Sickened, Part I

I really don't feel well.

It's less than an hour before I have to leave the house to teach my 101 class on West campus this morning, and I've been awake for a little more than five hours. Since waking up, every hour I have felt progressively worse. My allergies were bothering me, originally, which is nothing new -- but after those (mostly) subsided, I began to feel more and more ill. I'm exhausted and tired when I shouldn't be; I slept for nine hours, after all. I can't seem to snap out of it and "wake up," and I have no energy whatsoever.

I got dressed two hours early so that perhaps I could subconsciously trick my body into waking up more, letting it know that no matter how tired I was or how shitty I felt, I wasn't going to give in and go back to bed. I can't anyway; because I canceled my class on Thursday, there's no way I could cancel it today unless there was some sort of major emergency or catastrophe. No matter how bad I feel, I have to be there, give my lecture, and then come home. I can't avoid it.

It was at about this point where I realized I was feeling more weird than usual, and reached up to feel my head. Yep, it feels like I've got a low-grade fever. When I put on my deodorant this morning? Swollen lymph nodes under my arms (and now that I've checked my neck, there too). It appears that I'm coming down with something. Who knows what, but something.

You can set your watch to it; I always get sick around this time of year, I thought to myself. That would explain why I can't get any energy despite the amount of coffee I've drank thus far, and why I feel like absolute cat shit. I told Daisy -- who was sick over the weekend after going home anyway -- that I'm pretty sure I'm getting sick. The telltale signs are there. Of course, it always, always strikes me at the worst possible time (not that there's ever a good time) and during the time where I have the most stuff to do and the so-far-longest week of the entire semester.

Unless I feel leaps-and-bounds better by around 10:30 or so, I'll be coming home and going back to bed, putting everything else on hold. The work I have to do today, tonight, and tomorrow can all just wait until I've rested up some more. If I finish stuff on schedule, I do. If I don't, I don't. I can only do so much, and I'm not even halfway through my week yet. This week is going to seem ten times longer than normal by the time I'm done with it, and getting sick during it isn't going to help me at all, but it's not like I can force my body to shake off an illness.

"Babe, everything will get done in time," Daisy told me earlier tonight. "It might not be when as how you wanted it, but, the world is going to keep spinning. Everything important will get done."

Yeah, I know. That's the problem. The world is going to keep spinning, and time is still going to continue forward relentlessly no matter how I feel. I desperately want things to just fucking stop. I can't guarantee everything is going to get done, because I'm only physically and psychologically able to handle so much, and my stress/anxiety levels are already reaching critical mass with the events of the past week or so. There's only so much I have time for, so much I can take, and more keeps getting piled on my plate. More bills, more stress, more problems, sickness, and work. More things to worry about. More student issues to deal with. Another weird noise in the car. Another set of papers or journals to collect and grade. An eye injury that wants to take its sweet time in healing up.

I just desperately want to sleep. Part of that is because yes, I'm tired and not feeling well, but part of it is that I'm rapidly spiraling downward into that place where I just want to give the middle finger to all of my duties and responsibilities and retreat into solitude and silence where nobody, and nothing, can bother me. Most of my friends don't even know about my sister's death -- one of them asked me about it yesterday at the Chuck Palahniuk Q&A because she'd heard rumors around the department about it (again, word travels fast there). I've tried to stay off social media for the most part, and have barely used my computer at all except to write here, enter grades,  message Daisy, or check the email address I've specifically set up for my students (since my school email doesn't work correctly most of the time). I'm trying to keep myself detached as possible so that I don't get overwhelmed, and that tipping point is getting closer every day -- even more so now that apparently I'm getting sick. Even as the time nears closer to leave the house this morning, and my body/mind both know it, I'm not feeling better. Usually my body will perk up a bit in preparation to leave. Not today, apparently.

I told Daisy I'm more than likely going to come home and go directly back to bed without even touching the computer, so if she doesn't hear from me until tonight, that's why. She worries about me way too much, but I understand why she does. I told her I just want to get the day over with so I can come home, and if my body wants to crap out on me after that, it can. Screw it. I've reached the point of no longer giving a shit about the day.

The Day I Met Chuck Palahniuk

Fall semester: day thirty-eight

Yesterday...well, yesterday was an interesting day, to say the least.

Look, my emotional state and my sense of well-being has been all over the map over the course of the past week or so. I've dealt with death, an eye injury, the ramping-up of the semester leading into midterms (tomorrow is the official "midterm date," apparently), and the impending start of my evening 210 class on Thursday. I do have more to write on that subject, of course, but first comes the big news.

Yesterday afternoon I attended an hour-long Q&A session with famous author Chuck Palahniuk. The Q&A session was attended by many current GTAs, some in their first year, some of them getting ready to graduate. Several of us there had graduated already, or were otherwise adjuncts or no longer GTAs. Those of us in the loop knew of Chuck's visit to town about a month ago, including myself, though we kept it rather hush-hush (for obvious reasons).  As a result, there were less than fifteen of us there, with only two or three of us -- including myself -- who were actual faculty. None of the tenured faculty or other instructors were there. I later found that the meetup was supposed to be for the current GTAs (though it was open to basically anyone) in the English department, though as it was set up by the EGSA (English Graduate Student Association), technically higher-up instructors weren't allowed to be there because they're not supposed to be at EGSA events. But, again, it's not like this was some sort of formal EGSA meeting or anything. Actually, I was really surprised that some of my friends and colleagues who were really interested in the Q&A weren't there, though some of them had good reasons -- Parker, for example, is behind on his grading and is stressed out over his comps and thesis.

