jack and coke, please...

so lately i've been thinking about how there's two things i really want to devote a blog to. the first is my grandma altobelli.

maybe i'll expand more later, but grandma's got alzheimer's, and she's really not grandma any longer. i find it difficult to visit her, because she doesn't know who i am, and being around a large group of people makes her nervous...which is difficult to avoid in our family because everyone travels in large italian-slovenian packs.

anyway, i've been feeling like a bum because when i have the chance to see her--like before christmas--i didn't take it. i squelched out on it. mainly because it's so hard to see her and know that she's not yours, not anymore. it scares me because it's a reminder that perhaps i'm not too far away from assuming my mother's role in her mother's life, so on and so forth. and that makes me feel a strange need to reproduce, if only to further the genetic strain and have my daughter come visit me when i think i haven't had children.

i'll get over it. i know i will. there's probably not a lot of time left, i suppose, in all reality. but the gal i knew, when i was younger, has been gone for a few years now, replaced by this other woman who feels uncomfortable around me--i like my memories the way they are, edited for content, happy and well-fed in grandma ursh's warm little kitchen.

the other thing i've been wanting to write about is dad's one year birthday. on 2.5.05 he will celebrate a year of his re-furbished heart. i haven't been doing very well with dad's low fat diet lately, or exercising more, all those things i promised myself i would do. i try, i really, really do, but then something like last night happens, and a lot of liquor later, i think, that probably wasn't very healthy. i think there was a line in smilla's sense of snow: an overall poisoning of the organism. one drink is good, two is fine, three is pushing it, and by five i should have known better. i think.

anyway it's been a year since my family gathered in that room, prayed to ourselves as they operated. it's hard to imagine that now--that whole day was so surreal, so strange and on edge, and yet there was a lot of laughter sprinkled in the mix. i remember that morning, getting up and dad was already gone from the house, and there was a moment when we wondered if we should shower or not...should we wait, would it matter. so we showered and primped, just because it felt nice and normal.

then we went to the hospital. thought we would just sit in the regular waiting area but they had rooms set aside, with televisions and comfy chairs. it was a good thing we had a door on the room because there was a lot of roaring laughter after my sister brought out her 7th grade papers to read through. the kids were writing about trekking through the oregon trail, but it was hard to keep their modern thoughts--ie, one wrote about stopping at macdonald's on the way--out of the historical context. we watched tv, walked around some, had lunch, generally bothered everyone in the waiting area because for a group of people whose dad was undergoing open heart surgery, we were pretty full of laughter.

i remember the nurse came in and briefed us a few times--once when they started, once when they put him on the heart-lung machine, and then again later, when we were all nervous because according to the previous report, he should have been done. they finished at 245, about three hours later than originally planned. the doctor came down to the room--dr pineda--and let us in on why things took so long. they'd done 6 bypasses, total--and then when he was done, he didn't like the way one looked, so he re-did it. good to know. halfway through his soft-spoken explanation, he got a phone call from a nurse, who was trying to tell him that he needed to come up to the room because a patient was having problems with the iv in his arm. either the dr couldn't hear very well or just wasn't paying attention to her; his cell was so loud that we all knew it was the man's right arm, and there was an issue with his iv. finally the nurse shouted through the phone, after a particularly slow interchange of the dr still not understanding which iv was causing problems, "the right arm, you know, like the one holding your phone." we all stifled giggles.

i remember how long his fingers were. long and slender.

we moved around a bit after that. went upstairs and made short work of the phone list, what with everyone having a cell phone with them. then sat around for a bit before he was moved to icu and we could see him again.

that was the hardest part of the day, and the happiest, too.

dad was all stuck up on this bed, and the nurse in attendence said that he had sparked up when he heard our voices. i didn't cry then, i hadn't cried all day. as i write this it makes me tear up a little, thinking. he didn't open his eyes, had a ventilator down his throat, looked pale and a bit jaundiced, and his blood pressure was very, very low, but he was moving his feet (which is a normal dad thing, he does that when he gets into bed, or while just sitting on the couch, moves his feet around and crosses and uncrosses them) but he was too weak to do much more. mom and i moved over to the bed so we could kiss him, and he got agitated, like he could hear through all the layers of gook he was pumped with, all the knock you out COLD stuff, that we really were there. i leaned over and said: just be still dad, just be quiet and heal. and he nodded.

that was the happiest point of the day. i knew that everything would be okay, then. gave up worry. even if everything had turned for the worst, dad knew i was there, he'd acknowledged, and he calmed down some.

out of all the things in my life, any difference i made, that is the one that i carry with me, that little nod. it was almost like absolution.

we laid around the waiting room some more, talked with another woman whose mother was in icu for something else, and eventually went home, slowly, filled with weary joy.

you measure life differently, after things happen that change you. it's been five years since corey, one year since dad had his bypasses. three years, this year, since i left bemidji, and soon a two years since vickie died, too. it doesn't seem like that long.

yesterday it was one year since i'd seen my friend veronica. last time i saw her was the year end party for work last year. last night was fun, but i missed my friends--serena, veronica. i have new ones now, people who are just as funny and amusing, in a different way. i'm glad i went.

it's just a dichotomy, always--that sense of continuing, with all these aspects within. i think of the earth mother--maiden, mother, crone--three in one. the seasons, turning and turning. world without end, amen.

i'll have another heineken, please.