John Swinburn

We had dinner with friends last night and learned more about their upcoming trips. As they described their plans, I felt pangs of jealousy. I want to go on road trips and visit friends and family. I want to drive the back roads from Arkansas to California. I want to make my way from Arkansas through Texas to New Mexico and then loop north through Colorado and Nebraska into Iowa and Illinois and Indiana, aiming toward Ohio. I want to meander along the full length of the Natchez Trace Parkway. I want to wander through the Pacific Northwest and Canada and the southeastern U.S. I want to see this country in which I live.

It occurred to me after dinner—when my wife mentioned that our dinner friends had signed up for our church’s “dinners for six” and that they would be traveling during the months those events would take place—that my wife is coordinating those church dinners and, therefore, we have obligations that preclude my wished-for road trips. We’ve lived in Hot Springs Village for four and a half years and have taken but a very few road trips. We spoke of taking many, many of them once we’d settled into our new home. I guess obligations get in the way. But obligations shouldn’t rob one of one’s dreams. But that’s what they’re doing. I’m so damn tempted to abandon the commitments we’ve made and just go.

I can’t even think of doing that, though, until my brother is back on his feet and no longer needs my help. And, of course, winter isn’t the time to travel outside the south. So the possibility will have to wait until spring, when other obligations will preclude us from doing what I’ve wanted to do for so long. I’m angry at myself for failing to insist that we—or at least I—just commit to doing what we’ve talked about for so long, obligations be damned. But I won’t. I never do. The reasons to delay or defer or demur or whatever prevents us from doing what I want to do will always be sufficiently greater than the reasons for going. The price of the freedom to roam apparently is too great an expense to incur.

Since my last post, things have changed. My computer remains in the hands of the Geek Squad, but not for long. Though they cannot figure out why the thing dies and cannot be resurrected for days on end, they say they will return it to me. They claim they will send it to me by UPS, though they stress its handling by the boys in brown could irrevocably damage the already unreliable beast. Ah, I forgot to mention. They’re shipping it to me in Hot Springs Village, for that’s where I am for the moment.

Last week, I decided I wanted to make a trip home for a few days, so after consultation with my niece, we decided I would teach her how to pack my brother’s (her father’s) surgical wound and I would head home for a couple of days, just enough to reintroduce myself to my wife and vice versa, so we would not forget one another’s faces. But the plan was thrown into the ditch when, on Friday afternoon, one of the home health nurses thought the bloody discharges from the wound were too great. She consulted his surgeon’s nurse, who suggested he return to the Emergency Room. So, the plan was dashed. I took him to the ER, where the doctors decided right away that the infection of his wound was not getting better and that he needed to be admitted to the hospital. He would be there at least for the weekend, they said. So, I resurrected the plan. I would drive home, spend a day with my wife, then drive back on Monday so that my niece could return to work on Tuesday and I could look after my brother on his release, whether on Monday or Tuesday or whenever. But on Saturday, after I was well on my way to Hot Springs Village, the doctors finally decided what his daughter and I knew all along; he was getting badly malnourished because he was not eating sufficient amounts of food. He would need to stay in the hospital for at least the remainder of the week and possibly longer. And they decided to insert a PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) line, which they will use to supply nutrients he needs. According to the attending physician, he could not recover to the extent he needs to even if he ate a diet containing 5,000 calories, so a total parenteral nutrition (TPN) solution is necessary. I am assuming some things here, based on research; no one mentioned TPN, but my research suggests that’s what it is. Though he is also supposed to inject foods regularly to the extent he can, so it’s different from what I’ve read about. The issue arose, though, because he has been unable to eat much since his surgery. That issue must be resolved, long-term, before he can return to his normal self and be self-sufficient. At any rate, the docs say he will be in the hospital for at least a week, maybe considerably longer. I suppose we will just wait and see. I will pack a suitcase and assorted other “stuff” and keep it at the ready so I can head to Houston at a moment’s notice. In the meantime, I’m getting reacquainted with the joys of home ownership, such as fixing toilets that keep running after being flushed, leaky faucets, and a wood deck that remains unstripped and unfinished, despite my month-long disappearance; it refused to care for itself in my absence.

But back to the computer. It was not repaired. The Geeks cannot figure out why it suddenly shuts off and cannot be started again until they intervene in some fashion. And I paid for that service, which got me essentially nothing. Perhaps I need to replace the little monster with something four years newer and let the little notebook serve someone else, if it chooses. So I may look for another notebook computer over the next few days. And, while I’m looking, I may sneak in an annual subscription to Amazon Prime so I can order online and get it the next day. And, as an added bonus, I can get access to Amazon Prime Video, which is home to a series I began watching while at my niece’s house (though I could not watch much due to distractions that drove me approximately crazy from time to time). The series, The Man in the High Castle, is predicated on a different outcome of World War II; that is, that the Axis powers won the war. The U.S. was invaded, with the Nazis taking over the eastern two-thirds of the country and the Japanese controlling most of the western third, with a strip of “neutral territory” between them. The series, set in the early 1960s, seems to be focused on (thus far, at least) resistance fighters working to overthrown the invaders. A man in the mountains of Colorado (the man in the high castle) is somehow responsible for creating and/or collecting a series of films that show that the outcome is not as everyone thinks; that the Allies actually won but somehow convinced people otherwise. That part is very difficult to comprehend at this early stage; I’ve only watched one a half episodes. The series has three seasons (so far, at least) which should be quite entertaining. It’s based on a book (of course) that merits reading, I think.

I remain a non-writer for the moment. I just can’t stay focused long enough to write anything of any consequence. It doesn’t help that I have to borrow computers just to do   things like compose this blog post. But I may have a cure for that in a day or two. A cure for borrowing a computer, not for the paucity of focus on writing. I really do think I may need an extended time off, alone, working on nothing but emptying my head of useless thoughts and replacing them with something of substance. Maybe that will help. But the bottom line is that I feel like I’m unable to focus for more than twenty minutes at a time. And even twenty minutes is a stretch. I’m bouncing off the walls. If I could sequester my creative energy in some way and release it on command for extended periods of time, I might actually write something of which I can be proud. Or maybe not.

