The Hold Steady

The Hold-Steady is a great band. I love listening to them while doing housey-choresy-stuff.

Anyway, today's my Dad's birthday and I had to come to my blog to talk about it. Nothing has changed and I can't really talk to my friends about it because it's boring, I don't want to bother them, and they'd all feel sad, but can't really do anything about it. And plus not so many people really understand. Sometimes I think they secretly blame me for it. 

Thus I must hold-steady.

If I sent a text message, I'd get a painful response back from his wife, impersonating him.

If I called, he either wouldn't answer or would be a really big jerk on the phone, and I can't handle that again.

 I'll think about sending a card. Maybe a Christmas card. I imagine her tearing up the card or checking the mail first and throwing it away before it gets there. I imagine a "Return to sender" delivered back to me.
I imagine him reading it or it getting tossed in the trash right away, because he'd have to hide it from her.

So I just tell myself that it is ok. 12/8 is just another day.

And I visit the nursing home again on Monday and imagine my dad in one someday, at the end of the sunset path of life. Mondays are hard, you see people witing for dinner, watching TV, asking for help in their wheelchairs. The confines of the building are their entire lives, shrunken. It might be the natural state of things.

 It's just never like a Hallmark Movie, where everyone makes up permanently, where the nursing home ends and the family invites the patriarch or matriarch back home. It's just a false-make-up, and then things revert  back to the way they were. Taking care of the elderly is hard, tedious work. Mending fences is nearly impossible.