good news and good thing

[mrissa]

Good news arrived as requested: my great-uncle Rudy (the one married to Aunt Dor, for those of you keeping score at home) got through his surgery with flying colors and was recovering beautifully.

And the stuff that wasn't good today wasn't exactly news. So.

We seem to have gotten through the 14th without anything awful. On February 14, Grandpa went into the hospital, and on March 14 he took his last turn for the worse. Today, nothing of the sort. (I have no idea what would qualify as "of the sort." People are unique and irreplaceable. Grandpa more so than most.) I sat in the quiet house by myself just now, after Timprov went to bed--markgritter is in California and Ista is at the grandmonkeys', although she will come over with my mom tomorrow to Help Mormor, as she is a Very Helpful Poodle)--and I read Just So Stories, all the ones I read to Grandpa when he was in the hospital and the ones we didn't get to this time around. And they were just where I left them. No one had gone in and changed them while I wasn't looking. And now they are up on the shelf and will continue to be where I left them, approximately, allowing for other people to take the book down and read it, which is good, too.

Someone said--I can't remember whether it was an open post, so I'll leave it vague--that they were not sure how we could bear to read "Against Entropy" aloud in honor of Dr. Mike on Friday night of Minicon, though they thought it was a good and appropriate thing. And I said that for myself, it was hard, but I could bear it because the alternative of not doing it seemed worse. I think a lot of memorial stuff is like that. Doing positive things in memory is so very hard sometimes. But so very much better than not doing them. And anyway I had almost forgotten about the butterfly that stamped.

Comments

[aedifica]

I'm happy to hear the good news!

[pameladean]

Oh, I'm so glad about the good news.

I couldn't get through the last two lines of the sonnet, but it was still the right thing to do. Mike knew what was coming, even if not the form. He was talking to us, people who loved him, or who loved anybody.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

So much of Heat of Fusion and Other Stories is that way, too.

[lynnal.livejournal.com]

Very true. Mike considered his last few years as a gift. He wrote an open letter to the donor of his new kidney expressing just that. The advances in medical care extended his life more than he had expected.

When Elise brought up the anniversary of his birthday it made me think of his 40th. I helped arrange a big party for him when he turned 40 because he had spent all of his youth expecting to die before his 40s. He went from being very fatalistic to considering that he might have a future. First he went on peritoneal dialysis, then got a new kidney. He had Elise as a role model for dealing with chronic health problems as well as giving him a good reason to live.

I miss Mike tremendously, but I also know that he avoided the possible ways of dying that he dreaded. I still wish he could have been the one to set the new record on length of survival after a kidney transplant.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I wrote a thank-you to the donor clinic when he died, because without that kidney I would have had Author John M. Ford in my life but never Friend Mike. My aunt who had a kidney transplant when I was 5 just died on New Year's Day of this year, so when I heard that Mike had had a kidney transplant before I met him, it didn't worry me as much as it should have, because at that point Aunt Donna was around the two decade mark, and that felt like the norm, the expectation. I now know how much better than average it was, and am grateful we got that much more of Aunt Donna--just wish we'd gotten that much more of Mike, too.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I could read "Against Entropy" aloud without a catch in my voice even if it were not in conscious memory of the author. That's one of the most powerful poems it's ever been my privilege to see.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Nobody required us to do it without catches in our voices. Thankfully.