Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W. H. Auden

The Kindness of Almost-Strangers

I have nothing new to report. My father is still with us, physically, which is a feat that has astounded all of us, including the hospice nurse, who told us today she didn't understand it. I think he'd be surprised, too.

Two days ago I walked into my parents' room and my mother was talking to him. He had turned to her and said, "We need to make a decision." Assuming he thought he was in the hospital (he's in a hospital bed right now), my mother said, "Well, it's up to you." He said to her, "I'm ready to go."

I woke up my brother (this was around 9:30 in the morning, about four hours before he was really ready to be awake), and we stood on the other side of the bed. He turned slightly and looked at us, managing to say, "I'm sorry, but I need to go." He told us he'd say hello to Pop for us, and my mom asked him to look for her mother, too.

When the nurse asked my mother today if she had told him that it's alright if he leaves, she replied, "Hell, I've done everything but call the President to tell him it's OK."

I for one have managed to keep it together, mostly because I'm so exhausted from this experience to be really upset anymore. You kind of get used to the sight; my mother told me that she's afraid she won't be able to get the image of him lying in bed, reduced to a skeletal frame out of her head. One day I hope we'll all be able to forget that and instead focus on what he used to look like, which is almost unrecognizable by now.



One great thing to come out of this is a realization of how many people have been thinking of us. I've gotten a lot of emails, Facebook messages, texts, and IMs from friends (and even blogger friends I have never met). I haven't responded to most of them, but I want to express my gratitude; it has really helped me get through this. On top of that, we have tons of new flowers sitting on our porch, and we've been kept in lasagna and chicken salad and red wine, enough to last us another two weeks.

Tomorrow is the Relay for Life at the high school. My father's first cousin's husband (it sounds complicated, but not really) will be presenting a check to the American Cancer Society, which is from a golf tournament he organized a few weeks ago in honor of my dad and another woman from the area who is suffering, albeit surviving, from cancer. When he came by the other night, he told us that past tournaments in which he's participated usually raised around three to four thousand dollars.

Today he brought by a copy of the check for us to see. It's written for $12,738.02.

It's incredibly comforting to know that no matter what, my family is not going through this alone.

I've been out of it since the day I was born.

Yesterday I went to Fredericksburg to buy a suit, and that was a wonderful trial as I discovered I am the only man this side of the Fall Line who wears a 38L. Macy's didn't have one, JoS. A. Bank (stupid name, by the way) had one that was over three-hundred dollars and it was still too big, JC Penney was closed because of "severe flooding," and Belk didn't have anyone working the men's department. By the time I got to Men's Wearhouse, I was beyond relieved when Ronald pulled out several suits in my size. I didn't even scoff at him when he suggested that the classic dark gray jacket would look fine paired with a turtleneck.

That's not what I wanted to write this post about, but I do want you all to imagine me wearing a turtleneck with a blazer. Just fucking try, people.

Anyway, after I left Men's Wearhouse (by the way, do you see what they did there?), I planned to go to DSW for shoes, and, conveniently for me, Best Buy was on the way. Hey, I just spent over an hour just trying to find a place that would sell me a suit, much less buying one, so I was going to reward myself with a DVD. (Sure, I had already bought I'm Not There and All The Sad Young Literary Men from Borders between my first two trips to the Spotsylvania "Towne Centre" (very exotic, indeed, Maura), but that's besides the point.) I spent just five minutes in Best Buy because I immediately found what I wanted: the Criterion Collection edition of The Ice Storm.

This recent purchase made me realize I have spent entirely too much money on The Ice Storm. Before I saw the movie I bought the screenplay, as I was in my I-Want-To-Be-A-Screenwriter-When-I-Grow-Up phase. Then I bought the movie on VHS. And then I bought it on DVD a few years ago, which I recently sold to Reckless with a bundle of other DVDs (I only made twenty bucks for the lot of them).

