Parallel lines
Papaw Ralph is in the hospital. He has some combination of COPD and/or congestive heart failure and is using oxygen. From what I've gathered, he was supposed to have been using oxygen fairly continuously over the last year or so and has basically refused to do so. He worked in the mines for many years and also smoked for many years, both of which I'm sure contributed to his illness in some form.
I learned about his admission to the hospital on August 26, one month to the day after Arnold passed away from pulmonary fibrosis. COPD, like pulmonary fibrosis, is a progressive disease of the lung which makes breathing difficult. It can be treated and managed but not cured. And, since it's progressive, it gets worse over time despite treatment.
We visited him yesterday. He was in relatively good spirits and was eating a candy bar smuggled to him by my aunt Cindy. He's got tubes hanging out of his nose and wrapped up over his ears, a sight I've become quite familiar with over the last year or so, and he seemed tired.
We just went through this. We are still going through this.
Given the closeness in time and the parallel lines, I feel like there is something I'm supposed to glean from this. If that's true, I don't yet know what it is. I suspect it will be revealed to me again and again until I get it — that's how things typically work for me. Either that, or I'll not realize it until I'm looking at these words again months or years from now.
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On Goodbye, Blossom, Martha said: We can still dress up and go to Laury's. Or Aubrey's. Or even Soho's, if/when I get over being mad.