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May. 4th, 2004 02:00 pmI'm in the public library in Osoyoos where internet access is available by appointment and for short periods only, so I'm going to be brief.
I'll probably be here for another week and a half, by which point I'm going to be ready for a rubber room, but whatever, at least I'll be at home.
It's been a pretty surreal mixture of sadness and good times and homicidal mania these past few days. When I arrived in Penticton, my uncle was in the hospital in fairly dire condition (well, yes, obviously, since he died, but that wasn't quite so apparent at the time). He seemed to be in terrible pain from whatever had gone wrong with his back surgery a couple of weeks before, and he was making the most alarming noises, a complicated menu of vocalizations that sounded sometimes like battle cries, sometimes like creaking branches and haunted houses, and sometimes like a song to summon angels. He wasn't conscious, or only barely, and I don't know for sure whether he recognized my aunt or me, but at least he didn't hit the nurses when we were with him, so our presence must have been somewhat calming. His doctor later explained that Uncle J.'s noises were perfectly normal given the delirium, and weren't an expression of pain. He poked Uncle J. in the abdomen a few minutes later (not to prove his point, I don't think) and made the difference abundantly clear.
The whole hospital experience was horrendous. The support staff had just gone on strike and nobody knew what they were doing, my aunt was doing she could to ensure that my uncle received no treatment short of asking the staff to hold a pillow over his face, and I have all this icky hospital residue kicking around in my brain from my mother's death and, more recently, from my other aunt and uncle's lingering illness and deaths in hospital.
It's been very difficult to grieve, in part because my aunt is quite patently ecstatic to be shot of him. I loved the guy, but I didn't have to live with his persnickety, critical, annoying as fuck ways for forty years, so I don't judge her. It's just hard, that's all, to be around someone who is so indifferent to the absence of a person you really miss.
I've just received my five-minute warning, and I still have to send a message home, so I'm logging off now.
I miss you guys!
I'll probably be here for another week and a half, by which point I'm going to be ready for a rubber room, but whatever, at least I'll be at home.
It's been a pretty surreal mixture of sadness and good times and homicidal mania these past few days. When I arrived in Penticton, my uncle was in the hospital in fairly dire condition (well, yes, obviously, since he died, but that wasn't quite so apparent at the time). He seemed to be in terrible pain from whatever had gone wrong with his back surgery a couple of weeks before, and he was making the most alarming noises, a complicated menu of vocalizations that sounded sometimes like battle cries, sometimes like creaking branches and haunted houses, and sometimes like a song to summon angels. He wasn't conscious, or only barely, and I don't know for sure whether he recognized my aunt or me, but at least he didn't hit the nurses when we were with him, so our presence must have been somewhat calming. His doctor later explained that Uncle J.'s noises were perfectly normal given the delirium, and weren't an expression of pain. He poked Uncle J. in the abdomen a few minutes later (not to prove his point, I don't think) and made the difference abundantly clear.
The whole hospital experience was horrendous. The support staff had just gone on strike and nobody knew what they were doing, my aunt was doing she could to ensure that my uncle received no treatment short of asking the staff to hold a pillow over his face, and I have all this icky hospital residue kicking around in my brain from my mother's death and, more recently, from my other aunt and uncle's lingering illness and deaths in hospital.
It's been very difficult to grieve, in part because my aunt is quite patently ecstatic to be shot of him. I loved the guy, but I didn't have to live with his persnickety, critical, annoying as fuck ways for forty years, so I don't judge her. It's just hard, that's all, to be around someone who is so indifferent to the absence of a person you really miss.
I've just received my five-minute warning, and I still have to send a message home, so I'm logging off now.
I miss you guys!