I watched one of the documentaries on the second disc last night, which featured brand-new interviews with the stars of the film. As I watched, perplexed at Christina Ricci's terrible Speed Racer bangs and Joan Allen's Botoxed forehead (even you, Joan? Please, take a cue from Sigourney: her forehead moves), I was kind of shocked to realize that it was released eleven years ago. Not only did it make me feel a little old, I decided that my near-obsession with The Ice Storm speaks volumes of my personality, especially my pre-adolescent mindset. I mean, what kind of fourteen-year-old loves a drama about '70s-era, suburban wife-swapping?

That, my friends, is why high school was miserable.

Battery in your leg.

I'm kind of an idiot and brought The Diving Bell and the Butterfly home with me. I'm about halfway through after trying to watch it two nights in a row. It's very good, but it's very difficult to watch, especially when my father is laying in a hospital bed in my parents' room down the hall. I keep thinking about what it must be like to be in a morphine-induced haze, barely able to communicate.

Tonight I sat next to his bed, holding his hand, watching his chest move up and down and counting the breaths with a constant pain in my stomach hoping that every six to eight seconds another one will come.

I'm surprised that I've held myself together so well. I've cried a few times just looking at him, and have only seriously broken down twice since I've been home. I suppose it's a relief for me to be here and watch this progression instead of being in Chicago; I'm so glad I'm here, but I hate to have to watch someone go through so much pain and anguish.

The house was full of people all weekend. On Saturday my godparents brought a huge dish of lasagna, and there were about eight of us sitting in the kitchen, emptying the fifth bottle of red wine since I arrived on Thursday night. Every now and then someone would walk back to the bedroom to check on him to see if he needed anything; he slept through most of it, at least I think he did. I can't help but wonder if he can hear us back there.

At one point my mother said to him, "Everyone is so angry this is happening to you." I don't feel angry, really. I don't know what I feel. I think because I'm not a spiritual person, I'm not questioning why it's happening in the first place. Of course, at the same time, I've caught myself actually praying - I don't know know to whom or to what I'm praying, but I'm doing it nonetheless. I'm directing my thoughts and wishes to something.

A daisy grows from a turd hill.

An epiphany, and not a very nice one at that:



By the way, John and I are friends again, which is the best thing that happened during The Week That Exploded All Over My Face.

No, srsly, I totally am nice sometimes.

Hi everyone.

I am feeling better today, but I want to say that I very much appreciate the emails, texts, and IMs I received yesterday. As hard as it is to come up with anything to say in those situations, it's just as difficult to come up with a response sometimes.

There's a poem by Julia Kasdorf that I really like called "What I Learned from My Mother." It has this great line that I've always loved: "I learned to attend viewing even if I didn't know the deceased, to press the moist hands of the living, to look in their eyes and offer sympathy, as though I understood loss even then. I learned that whatever we say means nothing, what anyone will remember is that we came. I learned to believe I had the power to ease awful pains materially like an angel. Like a doctor, I learned to create from another's suffering my own usefulness, and once you know how to do this, you can never refuse."

ANYWAY, enough of that.

I do want to share a link to an essay I wrote on This Recording which I'm pretty proud of. It's my take on the emosogynist idea of the "nice guy," which of course, in that sense, does not exist. I should also mention that I'm pretty sure Molly changed my byline to include that I'm "a really nice guy." TRUE LOVE.

Et shitera, et shitera, et shitera.

Last night, after therapy (sad sack reference number one!), I decided to finally face my fear of eating at a real restaurant alone and went and got dinner by myself at Nookies in Boystown (#2! jealous?). And it was fine; I read a book while I waited for my chicken sandwich, and it wasn't weird at all. Sometimes it's nicer to not have to worry about splitting the bill with someone else at a cash-only restaurant.

When I was about to leave, I checked my phone and saw I missed a call from my mom, so I called her back. She asked me how I was, how therapy went, etc. I was like, "Eh, as usual, just generally disappointed with life, etc," which is kind of my response lately for how I'm feeling. I asked her how dad was doing tonight and she said, "Well, he's not feeling well today." And then I remembered that they were supposed to meet with the oncologist today and I had completely forgotten about it.

The cancer hasn't reacted to the treatments he was taking, and the doctor told them that there's really nothing else they can do. My parents have already called hospice care and a nurse came by the house last night for the first visit.

