A Sequence of Events

My father passed away on November 28th in 2013. In 2014 the 28th was Thanksgiving and I was worried that I would have trouble with the day. And while others in my family seemed to struggle, even if they hide it fairly well, I found myself no worse off than I had been on Thanksgiving the year prior, where we had a good time but missed the presence of my father who was in a nursing facility recovering from surgery as he had been for some time.

That night, a year prior, we got in our cars and went to visit him, taking him a plate of the Thanksgiving feast. He was very happy that we had come, as he’d been very upset that he would be unable to attend. I was glad we’d gotten everyone to come.

The next day I came to visit him, because I needed him to sign some checks. A few for bills and a couple for Christmas gifts for out of town family, his children from his previous marriage. I didn’t stay long. Then on Saturday I was sick, and being sick I couldn’t go see him, so I called him and told him I couldn’t come by and probably wouldn’t be by on Sunday either. I told him that I loved him, and he said he loved me too. These weren’t things we said often, he and I, and I couldn’t tell you why I said it that day, but I did. I suppose that’s about the best last words to have with someone.

The flu or cold or whatever I had hit me hard, and I was down for the next few days, taking time off work to get well. Then on Wednesday morning my brother called and told me dad had been taken to the hospital. Or maybe he called to tell me about the first incident of dad passing out. I honestly don’t recall the phone calls of that morning. We went to the hospital, my wife and I, both sick and wearing masks to hopefully limit our possible contagion. He was in the ER when we arrived. He’d coded four times, once in the ambulance and three times in the ER, or at least that’s what I recall, and then we was taken to the ICU. He was alive, but dependent on machines. He’d had, they believed, a blood clot, and we waited on a doctor to come assess his brain function, to let us know the chance of recovery.

Later that morning, we had them turn off the machines and allowed my father, whom the doctors gave no chance of recovery, to pass.

So, as I said, Thanksgiving, on the anniversary of his passing, went much more smoothly than expected. By the weekend I was sick again, another flu, and Saturday morning I broke down as I recalled our last conversation. Then on Wednesday after Thanksgiving, I broke again. The date, it seems, doesn’t matter as much as the repeating of a sequence of events. I suspect in the coming years that the Saturday and Wednesday after Thanksgiving will continue to be rough for me, especially if I get the flu.

Over three years ago, someone who had been my best friend for a decade died on Christmas Day. Every year I expect the day to be difficult, and while I have a moment or two of sadness, I’ve never broken down. In 2010, when it happened, we heard about it while driving home from Christmas with the family, and it had snowed, and was still snowing. My wife wishes for a white Christmas every year, and if we every get one I wonder what it will do to me.

Movie Round-Up: December 4th, 2009

I missed last week because it was Thanksgiving and I was sick, but enough about that and more about this week’s movies…

Brothers:

The cast looks good with Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Natalie Portman, but I’ll be honest and say I know nothing about this movie, so let me look it up.  One moment please… hmm, sounds depressing.  Maybe I’ll watching it when it shows up on Netflix or something.  Pass.

Everybody’s Fine:

I went to a screening for this, we arrived early as usual, but the line was so huge that we didn’t get in.  That happens sometimes.  I really do want to see it and might go this weekend.  I love me a good holiday movie about family.

Armored:

So, I saw this last night at a screening.  The short of it: six employees of an armored car company decide they are going to rob their own hauls and things don’t go according to plan.  The thing with a movie like this is that it has been done before.  A lot.  So the point here isn’t really to be original, especially since crazy originality in heist movies tends to lead to implausible stretches of believability, but to simply do the story well.  Armored starts a tad slow, mostly because the movie wants you to be introduced to the characters, their environment, and to almost painfully lay out exactly the reasons why the heist is going to happen now and point out all the reasons why it has to be done this way.  For example, the man in charge of the officers explains that next week they’ll be getting new trucks with GPS, informing you that right now they rely on radio contact and so are blind between scheduled check-ins.  However, once they get the money in the trucks and begin to commit the theft, the movie really picks up, and it does everything from that point on fairly well (except this one chase scene which if I had been the writer I’d have done without and put in a different tension element).  No, Armored probably isn’t worth the full price of admission unless you’ve got the spare cash to burn, but it was fun and well done.  Worth seeing.

