![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
last few days
First I note to myself that Kamagaya Fighters Fest is infact March 1 which means I will miss it due to Puzzle Hunt. Oops.
So, I last wrote on Friday night from Aiton's...
Saturday I woke up and we went over to Chuckie's house for breakfast. She actually made a casserole for me, but I didn't know whether there was any point in me taking it to the shiva, so I didn't. I talked to Aviva (her sister) on the phone for a bit, and since Aviva has been living in Seattle for the last 6 years we feel kind of dumb for never meeting up. Go figure.
Aiton dropped me off downtown, and I met up with my brother at the apartment building... and so Danny and I spent a couple of hours going through stuff. Me, I mostly finished cleaning out boxes of stuff from my room (which is done now I think), and also going through some of dad's stuff. Danny threw out a ton of old computer books and boxes. I actually ended up not taking the Apple //e after all, it seems... I feel sad about that but... I did take my dad's old license plate. Long story but it seemed totally appropriate. My brother took my dad's old wallet, which was full of old pictures and IDs. We found a box of stuff from when he was in the army with two dogtags and I finally got something I can wear -- I took the dogtag with the long chain and Danny took the one with the short chain, so I'm wearing it around my neck now.
Oh yeah, showed Danny my dad's little digital camera... it had all of these photos Dad had taken of himself over the course of several months, if you scrolled through them on the camera backwards he went from Cancer Man to Healthy Dad. He took them all from the same angle, in front of the star chart poster on the wall, so it really was kind of disturbing. I almost want to post them online just to show like "this is my dad on cancer", but I'm not sure that's a good idea.
I INSISTED on going to Jim's for a last cheesesteak, even though it was Saturday afternoon. We drove down there on our way out, parked next to the Old Pine community center, and ended up waiting in line there for like 30 minutes for me to get a sandwich to go, pointing out all of the autographs on the wall and whatever. Danny had never been there before so in a way it was good that I could show him a place that had meant so much to me in all the years I stayed in Philly, but we were worried we'd be late getting back to my uncle's. I also bought birch beer for him to try.
Got back to uncle Jack's house, had dinner with the family... and then around 6:30-7ish, people started showing up for the shiva. I finally got to talk to my cousin Todd, who is the same age as me, but who I hadn't seen since my bat mitzvah... turns out he's back in town working at philly.com now. Saw other family like that too, it's neat to find out what everyone is up to now. Aiton also came to the shiva, and so did Stewart Clamen, though I didn't see him until during the service.
Oh yeah, so there was a shiva service, and the same awesome rabbi from the funeral, who is the rabbi for the synagogue my uncle Jack goes to, led the service. I can still apparently read Hebrew a lot better than I expected, though I also have little to no vocabulary. The rabbi asked if anyone wanted to speak, and since my brother spoke at the funeral, I decided to get up and talk... I told what I refer to now as the "the iPod in the chemo room" story, which I should probably just make a separate entry for. I don't know if I didn't get as many laughs as I wanted because I was telling it badly or because people didn't know it was SUPPOSED to be really funny and people were supposed to laugh at it. See, my dad always liked to be a smartass about everything and when he had tough things to deal with, he tried to make jokes about it. I kind of got that trait from him too.
Which is why I found it kind of interesting that my grandpa (my grandma's second husband) and my uncles (my dad's half brothers) were crying a lot, and my brother and I were just kind of like "umm... well... we don't like crying in front of people..." I wonder if it's hereditary.
Anyway, my uncle Dennis, the rabbi, kind of hijacked the service and talked for a while and even he was like "if Mike was still alive he would have told me to shut up by now, so I think I'll shut up", and he started chanting the next prayer in the book.
After the service I got to talk to Stewart and Aiton at least... I brought them over to say hi to my brother, since at least they had MET him before. Danny didn't invite any of his friends up, I guess it's a bit far for him and even the ones in the area. My family kept asking who the hell they were and I'm like "hey, these are MY friends", since half of the people at the shiva were my uncle Jack's neighbors in the first place. Jack was hit really hard by this all and it totally is great to see how many friends he has and how much they cared to come by and make food and just be supportive in this time.
