Visiting Dad, Day 5

Well, it's not really the fifth day of seeing my father. Actually, it's the ninth day in real time, but the fifth in terms of arriving, then leaving for several days to visit my sister in New York, and then returning to see dad. I arrived back in his part of Pennsylvania around four o'clock this afternoon, checked into the motel where I often stay because of both its cheapness and its proximity to dad's nursing facility. Then I walked over to see him. I was surprised because he was awake and alert and sitting in the hallway. He recognized me immediately and had even remembered I was returning to see him (although he'd forgotten the day). I sat with him and we talked for a bit about small things: the weather, his sweater, how he felt. I walked him to the dining room and then we discussed when I'd come back tomorrow, and then returned to my motel room to watch nerdy TV.

What I did while I was away: I spent Friday until this morning with my sister and her family, eating, drinking, watching pro wrestling with my niece and nephew, going out to dinner, napping. During the time I spent a day visiting an old friend back where I grew up who had a stroke a year ago and remains in a rehab facility. On my way there, I wandered along the Red Trail at James Baird State Park.

I spent another day in my old haunts in New Paltz where I ran into several old friends while walking on the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail, hung out in one of the places I most enjoyed as someone with a lot of time to kill, then visited the wife of another friend who is in Italy. It was wonderful, one of those days which, if it's true heaven is where you spend eternity reliving the most pleasurable day of your life, would be among the top twenty.

In addition, I operated a little Grammar Nazi monkeywrenching on a not-so-innocent sandwich board along the road.
 

But, because I think when people who live the type of life we live get together to catch up there is always the stories about the lost and the dead, I also learned of the sad end of a friend of mine from so long ago. This is the story the locals managed to cobble together.