46?
shoot.
I'll see your 46 and raise you 1.
47.
Look out E, here I come!
and thanks for the prayers. It's so hard to sit in there and not tear up. I started crying twice yesterday just sitting in the room when everything was fine. I hid it both times so as to not upset my aunt, but I just have such a hard time accepting what's inevitable. I try to remember the good memories but even those make me cry because that is so not who he is anymore. After a heart attack and a stroke and now this he's not anywhere close to the boisterous, strong-as-an-ox, funny, outspoken, old-school Democrat (loves politics - don't get him started!) that he used to be. He was amazing. He was a POW in the Korean war for 28 months. Can you even imagine? Twenty eight months he was tortured, beaten, mentally abused, stripped naked, made to eat fish with maggots, and he came out of it. Years later he was changing the tire on a semi when it blew out, causing him to spend a month in the hospital. He lost his right eye, they had to remove bone from his hip for complete reconstructive surgery on his face to rebuild his eye socket and his nose, his mouth was wired shut for 6 months. And all that was even before I was born.
And he's never called me by my real name, not even once. From the day I was born he has called me Natalie. He said that sounded better with my brother's name (Nathan) than my real name did, and he wasn't going to call me by my real name. He said I'd be Natalie until the day he died.
That's just the hard-headed kind of rationale he's always had, and that's what makes it so hard now, because he's lost that. Now he just lays there helpless.
Sorry I'm a downer.
I've gotta go work out to get my mind elsewhere.
Thanks for listening.