Tomorrow marks the tenth week since my personal cat Lucy passed, along with Max. I really don’t constantly dwell on the loss, but Lulu and Ellipse are constant reminders of Lucy, as are Ruby and Annie of Max. The weeks are busy enough and the weekends equally busy with house projects. But in the evening, usually the Sunday evening after a short but intense weekend, the memories all come back and line up in my mind’s eye.

Family Extant

I was born in Atlanta and moved to Orlando 30 some years ago. Most of my family still lives up there, such as my mom and dad. Mom was in the hospital late last week having about one-and-a-half liters of fluid drained from around her heart. Several weeks before she’d been stung by a hornet and had reacted badly to the sting. A doctor proscribed steroids to bring down the swelling. My mother, being 83, had her immune system suppressed and caught a bad case of pneumonia, which led to the trip to the hospital and the massive draining. She went home today to be looked after by the rest of my family.

Mom, as they say, managed to dodge the bullet this time. I think a trip up to Atlanta is called for in the not too distant future.

Closing

I’m in a much more retrospective frame of mind these days, far more so than I’ve ever been. Perhaps that’s the product of getting old, like the fear of death. It’s not just my death I think about but death all around touching all I love and care about, leaving its shadow over everything.