On an utterly unrelated subject, an hour after I got back to Hot Springs Village on Saturday, my wife and I went to an “ice cream social” at church. It felt more than a little odd for some reason. Many people didn’t mention that I hadn’t been around for the past month. Others knew, vaguely, that I had mentioned my brother’s health issues, but not much else. Generally, I got the sense that any interest in talking to me was based on my role with the newsletter. I may have misinterpreted, but I sensed that I was outside a sphere, looking in. And the occasional “sincere” expression of concern seemed contrived. Maybe I’m just cynical. Maybe I can’t really see through charades.  We opted not to go to church the following day, deciding instead to go out for breakfast, where we ran into some neighbors and had a nice time chatting with them about everything from films they recommend to the unfortunate reality that men do not, in general, allow themselves to build bonds with small groups of other men in the way women bond with other women. Interesting stuff. And, then, later in the day, we had dinner with other neighbors of whom we have grown quite fond. I found it interesting that I feel much more at ease and comfortable with the neighbors than with the church folks. I don’t dislike the church folks, but the relationship with them seems utterly superficial. I had the sense, early on, that we were developing deeper relationships with the church people, but that sense is quickly disappearing. I sense, instead, that church relationships are based on one’s value to the church, as  opposed to one’s value to the individuals who belong to the church. I’m thinking with my fingers, here, so I may have a different perspective tomorrow. But at the moment, I’m not so enchanted with the church vibe as I was a few months ago. I guess the fact that responsibility for “care and concern” is an assignment in the church as opposed to a genuine and organic expression of empathy got me thinking along these lines. And it’s not that I don’t think people in the church don’t have genuine feelings of concern for others; it’s just that those feelings are not particularly strong outside their small circle of close church friends.  Perhaps these feelings an observations all spring from the fact that I am and always have been and felt like an outsider. I’ve never felt truly a part of a group, even a group of writers. I’m much closer to some than to others, of course, but I’ve never felt part of the fabric of “writers” in my sphere. As I read what I’ve written and contemplate what I’ve thought, it occurs to me that my distance from others may be self-imposed. Looking back, it’s extremely rare that I have been very close to anyone. Letting down one’s guard is an invitation to suffering wounds that may never heal. On the one hand, that perspective is sad and isolating. On the other, it’s a modestly protective isolation, albeit an artificial one that doesn’t really block the missiles and arrows and rocks thrown in one’s direction.

It’s after 7:00 am my coffee is now quite cold. I’ll post this, heat my coffee, and contemplate what one does to appropriately celebrate Labor Day.

One week to the day after my computer died, only to be resurrected a few days later, it died again. My experience with Geek Squad the second time around was frustrating in the extreme. The entanglement with Best Buy’s technology gurus is too long and boring to go into here; I’ll just leave it at this: while waiting on hold for someone to answer the phone, I spent five minutes listening to dead silence, interrupted only by the occasional “we’re still trying to find him” and then spent fifteen minutes driving to the store before the call was answered. I remain without my computer, but the tech whiz kids did back up my hard drive to a new $54 external hard drive, so I’m able to access my data, thanks to my niece’s generosity in letting me use her computer.

There is no end in sight to my time spent in Houston. I must repack my brother’s once-infected and now-healing surgical wound four out of seven days a week; a home health nurse is scheduled to come around three days a week and a physical therapist is scheduled to come the other two days. Both nurses will probably spend an hour or less with each visit. A follow-up visit to the surgeon is scheduled for September 17, almost three weeks hence. I’m still trying to get an appointment with the cardiologist who saw him in the hospital. Doctors’ offices either are overwhelmed with work to the extent that staff cannot possibly keep up or they are staffed by incompetent people or people lacking decency and a customer service attitude. That’s a generalization, but it’s a just one.

My attitude is under attack by my impatience. That’s not a good place to be, so I must work on developing greater patience. The attitude will improve thereafter, I assume. And that come too soon. I want an attitude adjustment and I want it right away. I feel utterly void of any creativity. As much as I’d like to write something worth writing, nothing comes out of my fingers. Even if I could capture my thoughts without the energy required of typing, they would convey nothing resourceful, imaginative, or inspirational. Instead, they would be best described as dull, lifeless, and feeble. I feel angry and embarrassed that I feel that way. I could scream, but I don’t have the energy. Ach! I think I’d like nothing more right now that to be alone in an empty but full-stocked bar; it would have one large-screen television equipped with Netflix and Amazon Prime. In front of the TV would be a large, comfortable recliner with tables on both sides. On those tables, huge plates with an assortment of tapas would be waiting for me.

What a strange desire: watching television, eating tapas, and drinking alone in an empty bar. I think I’ve lost my mind. At least I wouldn’t watch reruns of old, insipid game shows. That’s the sort of thing that can drive a person into the street, swinging a machete over his head with his left hand and spraying bullets from a machine gun in his right hand. Game show reruns probably cause more mass shootings than poor customer service from the medical profession. I have no empirical evidence to back the theory, but it just seems right to me. To say it’s “right,” though, is wrong. And I can’t help but agree with that.

Juan Gabriel. The name is on my mind because, as I type this, the television in the room where I sit is on, though it is muted and tuned to a Spanish language television station. Across the screen I see the name Juan Gabriel and I see images of the man. And I read the captions below images of a man, who I presume to be a reporter, speaking of Juan Gabriel. I can translate only enough to know that San Diego is the city in which Juan Gabriel died. Other images, of a younger and then aging Juan Gabriel, flash across the screen. I see people being interviewed about Juan Gabriel. Some of the captions suggest these people were his fans, some for many years. I saw another name, though I don’t recall what it was, and an indication that this person was Juan Gabriel’s manager for forty years. It’s surprising to me how much I can deduce from understanding of only a few words in connection with various images. After writing this much, I looked up Juan Gabriel and learned that he was an actor and singer and songwriter and his real name was Alberto Aguilera Valadez.

The reason the television was tuned to a Spanish-language station is that my brother was channel surfing and stopped on that channel. He muted the television when his phone rang and left it that way when he went to take a nap. I’m delighted that there’s no noise emanating from the beast. I think a Spanish telenovela is playing now. It’s easy to tell telenovelas from real life by the earnest expressions on actors’ faces. In those faces, deep, abiding love looks different, but only slightly so, from deep, abiding hatred. I can read the thoughts of the handsome actor, sporting five or six days growth of beard (but neck nicely trimmed). He is thinking, “By modeling my earnest expression, my incredible handsomeness will be indelibly etched into the psyche of hundreds of thousands of young, attractive, rich women. These women want to give me their money and, since they’re near, their bodies.” Yes, this is what the handsome actor is thinking. But he is thinking these things in Spanish, so I am unable to write his thoughts precisely as he has them. But I have an uncanny ability to translate them into English, without actually thinking them or listening to them in their native tongue. I must be clairvoyant. Yes, I know what you’re thinking and I am offended by it!

I’ve driveled on for too long. Time for a rest and a retreat into the recesses of my mind. I wonder where I’ve been this last little while?

It doesn’t take much ingratitude to change one’s perspective on humanity. Total commitment can descend into disregard in a flash. Compassion can blossom into anger in the time it takes for a hummingbird’s heart to skip a beat.

