thank you for spending your last night on earth with me...

Clarence Carl Shimer 1918-2007
Rest in Peace
(you've earned it)

strawberry fields forever

today my uncle and I made the decision to not put my grandfather on dialysis.

we confirmed it with my aunts and uncles.

he has 2 to 5 days.

on a whim i stopped and bought strawberries from a local stand.

-----life can be pretty dark, but a bite from a freshly picked, deliciously juicy strawberry, can make the shadow disappear even for a moment.

And while that's a bit hedonistic, I believe my grandfather, the farmer, would deeply appreciate that sentiment.

the bad eclipses the good;the good will eclipse the bad

i dont know what to write

My grandfather (who 've written about here and here) is in the hospital. his kidney's are failing. he's dying in a bed as I write this. the doctors and nurses are making him "comfortable".

To me growing up he was a patriarch, as formidable as Abraham and Jacob. He was our church's "wise counsel" and any fundamental idea of a godly man I have, is of him.

My sister inspired this post because she did not want to see him in a bed in the hospital. She wanted to remember him as the robust farmer who would bring us fresh picked cherries and vine-ripened tomatoes even at eighty five, laughing as we admonished him not to go on his rickety old ladder.

As she said that I realized while that was one memory I held of him, it wasn't my only one. Flashbacks of his slide into dementia and meanness (especially to my mother) while he lived in our home ran through my head, my picture of him as a person definitely wasn't as rosy.

It's not his fault. And I acknowledge I am pretty evil for letting those memories get in the way, but at the same time I am being honest.

And so it made me ponder the person i was before i became "sick" (though 'm not sure whether that delineation begins at my accident, or my tumours) and how much meaner, or ruder (not a word I know), or darker I am now, and how that affects people's views of me as a person. And that not many see the whole line of my life, including the light hearted insanely silly person I used to be.

Various addendums

Mark called and he asked how I was---my closest approximation was that someone has decided I am a pinata to be struck and sent twirling over and over. (though cracking me open would only cover the scampering children in blood and guts, though maybe the tumours would be shaped like little candies-they do look circular on the MRI)

Taking your mother in to say goodbye to her father is horrendously gut wrenching and tear inducing.