Sunday, August 15, 2004

posted by: copernicus on 8/15/2004 02:04:00 AM
At work again, 1 a.m.
For some reason, I am fucking exhausted and I still have 5 hours left on my shift.

Been having a lot of cigarette cravings lately. Odd, since I haven't smoked in over 2 and a half years.

I'm just rambling here, trying to keep my fingers moving. Whole lot of drama going on 'round these parts lately.

Example #1.
Someone I love was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I am the charge nurse on an Alzheimer's unit. My family thinks that I can make him better. My family is wrong. He is already getting forgetful. Not just going to Subway and forgetting what kind of sandwiches we wanted, but going to a family reunion and asking who was going to pick up his mother.......who's 15 years dead.

The hardest part about all this is how self-reliant he's been his whole life. My mom and I recently met for dinner. 2 bottles of Merlot later, we were picking at our steak and salmon and talking about him. He grew up as a peanut farmer's son in southern Georgia. Life on a farm in the post-Depression era South taught him one thing: He did not want to be a farmer. He hated his future and wished he had some way out of a hard life on a peanut farm.

Then came World War II. He enlisted immediately as a buck Private and emerged 35 years later a Lieutenant Colonel. He served in WWII, Korea and Vietnam and raised his children all over the world. My mother went to grade school in France and Italy, and graduated high school in Taiwan.

He's been the provider and patriarch for so long that he refuses to give in to retirement and old age. He won't admit that he can't do some of the things he once could and thinks it's perfectly acceptable for an 82 year old man to mow an acre and a half lawn with a push mower in 90 degree heat.

Shit, I have to get back to work. More later...........