I spent a good part of yesterday chasing down a commitment for home health care assistance for my brother on a temporary basis. After assurances by the hospital social services manager that the services were “all set,” I discovered the insurance company needed a doctor’s authorization. In spite of making many, many calls to doctors’ officers, I got no return calls. When my brother’s phone received an automated call from the hospital’s follow-up line (“how was your discharge? do you have any problems?”), I said “yes, there are problems.” No long thereafter, a nurse named Heather called. I explained the issues to her. She said she would explore it and call back. She did. She actually did! And apparently she got some action. Not long thereafter, the insurance company called back to say they had received the authorization they needed. Then, after dinner last night, a nurse called to schedule a visit today between 12:30 and 1:30. Hallelujah! Though I changed the wound packing yesterday myself, a nurse demonstrating how it should be done in a home setting will be great. And if she can bathe my brother (I haven’t a clue how one should use wipes to “bathe” a person with an as-yet unhealed incision and other assorted slices in his skin), all the better. I hope they will agree to come a few times a week. We shall see.

In spite of my experiences with home health care of late, I am not prepared to make a new career out of it. And I hope I do not find myself in a situation like my brother is in, needed to depend on family for home health care for an extended period. It’s no fun for him and it’s no fun for the rest of us. All in all, it’s an uncomfortable, stressful, and decidedly unhappy state of affairs. Healthier choices early in life tend to make such circumstances less likely, but these things could happen to any of us. I hope my brother finds himself energetic and able to get along at home by himself in a month or two. I can’t imagine a long-term experience in which I would be forced to depend on others for my day-to-day needs. I have known people who were in such circumstances. Both the person relying on others and the person providing the care lived in a state of ongoing stress and unhappiness, though neither would have abandoned it.

Achh! Such solemn and stressful thoughts can’t be good on an ongoing basis, so I will turn to something more uplifting. My experience thus far has taught me things I did not know. Including, of all things, how to cook an enormously oversized “arm roast,” a beef cut utterly unknown to me (my guess is that it’s a shoulder roast, although bigger than any I had seen before). My niece’s husband received the monstrous cut from a friend, a podiatrist, who had been given the meat in lieu of cash for podiatric services rendered. Apparently, the foot dude had received far more beef than his freezer could accommodate, so Ignacio received the arm roast as a gift. It was labeled “not for sale” and “Liberty, Texas.” At any rate, I thawed the beast and cooked it yesterday, beginning at 2:00 p.m. I cooked a bunch of veggies in oil, took them out of the gigantic Dutch oven, browned the roast (which I had cut into about 5 pieces so it would fit in the kettle), then returned the veggies and deglazed the pan with a very generous splash (probably half a cup or more) of red wine. After dumping a can of stewed tomatoes and a can of Rotel tomatoes in the pot, I put the covered Dutch oven in the oven (at 300 degrees) and left it until about 6:30 last night. The resulting meal was tender, moist, and tasty. I used only salt, pepper, rosemary, and massive amounts of garlic (whole cloves that I pushed into deep wounds I made in the meat by stabbing it…quite the stress reliever) to season the meat. So, my very first roast. My wife is the roast roaster in our house; I’ve helped (by cutting veggies), but she’s done the heavy lifting. This was my first solo engagement. We microwaved some potatoes to go alongside the meat and enjoyed a very fine meal, if I say so myself.

All of this teaches me something broad and grandiose, though I can’t quite put my finger on it yet. There’s a philosophical lesson buried in the minutia of: rage in the face of inept bureaucracy; contemplation about lifestyle choices and their impact on health; and risking food failure by diving it to cook something large and unknown. I don’t know just what the lesson is, but I’m relatively sure it resides just beneath the surface of the membrane that shields me from knowing what is going on around me. That membrane…that damn membrane…the one that makes me feel slightly like I’m in a fog, but close enough to truth to question that feeling.

Enough said. Off to fight the battles of the day in search of winning the war of time!

Just as I was about to leave the house to go buy sterile long cotton swabs, ham, cheese, tomatoes, light wheat bread, and jalapeños, it occurred to me that I had put clothes in the dryer a while ago. I checked and they are twelve minutes from being completely dry, or so says the magical, all-knowing electronically-controlled dryer. So I opted to wait and, while waiting, write.

The cotton swabs, by the way, are one component of a lengthy assortment of medical materials necessary for removing wound “stuffing” and then replacing it. It’s a trick I learned (I hope adequately) yesterday. The wound is the site of an infection near the bottom of a thirteen-inch incision that was closed with enormous metal clips until a week or so ago. The infection is troubling, but not overly-so, to the docs and they want to ensure the dressing is changed daily. The dressing is not just a “cover” for the wound; it involves removing a string of stuffing and replacing it with another one that’s been doused with sterile water. All manner of fun, this is, I tell you.

As for the ham, cheese, tomatoes, light wheat bread, and jalapeños, they will constitute the ingredients of today’s lunch sandwiches. I’m not sure my brother will munch on the jalapeños, but they will be a little delight in my mouth. Tonight’s dinner will be an “arm roast,” that I will braise, then cook slowly with a bunch of veggies and a few spices, for dinner cooking time should run about five hours, so if I start at 2:00, we should be able to eat dinner around 7:00.

I guess the clothes are probably dry about now, so I’m off to do more domestic chores before leaving the house for yet more domestic chores.

A couple of days without a full-fledged computer is troublesome, a fact that in and of itself is troublesome. Two days without a computer and my anxiety grows like kudzu! I think a break is in order, a meditative intervention that would sever the ties to electronic devices. Perhaps a cold-turkey withdrawal from telecommunications gadgetry might sooth my restive spirit and connect me with humanity in a way that’s impossible while staring at soulless screens and punching messages into integrated keyboards. This is all a fantasy, of course. I’m too deeply invested in knowing things I do not need to know and keeping tracks of activities that have no bearing on my day-to-day life except robbing me of time to contemplate and think and mull things over.  Bah!

I’m grateful to have my computer back. Having a working device in front of me allows me to complete newsletters and send blast emails about meetings I cannot attend because I’m more than six hundred miles away from the meeting spots. So, I’m living vicariously through a device that connects me only to the extent that it enables me to do jobs for which I’m not paid and which I’m doing only because no one else would. Something is wrong with this. Not that I don’t like playing with the computer, but playing because no one else will seems forced. I like tomatoes, too, but would be quite unhappy if I were forced to grow them to feed people who enjoy them but dislike gardening. Am I stream-of-consciousness-spinning-out? I guess so. Tomatoes are so very, very good, though. I might be willing to work as a migrant tomato picker if I were allowed to keep sixty percent of my haul. Probably not for long, though.  I suspect I’d plan a breakout. And thanks to my big mouth and trusting the wrong people, my escape plan would be found out and I’d be put in the “hole” for a week or more with nothing but bread and watercress.

They tell me I should sit down and write, regardless of what I write. Just write, “they” say. They are imaginary beings. They don’t care whether I write or not. They exist only in the minds of wannabe writers who lack discipline, knowledge, language skills, and ideas. “They” are not to be trusted. In fact, they should be captured and shackled to the deck of sinking ship. I once wrote a story that included a scene in which a young man shackled his mother to the deck of a barge that is then set loose on the open sea. That’s not the kind of son a mother wants to have. Nor is he the sort of son a father dreams of, I think. I can’t be sure, though, having never been a father. But I’ve been an uncle. And I can say with certainty it’s nothing an uncle like me wants relatives who would do such horrendous things.