Friday isn`t for the faint of heart

The day after Thanksgiving has become known as Black Friday. I’ve said it before, I go shopping on this day. The second reason I go is for some great deals. I’m not the camp outside all night type, so I never get the $100 TVs and things of that nature, but I’m more than happy to take advantage of DVDs under $5 and other such deals to help take the bite out of holiday spending.

The main reason I go out though is that I am, especially during the holiday season, an avid people watcher. I don’t do it as often as I used to, but every now and then I’ll head to the mall and wander around, or find a nice place to sit, and just watch people. The holiday season is great for this, largely because they are so focused on shopping that people rarely catch you watching but also because of that focus they are so interesting to watch. How people deal with crowds and lines and limited quantities, misprinted ads, misunderstood special prices and getting around from here to there and back again. It is a smorgasboard of idiosyncratic behavior of people at their best and their worst, and the two sides of every person struggling from moment to moment over which will win at any given obstacle.

The day after Thanksgiving, to me, is officially the “Christmas Season” and I love me some Christmas. If you do decide to brave the shops this Friday, do everyone a favor… every half hour or so, stop, take in a deep breath, exhale slowly and relax. One missed deal isn’t going to ruin Christmas. If it is, well, you’ve probably got far more problems than the wit and wisdom of a blog will ever be able to solve. Seek professional help.

Black Friday

It’s not just for Fridays anymore!

Seriously. The last few years, the wife and I have gone out and fought the crowds to do some shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving. And amazingly enough, we usually find some good deals. For instance, this year was a slew of DVDs for under $4 each. A few years ago, getting up at 4 A.M. was usually enough. Its just not anymore.

Yesterday, you know, Thursday, we were driving home from Thanksgiving dinner, and we decided, on a lark, to swing by the local Best Buy store. They were closed, but it was 6:30 P.M. and there were at least forty people lined up outside. Seeing as how forty people is enough to exhaust all the available Nintento Wii’s, PS3’s and every front page special from their ad, we decided not to bother. We’d just come in the morning like usual.

Right.

So at 4 A.M. we finish getting McDonald’s breakfast and head to Best Buy. There had to be easily more than five hundred people in line. The Best Buy is in a strip mall… Best Buy, Office Depot, PETsMART, and Sports Authority. The line went all the way down the strip, down the outter wall of the Sports Authority, out into the parking lot, and wrapped one time around the TGI Friday’s.

Target, on the other hand, had about twenty people in line. We went to Target.

Luckily, we didn’t really have our hearts set on any super-mega deals. We just wanted to pick up a few items at a deep discount, and we did. Score! We even went to Best Buy, after the line was gone, and managed to find all the items we wanted still available. Score again!

The only problem was the 2-pack of Ice Age and Ice Age: The Meltdown we bought… I mean, come on, who puts out a 2-pack where one movie is in Widescreen while the other one is in Full Screen. Idiots. So we need to return that. Or not. It was like $8. We might just buy another single copy. No big loss.

24

Around Thanksgiving I happened to stumble on to a sale and some coupons that allowed me to pick up the first season of the TV show ’24’ on DVD for about $12. I missed the show when it was on… I mean, I tried to watch it, but I missed the first episode, then while trying to track down a friend who had it on tape I missed the second, at which point it became too much work, so I gave up. I gave it as a gift to my brother a couple years ago, but he still hasn’t opened it, and he has a “you can’t watch my stuff until I watch my stuff” policy. So, it took a while, but I finally started watching it…

Wow. I had heard good things about the show, but just… wow. I’m only about 9 hours in the 24 and every episode has been interesting and exciting. I am enraptured.

I’m really looking forward to the rest of the season, and hoping later seasons are just as good. I recommend the show to anyone who hasn’t seen it. Its worth it.