I'd like to spare the details of how sick he is because it's hard enough for me to think about it already. The worst part about the situation is not knowing what the time frame is. I suppose that's the thing with mortality: you know it's going to happen sometime, but normally you have the benefit of positive thinking. Generally, unless you're incredibly pessimistic and sad, you have the feeling that death isn't just around the corner. Of course, with cancer, you don't get that; instead, you have to sit there, knowing it's going to happen, possibly sooner than you exepct, or vice-versa.

After the phone call, I managed to stay pretty calm. I was in Lakeview, and I had nothing to do, but I knew that if I went home I'd just spend the rest of the night crying. I tried to walk around Broadway, barely keeping it together, and finally got on the bus, heading back home. Riding the Broadway bus is depressing enough, but it's a little more miserable when you're crying in front of strangers.

I'm alright, I guess, other than the bouts of sobbing and the overwhelming feeling of heartbreak. I'm staying home from work today and I'm going to sleep for a while and maybe watch some movies and order pizza or something. And then, this afternoon or tonight, I'm going to figure out what my plan is. I've already got a flight home next weekend (I bought the ticket a few weeks ago), but, honestly, I don't want to have to come back to Chicago and leave that behind. My mother thinks I should, and part of me agrees, but I also don't really want to be six hundred miles away while this is going on.

In other news, British children:

Vlogging.

Remember when Christina and I were going to start vlogging? No? Well, I can't remind you, since I pulled the post asking for special vlogging requests because Christina chickened out because she "doesn't want her face and her voice on the Internet together," or something equally lameassed. Then she told me she'd only do it if she could have a hand-puppet play her, but that didn't happen because she didn't want to use just a sock and is too lazy to put the effort into making a sock puppet that looks like her, especially if it's something for MY benefit.

It was suggested that she vlog as her Bea Arthur puppet, but then I realized I'm not that ghey.

Today on Videogum, Lindsay challenged Gabe to create a vlog. And I think it's safe to say that I no longer have the desire or energy to add anything to the VLOGISPHERE. (See what I did there?)

Poophead.

I've had a rough couple of weeks and the shitty thing is that I haven't necessarily wanted to write about it here. There's only so much one can take of my whining, and there's only so much of my own boring bitching that I can handle, as well. But still, self-censorship sucks, which is why I've been so active on Tumblr recently. That shit is blogging crack, and it's rather terrible. (Admittedly, though, the nice thing about my Tumblr is that I don't have a SiteMeter, and don't plan on putting on there. It's somewhat refreshing to not be paranoid about who is watching the YouTube videos I post.)

I'm in a general life-funk, wherein every aspect is a little shitty. I've been thinking about going to school again, but I don't want to work: I just want to go back to school full time. I told Christina last night that the idea of going to grad school is incredibly appealing, but at the same time would be like me having a baby to fix a bad relationship. I need a master's in English like I need a child. Sure, it'd be cute and everything, and I'd be proud of this thing I made, but after two years I'd realize that it's not getting me anywhere and I'll have to pay for it sometime. (I'll stop now, because I'm too lazy to think this metaphor through and make it work. Which, I think, is part of my problem.)

I also decided recently that I really want to write for a living. I just want to publish things on the Internet and somehow get paid for it. I really hate having to worry about being insured; if I didn't have that hanging over my head, I think I'd be much happier doing something more creative for a living. Yet, as I am my worst critic, I'm generally disappointed with everything I write, even if someone tells me that they enjoy it. I lack the discipline and motivation to do anything, and I think my self-awareness is possibly more dangerous than my laziness.

Tumblin'

So, I'm sort of cheating on you, Blog. But not in a bad way!

I started a Tumblr a while ago and was just posting pictures that I took. And then I was bored one day and started reblogging things. And then I posted IM conversations. And then links. And I realized that Tumblr is really fucking addictive and fun, especially since the presence of people "following" me appeals to my vain sensibility.

Plus, it's nice to have a venue to post random shit online without cluttering up my blog here. I think that I can manage to keep both sites up and reserve it for the wonderful, charming, well-written narrative pieces you all love. (Right?)

So, it's not that I'm cheating. It's just that I want an open relationship. Is that okay, Blog?