I shall return to the hospital this afternoon for a brief visit with my brother. I still have no sense of when he will be released and where he will go upon his release. I’m still beating the drum for residential rehab, but my drum beat isn’t being heard, I’m afraid.

Enough for now. Maybe more later. Maybe not.

I woke this morning around 3:00 a.m., much earlier than usual. When I’m in my own house, I have no constraints on my movements when I get up so early because I know how to minimize the noise I make around the house. But when I’m a guest I feel compelled to tiptoe with care. I feel a bit like an intruder as I wander around in the dark. Even after I turn on a light, I feel ill at ease, as if I might be “discovered” in places I don’t belong in the wee hours of the morning. Strange that I feel such apprehensions in a house in which I feel so welcome. But that’s just me, an inexplicable oddity who feels out of place even in my own skin at times. It always comes down to the questions for which there are no satisfactory answers: “Who am I, beneath the layers of skin trained to respond ‘just so’ to external stimuli? Absent this lifetime of coaching to which I have been subjected,  who would reside in my head?”

Today, at some point, I’ll go visit my brother in the hospital. If I have unusually good luck, I will talk to the doctor who will decide whether my brother should, when he’s sufficiently healed, go to a residential rehab center or be released to go home. I would argue for the former, inasmuch as his too-early release from his original hospitalization might have been responsible for his malnutrition and dehydration. We shall see.

Aside from the hospital visit, I’m not sure what I’ll do. The iPad on which I’m typing this post is not suited to writing (at least not stream of finger fiction). Perhaps I could go find a neighborhood bar where strangers are viewed with a mixture of distrust and dislike; I could engage the regulars in a spirited discussion about parochial paranoia, leading to fisticuffs. Given my inexperience in hand-to-hand combat, I would end up beaten and bloodied, a bad way to be on a Tuesday. That likelihood, alone, is enough to dissuade me from seeking out a neighborhood bar. I could drive to Katy to take a look at the first house I ever bought, but that would remind me that I lost upward of $17,000 when we sold it…well, that ugly memory has surfaced without a visual reminder, so there’s no value in fighting the traffic to see a tract home built in 1980. Another option might be to search for the Astrodome. I wonder if it’s still standing. As I think about that building, it occurs to me that I don’t care enough to wade through the traffic on the loop, so I shall not do it. If I could take a train, that be another story, but another story would require me to tell it on my blog, where I’m learning to loathe one-finger typing.

My solution: chill. Sit here and meditate or, worst case, sit here and vegetate. I shall consider myself an artichoke and will peel back each of my unappetizing fronds until, finally, I reach what I hope is a delectable heart, flush with emotional nutrients that can fill a thousand pages with hope and life.

My last post was a few days ago. Since then, after his twenty-six hour stay in ER, my brother underwent surgery to remove blood clots in his legs and to repair veins/arteries in his legs to ensure adequate blood flow. That surgery took place Friday, August 17. Before the surgery, the surgeon told me he wanted to keep my brother in ICU for the night following surgery so he could be closely monitored. The next morning, my brother said he had stayed in ICU because he had been given too much anaesthesia or had a bad reaction to it. No one can figure out where he got that idea, but he was convinced of it and was angry with the anesthesiologists. He also said the doctor who was to be his anesthesiologist wasn’t the one who handled it. When I had open heart surgery about fourteen years ago, I had some bizarre hallucinations…I wonder whether the same thing is going on with him? At any rate, he was moved to a private room on Saturday, so my niece and I went to see him. He was cranky and generally unpleasant, which I can understand after such major surgeries. He feels cold, so the temperature in his room was cranked up past 80 degrees, making the room stifling for others.

Yesterday, I awoke with chest congestion, a cough, and feeling general aches and pains, so I thought it best not to go visit. My niece and her husband did, though, and reported that he remained cranky and crabby. When her husband suggested it might be best to cool the stifling room, my brother snapped at him, saying something to the effect of “get your hands off that thermostat!” Her husband spent the rest of the visit in the hall, where the environment was cooler and more friendly.

After I had decided to stay away yesterday morning, I worked on a newsletter I committed to produce. During the process, my computer died. Despite multiple attempts to coax it back to life, it refused my first aid. So, despite feeling approximately lousy, I found the nearest Best Buy so I could have their Geek Squad try to repair it or, at least, recover my data and files. They estimate repair or recovery by Thursday, so I am tapping out this post with one finger, using my iPad and my niece’s WiFi.

This morning, after I finish a load of laundry, I will head up to the hospital to learn what I can about how long my brother is expected to stay in the hospital and where he will go after release: rehab unit in hospital, residential rehab facility outside hospital, or home. Unless he is much better than last time he was sent home, I will argue for a longer time in rehab, whether in or out of the hospital.

Watching nurses and nurses’ aides and the like, I have a much greater appreciation for the work they do. ICU nurses, especially, seem to have enormous responsibilities placed on their shoulders and they pull them off in a manner so cool and collected that I am in awe. Enough of one-finger typing. More later? Maybe.

Yesterday was something of a bitch for me, more so for my brother. I got a call just before 9:00 a.m. from the cardiovascular surgeon’s nurse, for whom I’d left a message the day before. She apologized that she had not returned the call earlier; she has not been at work the previous day. She suggested that, based on my comments about difficulty swallowing and minimal intake of food and fluids, he may be dehydrated, which could be serious. “Take him to the E.R.,” she said, so I did.

We arrived at the E.R. around 10:00 a.m., after a drive through Houston backstreets that seemed to be more than an hour but was probably closer to 40-45 minutes. I drove into the E.R. driveway and parked next to an ambulance. I walked inside and was told by a guard I could bring my brother inside, but would have to quickly move my car because it was in an ambulance spot (it looked to me like it was a spot designed for non-ambulance patient drop-off, but what do I know?). After a little confusion, I was given a wheelchair and wheeled my brother inside and to the registration counter to wait for intake. I ran outside, took the car to valet parking nearby, and walked back up the ambulance drive, clearly breaking the rules as I walked past a sign that said, “No pedestrians allowed.” I suspect a fast-moving ambulance could take a person out without much of a chance for the victim to move out of the way.

After the obligatory long wait intake, the staff placed my brother on a stretcher in the hallway. He asked for water; “no,” they said, not yet. There he waited for an hour until, finally, a young doctor, Steve Doucet, came and asked us many questions. He was a very, very talkative guy and my brother liked him. I liked him, too, but my impression was that he has a great deal to learn about medicine and about time management. On the one hand, I’ve never experienced a doctor who spent so much time with a patient. On the other, I wonder how many patients had to wait longer than they otherwise would because of his tendency to chit-chat.

