Dad is smacking his gums right now with a childlike glee, not because he’s losing his marbles but because he’s checking in on the systems that still work. More pieces have fallen off; he’s driving …
Read the full story »The care and feeding of the impossibly small
The odds and sods of this and that
An accounting of my father and his resident alien
An accounting of my folly with fowl
Person rearing for amateurs
We’ve gotten the word from on high (his docs, since no other authority holds much water for Dad) that we’re nearing the end of the race. Which we knew, but it’s been officially annointed by others more savvy about these sorts of things.
Many of you would like to say goodbye in person, which I understand, but Dad is extremely tired now and things have changed dramatically even in the last 24 hours. You might have to find your own path to peace without those final moments together.
Dad, for whatever it’s worth, is content with his life, and importantly, his death, too. He’s ready. It could be weeks, it could be a couple months, but the fight is gone and the end is in view over the horizon. He’s happy to be with his family, he’s happy to be at home, and he’s not in too much pain. But he’s very, very tired.
He’s mostly in the house tottering about from the kitchen, where he picks up a bunch of cherries or grapes, and then ambling to his new little art space we set up for him. Then back for an issue of The New Yorker and a nap. A little lunch on his porch which remains a great solace and joy for him in these moments of quiet, no soundtrack but a northern flicker and a couple of noisy jays. His garden is exploding with color, a range between the violent red flame crocosmia “Lucifer” to the subtle highlights in tiny white roses an inch wide, to the rather more frilly and showy lavatera, shooting five foot pink sprays of ebullient spirit up his front steps. He loves them all.
And he loves you, too. We’ll talk again soon,
Quenby and Chris,
Co-Chairs of the Charles Moone Appreciation Society
Popularity: 71% [?]
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Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
–The Graduate, 1967
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