This one is going to be long and somewhat personal and cathartic, so buckle up.
Newton's third law states that for every action there is, an equal and opposite reaction. This applies not only to the laws of physics but other things as well.
As you read in the last blog my five year forced vacation will end after new years when my new job starts. That is the good thing that happened in the last three weeks and if you've followed my bellyaching over the years you know what a torturous journey it's been.
The "good" part essentially ends there, unfortunately because the holiday killer descriptions are next.
If you know me in the real world you know that like clockwork, at year's end, I travel with my mother to Texas to visit my sister and her family for Christmas.
It's an annual ritual that began mostly because of my dad's passing in 2002 and one I've missed only twice in the 15 years since then, once in 2007 when I was suffering from the illness that claimed my foot (and nearky killed me), and this year for a totally different situation, this involving my mother.
I won't go into any great detail about the exact situation but, it would appear that moving forward, I will be dealing with the problems associated with an aging parent. Specifically issues that deal with dementia and possibly Alzheimers disease. It runs in her family and by genetics I'm staring it in the face as well when I get to be that age.
There was an incident on the day we were set to travel to Texas a few days ago with my mom that basically prevented us from going this year. Again, not going to go into great detail about it but it was a simple case of my mother's health and well being vs the stress of traveling causing hreat distress to her and based on that, it wasn't hard to pull the plug on the whole situation.
It wasn't without consequences either.
This is another dicey situation which I won't go into but as it goes with children who have to make decisions regarding their parents as they "turn towards the door" of life, so to speak, talking about it before is a problem and actually having it stare you on the face are two entirely different things.
Now the reality of what's ahead is in our lap, and since we've never really REALLY talked about this issue just the two of us there is friction. Not unexpected friction, at least on my part, but it is what it is. It came to a head the night it happened and while there is peace between us now the road ahead is long and bumpy.
Clearly the two of us have our work cut out for us in the days, weeks, months and (hopefully) years ahead.
The last thing was a major thing in a personal sense, but minor in the sense that when you run up against everything else that's transpired in the last few days is a fairly routine deal.
I had a hole one of my teeth and it had to be pulled. I'm not sure exactly when it broke, but the day before mom and I were supposed to leave it began to ache, and after the adrenaline dump after the near emergency that took place two days later it began to hurt more seriously and it needed to be removed.
As a sidebar here, up until my amputation surgery ten years ago I was TERRIFIED of doctors. Doctors, dentists...it didn't matter. Usually, a doctor visit meant a shot, and seeing that I was also terrified of needles in a near pathological way, I offended my general health through my younger years.
Naturally, I'm paying for them in my (almost) middle age, but that's another blog.
Anyway, my first extraction in 2005 was painless, and the dentist did what he did (numbed, yanked, $150 please) in his perfunctory manner. Bill Cosby one joked that the numbing agent does not kill pain, it postpones it, and that was certainly the case then.
Mom and I were standing in line at the pharmacy she used to fill my dad's medicine cabinet of cardiac medication and I went from dull pain to face melting agony in a millisecond, and after four hours of vicodin assisted slumber at home, all was well.
I had no reason to suspect that it wouldn't happen with this tooth pull, and add it turned out I was pleasantly surprised.
There was discomfort of course, and being held and jerked around by the dentist and his assistant, but after it was all over there was little, if any of the debilitating passion I experienced years ago. I'm not a sadist, but I was expecting a lot more and was incredibly grateful that there was so little.
Needless to say, the Christmas holiday in 2017 is a wash, by and large. The New Year has it's challenges, in this case a few more than last year, but in the end things should work out.
Told you it was gonna be long. ..
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