My mother and step father, John watch the stock market fall like it is a Tues night sitcom, casually eating their snacks and listening to the latest reports. Although they are worried about our economy in a genuine kind of way, they are more worried about other things. Because John has pulmonary fibrosis he is not running around a lot lately and so they sit a lot and watch tv a lot and for some strange reason I think that this bothers me far more than anyone else in the house. They live in the next house (we share a duplex) so it is not like I have to watch tv with them all day but it is the knowledge of them, sitting, watching, waiting. It makes me mad, not like angry mad, like going out of my tree mad. I hate the not being able to do anythingness of the whole illness. I want to change him into some heroic fighter, someone who will go to yoga and get acupuncture and read really insightful books and maybe, oh I don't know, become a Buddhist monk. Do something with his life, his remaining life.
Then I think about myself. Like, what would I do if I were in this predicament. Well, turn back the clock say 13 or 14 years. There is me in my cutesy kiddy pajamas all wrapped up in blankets laying in bed dying. I was 22 or 3 and I had been routinely tested for HIV as part of a physical. Now, needless to say, I had no reason to believe that the test would come out positive but there I lay, dying. Gary had to come over and drag my sorry butt out of bed where I had wallowed for two days.
Real illness.
I'm not sure how I would handle this.
And who's to say that watching TV all day is so bad. Maybe watching the stock market fall is not a good idea but at least he is informed. At the dinner table he always knows the weather and the current events.
Sometimes he looks gray and lately much older.
I feel so sad for my mom and my children.