Latest posts
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Portrait of the Artist as a Disabled Man
“Art is not a thing; it is a way.” Elbert Hubbard I’m so glad Maki chose to visit his dad the night he asked for him instead of waiting till the next day because Vernon wasn’t quite as alert on Thursday. In fact, it took a good half hour just to wake him up enough to…
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Facebook
On Tuesday, I sat with Vernon during dialysis and he was as chipper as he was the night before. At one point, the word Facebook came up. “I heard some nurses discussing Facebook, ” he said. “And I wondered if it was still a thing?” I assured him that it was indeed still a thing, then he asked…
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Strangeways, Here We Come
I’m experiencing some ’emotional whiplash,’ as my friend Nicole called it when I tried to explain my current state of mind. Let’s see if I can get some of it on paper. Last night had to be one of the most surreal experiences I’ve experienced in a lifetime. I got a call in the afternoon…
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Fading
I met the ambulance at dialysis yesterday. Vernon was already in a bad state…he did NOT want to go. Even when we gave him his calming oil, which usually works in ten minutes or so, he resisted. I waited in the waiting room while they set him up with the machine, but I was called…
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Depression
What a week. Not a whirlwind of activity, but a slowing-down. Time and intention seemed to change for me these days. I barely saw Vernon, thanks both to the women who patiently sat with him during dialysis and to Justine, who’s fever kept me home with her. I did manage to file my taxes on Wednesday…so that…
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Love
Justine had a fever all night so I won’t be sending her to school this morning nor will I be visiting Vernon as planned. So in lieu of a current update, I’ll share a video from last week. They’ve had a hard time keeping Vernon in his bed, which is frustrating for the staff, obviously. The nursing…
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Unique Contributions
In my last post, I spoke about how unlikely it is that Vernon as-we-once-knew-him will be coming back. But giving up on him is out of the question. He still has life in him. He’s still here. He can talk. He can hear. He can see. And he can paint. That’s pretty much all…
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Northern Lights
If you’ve read my posts for the past two weeks, you’ll know I’ve been going through another phase of mourning. It’s not the first, and it’s unlikely to be the last, I’m afraid, but this one has been particularly hard…it feels deeper than the others. We’ve been reading and re-reading “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”…
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Shelf Lives
In a creative rut the past couple of days, I’ve returned to the task of sorting out the garage. Julia got me started last month, but there are boxes I have been putting off going through. Yesterday, I boxed up most of Vernon’s books to give away, separating the typography books (all 7 or 8…
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A Sort of Homecoming
I wanted to catch up on some of my thoughts over the past week. Of course my parent’s anniversary events and the mini-family reunion brightened my spirits considerably, and today, I feel mostly back in the game, emotionally. But I believe it was an important week in my process with Vernon…another round of grieving (aka letting…