This is gonna be a special post. You get three exciting stories of my life packed into one pithy post. The stories will feature death, drugs, cannibalism, and maybe some other things but I'm not sure. Let's dive in:
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Post one: Death
My dad died on Oct 12th. Back when we visited in early August, he had just decided to stop treatment for the melanoma that he had been dealing with for a long time and that had slowly been spreading all over his body, inside and out, including a few spots of it in the brain that didn't seem to be responding very much to treatment. When he decided to stop treatment, the doctors predicted that after 6-8 weeks he would experience a rapid decline, and then linger for a month or two. That's pretty much exactly how everything went down.
After being OK for 6-8 weeks, he started getting weaker and weaker, taking more and more naps and having much less interest in doing the things he normally did. He lost his appetite and started eating less, which only fueled additional weakness. After a few more weeks he started spending the majority of the day in bed, drifted in and out of consciousness, and stopped going down to meals. As he lost weight and started getting out of bed less and less, my siblings and I knew that his death was imminent, but we weren't sure exactly how much time he might have left. Days? Weeks? A month? Two? I started wondering if I should make a trip into St. Louis to see him and say goodbye, but I decided not to because when we had last visited at the end of the summer, we both knew that he had stopped treatment and that we might not see each other again. The goodbye we had then felt good and it felt like enough. I had a talk with my sister and told her how I was feeling about it, and she said that she and my siblings all supported whatever decision felt right.
The day after talking with my sister, I was at work, it was a Friday morning, and I found myself crying all morning and wanting to make the trip to say a real goodbye. To tell my Dad how I felt about him and that he would be missed. While he could still be conscious (maybe) and hear me. So I checked in with Jeannie and then my boss and decided that I would drive to St. Louis on Monday and drive back to Baltimore on Tuesday. So that's what I did.
I got to spend some time with my Dad, and I told him the things that I wanted to tell him, and we both cried, and we sang songs together (the killer, heartbreaking old songs about people dying horrible deaths in car crashes, or in war, or about kids dying from illness that he loved so much), and I sat and talked with my Mom, and my Dad drifted in and out of sleep, and I slept that night on their couch and listened to them talking in their bedroom the same way I used to do when I was 9 or 10 and laying in my bed hearing them talk in their room in the middle of the night. It was spooky, and heartbreaking, and maybe healing in a way. And the next day I said a final goodbye, which is probably the hardest thing I've ever done, and I ate breakfast with my Mom and then drove home. And cried, and cried, and cried.
And my Dad lived for another two weeks-ish. And he was moved into the skilled nursing building a couple of days after my visit, and he pretty much stopped eating, and spent more time asleep. And then he started telling people that he had died on October 1st, that he had stopped breathing and hadn't started again, and pressing the nurse call button because God was giving him messages to deliver to the nurses (who very kindly gave him a little shot of a sedative so that maybe God would send the messages a little less frequently). And throughout this process, when he was awake and lucid he would assure everyone that he was comfortable and not in any pain.
And then, on the morning of the 12th, a Sunday, I was driving home from fixing something at work and my brother called to let me know that he had just died. And that my Mom, and brother, and oldest sister and brother-in-law had been with him, and that my other sister had just finished spending the night with him.
And then we figured a day that worked for folks for a funeral, and my siblings did all the heavy lifting of planning and organizing it, and Jeannie and the kids and I made another drive in, and it was a beautiful day of family and friends and fall colors, and a lovely breeze, a beautiful cherry casket, and birds flying south overhead. My dad would have loved it all.
And what I am left with after everything is over is a tremendous feeling of gratitude. I am so grateful for my siblings -- that we all get along, that we're all different in ways that seem to compliment each other, and that everybody just pitches in in whatever way they can. I'm grateful for my Mom -- that in the midst of sadness and tremendous change she is able to focus on the positive, and the future, and keep putting one foot in front of the other with the faith that it will get easier (or at least, less hard). And I'm grateful for the man that I get to call my Dad. He was gentle, and kind, and reasonable, and fun, and he passed on his love of the little everyday miracle things in life that are given to us for free, without strings and without cause and without us deserving them: sunlight, nature, music, people, hotdogs, diving boards, running, kicking, wood, rivers, ice, tears, children, hearts.
I have been enjoying the feeling of seeing my Dad in the things and places around me (especially the birds and trees and rivers on the drive back to Baltimore). I have no idea if it's true but it sure is comforting.
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Post Two: Drugs
I recently (legally) ingested a Schedule 1 controlled substance. My first drug use except for alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine (and, I guess, ibuprofen and whatever Nyquil is). And throat coat herbal tea. Unfortunately, I cannot say much more about this except that A) it was legal. B) it was not pot (I promised Spiff a long time ago that if I ever smoked pot, he would be the first person I did it with, and I do not intend on breaking that promise without his express written consent). C) it was in a highly safe and controlled setting, and D) it has proven, so far, to have been a very profound and positive experience. I would point out that I think (D) is very much related to (C). I cannot really imagine the extent of the potential for negative effects if (C) hadn't been the case.
That's all I can really say about that right now. Maybe this will all get its own post later in life. Maybe not. For now it's what I can share.
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Post Three: Cannibalism
When we were in St. Louis for the funeral, my nephew (who works in the tech world) told me that whenever he encounters a new AI program/app/bot/whatever the hell you call it, he tests it with the prompt, "Tell me what you know about turkenboyden." Often, the AI bot will respond with things that don't really make sense, but he said he recently tried one that must have found this blog and was able to return results that showed tremendous insight about my personal history, psyche, and dare I say, the contents of my soul.
So, in an attempt to make AI eat itself, so that when in the future AI is searching for information about turkenboyden it will find information generated by a previous AI, I will include a copy of the AI results that it gave my nephew. In the hopes that the whole thing explodes and we go back to being fucking cavepersons. Here it is:
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