Finally, finally, finally, they took my brother to an E.R. room, where he was hooked up to monitors, fed intravenous fluids, and otherwise poked and prodded. This process took many, many hours. During the course of this slow-motion medical play-by-play, I realized I hadn’t eaten lunch. I had a fried egg for breakfast, but that wasn’t much. After my niece got there, at around 6:00, she “relieved” me so I went to the cafeteria and got a slice of pizza. Various of my brother’s doctors and their professional teams came to visit and talk. Much discussion took place between E.R. doctors and cardiovascular surgery teams about whether my brother should be admitted or not. The decision to admit him came sometime around 6:15 p.m., I think, before my pizza break. They could not move him to a regular room, though, because they were all full. He would have to wait until a room became available. So we waited more. And more. And more. Before he could go to a room, he would need a full-body CT scan, so that was done, finally, around 9:00 p.m. And we waited more. And more. And more. Finally, I decided I had to go home. I asked the nurse, Rommel, who came on duty at 7:00 p.m., to call me when my brother was assigned a room. About 9:45 I headed downstairs to find my car. Around 10, the valet brought it around and I headed home to my niece’s house, arriving about 10:30. Once at her house, I raided the refrigerator and ate a slice of her lasagna, which was the highlight of the day.

I was in a light sleep when my phone, which I’d left in the living room charging, rang. I jumped up and ran to it, but there was no message. A moment later, a text message popped up, date-stamped 12:12 AM: “Hello John, just to let you know Woods is moved to bed 40. Still in ER.”

This morning, I called the hospital about 8:30 to get a status of his location. Still in ER. The hospital obviously needs more beds. After I’ve washed a load of clothes, I’ll head back up to the hospital to find him and to find out who knows what about plans for treatment, discharge, whether he’ll stay another night, etc. The results of last night’s CT scan could well color the decision about next steps. If he can’t get sufficient fluids and nourishment by mouth, my sense is that the only option is a bit longer stay in the hospital.

As emotionally and, to a less extent physically, exhausting as yesterday was for me, it must have been far more taxing on my brother. I can’t imagine (actually, I can, from experience) the discomfort of reclining in an uncomfortable stretcher, covered with inadequate sheets and blankets, and relying on other people )who are frantically trying to meet the needs of dozens of other patients) for things as simple as a sip of water or a trip to the bathroom or the bedpan.

We shall see. I think the clothes are ready for the dryer.

The first three hours of the night went well. I went to bed quite early, around 9:30, and slept soundly until 12:30. During the next two hours, I slept in fits and starts. After 2:30, I may have slept an hour or more in very short segments. My back hurt and I couldn’t get comfortable. I daydreamed, then slipped into a dream once or twice between being wide-awake. The off and on sleep slivers stopped around 4:15. From that point on, I was awake. But I didn’t want to get up for fear of waking my brother down the hall, so I stayed in bed, where the pain in my back got progressively worse. Finally, just after six, I heard my niece in the kitchen, making muffins to take to her school; she had offered to help the principal feed the hungry masses of teachers by making banana muffins, so she was hard at it early.

Today will be a challenge, trying to extract information and recommendations from the medical community. We need to know how to encourage a post-surgery patient to eat. We need to know whether he should restart his diabetes medication. We need to know how to tell if a surgery wound may be becoming infected. We need to ask about post-surgical incontinence and whether it’s natural and, whether it is or not, how to address it. So many questions.

The high temperature today is expected to reach 96 in Houston. There should  be a law.

During the last few days, I’ve learned how very much energy an extensive and intrusive surgery can drain from a person. And I’m discovering that the remarkably difficult road to recovery presents its own challenges. I am providing post operative support to a man whose scar begins just below his sternum and snakes down in a more-or-less straight line for 13-inches. He is worn out. With barely enough energy to pull himself to a standing position on his walker and move slowly for a short distance from one place in the house to another, he reaches his destination winded and needing to sit down.

His surgery, for an abdominal aortic aneurysm, took roughly seven hours from the time he was wheeled into the operating room until the time he was taken to cardiac ICU.  Then, twenty minutes later, his vitals revealed that something was badly amiss and in need of urgent attention. So, he was wheeled back into the E.R. The surgical staples were removed, he was opened up again, and the doctors worked to find the source of serious internal bleeding. After several units of blood were pumped into him and the source of the problem was identified (his spleen was removed during the surgery and the stitches to close the wound had failed when his blood pressure spiked), the surgeons corrected the problem and “stabilized” him. The entire process took several additional hours.

Four days later, the hospital moved him from ICU to a private room. Finally, he was allowed to eat, but only “soft” food. But he wasn’t hungry and couldn’t eat much. Six days later, after eating very little at every meal (so much so that the nurses and dietetic staff expressed concern and said, “we can’t get him to eat, what should we do?”), he was moved to the rehabilitation unit. There, he was given various therapies but, still, he would eat very little food. The staff could not seem to make him eat; his family was unsuccessful either. This went on for a week. He was released from the rehabilitation unit to go home (to his daughter’s house) seven days later.

For two days now, he has tried to walk a little every few hours. And he has tried to eat. But he has a hard time swallowing. His already low energy from the operation is curbed even more by a lack of fuel; he’s eaten so little since coming home that it’s scary. And it’s not because he won’t. It’s because it’s so hard to swallow. I’ve decided it is unwise to release a patient right before or in the midst of a weekend. There’s nowhere to go for answers from people who know anything about the patient.

Tomorrow, we call an outpatient rehabilitation unit to arrange for ongoing therapy. And we ask questions of everyone we can. We inquire as to why his discharge papers that addressed which medications to continue, which to discontinue, and which to start do not mention his diabetes medication. We will ask about the difficulty swallowing and what can and should be done.

For my own record, here’s a calendar of his most recent interaction with the hospital and discharge. He was in the same hospital a week earlier for the diagnosis; he stayed several days then, too. What a taxing series of experiences. And it’s taxing on the caregivers, though not nearly as taxing as it is for the person receiving the care.

July 24: Tuesday, early morning surgery and late afternoon ICU
July 28: Saturday, late afternoon, out of ICU in private room
August 3: Friday, evening move to rehabilitation unit
August 10, Friday afternoon, released from hospital

I awoke early this morning, finished packing my car (except for the several things, including my cell phone charger, I left on the kitchen counter, and drove 425 miles.  I write these few words from Houston. The trip was planned, but not for today. My brother was supposed to be released from the hospital on Saturday. I learned late yesterday afternoon that the plan changed and he would be released today. So, I needed to hurry down so I could give him a ride to my niece’s house. I got to Houston around 2:40 p.m. I left Hot Springs Village at 6:40 p.m. So, it was an eight-hour trip. Two pee-stops, one of which included a purchase of lunch (a bag of Ruffles and a bottle of water).  Not a bad time.

After we got home, my nephew-in-law went to get food from Teotehuacan. I gave him $40 for the meal (he bought last time). He came back with a feast. My brother opted to sleep instead of eat, which worries me; he is as thin as a rail and has no appetite.  We’ll deal with that as we can. I’m beat. But I’m glad I made the trip.