So, anyway. Cutting to the point. There were about fifteen of us there total, around a big set of rectangular tables in the downstairs boardroom. It was actually a rather intimate room for a sit-down session with the man -- I was expecting a lecture-hall format or something like that. Instead, due to sheer luck of where all of us sat down at the tables, I sat three feet from Chuck Palahniuk for the entirety of the Q&A session.

When he came in, he was introduced by not only our EGSA leader but by the lady who runs the local bookstore who was sponsoring/in charge of this stop on his tour -- he's on a reading tour, the "Adult Bedtime Stories" tour, in support of his new book, Doomed. The Q&A for us was good because, unlike most campus-related events, the actual reading tour event was not free to the public; tickets were $25 each and included a signed copy of the new book in the price. We got in there, and once he was introduced, his publicist was there with him and announced that because this was a special event and we were all here to talk with Chuck, all of us in attendance at the Q&A would receive free admission to the reading event (we'd be put "on the list," so to speak) and we'd receive a free signed copy of the book there at the Q&A. Chuck signed mine in front of me and handed it to me. Which, let me tell you, was not only super-nice and generous, but surprised the shit out of all of us.

As for the Q&A itself, it was really good. He was so soft-spoken, scientific in his responses, and incredibly receptive to all of our questions. I got to ask him questions about the graphic novel sequel to Fight Club, which he announced at Comic-Con this summer, and asked him about his arrangements with Playboy publishing his short stories and excerpts from his novels and how that came about. Others asked him about his writing process, if he thinks he has a responsibility to live up to his audience's expectations or wants, his stories and experiences while touring, etc. It was one of the most interesting events I've ever been a part of, and certainly the most fascinating experience I've had as a writer since I've been at the university. While a lot of people outside the realm of writing, popular fiction, and pop culture probably don't really know who Palahniuk is aside from "oh, he wrote Fight Club?" ...well, for those of us who are writers and are otherwise fans of the man's work, this is the equivalent of meeting a movie star or one of the Beatles or something along those lines, and it was extremely hard not to bow down to him and thank him for reinvigorating my love of writing. Palahniuk, along with other "cult following" contemporary writers like T.C. Boyle (and to a lesser extent, Don DeLillo), are really the reason I decided to continue to write, to continue to follow that path. I've read so much of Palahniuk and Boyle's work that my writing style, when I try to write fiction (read: very rarely) tends to emulate one or the other subconsciously. Of those influences, I've always cited Palahniuk as my largest one. He's the writer I've always wished I could be.

Part of why he was able to do the Q&A with us this afternoon (aside from a large amount of finagling from the head of the EGSA) was because his tour -- which I linked to above -- started tonight, here in Wichita. Why he'd want to start his tour in Wichita of all places is beyond me; I'm surprised nobody asked that question, actually. This probably afforded him a bit more time than he'd normally have before other tour stops to actually talk to people like us.

When the Q&A session ended, I stuck around for a few minutes, along with the head of the EGSA, and had a nice, quiet conversation with him about the perceived death of the printed book, working in academia, and the job market for writers and professors before he had to go. It was really cool, actually. I'm surprised I didn't stutter or become super-nervous throughout it -- he is, obviously, the most famous person I've ever met and had a conversation with, that's for damn sure.

As for the actual reading that I'd basically been given a free "backstage pass" sort of access to attend, I didn't go to it because I have to teach this morning. I told those who were going that if they wanted to use my name (because I was on the list, but it's not like Chuck or the promoters knew who I was) to let their significant other go with them, or to let someone who wasn't able to make it to the Q&A go, to do so and go in my stead. I was really tired and my eye was bothering me (fatigue), which didn't necessarily make me want to attend the event even though I was already there and on campus for it. The reading was at 7, I think. I was home and in bed, asleep, by 4:30. It was enough for me to meet him and get to talk to him in private conversation after the Q&A; the story he said he was reading tonight appears in Playboy next month, which means I'll get to read it anyway. I subscribe, of course. Just renewed my subscription a few weeks ago, actually.

So...yeah. Damn, what an experience.

I stuck around the department for a little bit before going home, as mentioned before. I talked to the Director this morning about my student who had a first-eight-weeks final exam before or during my first Thursday night class, and discussed my options. If there's one student in that situation, there's bound to be more, and I'm not going to ask students to skip a final in order to attend my class (that would be a huge dick move) nor would I ask them to come to a three-hour class directly after they take one or more finals that day -- they'll be frazzled and burnt-out anyway, and I'd be in there trying to cover a syllabus, a workbook, and their first assignment all in one session because of fall break canceling our class for another week.

"If I have a handful of students dealing with their first eight week classes' finals," I told the Director, "or even midterm exams that are 'big deal' events, I have a contingency plan -- they're going to have to turn in their first papers, the email assignment, on the next class anyway, so about all I can do in class on Thursday night anyway is cover what needs to be covered and then give them that assignment. If I have to, I can do that via Blackboard if I have to cancel class, and then allow them to rewrite the email assignment by the next class if they do poorly on it, I suppose."

