sucky saturday bit

i should quickly bring up that while this is being typed on friday, i don’t actually expect saturday to suck…

…although it does on some levels, just hoping it’s not a total loss.

ya see, yesterday was the twenty-third anniversary of mom dying. on the positive, that means thursday marks twenty-three years since i met kramer, but we’ve covered that. no, the down side is my sister brought that up (the mom thing, not the kramer thing) third sentence into a rather lengthy conversation. the first sentence?

he passed away this evening

and the “he” in question? this guy…

well, the guy in the center (the other one is me). that’s my dad. he, in the pic, is five weeks past a kidney transplant. but said kidney brought an uninvited guest to the party – the CMV virus. typically not too harmful unless it’s allowed to advance, which with his transplant-weakened immune system it was. and it took him out thursday.

so now, in death, our parents are somewhat reunited with an anniversary – dad’s on february 6th, mom’s on the 7th. at least i can get all my mourning out of the way at once? i’d actually reached the point where the mom wound had scabbed over nicely. i was at peace with all that.

this kinda ripped at the scab a little bit. wanna see another bit of irony?

that’s the last pic i have of me and my dad (and the ufc, my sister, cousins, aunt) all together…and it’s taken in the got damn cemetery he’ll be buried in within the next couple weeks. that last visit, while not under the best of circumstances, was probably the best visit we’ve ever had. it was like we had a renewed relationship. and a year later, it’s done.

(a warning – all the same pics and then some are in the bit linked to above)

as if the date coincidence wasn’t enough of a kicker, i’m also helping john mark’s mom plan the thing for him which is slated for feb 29th. so this could be a better month for me.

i was gonna go into more detail about the rapid decline in the last couple weeks, but there’s no reason to – my dad’s gone, and that really sucks. i don’t know if i’ve 100% come to grips with it. i feel like it hasn’t quite hit me, and i don’t know when (or if) it will. i guess now we enter the mystery period…