My family vaguely picked on Aiton a bit, which isn't too strange, and he put up with it really well, and even later remarked that my grandpa is amazing. Which is true. I hadn't thought about it before, but he's going to be 91 years old in May... and is still walking up stairs on his own, and doesn't need to take a billion pills before eating food, and is still chasing around his grandchildren. I don't see a lot of 90-year-olds so I don't have much of a reference point, BUT there was a good point because when I said goodbye to my DAD, I didn't expect to see him the next year, but when I said goodbye to GRANDPA, I fully expect to see him live to be 100 or so.
Aiton gave me a ride back downtown (I made him stop at a grocery store on the way so I could get Tastykakes), he dropped me off around 11:30pm, and I talked to the front desk and asked if they could call me a cab for 3:30am or so, and they were like "sure, anything for Mike's daughter". Then I hung out in my dad's apartment for the last 4 hours ever. I got a suitcase out of his closet and packed it with the stuff I was taking back to Seattle from there, which turned out to mostly be papers and whatnot from my room, plus some of my dad's CDs, a tripod, a few other things. Yeah, I basically turned all of my crap in Philly into a box and a suitcase of stuff at this point. Goodbye childhood.
I called some people on the phone so I could make plans for Sunday, ended up talking to Jason L for about an hour. Then I just hung out for like 3 hours. I played with the new mini-HP, set it up and named it Succotash, which is inadvertantly Carl's fault -- I'd thought to name it either "Dad" or "Mike's Mini HP" which is what my dad would have named it, but Carl (on IM) said "why not name it Bacon Double Cheeseburger?" which WAS infact a good idea and since I was still thinking of how annoyed I was that my dad didn't eat the lima beans I had gotten for him...
I should note that when I came back to the apartment, I looked at my dad's chair, didn't see him, yelled towards his bedroom "HI DADDY, I'M HOME", got no response, started crying, and walked over there, looked at his empty bed and yelled "AND WHY THE HELL AREN'T YOU HERE?" and had to sit down for about 10 minutes before I could really do anything. I found myself sort of just babbling at my dad, kind of... when I went back into his room at one point I kept hearing movement from various things (the airfilters are still on, some other stuff) and got so freaked out I couldn't go back in there at all.
I went on his iMac and basically just copied down the last 2-3 years he had of photos, which were pretty much all of family. So that is good, because I didn't have a lot of photos of my family, and now I do.
Around 3:30am the cab showed up and I sort of said goodbye to everything there -- it's still hard to believe that I WILL NEVER GO BACK TO MY DAD'S PLACE. I have no real "home" anymore. It was DARK outside and I got into the cab and went to the airport. We got there at 3:55am and it was too early to check in so I had to wait a bit. My hands, which were dry and chapped all weekend, were REALLY killing me by that point.
Fell asleep in a chair in the Philly airport for about an hour (there's supposed to be free wireless but it seems that at 4am it is not working -- hell, the entire airport was DESERTED and nothing was really open), then got on a plane, fell asleep on that plane, got to IAD, got some Starbucks and waited around and then got on another plane and slept through most of that flight as well. I guess you could say that for ME, a 6am flight out of Philly is pretty much a reverse redeye, since staying up until 3am is no big deal for me. At least the flights went well and none were delayed. I saw a lot of people wearing Steelers gear in IAD, too.
Oren picked me up from the airport in Seattle, and we ended up in Ballard and got lunch at Lombardi's with Carl and Zach, and shortly after that Zach and I went to watch the Super Bowl out in Redmond, which I already talked about. I kept putting moisturizer on my hands and now they are actually mostly okay, though. Whew.
Now it is Monday and I am about to head out for some last-minute shopping, then will do a lot of laundry and packing. I'm not stressed yet but I'm sure in about 10 hours I'll be going nuts. Tomorrow I fly back to Tokyo...
So, I last wrote on Friday night from Aiton's...
