Complex Numbers

Revisited: "Power"

When I do these Sunday retrospectives, I can usually find a lot of things in common with the guy who wrote the earlier blog entry. The further back in time I go, the less I find in common, but such is life.

This personal update, though, from February of 2008, is tough for me to relate to, and difficult to re-read: "Power" 

The wind has been crazy here, today. It started sometime during the night, whistling between the houses and threatening to spin my attic vents right off.

While I still live in the same house, I've replaced the roof since then, and goodbye old-fashioned spinning attic vents.

When I woke up, at around the crack of noon, it was still going on.

I'm always a late to bed, late to rise person, but, with age, my ability to sleep until noon has vanished.

I figured I'd grab some breakfastlunch and go write this week's Comedy newsletter.

Well, I'm still writing Comedy newsletter editorials, at least. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

That, of course, is when the power went out.

I've since purchased and had installed a whole-house generator, an automatic start one hooked up to the city gas line. While I justified it to myself and others with my medical devices and a basement sump pump that tends to be most necessary at the times when the weather's lousy enough to cut the power, the real reason is so I never lack internet access.

I'm sure the neighbors appreciate the blast of a nat-gas engine cranking up and running like a combination leaf blower / lawnmower every time we lose electricity, but if anyone ever said anything to me, I'd absolutely claim medical necessity.

Now, I don't have my truck this weekend. A friend of mine is using it to move.

I don't drive pickups anymore, either. And that's one of the reasons why: someone inevitably asks to borrow it or, worse, me.

My wife was out in her car, so I was stuck.

No longer married, either.

I worked some crosswords for a while, but then started feeling antsy about getting the newsletter in.

I miss old-style paper crossword puzzles. Probably they still make them, but there's plenty to do on the internet.

So I called my wife to drive me to my office.

Nor do I have an office. Or a business. Or a job. (My choice.)

I booted up my computer, checked some email, started looking for items to include in the newsletter (funny things about romance, mostly - it's the Singles Awareness Day issue of the Comedy newsletter), and the power went out.

Well, I continue to rag on Valentine's Day most years in the Comedy NLs. Again, good or bad thing? I don't know. With my memory the way it is, I'm sure it gets repetitive.

Before we went home, though, we visited the hospital, where my dad's still being treated for his UTI.

Dad would go on to pass on the following month. Not of the UTI.

When the doctor called back, she said, "I don't know too much about that patient. UTI. Tested positive for influenza. Going to have to keep him at least a couple more days. Did they make you wear a mask in the room?"

As a reminder, this was 2008, long before masks became a political statement and were merely an effective means of helping to prevent disease transmission.

"Oh, and there's some question about whether we can send him back to assisited living or if he'll have to be moved to a nursing facility."

Wow, a rare misspelling. Eh, it happens. And I'm certainly not going to edit out that wart at this late date. Anyway, as I recall, they eventually moved him back to the assisted living facility (which specialized in Alzheimer's care).

He didn't die of the flu, either. Which would have been an irony I would not have appreciated. See, he had been born in New Orleans in 1917. A year later, his mother, quite a young woman at the time, dropped dead. The family never told me more details than that; when I was a kid, I just accepted that dying is what grandparents do.

It wasn't until much later in life that it dawned on me: New Orleans. 1918. Death of a young person. Oh... right. Spanish Flu.

Not going to leave you in suspense. Official cause of his death was "complications from Alzheimer's."

But I got home and did the Comedy newsletter anyway. Sometimes you just have to be funny, even if there's nothing left to laugh at.

And that philosophy, folks, seems to be the one thing about me that does not change.

There's a kind of power in that.