"You're in a tight situation here," the Director said. "But that's probably a good idea if it comes to that. The problem with the 210 class, as with a lot of other classes in the department, is that it's back-heavy. They're going to be doing a lot of work over a very short timeframe, since the big assignments come during the second half of the class. That's even more of a problem in an eight-week course."

"Oh, I know," I replied. "I have 22 students enrolled right now. I doubt I'll have half that many by the end of the semester. The workload will crush a lot of them."

Added to that, many of the students appear to be non-traditional students, as I've looked down my detailed roster (which lists birthdates and dates of enrollment, etc). Non-traditional students generally tend to have less time to do work in classes like this, as they have jobs, families, etc. The class curriculum is rather strict, just like a real business environment would be. Because it's a much shorter class, the absence policy is twice as strict, and the workload is doubled. These students will either rise to the occasion, or they'll drop the course/fail it. It is absolutely inevitable that I'll lose some of them one way or another. I've already had some adding/dropping the class leading up to this point in the semester, so who knows how stable my roster will even be between now and the end of the semester.

So, we'll see what happens. If I have more than a few students who have exams or other issues for Thursday night, I'll more than likely cancel the class's first day and reconvene on the 17th. I'm so tired and burnt-out by the semester thus far that I actually hope this happens. Staying on West campus all day on Thursday, right before fall break starts, is going to feel like imprisonment, or like I'm sitting in purgatory. I'll have some work to do, yes, but it's not enough stuff to do to occupy me for nine hours before that class starts in the evening. Not on the first day, anyway. I'm in a sort of lull right now when it comes to student work -- I'm giving my other classes the fall break to finish up their papers, so it's not like I have grading to do. I'll have my 011 students' journals to go through, but it's not like I'm going to lug those to West campus with me on Thursday -- especially not as I'll be returning the 101 students' journals that day as well, and will already have to lug those back in.

Make no mistake -- this is a long week. I will come home this morning after teaching not only with a large bag full of journals, but with four workshop copies to edit through as well. I need to mow the grass (yes, still), as the weather's nice, but that's going to depend heavily on my energy levels and my ability to do anything aside from student work. While my allergies haven't been that bad over the past few days, upon getting up in the overnight hours tonight, they've made me miserable. Combined with an eye that's still blurry and a general malaise about the semester as a whole, not to mention the slowly-waning grief over my sister, this is another one of those weeks where I just have to keep my head down and run through it like a charging bull, because if I don't, I won't have the motivation to actually go about my tasks.

All I want to do, really, is hole up in my house and sleep. A lot. Sleep for days. And yet, that is the one thing I cannot do. I can't get my eye to heal any faster than it's actually doing (which, again, I can't tell if it's actually healing or not, since my vision doesn't really get better or worse), and it's driving me absolutely nuts. I just want to see normally again, and when I'm tired/fatigued, said vision is that much blurrier. Some days it seems like I can see a little more clearly out of it, and then I get tired and/or actually sleep, and wake up with it "reset" to what it was the night it happened. No pain or anything, though, unless I get really fatigued, which makes both eyes ache because my body screams at me to go back to bed when I can't. I slept nine hours last night, and I'm still incredibly tired now. It's as if no matter how much or how little rest I get, it's never enough. I'm not having trouble sleeping anymore, but from this point through December it's going to be more about finding time to actually do it which will work into my hectic schedule, a schedule that will basically triple my time outside the house every week because of that night class. Today is the last Tuesday where I'll be home before 11AM until finals week, and that thought alone fills me with fatigue.

On the plus side, I was told yesterday morning that unless enrollment takes a massive plunge in the spring (something that isn't expected to happen at all), I'm already set up to keep teaching at the university again starting in January. Unless something happens between now and then, and/or I find more work or a better opportunity sometime in the next two months or so, that will more than likely be what happens. Obviously, Daisy and I aren't exactly huge fans of this prospect, but it will keep me financially stable and paying the bills, biding time and surviving until the wedding. As for past spring, and after the wedding? Who knows. Everything right now is pretty much up in the air. It's stressful enough just to keep my head above water as it is. I still have to request deferment on my student loans, or at the very least change the payback schedule to the least amount possible, so that I can survive once they start coming due around Thanksgiving.

On the plus side, I get paid on Friday. That will allow me to breathe a little easier, as most of the money from my last paycheck went to bills and to the shopping I did when Daisy was here last week. I don't really need to go shopping again soon, since I have plenty of food and commodities around the house, but I am ever-so-desperately just gunning for that break that's coming up. I just want the time off.

Frigid

Fall semester: day thirty-six

It's cold this morning. I don't know what it is supposed to get up to this afternoon, but this morning, it's cold. It's 41 degrees outside. I have not yet turned on the furnace (nor do I plan to), but I have broken out my old, trusty bathrobe and a pair of fleece pants. Oh, and my slippers. This time of year is difficult to dress for; you can freeze in the morning and then be sweating through your clothing by the afternoon. I haven't switched out my wardrobes yet, either -- mainly because it was 90 last week, and who knows if that'll happen again. I don't tend to mess with my clothing until I'm sure it's going to stay one set of temperatures versus another. In the spring, of course, warmer weather came late (if you'll recall, it was snowing in May right before finals week) so I tend to be a little wary of switching out wardrobes until I absolutely need to.

