Gunny Walker

  The doctors broke the news to us yesterday. They are not going to operate. My father has no chance. It's only a matter of time.
  My mother left the hospital yesterday. She's left to shower and she went to Wal-mart one day. (I can't remember when. The days are starting to blur.) Yesterday, however she left to get her hair cut. MeMa went with her and they were gone for a few hours. I was sitting there reading a book that I had found on the bargain rack at Books-A-Million. It was The Secret Life of Germs. (I was frustrated with the other conquest, Winnie-The-Pooh on Problem Solving.) Then one of my father's doctor showed up. He was interested in my book. I explained how I was just cruising the bargain books. He was talking to me about his family. I think that he was trying to comfort me in some way.
  The truth is that a few years ago, I watched my father drink until he couldn't piss anymore. When the doctor told him that he could begin drinking in moderation, he did anything but that. A year ago he was drinking three or four six packs a day. He smoked until he couldn't breathe anymore. He has forty percent of his lung capacity. He always seems to get sick whenever he hangs around smokers too much. He had a hip operation, but he's laid around so much that hardly can move anymore. Just before this trip to the hospital, he even bought a scooter. Of course, he can't handle the heat of being in an air conditioned car. Of course, he's cold all the time. I suspect that is because of poor circulation. Of course, he's had a blood clot which often comes from blood circulation.
  Of course, I haven't had any of that stuff confirmed. It's just my suspicion.
  I was telling Westmoreland about how surprised I was about how he could almost be killed by drinking, and still go back. He claimed it was food poisoning, but his kidneys and liver were weakened by years of drinking. Of course, the doctor told a great story about his own father.
  He talked about how his own father worked too hard. He worked so much that he hardly ever saw his father. When he was a kid, he was never going to work as much as his father. Of course, he became a doctor. He makes great money, and just like his father, he doesn't work to hard. Of course, it was never work that bothered him as a kid. It was that he never saw his father.
  The thing is that he wound up never seeing his kids either. He worked hard. He played hard. He tried so hard to not become his father and still became him anyway. The doctor then related the situation to a lot of the people that he sees in his practice. He said that he sees a lot of people with blinders. Morbidly obese that only see when they actually eat well and not the binges in between. People that wreck their lives so badly that they end up living under bridges. Things like that.
  The truth is that you need a life shattering event to remove those blinders.
  For his father it was the death of his mother. I don't need to go into details. That's for his blog if he has one. The doctor had his watching his father go through the ordeal.
  The truth is, I wish that my brother and sister-in-law were there. They've acted more like tourists than grieving family. With a father, that could go at any time, they've spent a lot of time away from the hospital. They've been driving around looking at the sites. Walking around the square. Shopping. And that last one is the kicker.
  Well, he and his wife went to the square. I called him on his phone. Our mother wants us to go to Nashville to look at my father's house. My father bought a house in Nashville at the tax auction and has been getting it fixed up. My mother wants us to go up there and look at it. I can use showing my brother around as an excuse to check stuff out.
  The problem is that when my brother showed up without his wife. We went to the square to find her. The thing is that he had no idea where she was. They had split up. He got out of the car to go to the bank to see if he could get some money wired from Texas. I went to the gas station because by the time we had gotten to the square the gas light had come on. I had filled up my mother's car the day before yesterday. By the time I got back to the square, he had spotted me. He seemed quite irritated. I asked if he knew where his wife was. He didn't. He then asked where a Western Union was. I said I didn't know. He then asked when I would meet the contractor in Nashville. I said in a couple of hours. I needed to get him his money before the banks closed. It was one in the afternoon. My brother got out and said that he would walk back to the hospital. Of course, he wouldn't have a choice. I had the keys to my car and was driving my mother's car.
  I went to the house, delivered the money, and checked the place out. I told Gregory that we were going to shut it down for a few weeks. I also told him about the condition of my father. I had to after he gave me the get well card for him.
  When I got back to the hospital, I got the rest of the story about my brother and his wife. It turns out that they had gotten into a fight. My brother was upset and started driving crazier. That's when my sister-in-law decided suggested that he park the car and then they walk on opposite sides of the square. They would meet on the other side cooled off. Of course, she had to walk back to the hospital because she didn't know that he was with me. Then he walked back after he got out of the car.
  When I got back to the hospital, she was in the room and he was in the ICU waiting room. This is not the time for this crap to come out.