Liralen's Adventures Through Life

I'm getting asked a lot these days about how my mother is doing. It's never easy to answer, because she's dying. She's pretty comfortable for all that, all of her needs are being taken care of. She has hospice checking on her every time she needs anything. She's being made as comfortable as possible with modern medicine and care.  Most people end up saying, "That's so hard."  And the only thing I can really do is nod. There's something in my head that always says, "It's not hard the way you think it's hard." It doesn't detract from the fact that everything is pretty difficult right now. I've always hated my emotions. They're always pretty difficult for me to access, except when I have the opportunity to process them with someone else, extroverted emotional expression seems to be one of the few ways I can deal with them. Grief always eats all my energy.  When I first came home from San Diego after the Thanksgiving perio...

The last time we came to Kaua'i was in 1993, right after hurricane Iniki. It was pretty sparse back then, as the whole island was rebuilding, we stayed at one of the few hotels that was still whole, and we ate at one of the very very few "fish" restaurants and the waiter there thought we were remarkable as we were dressed like a native, but no native would be eating fish at a restaurant. Everyone had plenty of fish off their boat or their uncle or cousin's boat. They wouldn't be paying money for fish. It's very different now. We've also been to Hawaii a few times, including a trip to the big island after Jet graduated, so that he'd get a trip to Hawaii under his belt before he left home, and then another to Maui to look for whales. We love the Big Island a lot, but memories of little, old Kaua'i with it's perpetual rain storm at the top of the island prompted us to come back when we were thinking of how to escape the winter cold of Colorado. I ...

There was mixed news at the dentist. The bite is just fine, it's that this is at least the third time this particular molar has been drilled into and there is some chance that the nerves and veins, the pulp in the tooth, is just going to die. There is some chance it will just heal on its own, but the experienced dentist here said that he thought it less likely than it failing eventually. The good news was that the X-Ray showed no deterioration along those lines, yet, and I've done this before, where the dentist was sure it was going to die, but it came back with time and being careful to not mess with it too much. It was oddly good to know that there really wasn't anything I could do for it other than wait. And it was really good to get confirmation that my dentist at home is entirely competent and that I can trust him with whatever does happen next. We headed out because it was supposed to be raining all day, and the turquoise house in the photograph was across the street ...