python

The new year cometh!

Perhaps for some this year has been the year. Personally, I don't know anyone who has felt this way (including myself), so the end of this year has a sort of arbitrary sense of relief. The end of the year doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it's so deeply embedded in our culture as a point of change that you can't help but believe it.

For me, the biggest thing now is that my grandfather is dying.

It's not a huge shock, though it's a huge sadness. My family line has always had children quite young (my siblings and I are a pronounced exception. I don't think any of us will be having kids of our own), so we've had the privilege of being present for more last moments than some in older families do. There's something eerily tangible and manageable about this kind of sadness. It's more important and devastating than everything else that has happened this year, and yet I feel far more prepared for the inevitability of it.

Dementia is a very strange thing. When I first learned of what was happening, my father explained that his father had pancreatic cancer that had spread to his liver. To anyone familiar with cancer or the body, you'll know that damage to the liver is pretty damning, no matter the cause. Cancer is especially so, but still. I wondered how this could have gone undetected for so long? Cancer has many forms and paths of growth, but there are typically symptoms signs that are detectable before spreading happens.

I'm no expert in dementia, but as a person with memory problems, it is something that worries me. This incident has made me realize the depths of dementia in ways I had never considered before. My Grandfather: Papi, or Pip-Pop as I call him, is not aware of many things happening. Maybe more accurately - things happen to him, and he is aware, and then he is not. The ailments of his body are like smoke signals. He was not under constant medical supervision - to my shame. It was only Nani, my grandmother, keeping vigil. He would fall, or there would be blood in the urine: smoke pluming in the air, and then dissipating into the sky as though it were never there. There was no way to know that something so serious was brewing underneath the existing ailments.

He has been placed into palliative care, and evidently his condition has been declining rapidly since. That dementia could take away the most base acknowledgement of the body is terrifying. I can only hope that memories of pain are lost along with everything else. Pip-pop does not recognize Nani lately. I'll be visiting him in the hospital tonight along with my father, who is flying in from Nova Scotia. He too, feels guilt over his lack of presence in the recent years. It will be a strange thing to see my father in this time. He has always had this sort of somber dissonance at funerals: sad, but never falling apart or faltering. This kind of "well this is how the world is. It is sad, but fine" attitude. I'm not sure if others find it alienating or a reliable strength in these moments. In some ways, I wonder at my own disposition at these key life events. I've always been asked to cheer up the dying - hold a conversation with those in their precious last minutes because I can do so without crying. Without distressing the soon to be departed. I can be called up to give a speech with a steady voice. My father is much the same, but I wonder about now.

I'd like to read Pip-pop a good book, or ask him for a good joke. He was always one for a good joke, or especially a good prank. I remember hearing the story about him setting off a stinkbomb in public, only becoming a tad embarrassed when the stench of it spread and lingered longer than he had expected it to. I want to recall the good times with him, because it's the kind of things people like to think about. It's the kinds of things everyone else will be thinking about for years to come.

I took a brief break from writing this to do a bit of research for my visit. Visiting Relatives with Alzheimers and How to Visit a Love One Who is Dying have both been invaluable insights. I am forever humbled by each new thing I learn. While it is a topic some may find grim, death is the singular inevitability shared by all living things. I think it's important to be knowledgeable on how to treat others with dignity at this time.

Aside from this, the racoon is still stuck in the roof and trying to avoid leaving it. Any time he nibbles or gnaws or slaps his paws against the walls at night, I have to play Daft Punk and dance about wildly for a bit to encourage him to stop. I hoped that continuous agitation in this fashion would permanently deter him from wanting to stay, but it looks like the cold of winter makes a better argument than I do. All I can really do is keep him from destroying things too badly before the spring. It'll be an expensive thing dealing with it. $1500 just to rid myself of the bugger, and lord knows how much for the roof.

I am feeling a small bit better after some support from my partner the last few days. I thought I had expressed the trouble I was feeling and the help I needed earlier in the year, but I think perhaps he was feeling similar. I've lost some weight and have been having troubles with my health from the stress, and I think now he's feeling better enough that he has the energy to be a bit more patient and supportive for me.

And yet I can't help but be a bit hopeful for the new year. The knot in my stomach that has kept me from eating much has slowly started to unfurl. Even as a kid, I am amazed and a bit mortified at my own perseverance at times. So many weeks and months this year where I thought that this could be my breaking point, that any moment now I would slink into something lower than I had ever known and never come up from it, only to find myself in a position of feeling even the smallest amount of hopefulness.

I sometimes wonder about the division between the man and the machine which he conducts, and in which he is conducted by in turn. Do the cogs of the machine that is animal screech out with their own base desire? The desire to run, to consume, to live? -Despite the weakness of the spirit, does the machine burn whatever it can in order to give one last burst of energy - to push the man into momentum?

Sometimes, it does feel this way. -That when I dream in the dark and cold depths of some dastardly ocean - when I, the man, am deep in sleep, the machine hums and ticks and plans its unknowable schemes. The machine breaths and fusses in my unconsciousness. Do we write the dream together, or are these the sole hours of our separation?