Coming Home

The last few weeks have flown by me yet again. It has been a whirl of hospitals, preparing my parents house for my Dad's homecoming, and trying, unsuccessfully, to take care of our own personal matters.

I had a dream of the hospital every night last week, and though it was very different from the place my Dad has been staying, it has remained the same in each of my dreams. What I remember most about it are the winding hallways that force you to turn every few feet. This building in my dream was impossible to navigate, and the staff was continuously moving my Dad to a new room, and with each room change we had to walk through the nurses office that was cluttered with so many personal items that I could not walk through without knocking over an entire shelf of books, dishes, or haircare products. I was given the evil eye each time I stepped through the door, and each time I would lower my head and try to walk as carefully as possible, yet I ended up knocking over another pile of something or other. I usually woke up after the third pass. While this dream may seem very cryptic, you would understand better if you could see the state of my parents house, and it is not due to a lack of effort, but to an over abundance of stuff that my Dad thinks is gold. I'm still not sure how we are going to convince him to let it go. I would call Clean Sweep or Mission Organization on him if I thought they could do a better job of convincing him that he does not need his Word 97 boxes, or every issue of Model Railroading Magazine since 1973.

In spite of everything Jon and I trying to keep our heads up. We haven't gone this many nights on 5 hours or less sleep since we were in our teens. It is becoming very hard to function normally, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The hospital was already talking of releasing my Dad today should everything continue going as plan, and then we can begin the at-home recovery time that could take anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months. I know my Mom will be thrilled to have him home again, but I don't think any of us want him to be home nearly as much as he is ready to be home.