The Chuck Palahniuk Q&A runs from 12:30 to 2. I am teaching (or, well, supposed to teach, but class never runs the full time) until 12:15, after which I'll get to go to this little Q&A session and then come home. Even if it runs the full time or runs long, I should still be home by around 3 or so. I told Daisy that I have minimal work to do for my students -- possibly one or two more late rewrites to grade -- so, depending on how tired I am upon returning home, I may go to sleep.

I don't have anything to do for my students tomorrow; since I had to cancel class on Thursday, all of my lesson planning is already finished and ready to go, since they're the same plans I would've taught then. I've not had to modify the schedule any, despite fall break looming around the corner -- luckily, we only have four workshop copies to go through this time on Thursday, and then should have plenty of time left over to do peer-review with everyone not in the workshop group. I've volunteered to stick around after class (since I'll be there anyway) to look over anyone's papers with my extra time in order to make up for canceling class last week.

My eye, remarkably, seems a little better this morning. Yes, it's still blurry, but it seems like it's a little clearer compared to earlier this weekend. I don't know. I think a lot of it depends on how tired or fatigued I am at any given time, and how much sleep I've gotten. Daisy's sister had a jar of molten baby food explode into her eyes about a year ago, and her vision returned to normal several weeks later. The Pineapple Incident wasn't anywhere near as brutal as that, so I have hope that perhaps it's starting to heal up a bit more.

Really, all I can focus on (no pun intended) right now is getting through this week. I have a lot to do, including grading journals all afternoon tomorrow, collecting another set on Wednesday and grading them, and teaching my night class for the first time on Thursday (I think; I haven't heard back from the Director on what he thinks I should do). And again, I'm still dealing with grief and an injured, though apparently healing, eye.

I haven't heard back from my oldest sister; I'm not sure I will anytime soon.

"Give her time," Daisy said. "She's going through a lot. I thought your letter to her was very sweet and appropriate."

I'm giving her all the time she needs -- I'm not going to bother her, as I mentioned before. I grieve in a much different way than she has been, I would imagine.

On that note, I need to leave the house in about five minutes. I look forward to the end of the week, and am very relieved that this time next Monday morning, I will still be asleep and waking up naturally whenever my body chooses to do so and not to the sound of an alarm clock at 5AM.

The Aftermath, Part II

My eye, again this morning, is no better or worse. I'm beginning to wonder if it's actually going to heal any more than it already has, or if I'm permanently going to have a low-grade blurriness in it with everything I do. Again, there's not like I can do anything about it; it doesn't hurt, it doesn't ache, it doesn't do anything but be blurry. But it's a huge pain in the ass. If it heals, it heals. If it doesn't, there's really nothing I can do except for (I assume) some sort of weird-ass surgery somewhere down the road. Lasik to burn off the scar tissue, or something. Who knows.

"You'll know in a few weeks or a month," Daisy said, "and you can go from there."

Yes, I suppose this is true, though my eyes are pretty damn important. I'm a professor. I have to be able to read and grade papers without blurriness or issues. I have to be able to see to drive normally and still keep my hyper-vigilance when on the road, because Kansas drivers are incredibly fucking stupid. On Thursday night, I have to be able to see to drive home in the dark with no streetlights or road lights for seven or eight miles when I return from my evening class. While I can see to drive just fine (I've been driving normally since I hurt my eye with no problems at all), even with perfect vision I hate driving at night where there are no lights whatsoever -- like my drive through the countryside coming back home from West campus.

There is that issue as well. Yesterday I sent a message to all of my 210 students on Blackboard, telling them to purchase the books for and prepare for my class on Thursday, because once we get in there we have to start proverbially moving as soon as our feet hit the ground. This is because it's an eight-week course, we have fall break interrupting our class for a full week, and we have another full week off over Thanksgiving when I'll be gone. Time is short, and there's very little breathing room for dilly-dallying.

Soon after, I received an email from one of my students in that course, confirming that we were starting on this coming Thursday and telling me if that were true, he wouldn't be able to make it because he has other eight-week-course final exams that day.

What?

Okay. I don't know what this means. The schedule says the class runs from October 10 to December 5. I can only go by my schedule. By that schedule, I assume that means that since Thursday is the 10th, and the class is held on Tuesday/Thursday evenings, even with fall break starting the next day, the first class should be held that night. Yet, if there are first-eight-week final exams being held on that day, and those exams clash with the time I'd begin teaching the course, I don't know. Again, I only know what the schedule tells me, I've never taught this class before, and I've never taught an eight-week class before -- especially not one that starts right before fall break does. I'm sort of lost on what I'm supposed to do here.

I sent an email to the Director explaining the issue and asking for clarification on what I should do -- not teaching on Thursday night would be nice, as it would be a softer entry into fall break for me (and would mean I'd get to come back home on Thursday morning and go to sleep if I wanted to), but it would also require me to completely rewrite and restructure my lesson plan for the rest of the semester to be able to incorporate that unexpected extra day off...and still have time to fit in all of the necessary assignments and instruction in the remaining seven weeks. Yes, that's how tight the schedule is, because it's an eight-week course and I don't have any other option. I've already had to slightly modify some of the assignments in there and combine them, because there's just no time to give my students "option A/option B" assignments or to have a resume and a cover letter or a proposal and funding request to be two separate assignments each. There's just not. In a sixteen-week class, there's breathing space. In an eight-week class, there isn't.

