(no subject)

[katallison]

OK, so you want to know the scariest thing about homo sapiens as a species? It's not our capacity for violence and horribleness, though that is scary; rather, it's our ability to adapt to the most godawful situations, to accommodate to circumstances that are really, honestly, just hell.

As in. For example. Case in point. If I could somehow go back, say, 32 years, to when my dad was my age, and track him down, and do a whole Ghost of Christmas Future thing and say to him, "Look, 32 years from now, when you're 83, you'll be in a nursing home, basically bedridden, catheterized, tube-fed, mentally wandery and vague but just intact enough to know the awfulness of your situation, with no prospect of ever getting out of there--would you want to go on in that state?" And I god-damn guarantee you his answer would be "Not just no--HELL no." Except that it's been such a long slow slide over the years, he's failed so gradually and yet so totally, that at each point along the way he's come to accommodate his status as something normal, as OK.

I find myself this evening tempted to write the God-Awful dS AU, the one in which yes, Robert Fraser gets shot, but you know what? He doesn't die--instead, he survives, incapacitated, maybe paraplegic or quadriplegic, never again the man he was, stuck in a nursing home in Ass-End, Canada, cranky and bored and mentally fading. And he guilts Fraser regularly about not visiting him more, about not doing more for him, about not getting him out of there, and Fraser, god knows, visits as often as he can, and if he uses the excuse of the job from time to time, we won't fault him for that when for chrissake he's hauling miscreants over the pass in a blizzard--except he faults himself, he feels regularly hammered with guilt for not somehow managing to patrol the entire northwest quadrant of Canada and also make it in to the nursing home on a regular basis, and when he does visit, Bob is all wandering and incoherent and helpless, and Fraser does what he can to settle the old man down and help him remember stories of the old days, and he talks to the staff about being more attentive, and when he does finally leave, he strides down the corridor with the stink of piss and shit in his nostrils and the sound of the demented patients shrieking over and over in his ears, and he's full of resentment, and hating himself for the resentment, and ...

Yeah. I'm not writing that one, but I'm thinking it. And please, whatever gods there be, let me die fast and clean.

Comments

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

I believe you and I already have a pact about this.

*hugs*

[beledibabe.livejournal.com]

::nodnod::

Although it was absolutely hell for us when my much-loved father-in-law died suddenly of a massive stroke at age 56, we took comfort in the fact that he'd have *hated* being incapacitated in any way. For him, it was the best resolution of a horrible situation.

Much love to your dad, for having to live that, and to you, for having to deal with it all.

[reginagiraffe]

*hugs you tight*

You've just described my version of hell (with me being the one in the bed).

All my sympathies.

[umbo.livejournal.com]

Tomorrow morning, I will give you lots and lots of hugs in person. For now you'll have to settle with the LJ variety.

*lots and lots of hugs*

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

I don't think I could read that story -- it's just too much.

I'm impossibly sorry that you're in that situation, though, or one analagous to it. Gah.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry. *hugs* And it is scary, that adaptability to the unbearable, but it's also probably the only thing that's kept us from mass extinction.

[sanj.livejournal.com]

My dad was this brilliant, funny, charming guy who worked on ENIAC and other computers from the 1940s to the 1990s. And then my mom died, and he fell into a deep depression, and then the depression slowly drifted into stage one Alzheimer's and now he's in stage three and it's a good day when he doesn't pee his pants or hit an orderly.

Which is all my way of saying, I hear you, and it hurts like hel, doesn't it?

*hug*

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I'm really sorry you're going through all this.

[hetrez.livejournal.com]

My mom and I have a promise. She wants me to make sure that she's DNR if she ever gets sick, no heroic measures, no nursing home, and I got scared when she said that and made her promise me the same thing back, if I ever get sick. I can't imagine that ever happening to my mom, one of the walls in my universe, and I can't but feel for anyone it happens to, and admire their strength in dealing with it. Add my hugs to everyone else's.

[lapillus]

{{{}}}

If poking at the story would be cathartic, go for it. Even if it never gets finished.

[dine.livejournal.com]

I remember what my mom went through with my grandmother - and I feel for you. it is totally hellish for family (although I hope the process of adaptation over time has meant that it wasn't hellish for your dad)

[kickair8p.livejournal.com]

{{{{{hugs katallison}}}}}





~

[twistedchick]

::lights candle::
::wishes::
::hugs::

[popfantastic.livejournal.com]

Oh, Miss Kat. *hugs* I will tell you what my godmother says about taking care of her fiery and completely out-of-it 90-year-old Italian mother (and hope it doesn't sound too terrible), which is that these things can take a long time -- an excruciatingly long time, in many cases -- but they don't take forever, even when it feels like it has and will. I don't think it's ever going to feel better or shorter or less horrible for you, even in retrospect, but eventually the whole ordeal will be finite and you and your father will both have some peace.

[flambeau.livejournal.com]

I want to tell you a story about my grandfather, but - it's a story that has meaning for me, not a story I can just push at you as though it would automatically have meaning for you, because your pain and frustration are not mine. So I just send you love and hugs.

Just...

[maygra.livejournal.com]

I know.

{{Kat}}

[meri-oddities.livejournal.com]

*hugs* There are no easy answers for dealing with it. I'm sorry you have to go through it. Yeah, I so am with you. When I check out, I want it to be the express serive. Done and over with.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Can't think of anything useful to say, but you've got all my sympathy. Horrible situation to be in, both for your father and for those who love him.

[the-star-fish.livejournal.com]

The whole thing sucks a lot, Kat. Wish I could help with more than virtual hugs, but that's all I got for now.

::hugs::

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I know just what you mean. *hugs*

[vickita.livejournal.com]

Oh man. Yeah. I have stood and watched The Mom in her wheelchair, sucking on cancer sticks that she is barely conscious enough to hold, and thought that the feisty teenage girl that she once was probably never, ever dreamed that it would end up like this.

Don't get me started on the dubious benefits of medical science keeping bodies going long after the mind is gone...

[sinensiss.livejournal.com]

you have all my sympathy, Kat.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I love you, sweetheart. I'm so sorry you have to go through this.

[(Anonymous)]

There's a saying that calls pneumonia "the old folks' friend." I find this (coldly) comforting when I think about death, which scares me to death, and when I think about not-death un-death pre-death, which scares me, like everybody else, much more. There are these things no one survives, and in the end they can come as our friends. Maybe, as with Roland and Oliver, this is what it takes to make us recognize them.