Saturday I woke up and we went over to Chuckie's house for breakfast. She actually made a casserole for me, but I didn't know whether there was any point in me taking it to the shiva, so I didn't. I talked to Aviva (her sister) on the phone for a bit, and since Aviva has been living in Seattle for the last 6 years we feel kind of dumb for never meeting up. Go figure.
Aiton dropped me off downtown, and I met up with my brother at the apartment building... and so Danny and I spent a couple of hours going through stuff. Me, I mostly finished cleaning out boxes of stuff from my room (which is done now I think), and also going through some of dad's stuff. Danny threw out a ton of old computer books and boxes. I actually ended up not taking the Apple //e after all, it seems... I feel sad about that but... I did take my dad's old license plate. Long story but it seemed totally appropriate. My brother took my dad's old wallet, which was full of old pictures and IDs. We found a box of stuff from when he was in the army with two dogtags and I finally got something I can wear -- I took the dogtag with the long chain and Danny took the one with the short chain, so I'm wearing it around my neck now.
Oh yeah, showed Danny my dad's little digital camera... it had all of these photos Dad had taken of himself over the course of several months, if you scrolled through them on the camera backwards he went from Cancer Man to Healthy Dad. He took them all from the same angle, in front of the star chart poster on the wall, so it really was kind of disturbing. I almost want to post them online just to show like "this is my dad on cancer", but I'm not sure that's a good idea.
I INSISTED on going to Jim's for a last cheesesteak, even though it was Saturday afternoon. We drove down there on our way out, parked next to the Old Pine community center, and ended up waiting in line there for like 30 minutes for me to get a sandwich to go, pointing out all of the autographs on the wall and whatever. Danny had never been there before so in a way it was good that I could show him a place that had meant so much to me in all the years I stayed in Philly, but we were worried we'd be late getting back to my uncle's. I also bought birch beer for him to try.
Got back to uncle Jack's house, had dinner with the family... and then around 6:30-7ish, people started showing up for the shiva. I finally got to talk to my cousin Todd, who is the same age as me, but who I hadn't seen since my bat mitzvah... turns out he's back in town working at philly.com now. Saw other family like that too, it's neat to find out what everyone is up to now. Aiton also came to the shiva, and so did Stewart Clamen, though I didn't see him until during the service.
Oh yeah, so there was a shiva service, and the same awesome rabbi from the funeral, who is the rabbi for the synagogue my uncle Jack goes to, led the service. I can still apparently read Hebrew a lot better than I expected, though I also have little to no vocabulary. The rabbi asked if anyone wanted to speak, and since my brother spoke at the funeral, I decided to get up and talk... I told what I refer to now as the "the iPod in the chemo room" story, which I should probably just make a separate entry for. I don't know if I didn't get as many laughs as I wanted because I was telling it badly or because people didn't know it was SUPPOSED to be really funny and people were supposed to laugh at it. See, my dad always liked to be a smartass about everything and when he had tough things to deal with, he tried to make jokes about it. I kind of got that trait from him too.
Which is why I found it kind of interesting that my grandpa (my grandma's second husband) and my uncles (my dad's half brothers) were crying a lot, and my brother and I were just kind of like "umm... well... we don't like crying in front of people..." I wonder if it's hereditary.
Anyway, my uncle Dennis, the rabbi, kind of hijacked the service and talked for a while and even he was like "if Mike was still alive he would have told me to shut up by now, so I think I'll shut up", and he started chanting the next prayer in the book.
After the service I got to talk to Stewart and Aiton at least... I brought them over to say hi to my brother, since at least they had MET him before. Danny didn't invite any of his friends up, I guess it's a bit far for him and even the ones in the area. My family kept asking who the hell they were and I'm like "hey, these are MY friends", since half of the people at the shiva were my uncle Jack's neighbors in the first place. Jack was hit really hard by this all and it totally is great to see how many friends he has and how much they cared to come by and make food and just be supportive in this time.