Regardless of what night I start teaching that class, I have to go in there that first meeting and be a hardass who lays down the law. If those students can't keep up with the workload involved or can't show up to class at the required meeting time, they need to drop it or they will very quickly fail it. The lesson plan has them turning in an assignment once a week -- basically every other class day. Sometimes these assignments are easy (an email or a memo) or they're really detailed and intricate (a proposal and request for grant funding to implement it). Each one requires them to read anywhere between two and four chapters per week in their textbook and spend hours upon hours creating a project. There's no final exam, but the last week of the class is all oral presentations. I have 21 students; I expect to see less than half of them in there and enrolled by the end of the month, let alone by the end of the semester. The workload will overwhelm them. Hell, the grading workload will more than likely overwhelm me. As mentioned before, I will never have another "free weekend" again. Not until shortly before Christmas, anyway. 

It's in the forties outside this morning, and windy. It's relatively cold in the house. This is good, for once. I like this weather. It's pleasant, but too cold to mow the grass in. I'll probably mow the grass on Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, depending on my eyesight and my energy levels then. I'd rather not trip up and cut off my toes because my blurry eye doesn't let me clearly see a branch in the grass, and I'm certainly not going to mow when I'd have to wear layers to stay warm while doing so.

I mentioned about two weeks ago (roughly) that I ordered a bottle of peppermint oil to spray down the doors and windows with around the house to keep out spiders as it gets colder. Spiders apparently hate peppermint oil and will stay away from it. I had to order the peppermint oil because it's not like I have stores around here which would sell it, and a 4oz. bottle of it on Amazon, with shipping, was something like $20. It couldn't be helped -- I'd rather keep spiders out of the house than to put out glue traps and hope for the best. Well, said bottle of oil arrived while Daisy was here, and after she left, I put it in my spray bottle with some water and shook it up to give it something to mix with and be propelled through the sprayer with. The water would evaporate once sprayed; the oil wouldn't.

The first door I wanted to spray down was the door that leads out to the back deck; the seal on it isn't that great, and brown recluse will come in around it on occasion (because I tend to kill a fair amount of them around that door). The spray bottle I use has a jet-like spray -- it's focused in a squirt similar to a water gun, not a mist. I raised the bottle to the corner of the door and squeezed the trigger. The spray shot out, splashed and ricocheted, and the resulting splash of water and peppermint oil shot back and bounced right into my fucking injured eye. Of all fucking places.

Let me tell you, folks, it was not pleasant.

This is not my week.

It burned and watered for about five minutes or so until I could blink enough and carefully wipe down my eye enough to get it out. It didn't hurt the eye -- again, I'm no more or less blurry/injured than before -- but it's not like I enjoyed it, obviously.

I carefully sprayed down the doors of the house, including the garage doors, and sprayed around the accessible windows, both inside and out. The cats seemed intrigued by the peppermint-y smell, but as it's the only deterrent option that won't hurt them if they get into it/smell it/lick it, it's all I could do. It took the entire bottle of water/oil, and I'll probably have to order more eventually to give it a second coat. On the plus side, my entire house now smells like peppermint as opposed to cigarette/incense smoke or cat/cat litter.

On the plus side, since the temperatures cooled off, my allergies have almost disappeared. I say almost because yes, they're still there, but they're much less severe than they were before the storm front rolled through on Friday.

It's the little things, I suppose.

I messaged my cousin and asked her if she thought I should talk to my oldest sister; I wanted to know how the girls were holding up, and gauge from what she said if talking to her would help or just make things worse. I never, never want to be a bother to my sister, nor do I want to make her feel worse. I know she has her own life that I'm not really a part of. I know she's independent and intelligent and has a good career. And I also know our youngest sister's death really, really rocked her. It had to. My cousin said I should talk to her -- the family had a support network until Friday, until the funeral was over. Now everyone's gone home and they're alone, and she could probably use the support from her brother.

I still don't know. I don't want it to sound like "hey, I know we haven't talked in a while, but our sister is dead so this is my excuse to message you." And I'm afraid if I do, that's what it will feel or seem like. That's not it at all, obviously. Regardless of whether or not we're in frequent contact, she's still my sister and I'm still her brother, even if our father has cast me aside and ignores my existence.

And, again, I'm awkward. It doesn't matter that I'm a grown man of thirty or that I'm an English professor -- I don't even know where to begin. I'm having a really difficult time in grieving over my sister because I don't even know if I have a right to be grieving since I'm so completely detached from everything. It's not like I've ever been in a situation like this before, either. My coping skills for even little things are shot, since I hate the world anyhow. When a big thing like this comes along, I don't know how to deal with it.

I eventually sent her a message this morning, just to let her know I'm there and dealing with it too:

"I hope you girls are holding up okay. I can't imagine how hard it is for you. I am having great difficulties in processing it myself since I'm so far removed from the situation. I don't know what I should feel or say. I mean, I never even had the chance to meet [sister], so I don't know how I can even process things properly anyhow. Just know that I love you and I want to talk to you when you have the time. We may never see each other and we may be separated by a lot of distance, but that doesn't mean I care any less."

It's all I could do. It's all I could say. All I can do is reach out. I want to tell her why I wasn't at the funeral. I want to tell her why I'm not in her life more. I want to tell her how our father basically cast me aside for no reason. I want to tell her how sad it is to me that I didn't get to grow up with all three of my sisters as I should have, that I didn't get to be the big brother they went to for advice or cried to when their boyfriends broke their hearts. But I won't. I can't, really -- it's pointless to do so. Life is what it is. It is a precious thing, and the past can't be changed. I hold no true resentment for any of the non-contact with my father; I have no relationship with him, or his wife, whatsoever. What I want is to be a brother to my sisters. Especially now. Life's too short. 

