this CD in the mail, and this song mostly sums up my train of thought lately.



I'm still in the shouting at my TV (and internet) stage, though. Keep fighting the good fight, friends.

I've been listening to Against Me!'s newest album, "Transgender Dysphoria Blues" quite a bit lately. As you might guess from the title, the album deals a lot with transgender issues, as the band's frontwoman, Laura Jane Grace (formerly Tom Gabel), came out as transgender a few years ago. I've written about her previously, probably because I relate to her themes of alienation, depression, awkwardness and loneliness on a certain level, but I also feel like there are parts of her music I will never understand. As a woman who is not overly feminine but has also never questioned her gender, I can't imagine what it's like to trans. I ask myself how she does it, what it would be like, and I just don't know.

I suppose it's selfish to ask those kinds of questions, as if that hypothetical would somehow make me seem more compassionate when it really just centers the discussion around me again. That's just a round-about way of being self-obsessed, and yet I've managed to do this repeatedly even as I've become more aware of it anyway.

But aside from that navel gazing, I wanted to post this song, probably because it sounds like a morbid love song at first.



( Lyrics )

All that might be true. Two coffins could be for anyone, especially for you and a significant other because who wants to think about the impossible eternity of death and losing the partner you've agreed to share your life with. 'Til death being a pretty prominent part of the traditional vows and all.

Still, the word "little" being thrown into the mix makes me wonder if she's singing to her daughter, who would be about five now. (And looking up links in the course of writing this entry, I've confirmed this.) That interpretation of the song makes me more sad if it's true, like trying to explain this to a child makes it all the more tragic. At least your significant other understands death on the same level you do.

Given life lately, these lines has been kind of soothing: "All the things I have yet to lose will someday be gone too/Back into annihilation." It matters now, but it won't always. Regardless of what's remains, there's something to be said for the passage of time.