Two and a half years later. He is still alive. He has seen me graduate. He has walked me down the aisle, danced with me at my wedding. He has been back in the hospital four times, twice for infections, once for a fall and a broken nose, once to fix the aneurysm in his stomach. He is, as my mother insists is diagnostically indicative, pink. Physically he's still struggling; walking with a walker or a cane, but these are not anomalies for an 82-year-old man. Mentally he's not back to baseline either - forgets things, loses track of the conversation - but he believes he's at 90-95%, which I'm coming to think is more a good thing than a bad thing. His belief that he's doing fine is probably keeping him alive at this point, and I'm not about to burst that bubble.
I am living across the country now, in a neuroscience postdoctoral fellowship. We go back East this week for Thanksgiving. While I managed to have seen my parents three times this year - in April to visit, in June for my graduation, over Labor Day because I was in town for a friend's wedding - I feel like I am on the outside. I am so completely removed being on the West Coast. Even when we were a two-hour drive away I was in it, I was there. But now with a three hour time difference, a whole day of travelling between us, I am out of the loop. It scares me sometimes, how far away we are. I feel like a portion of my life is on hold until we go back.