My week coming up is a long one, not just because of my third class starting up. Tomorrow I'll be on the main campus for an extended period of time. As I mentioned before in hush-hush secrecy, there's a major, super-famous author coming to campus on his reading tour, and until now, I didn't want to mention him by name because the department has been keeping a pretty low profile about it. Well, as that tour date is tomorrow, I can now say who it is. It's Chuck Palahniuk. That's right, the guy who wrote Fight Club and a ton of other crazy-good novels. I'm not going to the actual reading/tour date thing he's doing on campus tomorrow evening, as it's not free -- the tickets are $25 each or something like that -- but I am going to a private Q&A he's doing tomorrow afternoon with the English department where I'll more than likely get to meet the man personally and/or ask him a question or two. I've been (understandably) looking forward to it for weeks. Maybe it'll help get my mind off of everything else going on right now. 

As I've been working on this post, my sister read the message I sent her, but has not replied. Let her take all the time she needs. Again, I'm not going to be a bother.

On that note, I need to go out to the living room and look over some student rewrites of papers. I'll put on football. I'll zone out. I'll try to decompress. I don't know how successful I shall be.

The Aftermath, Part I

My eye is no better or worse this morning, even after a long night's sleep. I've tried describing what it's like to see out of it while it heals, and have had trouble even putting it to words. It's like when your vision is blurred due to an eyelash sticking down right in front of your eye, or how your vision is blurred when you first wake up in the morning, except it lasts all day. Looking out of that eye alone (meaning, covering up the good one) is like watching a 3D movie in the theater without the glasses on. Yeah, you can see everything that's happening in detail, but it's all blurred around the edges. That's about the best description I can give, really. I wonder if I went to a 3D movie, covered my good eye, and watched the screen if I would all of a sudden have 3D vision without needing the glasses. Maybe my eye injury is a superpower in disguise, or something.

One of my friends asked me if I'd gone to the eye doctor about it. I told her no; there's nothing that can be done anyway -- it just has to heal and "reset itself." It's not like they'll give me a magic pill that will refresh my vision, like reloading a web page. They'll tell me to do what I've been doing anyhow, which is to put drops in it and if it bothers me to wear the patch, and to try not to rub it. Well yeah, duh. I'm not going to pay an optometrist $100 that I don't have to tell me what I already know. What matters is that it's a simple annoyance and nothing more -- I can go about my daily tasks, I can drive, I can write, I can cook and clean, and I'm not bumping into walls or running into doors, so I'm fine. Whether it heals in a week or heals in a month or two, it doesn't matter because it's not like I can't see. I can. I can read books and magazines and web pages with my injured eye alone. Yes, it may be a little blurrier than normal, but my vision in that eye is still at about 90% normality. And unless it gets worse, I'm not wearing my eye patch any more because it cuts off half of my vision and destroys my depth perception. Plus, as I may have mentioned before, it is the most uncomfortable thing I could possibly wear. And it really doesn't seem to help much either way other than to keep half of my head in the dark.

Anyway.

Yesterday morning, they buried my sister.

My cousin told me it was a sweet, rather upbeat funeral. The pastor gave a good eulogy, and then they took her to the cemetery and buried her. The week-long process of everything involving the arrangements and anguish surrounding my sister is over. I suppose. The worst part of it, anyhow. The family and her friends have some sense of closure, as tenuous of a sense as that may be.

The high school closed for the funeral. All weekend sports and activities -- and it's homecoming week there -- have been canceled or otherwise rescheduled because of her death.

I can't imagine what my father, stepmother, and surviving sisters are going through, even now. I'm not sure I want to. They say that when the funeral is over is when the real grief begins, but I'm not sure I buy that -- or my mind just functions differently than everyone else's. I've also heard that the healing process begins after the funeral as well. Which one's correct, society? Who knows.

My oldest sister read the message I sent to her, but did not respond. I didn't really expect her to, honestly. I'll try to talk to her next week if she seems willing or able, but I stress this -- I do not want to bother her or upset her. I also don't know what the appropriate "waiting time" is to talk to my sister about this sort of thing anyway. I don't want her to think I'm being insensitive or weird by messaging her out of the blue and reminding her about the tragedy she just went through, you know?

Some of you are probably saying things like you should be talking to her NOW or something along those lines. My relationship with my oldest sister isn't that sort of relationship. Imagine if you had a sibling that you were nine years older than, and hadn't seen since she was a toddler, and had only had a handful of conversations with throughout her entire life. We may be blood and we may actually be in contact, but I'm little more than a stranger to her -- the son, the black sheep, the one the family doesn't talk about. We took very different paths in life, and she's the only window I have into my father's side of the family for the most part. Now she's grown up, has at least one degree, works in the medical field, and is really successful, but she likely feels as detached from me as I do from her. I mean, I love her -- very much -- but it's not like we got to hang out while growing up or anything like that. So, yes, it's a very strange situation.

What I do know is that it's not like she's forgotten about me, or anything -- I'm sure, just like most of my family members, she wanted to make sure I knew about what had happened just as urgently as the rest of them. Again, though, she's a lot closer to the proverbial ground zero than the rest of my extended family is.