Too tired to write more.

I mused, last evening, about the enjoyment I get out of taking pictures of my food. Maybe it’s a sickness. Or it might be an artist’s engagement with the manner in which the fruits of the Earth sustains him. Or simply a quirk. According to Oxford’s online dictionary, the pronunciation and definition of quirk are as follows—”/kwəːk/: A peculiar aspect of a person’s character or behaviour.” A subset of that definition reads: “A strange chance occurrence.” I’ll accept the definitions and the British spelling of behavior in the first definition, but I’m afraid I can’t live with the pronunciation, thought it is no doubt proper for someone with a British accent. Americans, though, pronounce the word kwurk. And, despite my embarrassment to say it lately thanks to a mindless minority of the population who managed to get an arrogant narcissist with totalitarian tendencies in the White House, I am an American. But this has little to do with photographs of food, I’m afraid, so I’ll just cut off this conversation with myself and return to the subject at hand.

Last night, before I mused about random things including taking pictures of my food, I actually took a picture of the meal my wife made, a chicken breast dressed with a marvelous blueberry sauce she made from fresh blueberries. Oh, and we had steamed broccoli and a green salad. I failed to capture the salad, but I did get a shot of the dinner plate.

The photo doesn’t do justice to that fine meal. I should know better than to rely on my Android phone’s camera to take pictures, but I’m too lazy to take the time and trouble of pulling out my “real” camera. So I make do with tools designed to meet the needs of slothful people.

This morning, I got up early (around 4:30, early even for me lately) and got to work. I mashed an avocado for avocado toast (which we haven’t yet had—that will be for lunch), hard-boiled a bunch of eggs, and found a recipe for something I’ve wanted to try for years but just hadn’t gotten around to it: cloud eggs. Cloud eggs are made by separating the whites of two (for us) eggs from the the yolks and whipping the whites until stiff peaks form. Then, divide the foamy whites into equal-sized globs on a piece of parchment on a cookie sheet. Make an indentation large enough to hold a yolk in each glob. The globs cook for about six minutes until they begin to brown. You then slip the yolks into the indentations and cook the eggs another four or five minutes. The results are attractive (in my view) but the dish has a moderately quirky (see what I did there?) texture. Pictured here is my egg (decorated with chives harvested fresh this morning from the chive orchard outside my back door), alongside a slice of Canadian bacon, three cherries, and two halves of a large radish.

On an entirely different subject, I think it’s been more than two years since I adjusted my Facebook profile to show the pronunciation of my name as ku-LIP-SOH NEE-blud. The fact that no one has ever mentioned it to me reveals the superficial nature of Facebook interactions. Facebook portrays itself as creator of close-knit communities. In fact, though, I think it’s rather rare for people to actually look at a person’s complete profile. That thought caused me to stop writing and take a look at several Facebook friends’ (people I’ve never met in person) profiles to see whether I find anything new or unusual. And I did. Quite a lot, in fact. Oddly, though, none of the small sample I looked at revealed how to pronounce their names. The fact that I didn’t already know that illustrates the degree to which I take the time (or don’t) to learn what people have opted to reveal about themselves or to keep private.

Earlier this morning, for no particular reason, I wondered whether a tract of land filled with avocado trees must be called an orchard or whether it’s permissible to call it an avocado forest. “Permissible” isn’t the right word; I suppose it should be “correct” or “advisable” or something like that. Anyway, I wondered. And I discovered plenty of references to avocado forests, but most were tongue-in-cheek. But I did find a professional paper included in the proceedings of the 1995 World Avocado Congress that referred to avocado forests in a not-so-positive way. The paper, presented by Gray Martin and Guy Witney, Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California, Riverside, puts it this way: “Currently many of the groves in California look and act like avocado forests. As trees begin to crowd the loss of the canopy reduces not only production surface area but reduces the trees ability to be productive (Figure 1.).” Based on my understanding of this reference and other statements made in the paper, I concluded that forests are natural and not managed, whereas managers of trees in orchards (or, to use their terminology, groves) prune and otherwise manage the stock to maximize production. Yet that suggestion doesn’t quite explain why we don’t hear of pine orchards, despite the fact that large tracts of pine trees are subject to intense management by timber companies. Further, the term “forestry management” also argues against the idea that forests are natural and not managed. So, for the time being, I will continue to wonder. And I’ll ponder whether I might one day be the owner of a tomato ranch. That leads to questioning whether “cattle ranch” and “cattle farm” are both appropriate and whether one can operate a “dairy ranch” or whether one must forever be saddled with the term “dairy farm.”

I’ve emptied all the excess pieces of mindless drivel that I can dislodge from my brain, for now, so I’ll post this and hope it doesn’t result in a 72-hour confinement on a mental health hold. 😉

Today was special, not because it was filled with activities in which we rarely have the opportunity to be involved but because we enjoyed what was available. After we visited several stores in search of fennel, we finally found it at the Kroger on Airport. It wasn’t visible in the vegetable section, so we asked Jesus, a young guy whose badge said he was a member of the produce section team. He led us to the place it should have been, but the bin was empty. He asked us to wait and then ran back to see if he had some on back.  A few minutes later he came back, carrying a box on his shoulder. He opened it up and, voila, fennel. But it was in pretty sad shape. My wife said she was most interested in the bulbs, not the fronds or leaves. He then offered to take it to the back, cut off the leaves, and put the bulbs in a “discount dollar bag” for us, which he proceeded to do. Outstanding customer service! (When we got home, I sent an email to Kroger, asking the company to acknowledge his superior service and give him a hefty raise.)

But that wasn’t the only thing we enjoyed that made today special. On the way home, I half-joked to my wife that we might stop at SQZBX Pizza for a draft beer. She suggested, instead, that we visit Core Brewing’s new(ish) pub on Central. So we did. She had no interest in going there. She offered it only because I’d talked about it for a month or more. So we did. I tried two of their draft beers and chatted with the bartender. She tolerated the experience and played Words with Friends.

Both experiences today were magical in a sense. I’m glad we found the fennel, because my wife wants to try two recipes that call for it (fennel is, by the way, a Spring vegetable!). But I’m delighted that my wife suggested we stop at Core; she’s the love of my life!

