Of Visiting Gramps, Saying Farewell to Dave, and Job Searching Again

Howdy doozles. It's been an eventful three weeks, that's for dang sure. The end of December I traveled with Nick and my mumzers to Idaho Falls to see my uncle Dave and my gramps, neither of whom were doing very well, especially Dave, who was living out his last few days in the hospital. The night of December 30, Julie had him taken home under a hospice program, and the next morning he passed away. It was sad, but at the same time I think we were all relieved; he'd been battling his cancer for more than a year, I believe. I was really glad to have seen him before he died. As for my grandpa, he had fallen and broken his ankle and somehow wound up in an absolute dive of a rehab center, complete with dogs running around the place and popping in and out of residents' rooms (Nick took the liberty of naming one of the dogs "LaFawnda" simply because he's Nick), horrible food that we dubbed "Vomit in a Cup," and incompetent staff who purposely overmedicated him. (My cousin confronted one of the nurses over not waking up my grandpa for breakfast, and she apparently said something to the effect of "Well, I don't want him choking and dying on my watch!") So, after we bought him some much needed and much appreciated Wingers, my dad had him moved to a much better center and everything's been good.

Last week I went to Idaho Falls again, this time for Dave's funeral. It was quite good--Phil and Jeff both spoke at length on Dave's lifetime of crazy shenanigans, like the time he tried to chase a fire truck on Janessa's bicycle and ended up in the gutter with a face full of gravel, or the time he was teaching at University of Winnipeg and decided on a whim to take out one of the brick walls in his office with a sledgehammer. What an amazing and inspiring guy. After the funeral, it struck me just how much he had accomplished in his shortened life--he had probably had enough memorable experiences to last three lifetimes. Also, my dad coerced Doug, Dave's pianist brother, into playing Liszt's "Mephisto Waltz" (which involves demons dancing in a barn, or something) after the luncheon, since it was Dave's favorite song. It was also great to hang with my cousins, especially Jeff's kids, who are all brainiacs like their parents but oodles of fun (especially my cousin Aaron, who decided during the luncheon he loves it when really tall people lift him up as high as they're able and then drop him on the floor--I swear that kid's a masochist).

Alyssa, meanwhile, has been swamped with the kid-wrangling responsibilites of her new preschool teaching job, but I know she loves it. This is the perfect job for her. As for me, I'm back in job search mode, having decided I would much rather have money than have to deal with obnoxious teenagers putting fetal pig organs down each others' shirts. I dunno, maybe I'll finish out my biology teaching degree someday, but for now, that's on the back burner. And that's all I have to say about that.