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Friday, Jan. 27, 2006 - 5:54 a.m. O Freude!
Tarik's
grandfather is starting to lose it. Let me preface this with a little bit
of information about him. He joined the army in WWII and went to flight
school. He flew bombing missions over China, and turned 23 on VJ Day, the
day the war with Japan ended. He went on to a long and distinguished
career in the Air Force living in Japan, England, Nebraska and Texas. He
retired as a Lt. Colonel, and his last assignment was with Strategic Air Command
and he retired sometime in the 60's. Much of that last leg of his military
career is still classified. He then went on to get his masters degree in
Spanish and speaks it fluently. He and Tarik's grandmother moved to
Tulare, California, an agricultural center of the Joaquin Valley, and set up
shop there. He became a Baptist minister and started a church and was
eventually forced out by its members because he did the HEINOUS AND
DASTARDLY deed of approving and welcoming black members to the
congregation! (This WAS the 60's after all and bigots were abound.)
Eventually he ended up teaching at the local community college, retired again,
and moved back to Texas to live in a town adjacent to Waco where he and Tarik's
grandmother currently reside. Tarik's grandmother is a retired school
teacher. They are very conservative and are also RAGING Democrats.
The goodness of this man knows no bounds. The purity of his heart, his
deeds, his actions, likewise. This is a man, who when we go to a restaurant,
will take the opportunity to talk to at least one or two tables of people,
complete strangers, just to be friendly, and he leaves whomever he has met and
talked to, smiling from ear to ear. He is always smiling, has special
nicknames for his grandchildren (including me, as I am his granddaughter by
marriage), and loves to tell jokes. So it came as quite a shock to my
mother in law on Wednesday when she, her sister and my sister in law went to
visit grandmother in the hospital, and grandfather tried to have them forcibly
removed. He became extremely angry and belligerent, was shouting at them,
and tried to physically himself remove them from her room. Then he tried
to have the nurse force them to leave. Luckily, she said that she had no
authority to do so and kept her wits about her. When Tarik's sister was
trying to feed grandmother, he started yelling at her too and tried to have her
kicked out of the room. We don't know what provoked this outburst, and it
has my mother in law scared to death as this is completely out of character for
her father. Best guess is that he is not sleeping at all. He stays
at the hospital 24/7 and does not leave grandmother's side. He wears a
wrist cuff that is tethered to her wrist as well that will alert him if she
tries to get up out of bed during the night. I can only begin to imagine
the stress and anxiety he is experiencing during this time. He loves his
wife with every fiber of his being. They truly are a love story and he
needs to take care of himself as well as her. He needs to come home for a
day and sleep, and take a decent shower and get away from the hospital and the
staff. She will be fine. He needs to make sure he is well both
physically and mentally, for her. At this pace though, he is nowhere near
that state, and is doing himself and her a disservice by keeping up this
pace. Hospitals are not places you go to get well. They are places
you go to get well enough physically so that you can leave. Healing is
done at home, in familiar and comfortable surroundings with those you
love. Hospitals can also make you crazy. I hope that when we go to
the hospital this weekend that he is over his bout of "out of
character." Song
Virus du Jour: The Ode
to Joy, the 4th Movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony Useless
Trivia du Jour: This is not so much trivia as it is a really funny quote
I read this morning: "He's so dumb he couldn't pour piss out of a
boot if the instructions were on the heel." Taken from Overheard
in the Office. |
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- - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008
More updates on another blog home. - Wednesday, Feb. 06, 2008 Where are my zzzzzz's? - Thursday, Nov. 08, 2007 Halloween '07 - Friday, Nov. 02, 2007 Hallween is All Good! - Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007 |
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