In a dream early this morning I experienced a place I’ve never been but which consisted of elements of various places I’ve either lived or been. A wall of glass doors and windows at the back of the house, much like my current home, looked out over a large back yard that sloped steeply away from the house. An enormous fig tree blocked the view to the left. At the back of the yard, a tall wood fence topped with two or three feet of chain link fence marked the edge of the property. Beyond the fence, a mass of dense underbrush stretched as far as the eye could see. I was standing at one of the windows when I saw a large cat, a tiger I think, peer over through the chain links. Another big cat, a leopard, nudged the tiger aside and peered over. Next, a bobcat poked its head over the fence. The bobcat was much larger than real bobcats. It was only slightly smaller than the other two cats. I called Janine to come look, but as soon as she came through the door (which I somehow knew led to the garage), the cats slipped out of sight. I pointed to where they had been and she stared intently at the spot. In an instant, the huge fig tree began shaking violently. As we wondered what could be causing such shaking, an enormous black bear climbed down from the tree and ran toward the back fence. As it ran, though, it became apparent to both of us that it was not  a bear. It was a gigantic skunk, all black with no white stripe. Suddenly, I wondered where the dogs were. No sooner had the question come to my mind than I saw both of them at the back door, wagging their tails wildly as torrential rain drenched them. Worried that the creatures outside the house might hurt them, I hurried to open the door between the garage and the back yard. I opened the top of the Dutch door and the dogs jumped up on the ledge of the lower part of the door and climbed over into the garage. And then the doorbell rang. I think it was about then I woke up.

I don’t know the last time I saw a Dutch door. I bet it must have been sometime in my childhood. I’ve not had a dog since childhood. And I am relatively sure I’ve not seen large wild cats climbing around my back yard since…forever. But something about the place (aside from a wall of mostly glass) suggested placed I’ve known. And I think, in the dream, I was conscious that the house may have been in Africa, a place I’ve never been. Odd stuff. And the bear-turned-skunk was an odd experience unlike any I’ve had, but the way the bear shimmied down the huge fig tree looked like I think a bear would look shimmying down a fig tree. I’ve probably seen enough videos of bears coming out of trees that my recollections of those scenes flowed into my dream.

Oh, there was more to the dream, but I just don’t recall what else. I just know there was more, but my mind just won’t allow it to come to the surface. A psycho-surgery procedure might unearth the rest of the dream, but I’m a little hesitant to go asking for such a procedure lest the surgeons either: 1) accommodate my request; or 2) have me involuntarily committed for making it. Early this morning, after I awoke from the dream, I did a bit of research on psycho-surgery, simply because the term popped into my head out of nowhere. I wonder if there’s a connection with my dream? Who knows?

The smiling faces of friends and acquaintances can hide haunting secrets, painful memories, and dark experiences that will never see the light of day. We’re like icebergs, revealing only a fraction of our selves and keeping the bulk of what we think and who we are hidden beneath a thick wall of privacy. We don’t even know that we’re hiding our true selves; we only know that the public face isn’t really who we are. And when we think about what we’re hiding from the world, we realize we’re hiding just as much from ourselves. Who are we, in fact? Are we simply responses to the stimuli around us, or do we exist separate from our environment? Is the happy-go-lucky guy in the mirror just a manufactured image, cultivated by the people with whom he interacts? Is he real, at his core, or did he come into being as an expression of the people with whom he’s spent time and the places where he’s lived? Some days, I feel like I don’t know who I am. Is there a real me buried beneath the layer upon layer of trained responses? Had I lived without the input of my environment, would I be a different person, a different being? I think I would. I think I would be more introspective (if that’s possible), less concerned with what others think of me, and more capable of focused attention. The older I get in this body, the less I’m able to stay focused. My mind spins like a top on a jagged, broken tabletop. Enough of this.

I read a lot about cultural appropriation. And I get it. But, like so many other issues that tend to create friction where none previously existed, a burr seems to have grown into a full-fledged mesquite covered in monstrous thorns. I understand the indignation that arises when people “appropriate” an element of another culture and claim it as their own. But I do not understand the rage that accompanies “appropriation” when full credit is given to its source. Does my appreciation for and enjoyment of Mexican food count at cultural appropriation? What if I modify “original” recipes to better suit my personal tastes? Must I ask someone for permission? And how about hair styles? I’ve seen considerable anger over dreadlocks on white people, along with assertions that the hair style is a statement by black people asserting their African ancestry. Perhaps adoption of dreadlocks in Rastafarian culture counts as a recent claim to the style, but research suggests the style originated in India or Egypt long, long ago. So, if someone appropriates the style, who is the party injured by the appropriation? And, frankly, why does it matter that people outside the originators’ culture appreciate and adopt a hair style or food preference or anything else?

I can think of very few culture-specific things that are truly unique to the culture. Historical contributions outside our realm of experience color all aspects of our lives. I, for one, appreciate and am happy to acknowledge the contributions of other cultures to my enjoyment of the one in which I live. Barbecue’s history is not uniquely WASP, but should I not use my grill because that method of cooking did not originate in my culture?

My reading of the outrage over cultural appropriation is this: it’s a symptom of a deeper anger at one culture’s dismissal of the contributions of another. Frankly, at that level, I understand and can appreciate the anger. But I believe that anger could just as readily be channeled in another emotion, joy, over the fact that an aspect of one’s culture is so appreciated that people outside that culture adopt it. As long as it’s not claimed as one’s own (as in, I created this), I think cultural “appropriation” is, in fact, an expression of deep appreciation.

Now, that’s off my chest. Of course, if someone reads this and thinks I’m dead wrong, I’d like to hear how I’ve missed the mark.

Unexpectations. That’s what I call them. Experiences that one realizes will take place without any prior planning. You know they’re coming, but you don’t know why. And you didn’t know to expect them. I discovered, quite unexpectedly, that a woman I’ve met only once in the real world is visiting Hot Springs this weekend, along with her partner (what else does one call a male attachment one assumes is a lover…a lover?). Her daughter, I gather, is here, either as a resident or as a prospective resident. Here, being Hot Springs. Not the Village. The Village is a lifetime and 22 miles away. 

Anyway, I learned of the trip and suggested we get together. At the moment, we’re talking dinner with a huge entourage at McClard’s. I don’t know about that. I’d prefer SQZBX for pizza, but I nobody asked me. And McClard’s is by far better known for a long, long time. We’ll see. Isn’t it odd that someone from a lifetime ago can pop into the periphery of one’s life and suddenly seem important? I hope I can see Paula and her brood. If not, at least I’ll know I tried. As if that matters. Sometimes attempted connections make no difference. I once connected with someone else, a lifetime ago, and have never connected again, at least not in the same way. There’s still time, I guess. Or maybe not. 

I decided this morning I should make a record of our recent trip to Texas and back, if for no other reason than to jog my memory at some point in the future when I ask, “What year did we make that trip to Houston and Corpus Christi?”

We had long planned to drive to Corpus Christi to attend a July 26 launch party for an anthology of authors with connections to Corpus Christi. Our itinerary, which was to be extremely flexible, was to include a stop at my brother’s house fifteen mile outside of Huntsville and a visit with my niece in Houston. From there, we would go to Corpus Christi and after a couple of days would meander back northward, possibly through Central Texas and to Dallas, where we’d stay a day or two with friends.

Those plans changed when my brother was rushed to the hospital in Huntsville, then transferred to Methodist Hospital in Houston for treatment for an abdominal aortic aneurysm. After a couple of days in the hospital, they sent him home for a few days until he could be scheduled for surgery on Tuesday, July 24.

