— पांच हजार एक सौ साठ-तीन —
Well, I guess I have another family member on the way out: Uncle Paul is in the hospital. Jennifer (his daughter) messaged me over Facebook last night to tell me he was not expected to last through the night. As of this morning, I guess he did last through the night, but who knows how long he will continue to last. I did know he was in the hospital; Jennifer told me that on Tuesday.
A lot of people who know him might assume it's Covid, given his deep and longstanding contempt for anything even remotely liberal or progressive, which presumably now includes anyone supporting pandemic restrictions or vaccines and the like. (I have no idea if he's vaccinated; I can't remember. He actually might be.) But, nope, he was in the hospital for entirely unrelated reasons.
When I asked her why he was in the hospital on Tuesday, she said,
His kidneys aren't functioning well and he's going to have temporary dialysis. Shortly thereafter she added,
Last Sunday (9 days ago) I went out to see him cuz Sara was worried about him. He wasn't getting out of bed or going anywhere. He has a cyst on his leg and got sent to wound car and has a polyp that needs to be removed in his colon. But apparently he was in septic shock and has sores all over his body. Sometimes Sara exaggerates so I don't know how serious "all over his body" is. Anyway he went to wound care they talked to him being admitted through the er. Then after being in Shelton hospital a few days they transferred him to UW the night before last night. So, I guess that would have been last Sunday.
A few moments later she added,
But he's super pissy. I talked to him on the phone once and he was annoyed with all the people calling him. That sounds like Uncle Paul.
I wondered how he was transferred from Shelton to UW Medical Center. That's, like, ninety miles. Did they take him in an ambulance? How much of that would be covered by insurance? Because I know the cost to that will have been a fortune.
Even though Uncle Paul is 71 years old, and was never known to be particularly healthy, even with him being in the hospital I just took it for granted that he would recover and be fine. I don't know why. Maybe because, as Jennifer put it on Tuesday,
He's an ornery cuss.. But, then she messaged me this last night:
Just letting you know- my Dad isn't supposed to make it through the night. His body is shutting down. Holy shit.
If he does indeed pass away soon, he will be the first among Dad's siblings to go. I felt pretty bad for Jennifer in particular, because she already lost Heidi, her sister, far too soon—Heidi died suddenly at the age of 40 in 2019. I still don't know what it's like to lose a sibling, but I did tell Jennifer that I can speak from experience that when you lose a parent, regardless of what your relationship with them was like, it's fucking weird.
I guess there was a family Zoom call last night, because of course no one could visit Uncle Paul in the hospital, so people could say goodbye virtually. Jennifer said he was kind of out of it, but she was sure that if he were more alert, he would just be annoyed with so many people there. Even though, as Dad mentioned later (I'll get to that in a minute), there was not really that much talking involved. Still, according to Jennifer, the Zoom call included her, her brothers Ben (who lives in greater L.A.) and Andrew (I don't know where he lives, somewhere in Washington I think); Aunt Raenae; and Dad and Sherri. I guess Aunt Penny got on a phone call with Aunt Raenae while on the call, and Uncle Garth, the only one among Dad's siblings who lives outside Washington (he's been in Cheyanne, Wyoming for decades), did not get on the call.
Uncle Paul and Sara adopted two of Andy's kids, Braxton (who is now 21, which stunned me; he's very intellectually compromised though) and who is now calling himself Spencer, after using the name Damien for a while. Spencer is either trans or nonbinary; his Facebook bio now lists preferred pronouns as "he/they." Uncle Paul and Sara have refused to acknowledge his gender identity from the start, and the kind of frequent name changes notwithstanding, it's not really cool that even Jennifer misgendered him once or twice during our texts last night. I have no idea how much that was intentional or not, but I decided not to challenge Jennifer on it while she was in the midst of facing the death of her dad.
I will say, though, that I unfriended Uncle Paul on Facebook a few years ago, after he was quite brazenly using the N-word—and this was after many directly insulting comments he had posted on my own posts over time previous. He clearly thought in his mind that he was just joking around, but it was never fun for me. And the N-word thing was the last straw; I was like, okay, fuck him. I basically washed my hands of him after that. I did the same with my cousin Michael for basically the same reason.
None of that changes the fact that he's still Jennifer's dad, though, and it doesn't make it any less worthy of empathizing with her. For similar reasons, after my Facebook Messenger conversation with Jennifer, I called my dad, just to see how he was doing. This will be the first sibling he loses, after all. But, Dad was pretty chill and stoic about it. He noted that he really hadn't seen much of Uncle Paul in a few years. And of course, for the past two years of a pandemic that makes total sense. But, Dad did say they ran into him a couple of times, both times inviting him out to lunch with them, and Uncle Paul always declined. So, I think there was just a kind of natural distancing that happened between them in recent years. Uncle Paul and Sara used to come to family holidays a lot but they haven’t in several years now.
I brought that up to Jennifer this morning, and she said even she had kind of a similar experience with him:
Yeah Dad kind of stayed in his own world. I hadn't seen much of Dad either. I went out to his house the Sunday before he was admitted to the hospital because Sara wanted me to come check on him cuz she felt like he wasn't doing well.
It sort of feels like now we're just waiting for it to happen. It's be incredible if he pulls through, and I won't even necessarily be surprised. But, it sounds like that's unlikely.
— पांच हजार एक सौ साठ-तीन —
— पांच हजार एक सौ साठ-तीन —
As for last night otherwise, there's not much else to tell. Shobhit made a ridiculous dinner, of a
giant, triple-decker baked sandwich, which was very much a challenge to eat. But, it was pretty good, actually. I barely stopped short of finishing what seemed like a fairly narrow slice, I just got so full.
Otherwise, we spent watched TV. First was the season finale of
Peacemaker on HBO Max, which was . . . fine. Then, episode four of season two of
Raised by Wolves, also on HBO Max, which I thought was the best episode of the season so far. After that I retied to the bedroom and spent maybe an hour working on reconstructing Apple Music playlists. I got through a good four or so of the Christmas playlists. Unfortunately, though, I discovered this morning that my Bangles playlist, which allowing for tracks to be added, won't play most of the tracks. I don't know what that's about, it's the first I have encountered this kind of problem, but I will need to figure out a way to fix it.
Oh! I nearly forgot: I had my Covid test by Curative at The Paramount Theater, my second in as many weeks, both on a Thursday after work. So, if it goes the same way as before, I probably won't get (hopefully) confirmation of my negative test until tomorrow morning. I will sure feel better once that happens though.
— पांच हजार एक सौ साठ-तीन —
[posted 12:47 pm]
