I Seem to Be Missing

I am sitting at my computer looking through pictures before I go play tennis. I discover that I didn't post anything on this blog yesterday, breaking a record that has gone on for a couple of months. Not that I was trying to set a record. I was just trying to give myself a chance each morning to write (or type) and reflect (ahem) on things.

Yesterday I was out of the house by a few minutes after seven and not back until about 10:30. Then I had a meeting at twelve. (Which I still need to do the minutes from...why do they call them minutes when these things never take less than an hour? The Hours. There was a cool book and movie. But I digress.)

I took my dad for his pre-op visit to the hospital before his surgery. With picking him up and taking him home it took over three hours.

"Are you an organ donor?" asks the kid filling out paperwork.

My dad looks nonplussed. "I never, I, I think I've worn everything out and I'm not sure anything would be good to anyone."

That's a 'no' son. My mind races. Skin? Bone? Heart? Lungs? Liver? Gee. He's probably right.

Not that he's afraid of talking about dying. He doesn't call the paperwork the boy is copying a "Living Will." He calls it a DNR.

"I don't think I'll get anything done again," he says when we are waiting between visits from various people in the pre-opt exam room

"You will if you are in pain or can't see," I say. "Remember with your back? You said 'try anything!' Now that your vision is impaired you are willing to do this without a second thought to see if it will help."

We visited with no less than eight different people. One typed a computer screen full of stuff that must have been handwritten and faxed by the surgeon. One was the business manager for the anesthesiologist who was responsible for seeing if they would somehow get paid, I think. The anesthesiologist worried about putting him under a general. His walkie-talkie and his phone were calling to him simultaneously from either side of his belt. A small kid with a weird haircut mostly covered by a scrub cap drew blood and gave him an EKG. The EKG waiting room had a copy of The New Yorker from the last presidential election. Not as old as some of the ones in my bathroom, but still.

A long process. But they do have valet parking. Of course, he has to go back to have the actual surgery.

When someone is missing, we think that there is a void but then we adjust. Somebody else does this, that accommodation is made, we decide this was never necessary. Like the visible woman. The blog that is. My five readers wasted time elsewhere yesterday and not much was lost from the world. Do we really miss Fred Thompson and John Edwards in the presidential race now? It's OK Fidel, someone else will take over. You made it over fifty years.

OK, weird mood, huh? If you don't see me for a day or two, don't despair. But I know my duties will be taken up or, like this tome, were never that important anyway.