As I’ve often said in my life, if there were a such things as a mythical purgatory, mine would undoubtedly look like Reagan National Airport based on how much time in my life I feel that I’ve wasted here. Even now, I am once again stuck here on account of multiple flight delays, probably because of some rain as if the stuff has never existed in the history of the universe.
And it’s not one of those old “well maybe if you actually paid full fares” accusations I used to get when I had a flight pass and could jet set on standby flights any availability I got, because that ship has long sailed and I’m on a full-ass fare and still dealing with the insufferable passage of time at DCA.
Anyway, as the title of this post so succinctly reads, I am drained and I am in need of a real break. The week of Thanksgiving started off a little bumpy, but limped towards progress, the holiday itself was really personally fulfilling, and there were a lot of good memories. However, my holiday started with a long-ass drive, concluded with a long-ass drive, and now I’m stuck at my personal hell just trying to get home, so I can get back to work without really having any time to have unwound or relaxed, at all.
As I’ve said in the past, I’m probably at that stage of life where a lot of people my age have to accept and understand the mortality of our parents, as well as the onset of babysitting, assisting, holding hands, arguing about independence while trying to not step on eggshells of frail personal egos and the fears of change and mortality of them themselves.
This past week was basically all of the above, trying to see if I could convince my dad to move into a home down in Georgia. The place where I brought him allowed for us to do a trial stay for a week, and I loved the idea of doing over Thanksgiving, because I always made me feel very sad over the years of my dad being by himself on just about every holiday, and I could have him spend this year’s with me, as well as hope to see if he could accept the place as a viable landing spot to get him out of his current home which is too big, has too many stairs and way too isolated from any family members who are willing to help him.
Although there were some good times during the week, like having my dad over for Thanksgiving and ensuring that he wouldn’t be by himself, and having him spend some time with my kids, his grandchildren, the end result is basically no real different than when we started. Such wasn’t really unexpected, and I’m honestly not really surprised, but it’s still disappointing that all the time, care and effort I put into everything led basically nowhere, and at the end of the day I can’t make him make a decision, and it’s up to him to decide, something at all, no matter how much logic and truth my sister and I try to get into his head.
Needless to say, I am just drained. My life in general operates at a pretty high stress threshold to begin with these days, and adding my dad and all his end of life affair footwork on top of it is perpetually overflowing me on a regular basis, and I don’t feel as if I’ve had a chance to unwind, decompress or just catch my breath in weeks.
I think I may have to use a vacation day in the coming weeks to just take a random midweek day off where I can not be the first fucking person up in the morning, get some actual sleep, and hopefully a feeling of actual physical and mental recharging.