My family vaguely picked on Aiton a bit, which isn't too strange, and he put up with it really well, and even later remarked that my grandpa is amazing. Which is true. I hadn't thought about it before, but he's going to be 91 years old in May... and is still walking up stairs on his own, and doesn't need to take a billion pills before eating food, and is still chasing around his grandchildren. I don't see a lot of 90-year-olds so I don't have much of a reference point, BUT there was a good point because when I said goodbye to my DAD, I didn't expect to see him the next year, but when I said goodbye to GRANDPA, I fully expect to see him live to be 100 or so.
Aiton gave me a ride back downtown (I made him stop at a grocery store on the way so I could get Tastykakes), he dropped me off around 11:30pm, and I talked to the front desk and asked if they could call me a cab for 3:30am or so, and they were like "sure, anything for Mike's daughter". Then I hung out in my dad's apartment for the last 4 hours ever. I got a suitcase out of his closet and packed it with the stuff I was taking back to Seattle from there, which turned out to mostly be papers and whatnot from my room, plus some of my dad's CDs, a tripod, a few other things. Yeah, I basically turned all of my crap in Philly into a box and a suitcase of stuff at this point. Goodbye childhood.
I called some people on the phone so I could make plans for Sunday, ended up talking to Jason L for about an hour. Then I just hung out for like 3 hours. I played with the new mini-HP, set it up and named it Succotash, which is inadvertantly Carl's fault -- I'd thought to name it either "Dad" or "Mike's Mini HP" which is what my dad would have named it, but Carl (on IM) said "why not name it Bacon Double Cheeseburger?" which WAS infact a good idea and since I was still thinking of how annoyed I was that my dad didn't eat the lima beans I had gotten for him...
I should note that when I came back to the apartment, I looked at my dad's chair, didn't see him, yelled towards his bedroom "HI DADDY, I'M HOME", got no response, started crying, and walked over there, looked at his empty bed and yelled "AND WHY THE HELL AREN'T YOU HERE?" and had to sit down for about 10 minutes before I could really do anything. I found myself sort of just babbling at my dad, kind of... when I went back into his room at one point I kept hearing movement from various things (the airfilters are still on, some other stuff) and got so freaked out I couldn't go back in there at all.
I went on his iMac and basically just copied down the last 2-3 years he had of photos, which were pretty much all of family. So that is good, because I didn't have a lot of photos of my family, and now I do.
Around 3:30am the cab showed up and I sort of said goodbye to everything there -- it's still hard to believe that I WILL NEVER GO BACK TO MY DAD'S PLACE. I have no real "home" anymore. It was DARK outside and I got into the cab and went to the airport. We got there at 3:55am and it was too early to check in so I had to wait a bit. My hands, which were dry and chapped all weekend, were REALLY killing me by that point.
Fell asleep in a chair in the Philly airport for about an hour (there's supposed to be free wireless but it seems that at 4am it is not working -- hell, the entire airport was DESERTED and nothing was really open), then got on a plane, fell asleep on that plane, got to IAD, got some Starbucks and waited around and then got on another plane and slept through most of that flight as well. I guess you could say that for ME, a 6am flight out of Philly is pretty much a reverse redeye, since staying up until 3am is no big deal for me. At least the flights went well and none were delayed. I saw a lot of people wearing Steelers gear in IAD, too.
Oren picked me up from the airport in Seattle, and we ended up in Ballard and got lunch at Lombardi's with Carl and Zach, and shortly after that Zach and I went to watch the Super Bowl out in Redmond, which I already talked about. I kept putting moisturizer on my hands and now they are actually mostly okay, though. Whew.
Now it is Monday and I am about to head out for some last-minute shopping, then will do a lot of laundry and packing. I'm not stressed yet but I'm sure in about 10 hours I'll be going nuts. Tomorrow I fly back to Tokyo...
no subject
no subject
Isn't there a movie out about that?
Most 90-somethings aren't alive, so your granddad is doing pretty great. Mine could still run a bit at that age; now at 94, he can't run, but he can walk. And the great-grandkids are older so they know not to run so hard.
I continue to hug you and wish you safe travels.
no subject
no subject
But yes, I don't think it's something I'm going to do.
no subject
no subject