Life Happens On The Road

 

BACK TO TEXAS – FOR THE TIME BEING. We have been home for Thanksgiving, but we will be lining up for flights heading south again for Christmas.

Ho. Ho. Ho.

As anyone over the age of 12 can tell you, family trips are no vacation. That’s just a law of Nature. Not that I don’t enjoy seeing and being with the fine members of the family. It is that “grown-up matters are the primary function of such trips. Life.

We were there in August for a funeral with a hurricane thrown in at no extra charge. Our seven day planned trip turned into a sixteen day stay.

In late October we flew south again, this time to visit with Dawn’s Mother who was in rehab trying to recover from a stroke just before the hurricane. When we arrived we learned that another family member was at death’s door. We did have a chance to bid him farewell three days before his passing. Our ten day trip stretched out to three weeks.

At the moment we are back in Terre Haute (That’s French for “”Let’s do laundry.”), but it will be a short layover. We head back to Texas later in December for a two week return engagement. It may be one of the last Christmas Holidays where all of us gather together in the Old Family Home. Emotions will be mixed and difficult for us Old Folks. We are determined to make it a wonderful Christmas for the Young Ones.

I know that there is another trip planned for sometime in January. That visit will be business – working through the disposition of the holdings of the Uncle who passed away in November. He was Dawn’s Uncle Roy. The loss in August was Aunt Ruby. They had been together well over sixty years and 79 days after Aunt Ruby died Uncle Roy joined her, surrendering his life. On one point of view it was very romantic, but from every other angle it was as sad as could be imagined. Roy passed away two days before his 90^th birthday.

Both Dawn and I are physically and emotionally exhausted. These days before we leave to spend Christmas in Texas we are trying to recharge our batteries and take care of business here at home. When we got back just a couple of days ago we were met with a stack of mail that was two feet high. We plowed through it, separating the junk from the overdue and important. Today I will be writing checks, paying bills and going to the Post Office.

In the next few days I have to deal with three different doctors – getting their go-ahead to stay alive for another three months and arranging a date to get these pesky cataracts removed from my eyeballs. I want to get that surgery done ASAP because my driver’s license comes up for renewal next July and I don’t want to face any eye test at the DMV with cataracts.

We have been on the go since August and it doesn’t look like there will any break for another month or two. Dawn is terribly tired and concerned for her mother who is 96. I’ve been down this pathway before and I understand what she is going through. Life.

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