Dearest Rachel –
The last couple of days have been a little bit difficult. Daniel and I have been trying to keep in touch with the folks, calling them every day before we head out. Dad may have granted us his blessing to go traveling while he is in hospice, but that doesn’t absolve me of my responsibility to make sure he’s doing all right. These calls are as much a sop to my own conscience as they are a means to be “the dutiful son” even as I’m out and about on these various trips – especially after our last trip; I heard about his disappointment about not having heard from me while we were out (bear in mind, this was before this current crisis. He was still ambulatory, and even able to drive, at this point. Nevertheless, while he never said anything to me directly, I realized afterwards that he wanted me to stay in touch with him in real time). Up until now, I’d thought he was keeping up with my letters and videos, living somewhat vicariously through them, but admittedly they didn’t allow him to interact with us the way a phone call would. So that’s what we’ve been trying to do on this trip.
But the last couple of days, when we call him in the morning around breakfast, he’s been more and more difficult to understand. He’s having trouble articulating himself, which I’m sure must be frustrating for him. At the same time, it worries me; he’s given us permission to travel, but if this is indicative of a terminal decline, what’s to happen next? Worse yet, as we were preparing to disembark in Valdez yesterday morning, we tried to call both before and after breakfast, and neither call was answered.
Needless to say, this was alarming – and distracting, if that doesn’t sound too selfish to express.
Meanwhile – since this was Tuesday morning – Daniel was tuning in to his usual livestream by this one pastor down in Alabama who claims to be a prophet. I’ve said my piece about this fellow; I probably have a different definition of what a ‘prophet’ is. The way I see it, a Biblical prophet should be right one hundred percent of the time, and be added to scripture itself – and the book of the Revelation literally says that nothing more should be added to it after it; so there aren’t any such ‘prophets’ in the modern era, and anyone who claims to be is immeasurably suspect. But maybe there are those who consider ‘prophesy’ to be synonymous with preaching; in which case, okay. Normally, I let Daniel listen to what he wants to, and just get out of the way. But when we’re sharing a cabin like this, there’s nowhere for me to go. So this was distracting me, too.
Eventually, I chose to sit in a corner of the atrium to get away from Daniel’s stream, and to kill time until either it was over or it was our scheduled time to disembark, whichever came first – and I was going to interrupt the stream if it came to that, but doubted I would need to, since we were once again scheduled to do so just before eleven (which translates to nearly two in the afternoon back home; usually, this was over and done with before one). A few people actually passed by (presumably on their own way ashore) and inquired as to why I was sitting on the floor next to a plug, when I could be doing the same thing back in my cabin. I tried not to go into details.
While I was there, though, I did get a couple of calls from Mom about the situation. Apparently, both times we’d attempted to call were somewhat inconvenient times, and even then, he was unable to speak, so she was doing all the talking. Worse yet, the connection kept cutting out, and each of us kept trying to call the other back. And on top of this, when we finally got a stable connection, I kept hearing beeps on my end of the line, as if someone was pressing the phone buttons while we were trying to talk, making it somewhere between difficult and impossible to hear what she was saying about Dad’s situation, and how he was doing.
None of this was assuaging my concerns about the situation back home. But at the same time, there was literally nothing we could (or can) do at this instant. All that could be done was to get out there and try to take things in.
I mention all of this in order to give you a backdrop of what I was dealing with as we set out into Valdez. Daniel was aware of some of this – he was in the room when I tried to call before and after breakfast – but not everything, so he may have been a little more blithe about things. Then again, he comes across less cheery than myself on camera, so maybe I only have to try to excuse myself.
The interesting thing is that, halfway into our walkabout (and thus, this series of clips), as we were checking with the bar staff at the Valdez Brewing Company, we got another call from Mom and Dad. To be sure, Mom still was doing most of the talking, but Dad had rallied enough to speak a bit; it would seem that his difficulty came from his struggles to stay oxygenated. Since he had been sent home from the rehabilitation center with a canister of oxygen, they had decided to start using it, and he was now able to speak, albeit not clearly yet. So they wanted to catch us up with that, and assure us that things were, if not improving, at least not as dire as they had been. So maybe you can spot where there’s a little more relief in our tone or body language.
Or not; honestly, there’s still the concern as to whether we’ll get home before he goes Home. It feels cavalier to point out that it can’t be helped at the moment, but that’s almost all I can say about it.
With all that out of the way, I can show you things we took in during the few hours we were out there. It had been sunny when we docked, but the clouds rolled in by the time we were about to disembark; which, from a literary standpoint of our personal situation, seems rather appropriate. Still – and this may continue that thread of the weather reflecting our concerns – there was never any threat of rain as we did so, and there were a few sights to be seen. The mountains, grand as they are, tend to be distant background, but the town seems to blend art and practical creations more effectively than gritty Kodiak or artsy Homer.
We were out for little more than two hours; had we found a restaurant that served what we had been looking for in Seward, we might have been out longer. We did manage to stop at each of the three museums we had been given tickets to, so we considered this a reasonable success – and while none of them held Daniel’s interest the way the SeaLife center had the day before, it was still sufficient that he wasn’t too bored by any of them. Then again, maybe it was because we couldn’t stay at any of them for long, and we had the opportunity to wander the place to get from one to another, rather than being stuck in one spot until the shuttle could arrive.
That’s really all I have to relate to you for now, honey; it would seem that there’s more to concern myself with at home than here, but I can’t do anything about it. Even worrying about it, while unavoidable, is rather pointless, since there’s nothing that can be done. I still don’t want him to go while we’re gone, but it’s not as if we’re in control of that one way or another. If you can keep an eye on him, though, and wish him well, I’d appreciate it; but I understand if you’d just as soon he join you where you are. It’s not as if I haven’t have plenty of opportunity to bid him goodbye; I’d just rather be there to see him off. Or is that selfish of me?
Letters to Rachel 