end times

i think my dad is about at the end. i talked to him last night by phone and could hardly understand him. he's stopped eating, his digestive system has stopped working, and he's back in the hospital. they were originally just going to keep him until those things were back in gear, but his white blood cell count is too low, so they're keeping him for the duration.

my aunt called justin last night to ask me to call my dad. apparently he has been having nightmares that something has happened to milo and me. he's told people that want to pray for him not to pray for him but to pray for us. and he's hallucinating - he's convinced his wife and relatives have been talking about what's gone wrong with me while they think he's asleep but keeping it from him - nevermind that i don't talk to any of them and they wouldn't know anything in the first place.

i don't know if he just doesn't have muscle control over his speech, or if he was fuzzy from medication, or if his mind is going, but our conversation was bizarre - even more so because of the strangely high pitch of his voice. he's been talking about milo for months, but in the middle of our conversation had to stop and confirm his name. i understood the gist of some of what he said but much of it was lost on me.

i talked to him about when we would tentatively be coming down to florida for him to meet milo, and he seemed excited, but i have no way of knowing if he understood or will remember. i had hoped that knowing that our visit is about 6 weeks away will motivate him to eat and to stick around, but it felt like a foolish hope after we talked. i will not be surprised if i get the call that he's gone at any time. i do hope he can hang on for a while, without too much suffering, because i would like him to meet milo - it will likely be his only chance - and because if he dies quickly and i'm not able to travel to his funeral, it will be a bit more difficult to get the closure i've looked forward to for a long time.

it would be easier in some ways if we had a better relationship, i think - but maybe not. i'm worried, but i'd probably be much more stressed if i were more invested in him. it's sad that it's come down to the end for him and i don't care more. twenty years ago, i never could have pictured his end coming the way that it is.

i had the strangest thought this morning: his torment about milo and me could be his karma. how odd. i'm not sure i believe in karma in the first place, and i am way past the point of wanting to punish him or avenge the pain he caused me. but isn't it weird that after so little contact for so long it would be me, and my son, that would haunt his dreams?

as i get more and more joy about milo, and more confident of his live birth, so much else is headed down the toilet. not only is my dad's death imminent, but my mother is the most stressed i have ever known her to be. she got a new boss last fall that is punishing her for squealing on his misdeeds by systematically working to break her down. judging from her tone this morning on the phone, he's damn near accomplished his mission. his bomb du jour was to suddenly decide that she couldn't take any time off - knowing full well she was headed here as soon as milo is born. one of her awful boss's peers has intervened this afternoon and is interceding on her behalf with hr right now, and she seems a bit less despairing, but it sucks she should be going through this now. and it sucks for us, too.

conversely, milo is better and better. his NST today was stellar. his movement is nothing short of extraordinary. i am expelling copious globs of mucous at a disgusting and alarming pace, and the contractions are gathering steam: at least once a day now i have three in a row. the gd gd is perfectly controlled. everything is ready for him. he seems ready for us.

do things always happen in this kind of cluster? does sorrow always occur in conjunction with joy? or do i just notice sorrow - or joy - all the more when its opposite throws it into relief?

i've been catching up on back issues of the new yorker, and the other night i read an essay by calvin trillin about his late wife alice. when she had cancer, a friend's daughter was raped, and alice wrote the younger woman about what she was experiencing. she understood that what they were experiencing couldn't be compared - except that their horrors made both their lives so much more ripe, and she encouraged her to embrace the ripeness that people with simpler lives could never know. that thought struck such a chord in me - i felt something of that ripeness, of the fullness of experience, as i grieved for hans.

perhaps that same ripeness will afford me greater joy than i could imagine at milo's birth - greater joy than parents with uneventful reproductive lives will ever know. it seems cockeyed that sorrow could breed joy, and yet it seems to be true. life is so strange.