Terrible Week

 This has not been the best of weeks.

I did work over 60 hours last week due to some co-workers being out of the office, so I tried to pick up the lose ends.  Hopefully it will serve me well, as I'm out of the office next week.

But Sunday did not start too well when my wife informed me that one of her uncles - the last one - had passed away.  His widow is still here, but we're not heading to the funeral tomorrow.  While I remember the reminder I learned in high school that funerals are not for the dead, they are for the living, it doesn't much improve things if you're not there.

The gentleman who passed away was always friendly and kind to me and my growing family.  And we shared a bond that no other two men will have on this planet.  One morning, early, my grandmother-in-law was having a medical procedure done.  It involved the insertion of some sort of technology through an artery in her leg, up near hear heart.  Mind you, I was young, foolish, and well under 30 when this occurred.  Due to some exhaustion and unfamiliarity with the area, I had managed to accidentally go through a red light that I didn't realize was facing me in La Crosse, Wisconsin. 

It was a strange intersection with four roads intersecting - not one going north-south and one going east-west, like a normal + symbol, this had those streets plus a few more.  I thought my light was green, learned a block or so later it wasn't.  The poor officer who pulled me over - mind you, this was around the Rodney King Riot time - was concerned when my wife kept moving in the car to keep our cat settled down as I got out.  After we explained the situation - cat, heading to Dubuque Iowa for family surgery, confusion, etc., the officer took my license and asked me to follow him to the police station.  At the station, all would be forgiven provided I immediately, there, paid the fine.  Which as I recall was around $200 - which was a hell of a lot of money for us in 1991 or so.  

However, fortunately, due to the fact we'd recently been paid, I paid the fine, received my license back, and continued, two hours later, down the road.  We barely had time to get through Dubuque, to Maquoketa, unload the cat and luggage, load up and turn back to Dubuque.

Which is where we get to the point of the story.  Anesthesia does tend to wind up some people before it knocks them out, and my grandmother -in-law was intent on showing us - all of us in the room - where they'd be starting the procedure, inserting the item, and where it might end up, and then where they might have to open her up if their first idea didn't work.

If you've ever been in the hospital for surgery, you know how much you have on under that gown.  That is, zip, nothing, nada, nope.  And Grandma was prepared to show us these critical medical locations - and I was never so uninterested in a nearly naked lady.  Both the other gentleman and I - the only two males in a room with eight people in it - counted ceiling tiles like our lives depended on it.  

And now he's gone, the funeral is tomorrow.

I have also learned that a good friend of mine has lost a granddaughter.  There are all the empty platitudes you can spout - must have been needed elsewhere, too good for us, here for a reason, they're all hollow-sounding empty phrases that do not provide comfort.  My wife worked for a woman who was notified, during her pregnancy, that the infant she was carrying was not going to survive due to a number of birth defects that placed much of her brain stem and other necessary organs in the wrong place - such as outside the body.  The infant was born and survived less than a day.  

As a family, we've had friend's families who have been touched by suicide and other tragedies.  I can't make much sense of why some are taken far too soon, and why others choose to end their lives.  I've been fortunate to see many beautiful moments and events and I know there's less of it ahead of me than there is behind me.  I can't take away their pain, but I also know that there's nothing I can say that will make it better.  I am here, and I am willing to listen.  I may just be able to nod and grunt and cry, but sometimes that helps.  Sometimes it's just bloody annoying.  

But we are still here.  For now.