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Difficult times
I haven't posted for weeks, I know. From the time of that last post the distractions and time demands have been extreme.
The biggest highlights (or maybe low points) have been illnesses and deaths in my mate's family, including an uncle at Thanksgiving, sister-in-law a week later, and then his mother on December 20. Needless to say, this has been a gray and gloomy season for us. He spent several weeks in Chicago sitting in hospital rooms and dealing with stressful and difficult situations, while I stayed home and took on all the animal responsibilities which made for very long days indeed here.
The final straw was his mom's passing. She had surgery for cancer in November, and was in chemotherapy. Finally starting to improve, we thought, when a stroke hit her. He was there with her when she went to bed as usual and couldn't be awakened the next morning. Back to the hospital for the third time in a month, where she died without regaining consciousness two days later. Gerri was a kind and generous woman and we will all miss her very much, though at age 83 she had in fact been occasionally expressing a wish for her succession of medical difficulties to come to a final ending.
We're trying to return to a semblance of a normal schedule now, but it's taking a bit of a shakeout to get back onto the rails. I intend to return to a more regular posting schedule with the new year, if I can.
The biggest highlights (or maybe low points) have been illnesses and deaths in my mate's family, including an uncle at Thanksgiving, sister-in-law a week later, and then his mother on December 20. Needless to say, this has been a gray and gloomy season for us. He spent several weeks in Chicago sitting in hospital rooms and dealing with stressful and difficult situations, while I stayed home and took on all the animal responsibilities which made for very long days indeed here.
The final straw was his mom's passing. She had surgery for cancer in November, and was in chemotherapy. Finally starting to improve, we thought, when a stroke hit her. He was there with her when she went to bed as usual and couldn't be awakened the next morning. Back to the hospital for the third time in a month, where she died without regaining consciousness two days later. Gerri was a kind and generous woman and we will all miss her very much, though at age 83 she had in fact been occasionally expressing a wish for her succession of medical difficulties to come to a final ending.
We're trying to return to a semblance of a normal schedule now, but it's taking a bit of a shakeout to get back onto the rails. I intend to return to a more regular posting schedule with the new year, if I can.
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I've actually thought of you occasionally, wondering "hey, whatever happened to ? he's not posted anything in a while", and I always thought I should get in touch and see what's up, but of course every time I got home again, I'd forgotten about it. I'm glad to hear from you again; I wish things would've been less bleak for y'all there.
Hang in there, both of you.
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Perhaps this is the big curse of acquaintances and friendships across the internet. Someone can all but vanish off the face of the earth, and it will be weeks if not months before his friends start wondering whatever happened to 'that guy'.
Altivo, you have my deepest condolences for your and Gary's losses. I've never been good at these things, I always feel that whatever I say comes out as lame platitudes, but know that you both have many people who care about what happens in your lives.
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Oh, absolutely! I think it's due to how content is pushed to us: we don't have to poll someone and talk to them, we just see their updates on our friends page (or wherever) when they happen; when they cease updating, we'd have to switch mental models and starting polling them after all. But in the absence of updates from them, there's nothing to remind us, to trigger that switch.
I think that's one of the big downsides of this form of communication: people aren't really on our minds anymore to the extent they used to be.
BTW — totally unrelated, but I love that icon of yours. :)
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Oh, yes, I'll say — that's quite cold indeed! We've had temperatures like that a year or two ago on one occasion, but it's a very rare occurrence, and everybody complained about how bitterly cold it was then.