The waiting

Random thoughts while I have too much time on my hands in the palliative care unit:

• I seem to get my most emotional these days when strangers (nurses, friends of my Dad’s, etc.) are nice to me. Not sure why that is.
• A year or so back, I said that childhood ended when you started looking for long-term care for your mother. If any trace happens to linger, it evaporates when you have to make the decision to let nature take its course as your father approaches the end of his life.
• Death is not a neat and tidy thing.
• My dad is an amazing person who apparently made friends wherever he went. I sometimes wish I’d inherited a little more of that.
• Despite my distaste for Wells Fargo when I banked with them in California, they do have at least one employee in Greensboro who is a human being. Not surprisingly, she was hired during the (pre-First Union) Wachovia era and made things much easier for me Monday than her counterpart at Bank of America did five years ago when I had power of attorney for my uncle.
• Hospital cafeterias are not as bad as their reputations suggest.