Terrible: Dreadful; causing alarm and fear
The conversations with my father are getting shorter and shorter.
"How are you today, pop?" I asked this morning.
"Terrible," he said.
"Pretty sore?" I said. I keep my sentence structures short and sweet. He doesn't want me to talk to him as a general rule and he has no interest in talking to me. I'm not there directly solving what he considers problems primarily because I consider these alleged problems solutions to problems. I'm frankly happy he's in a hospital bed. He's not drinking and he's not falling down. Hate to say it but that's about as good as it gets right now.
"That and it just takes forever to get anything done," he replied. "I spend all my time waiting around."
I do not comment directly to this kind of bitching. I do not reason with people who are basing their position on specious and illogical reasoning. It reminds me of the anecdote in The Book that talks about a guy hitting himself in the head with a hammer and then complaining about the headache. It reminds me of my vociferous objections whenever I got a speeding ticket: illegal speed trap; I always drive that fast on that road; everyone else was driving that fast; the radar actually got the guy in front of/next to/behind me; and so on and so forth, conveniently ignoring the fact that I was . . . you know . . . speeding.
What an awful, slow spiral down. When I get off the phone I take a minute to think of Kenner and his last days in hospice. I need that juxtaposition. I need to remember how my choices can lead to different results.
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