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| Thursday, August 30, 2007 |
| Declination |
Ata's father turned 60 last weekend. There was a party for him and his twin brother, attended by Ata's immediate family (minus two brothers, sadly), Ata's mother's family (minus Ata's mother's mother - who has reached an advanced state of dementia - and two cousins), and Ata's uncle's wife's immediate family. Got all that? It sounds like a lot of family, but totalled only thirty-something people. Ata's grandfather turned 89 in the preceding week, so there were two cakes - one for the twins, and one for their father.
A good time was had by all, Ata saw her cousins for the first time since one of them got married four years ago, and met the unmarried cousin's globetrotting partner who designs shoes for Nike. He also drives an Audi, and Mr Ata was not only taken for a drive, but allowed to drive the car himself - a highlight of the weekend for Mr Ata. Ata made a brief and improvised speech, having worried over what to say for some weeks and eventually given up on clever poems and nostalgic stories. Instead, she scanned in some family photographs and assembled them into frames. The concept was to show a family growing over time - the first picture was of Ata's grandparents with the twin boys as babies. The second photo included Ata's father's sister, and Ata's mother, and Ata's uncle's wife, and a smattering of children - Ata, her brother, two cousins by birth and one foster cousin. The third photo was taken about six years ago, and showed the whole family as already described - plus two more cousins, an extra uncle, the foster-cousin's daughter, and a couple of partners of cousins. Complicated, I know. I did not have a more recent whole-family photo. Since then, there have been two more cousins, two more partners, and one death. It was not until a whole day later that Ata's mother pointed out that the centre photo - taken a little over 20 years ago - showed Ata's uncle's first wife.... oops. Oh well. Too late to worry about it now.
On the Monday, Ata's grandfather was admitted to a Palliative Care unit. This is cause for a great deal of relief among the family. He and Ata's grandmother have been steadfastly resisting moving out of their home in any way, shape, or form for the last few years - despite increasing debilitation due to an assortment of conditions, including (but not limited to) Parkinson's disease, Meniere's disease, heart disease, hearing loss, unexplained collapses, one dealt-with-but-still-unexplained growth in the brain, and general frailty. After all that, it is cancer in the bones and lungs that has finally pushed Ata's grandfather into nursing care. It will also be the catalyst for Ata's grandmother moving into some type of assisted living accomodation.
"Sometimes," sighs Ata's grandmother, who has been anticipating her death for as long as Ata can remember, "I wish I could just die. You know, just die. I'm tired of being old and sick." Ata understands what she means. It seems that there should be a switch inside somewhere, that when one reaches the end of life, one just - decides to die, and does. Like falling asleep. You decide to sleep, you lie down with your eyes closed and relax, and - there you go. Asleep. It even has it's own failsafe - if you're not really tired, or your mind is busy, or it's too bright, you can't sleep. Shouldn't death be the same? Or - perhaps it is the same, it's just that the failsafes are set very high. Just as sometimes, it's not enough to feel tired and want to sleep - you have to wait for your body to reach the same place as your mind before you sleep.
At any rate, it is a strange thing - to be with someone who is waiting for their body to reach the same place as their mind. All there is to be done is wait - but how can I counsel patience to someone three times my age? And what does one do whilst waiting? |
posted by Ata @ 11:13 am  |
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| Wednesday, August 22, 2007 |
| Hobblings Galore |
I'd like to set one thing straight - I actually DIDN'T mix Q and Em up. However, I didn't name them in the order they were standing, so while I was LOOKING at Em whilst saying Em and LOOKING at Q whilst saying Q, I may have pointed to them in the wrong order. Or possibly I was looking at the wrong one but pointing at the right one. Or something. At any rate, they completely confused me by not introducing Myo. I thought at first that she was a random stranger who had gotten caught up by the general Hobbling excitement (Em and Q together makes for a LOT of noise), or perhaps a figment of my imagination. Myo later went on to tell me that Sydney was a "drowned river harbour", thoroughly confusing me again as - for two befuddled seconds - I thought she meant that it had been deliberately created through some mammoth engineering project that had, in turn, been entirely left out of the school history curriculum.
And I got a frog tattoo, not a gecko. Although I was tempted by the gecko. But yes, the arse in class comment threw me into the sort of helpless giggling fit that any witness usually finds terribly amusing, and involves me becoming almost paralytic. You were lucky I didn't actually collapse in the street. Although I guess that would have made for good photos. Furthermore, every time I said "classy" over the next week, I remembered Q's tone as she caught sight of me ramming an entire caramel bar in my mouth (I couldn't bite a piece off, so I was hoping that it would somehow be more dignified to eat the whole thing at once... sadly, I quickly discovered that not only did it barely fit, it effectively glued my teeth together so I couldn't chew it), and very nearly got the giggles all over again.
When I got back to the flat that evening, the Real Life Female Person was teasing Mr Ata for having called so many times. I think he was anxious to meet Hobblings. Otherwise, the conversation on my arrival at the flat went like this:
Male Person: (putting head in from the balconey where he is cooking on a barbecue) So... those were your friends?
Ata: Yep.
MP: Where were they from? Paraguay or something, wasn't it?
Ata: (thinking, dear lord, this man is a doctor?) No... Victoria and NSW and Sweden and England....
MP: And you know them from the internet.
Ata: (thinking, how many times did we go over this yesterday - does he really plan to be a cardiac surgeon?) Yes.
MP: So.. when did you first meet them? Like, in person?
Ata: (thinking, yes, went over this too) Today.
MP: Today was the first time. You've never met them before.
Ata: (silently swearing to take excellent care of her heart) Yes. Today.
MP: Oh. Hm. (goes back to cooking barbecue)
Female Person: Hey! Are you on Facebook?! |
| posted by Ata @ 8:08 pm |
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| Monday, August 06, 2007 |
| No regrets |
Today I hauled my old textbooks to the Med Library and donated them. Some of them, at least, will still be relevant... like the Anatomy of the Head & Neck text, or the Acoustics text that was the sole reason I passed that subject, having missed all but two of the lectures (...err, mostly due to illness rather than laziness). Walking through the back of the hospital where Speech Pathology & Audiology share quarters with the Medical School, I felt a familiar pang of uncertainty. Particularly noting the advertisement posted for the new graduate position offered every year in the Speech department... apparently new grad Speechies are worth a little over $47,000 a year. So, let's see, if I HAD looked for a Speech position after graduating, and I HAD moved into an acute care position after a year or so, I'd have, what, five years of experience behind me... yes, I'd be on the edge of a nervous breakdown, but I'd be earning more than $19.50 an hour for my troubles. And I'd be working in a Real Job, where people do Further Study and have topics of interest to discuss at parties.
The library accepted my donation without even looking at the books - convenient, as I was also taking the opportunity to get rid of my Organic Chemistry and first year Biology texts, as well as one of Mr Ata's books - simply entitled, "Computers" - and I didn't feel like hauling them up Cardiac Hill to the main campus library. On the way back out, I stopped to look at the list of placements & supervisors for the Masters courses in Audiology and Speech Pathology. I ran my eyes down the list and checked off names. She was in the year above me, I studied with her and her, she was one of my lecturers, he was my first supervisor... as I updated myself with who was working where, I realised I was grinning an idiot grin as a wash of emotion settled over me like a veil. Relief.
Oh yeah. I made the right choice. |
| posted by Ata @ 6:48 pm |
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