Just Another Week for Dr. Hades

A week ago, Percy became Doctor Hades, thank you very much. So far, that and $5 will get old Percy a large latte at Starbucks, but it's early in the beginner's game, of course. 

Doc Hades' old friend (38 years of brotherhood by choice) flew all the way out from Newark for the event. There were several other friends in attendance, the defense went well, but it was nearly four hours long—after the first public hour, Percy's committee grilled and grilled. Good questions, some great discussion, and lots of new ideas, and not very many revisions. A sort of perfect result. 

I woke up Saturday morning feeling a weird combination of disorientation, relief, and uncertainty. After dropping off my friend at the airport, I went back to the hotel and listened in. My intuition was very, very strong that I should set out for the east, and turn this strange limbo into some connection with my family self. I suspected the intuition was because my father has been in home hospice for a couple months, and there was some reason why I needed to see him again. 

I drove to Van Horn TX and then the next day, to Texarkana, almost making it out of Texas. Then on to Nashville. 

For a few years now, I have loved stopping in East Nashville on the way east. Hot chicken, Jeni's ice cream, the hip feeling of the place. Sure, it's gentrification central. I have usually stayed a few miles outside of the district, but this time snagged a deep discount at a fancy boutique hotel at 9th and Russell, called The Russell. A renovated church with a lot of artsy feel to it. I felt simultaneously impressed by the attention to detail and coolness, as well as embarrassed by the conspicuous hipster gentrification. 

Anyway, I hit Bolton's Chicken and Fish, a favorite hot chicken place, and then walked a couple miles to get some Jeni's ice cream. It was a blustery night, but nothing was happening weather-wise, really. 

I took some melatonin, put my earplugs in, and fell asleep. At about 2 a.m., I woke up, went to the bathroom, and there was no electricity. My half awake mind thought maybe a fuse had blown in the hotel, or some little thing. I went back to sleep, finally waking up at 7:30. I got my stuff together in my completely dark room (no windows) using the flashlight on my cell phone. I headed out down the hall and ran into some other guests. "I guess the power is out huh?" I said, still not fully awake. "Yeah, it's really bad, just awful." 

"What?"

"The tornado. Total devastation. Cars everywhere, debris everywhere."

... "oh."

I suddenly felt this weird surge of panic, imagining Sappho tossed and crushed. "How's the hotel parking lot?" 

"Oh it's fine, just some branches and things. The real destruction is down on Woodland and along Main Street." 

Note the location of The Russell near the lower left corner of the map. Down on Woodland, especially along the northwest side of Woodland, total destruction of everything. Also along Main. Two people were killed outside Attaboy, which you can see along McFerrin Street. Some pics I took before I headed out, really in shock. I still am. 

It was especially odd how easy it was to get out of the city. The way east was completely clear. Driving out I 40, however, traffic was backed up headed into Nashville for at least 60 miles. Everything felt like the end of the world. Of course, manufactured housing took a huge hit out in rural counties. more than 20 people died. 

I stayed in the "lost in time" quaint little town I often stay in in Virgina, Harrisonburg. It combines a 1950's All American feel with a population of nearly 2000 refugees, oddly enough. "The city has become a bastion of ethnic and linguistic diversity in recent years. Over 1,900 refugees have been settled in Harrisonburg since 2002.As of 2014, Hispanics or Latinos of any race comprise 19% of the city's population. Harrisonburg City Public Schools (HCPS) students speak 55 languages in addition to English, with Spanish, Arabic, and Kurdish being the most common languages spoken. Over one-third of HCPS students are English as a second language (ESL) learners.[18] Language learning software company Rosetta Stone was founded in Harrisonburg in 1992, and the multilingual "Welcome Your Neighbors" yard sign originated in Harrisonburg in 2016." (Wiki)

I woke up Wednesday morning to a text from my sister, announcing that her husband had died suddenly of a heart attack the night before. A lot of my weird pull to the east suddenly made sense and came into focus. It still may have been an intuition around my father, but now, I was only six hours away from my sister's place, and knew I had the chance to go up there and be useful somehow. We spoke on the phone as I drove north and she wanted me to wait until Saturday to come up, so I am going up there tomorrow. 

I drove up to see the same friend who had just flown out to the dissertation defense, who happens to live in a sleepy little town along the Delaware River, in New Jersey. Taking my time approaching the Pennsylvania family. I had another series of intuitions that it's not so simple as just popping in to say hello, due to complications and issues related to my father's health. This was borne out also, as it turns out he has been having a rough time the past few days. 

I did visit last night. It's the kind of situation where it causes some stress for my 88 and 87 year old parents to be surprised by me visiting, but a lot less stress than them knowing I am going to visit and worrying about it ahead of time. They were very surprised. "You're not a very nice person, sneaking up on us like that!" was what my unbelievably frail father said. He was only half kidding. He's always hated surprises. But we settled in as they ate their Meals on Wheels dinner. My father is wheel chair bound, declining into later stage Parkinson's, has trouble eating and swallowing, and uses a catheter because of bladder spasms. He takes Ambien every night to help him sleep, but he's experiencing some of those wild side effects that go along with it, including holding forth in long conversations and having vivid hallucinations. He has home hospice care 8 hours a day, sleeps in a hospital bed, and is on a baby monitor so my brother and his wife can hear everything that is going on. He is stubborn and tries to get up and walk around, and often falls and has to be picked up. They are probably going to put a safety belt on the wheelchair, which he'll hate, of course. He lost his upper teeth dentures a couple of months ago and he's hardly eating as a result. I watched my parents both pick at their food. It takes them forever to chew and swallow. Both of them are incredibly frail and have relatively low mobility. My brother and sister in law are providing a lot of basic care, in addition to the home health nurses who come every day. 

They just closed on a vacation and rental property on the beach along the Atlantic in South Carolina, and want to go down there for a couple of weeks in late April, early May, so I may well be doing the round the clock care for at least those two weeks. But first, up to help out my sister as she closes out an incredibly complicated life she and her husband had, since they ran a fairly large business together. 

And that, dear readers, has been the week since I defended.