We decided to drive to Houston on July 24. We arrived at the hospital around four o’clock in the afternoon, where we met my niece in the cardiac surgery family waiting room. She told us that his surgery had been completed around 2:30 and he had been taken to the cardiac ICU, but not long afterward he had been taken back into surgery due to internal bleeding. We waited and waited and waited with only one or two “updates” that indicated he was still in surgery and that the doctors were trying to stabilize him. Finally, around 8:30 (I think), the surgeon came out to give us an update. During the initial surgery, he had removed my brother’s spleen because it was in the way of the surgery required to repair the aneurysm.  It had become apparent during my brother’s short stay in the cardiac ICU that something was terribly wrong, so he was taken back into surgery. The doctors opened him up again and searched for the source of the internal bleeding, while giving him transfusions of more blood.

The sutures used to close the wound had apparently failed when my brother’s blood pressure spiked. After they found the source, the surgical team closed the wound and monitored my brother’s status for quite some time. The second surgical intervention lasted several hours, perhaps even longer than the first one. The doctor said my brother had been stabilized and would be taken to ICU again shortly. Soon, another staff member came out and told us we should be able to go to ICU in fifteen minutes or so. That came and went and we decided it was time to go in, but when we entered, we learned it would be another ten minutes. Finally, we were allowed to go in. My brother was in a section of the ICU that had around fix or seven beds. He was hooked up to all manner of tubes and wires and an incredibly array of medical apparatus. He was marginally aware we were there, but he went in and out. The anesthesia was still in control of his consciousness. Finally, we left for the night. My niece stopped on the way home and bought an assortment of wonderful tacos from a place called El Rey.

The next morning, we went in to see my brother again. He was still marginally conscious and still had a breathing tube in, so he could not talk, but he was aware of our presence and squeezed our hands when we squeezed his. We left for Corpus Christi after noon and got as far as El Campo before we stopped for lunch at Mikeska’s Bar-B-Q. Despite the signs claiming the place had BBQ that was famous all over Texas, we thought the food was on the very low end of mediocre, lousy enough that we’ll make a point to never again stop at any place claiming to serve BBQ under the Mikeska name.

We got to Corpus Christi around 4:30, maybe a bit earlier, and checked in to our motel, which is in an industrial area a good fifteen minutes from downtown. We decided to go exploring, so we drove up Leopard Street to Padre Island Drive and, from there, to a shopping area where South Padre Island Drive intersects with South Staples Street. We had a target in mind: my wife brought two sacks full of books that she had planned to sell at Half-Price Books in Houston, but she learned online that there was one in Corpus, so she decided that was the place to go. We did. She sold half of her books for $10.50 and left the rest of them, which the company would not buy, to be given away to libraries or schools or other such place in need of books. From there, we slid over to a Chinese restaurant called Taiwan for dinner. I had an acceptable meal of Chinese food and my wife had a Filipino dish called Pinakbet. She liked it. I thought it was fine, too.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the motel, then went out wandering. We cruised Ocean Drive, then headed to Padre Island. For lunch, we headed downtown, where we ate at Water Street Oyster Bar. I liked whatever it was I ate, but I don’t recall just what I ordered.

After a bit of a rest back at the motel, we headed out to Hogemeyer’s Barbecue Barn, the site of the launch party. We had assumed that the light hors d’ouevres and refreshments would reflect the type of restaurant where the event was held, but we discovered that the owners of the restaurant simply let the event organizer use the space. The organizers brought in some appetizers including sandwiches and hummus. Interesting mix.  We met a few people, then sat down to nibble. Soon, the readings began. The organizer announced that the readings would be in alphabetical order, but that soon proved not to be the case. I wanted to read, but did not know the plan, so I just sat and listened as a number of people, apparently selected by the organizer in advance, read their pieces. Finally, I motioned that I’d like to read. So I did. But I only had three minutes, so I couldn’t even begin to read the entire story. I decided to start in mid-story, possibly making it to the end; I didn’t. I was alerted that time’s up before I finished. Oh, well.  The evening was soured a bit when I opened the anthology to see the editor’s comments under the heading “Forward.”

The event ended by eight o’clock and I was still hungry. We stopped at a convenience store and I bought a bag of chips and a six-pack of beer to top off the night.

We left for Houston the next morning, Friday, expecting to go to my niece’s house and then to the hospital. As we were making our way there, she called and asked if we’d be willing to meet her and her husband at their favorite Mexican place, Teotihuacan.  Well of course! So we made our way there, using our GPS and good sense to guide us. I had intended to buy lunch, but Ignacio beat me to the punch as he was heading out the door to go back to work.

We then went in to see my brother, who was still in ICU. He was more aware and alert than he had been a couple of days earlier, but still in a fog. It was a bit difficult to know when he was fully conscious of what was going on around him and when he was hallucinating or confusing dreams with reality. But we communicated. By then, his breathing tube had been removed, so he could speak, but his voice was very weak and feeble. Clearly, though, he wanted out of ICU. He hated the noise and the constant activity around him and the other patients, but he knew he had to stay until he was well enough to be moved to a private room. On Saturday afternoon, July 28, he got into his room. He was quite happy to be out of ICU, though he was still very weak. I told him I would go back to Houston when he gets out of the hospital and will stay with him at his daughter’s house until he is able to get by without my help.

We hit the road moderately early the next morning, reaching Texarkana around 1:00 p.m., when very strong thunderstorms whipped through the area. We couldn’t see well enough to keep driving, so we pulled into a gas station/convenience store and bought some fried chicken and a jalapeño for lunch (to accompany the Scoops version of Fritos and jalapeño bean dip we’d bought along the way). After the rain slacked off a bit, we hit the road again and make it home about three hours later.

Since we’ve been home, my niece has been sending us updates on my brother’s progress. At this stage, we have no idea when he might be released from the hospital. The medical team is trying to get his insurance company to authorize time in in-patient rehab, but we don’t know the status as of yet. Last night, when I called my brother, he said he expected to be in the hospital for another week or two, followed by in-patient rehab, but that may or may not be based on good information. He’s still not completely free of having fuzzy thoughts and confusion; last night he said he had been on the phone with someone trying to sell him insurance when I called earlier and got a busy signal. Somehow, I think it’s unlikely that an insurance salesman called his hospital room to try to sell insurance. But there you go. That’s the story as it stands.

I learned yesterday of a young man’s death. He made the irrevocable choice to end his life by leaping to his death. I can’t help but think he might not have done it if he’d waited just one more minute. Perhaps in that one minute he would have realized the darkness, as bad as it must have been, would have been temporary. But once he flung himself off the building, his decision was irreversible. The darkness overcame his will to live. His pain overwhelmed his hope. I will never know what went through his mind in the weeks or days or hours before he made that horrible decision. I knew him only as a passing acquaintance, but I feel a sense of loss, nonetheless. I’m stunned by the news and I feel empty, knowing that I didn’t realize that, beyond his outward appearance, he was dealing with a life or death struggle.