ohhhh, the symolism

Camping season, 2009, has drawn to a close. It makes me sad. We got home this morning from what turned out to be the last trip of the year. When we arrived at the park, it was apparent that others had already ended their season. Ours was one of three campsites in the entire park that was occupied. At first it was wnderful! The dog could roam free, we had no one adjacent to us....almost like we were the only ones there. This morning the reality set in.
We know that this park closes, usually at the end of October. The manager had told us that the pipes freezing was used as the gauge. Frozen pipes mean that it is time to blow them out and close the gates for the winter. We woke up this morning to frozen pipes. We would be the last compers of the year.
We tried to milk it. We kept adding wood to our fire, going for walks, anything but gearing up to leave. As our wood ran out, I grew melancholy. The fire was symbolic of our camping season. Flames were out and we were trying to keep them going just a little longer. We sat watching the coals burn out while off in the distance we could hear a tractor picking up picnic tables. They have to be refinished every winter. We watched the burning coals while our tables went away to the shop.
Finally after about an hour, we had to call an end to it all and dowse the burning embers with water, dowsing our monthly getaway in the process. With the coals go our trips to the river, our hot dogs roasted with sticks, our long walks looking for deer, our s'mores, and any chance of seeing the elusive bear.....at least for this year. All will wait until next spring. All we have to get us through the winter is the memory of our camping trips. Finding out that Cooper only like marshmallows that are toasted, eating a little less dinner so we have room later for s'mores, heading to the field early in the morning to see the herd of deer, and waiting patiently and quietly while Jamey tries (and succeeds at) feeding deer from his hand. these memories will all come to life again next spring. But for now, I am left with the memory of that fire burning out my campiing trips.....oh the symolism.

That Time Again

It's that time again. Fall.....the turning of the leaves comes thoughts of the past. It was about this time two years ago when I found out my son was ill. He had his last day in school in mid October. Then he was admitted to the hospital and I was keeping the Interstate hot. I was traveling 400 miles every weekend, never knowing for sure how long I would be away from home. Usually I was away for a long weekend....3-5 days. Then it became apparent why we were staying in an extended stay hotel. We were living in a hotel for 3 weeks. Nights in the hotels, days in the ICU waiting room or in my son's ICU "pod". I would sit there watching him, hoping he might move....a twitch, an eyelid flutter, I watched for anything. He did eventually wake.

When he woke, he was in Hell. He had lost a leg to MRSA and he didn't even know it. AIDS wasn't bad enough, now this. Poor kid. It took him a few days to realize the leg was gone. I guess the meds were keeping him from noticing he no longer had his right leg. When he finally realized, the poor nurse took the brunt of it. He still wasn't coherent. I think he thought she did it. He started biting her and trying to hit her. I felt so bad for her and for him. He didn't know. He was so incapacitated from the meds and all the surgeries.....he just didn't know. After 13 surgeries in 20 days, he was no longer the young man I had seen 4 months earlier. He was no longer able to speak above a whisper. The ventilator had scarred his vocal cords horribly. He didn't have the energy to exchange banter with me, as was our way of communicating with each other. He didn't have his sense of humor, although he did try. He tried for me. It took all he had to talk to me or ask a question.

My son was a demanding patient for the hospital staff. He had questions, he didn't understand what was happening or when, and frankly, he was bored out of his mind after 2 months in the hospital. He was just trying to understand and put the pieces together.

He was finally released just before Christmas. He went to stay with his Dad where he could get treatment without living in a nursing home. He was literally half the man he had been only 4 months before. He had gone from 220 lbs. to 114 lbs. upon release from the hospital. That was the last time I saw my son alive.

There is a piece of me that wishes I had not seen him...a sallow shell of his former self. He was gaunt, weak, and didn't even look like anyone I knew. My baby was an AIDS patient and seeing him brought that home to me. I cried in the car on the way to his hotel. I had to pull it together before I saw him again at the hotel. I couldn't let him see me cry. I managed to pull it together long enough to go in to register them. While we were doing that, he was getting sick in the parking lot.

I hate that disease. I hate what it did to my baby. He was on his way to his dream. Going to school to achieve a goal. He wanted to own a small neighborhood bakery and watch it grow. He was in the pastry program at Le Cordon Bleu. For the first time in his young life he was loving school. That got ripped from him. He never got a chance to do a lot of things. ..drive, own a home, go to Disneyland, play a slot machine, be in love, or have a family. I hate that disease.

I hate this time of year.