I'll give it a few days. A week or two, perhaps, if necessary.

In other news, it stormed here last night. Briefly, anyway. Some thunder, some lightning, and some good rain for a while, but nothing anywhere near the severity the fear-mongering weather people were calling for. The town in Nebraska where one of Daisy's sisters live got hit by a tornado or two, and a few houses were destroyed. Everyone's fine -- I checked with Daisy as soon as I heard the news. Daisy got home relatively quickly yesterday afternoon and went to work last night without incident. Today is her mother's birthday, and I made sure I wished Mama a good one.

I haven't had much of an appetite this week. As mentioned previously, Daisy and I got a lot of food to stock the house with while she was here, and I've just been...out of it, I suppose? Too stressed to have an appetite? I don't know. Regardless, I really haven't been hungry that much, and have barely eaten since she went home. I don't have much patience for anything, including cooking, and I'm just so fatigued and tired from stress. I'm sure the stress and being tired isn't helping my eye heal any faster, either.

The temperatures took a sharp dip as well, as predicted. This morning when I awoke it wasn't even fifty degrees outside, and is struggling to reach the mid-fifties right now. I like it. Keep in mind that it was nearly 90 yesterday. Fall weather is here, I suppose -- it's only supposed to be in the 60s for much of the next week, and possibly 80 at the warmest. 80s in October in Kansas is nothing new, but none of these summer-like temps stick around long. I expect snow before Halloween. Maybe not measurable, accumulating snow, but snow.

Through everything going on, I think I'm mentally curling up inside myself and need a ton of decompression time. More than usual. I have minimal work to do this weekend for my students, but I can't seem to get motivated to do said work. I just want to space out, to completely detach from the rest of the world and go to sleep or mindlessly watch football, seeing if I can make out the numbers on the jerseys on the screen with my blurry eye alone.

The Pineapple Incident, Part II

Fall semester: day thirty-five

My eye is healing fairly quickly, it seems. I took the patch off last night after it got dark, and my eye is no longer sensitive to light or painful/achy. The vision in it is still a little blurry, but it keeps getting better and better. I haven't worn the patch today, and don't foresee needing it again unless, for some reason, it gets worse. I don't foresee (hah! puns!) that happening, though. Still, I'm okay. I drove us to and from Walmart last night in the dark, and spent 90 minutes in the store shopping with no ill effects or bothersome watering, itching, or pain in the eye. By the time the weekend is over, I would imagine I'll be mostly, if not completely, back to normal 100% vision in the eye. Right now it's at about 90%.

The offending pineapple itself is in the fridge. We didn't have the chance to cut it up and eat it before Daisy left this afternoon. Daisy and I always get much more food than we can eat while she's here, and then I end up slowly eating it over the course of a few days or weeks afterwards. I'm not sure what I'll do with the pineapple. They're a pain in the ass to chop up and do anything with, and unless I cut it up and use it/freeze it this weekend, it'll probably go bad.

Our anniversary (yesterday) was mostly uneventful; it was overshadowed by the death of my sister, obviously, and further aggravated by my injured eye. I was upset and stressed out about both things, and because of that we had a lot of little bitching-back-and-forth arguments and fights which would become briefly heated, then we'd both cool off and make up with one another because we love each other. This happens, obviously, in every relationship, though this time these fights weren't as goofy and trivial as they normally are, because I was (and am) under so much stress, grief, and every other negative emotion you can probably imagine, and though I never take that out on anyone, when I'm upset and my emotions are running high, these emotions...well, they leak out the sides, for lack of better phrasing.

"I should have been more understanding," she told me this morning. "I just honestly didn't realize how it had impacted you. I'm sorry. You usually are wonderful and I was confused. Thanks for clarifying for me again. I love you."

"I know," I said. "It's okay. None of it's your fault, baby. I love you too. Very, very much."

Despite our squabbles, we had a good anniversary. Last night we made spaghetti with gluten-free corn pasta (thank you, Trader Joe's) and then later made the trip to Walmart. She wanted to get me a new computer chair, since the one I'm using now is my wholly uncomfortable spare chair -- my regular chair, my old one, fell apart about a month or two ago. The back separated from the rest of it, rendering it basically useless. We found one in Walmart that I liked, but it was $100, and I told her that I wanted to wait and shop around (also, I didn't want her to spend $100 on me). We came home, played cards, and ate snacks before we went to bed. 

Daisy, as mentioned above, didn't know how much my sister's death had affected me. I don't even think I knew myself. I can only process things so much when I'm so detached from them, and the rest of those processes get buried -- pardon the terrible pun. This morning, she asked me about it. She wanted to talk, she wanted me to get my emotions out about it, but there wasn't much else to say. She wanted to see the obituary (that, as mentioned in my last post, I was omitted from), so I showed her. Someone wrote a really sweet, heartfelt story in the paper back home today about how well-liked and respected my sister was in her high school and on her track team, and we both read that as well. I showed Daisy pictures of all of my sisters, both with all of them together, and separate pictures of each of them. I showed her a picture of my father, and talked about how all of us looked either more like him or more like their mother. I think my deceased sister looked like our father a lot more than her mother, and how my older two sisters look more like their mother. Daisy thinks my oldest sister looks a lot like me -- which makes sense because we carry the same genes, obviously -- which is something I never really thought about before. This is the only real, spoken-out-loud "processing" of my sister's death I've been able to do with anyone, aside from a few conversations earlier this week with Parker. I needed it. Neither of us realized that the reason why I was so prone to snapping and under so much stress and squabbling was because I haven't been able to properly process everything. I really can't, not out here. Not here alone.

"Are you more sad that she died, or that you never got to know her and share your life with her?" Daisy asked me.

"I don't know," I said. "I really don't. It's about equal, I suppose. I guess."  

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to fully answer that question, really. I don't know if there's a true answer for it. 

My mother sent me an email last night that said she cried when she heard of my sister's death, and that she's been sad ever since. My mother has no connection to my sister other than the fact that for seven years, she was married to our shared father. There's no relation there for her, no real connection, and my mother (for quite obvious reasons) dislikes my father. Said sister wasn't even born until ten years after they divorced and both family units had moved on. Yet, her death still affected my mother strongly.

"Life is so short," my mother told me. "So live it while you can and be happy." 

There's only so much I can do.

This morning -- while Daisy and I slept -- they lowered my sister's body into the ground, into her final resting place. I was not there. I tried not to think about it. Even now, I don't want to think about it. All it does is fill me with sadness, and like it or not, life must go on. Several relatives on both my mother's and father's sides of the family planned to go to the viewing, the funeral, or both. I have not heard from any of them since yesterday afternoon on whether they did or not. I'm not going to bother them. My oldest sister, aside from sharing a photo or two and changing her profile picture to one of her and my dead sister together, has still been silent on social media, and understandably so. I don't think she's read my message I sent her, even. I know she will eventually. Again, I'm not going to bother anyone back home or ask them for details of the funeral, as much as I want to know those details. 

I talked to my cousin for a while yesterday morning, and linked her to my last post here so that she could read it and read my thoughts on being omitted from the obituary's "survived by" list. She was appalled and offended on my behalf, seemingly more so than me, even. She has issues with my father anyhow for basically tossing me aside and writing me off so many years ago, and she has better reasons than most for those issues -- when my father's parents (read: my grandparents) died back in the 70s, when my father was in high school, he had nowhere to go, so my aunt and uncle, who were older than my father and said cousin's parents, took him in and gave him somewhere to live. I still don't know the circumstances of my grandmother's death or when it happened (I've tried to find records or get accounts from family members for years), but I know my grandfather committed suicide -- he killed himself in 1974. My father told me that himself in the only conversation the two of us have ever had as adults, back in 2006 via instant message before I moved to the midwest.

"I know for a fact [oldest sister] would never omit you," said my cousin, when I'd asked if she knew who wrote the obituary. 

"I know that too," I replied. "If if was [middle sister] I'd understand it as a genuine oversight, because while she knows I'm out there, we haven't really spoken since she was very young." 

Perhaps I'll eventually find out who wrote it, perhaps I won't. It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. My sister's still dead, she's still in the ground. Nothing changes anything. 

Daisy, of course, has done the best she can to try to comfort me in all ways, but seems lost, and I don't blame her. I wouldn't know how to fully comfort someone in this sort of situation, either. Daisy grew up with her sisters -- they were, are, and will always be a huge part of her life, and I love that when I marry her, I'll gain two more sisters as well. But, try as she might, she can't fully comprehend what it's like to be separated from a large chunk of family and then to lose one of them, especially a sibling, before even getting to know said sibling. She's doing all she can to support me, even if I'm stressed and snapping at her and occasionally unintentionally mean, and I appreciate that. She loves me and just wants me to feel better. I never take my relationship with Daisy for granted and never will.  

Through all of this, I will again remind you that aside from some cousins, aunts, and other relatives back home, I've been mostly in the dark about everything going on. My father has not attempted to contact me, of course, nor do I expect him to -- and if he wanted to, it would be painfully easy to do so. I have my oldest sister's number in my phone, though I don't know if she has mine, and if he truly wanted to reach out to me, all he'd have to do would be to ask said sister, or one of my cousins or aunts or whoever is there who actually cares about me, for my contact information. Most -- if not all -- of them can reach me very quickly and easily. Am I angered by the fact that he hasn't reached out? Psh. No. It's par for the course and exactly what I expected out of him. And, as I mentioned before, I should be the last thing on his mind right now anyway. My guess is that he's probably not thought about me at all. 

I spent some time with Daisy this morning and talked with her about everything, including this and including our squabbling, trying to put things into perspective and trying to get as much time together as we could before she had to go home. She goes back to work tonight, after all. I fed her coffee and waffles and stroked her hair, cuddling with her on the couch. It's been a terrible, horrible week and I just wanted peace. Of course I'm hurting inside. My eye is injured. The world won't stop, nor will my responsibilities and duties, and I so desperately want it to so I'm able to breathe. 

It can't be helped. No matter what happens, no matter how many eyes get injured or who dies, life goes on. Nothing stops. Nothing ever does.

Daisy left for home around 1PM. She couldn't leave much later than that, because in addition to everything else going on, not only is her oldest sister coming into town this afternoon, but today the weather forecasters are on high alert because it's the only time since the year 2000 that they've been able to predict with "almost pinpoint certainty" that there are going to be terrible thunderstorms and possible big-time, damaging tornadoes throughout most of the entire midwest this afternoon and evening, and she needs to get home ASAP where it's safe and where, if those storms and tornadoes hit, she won't be stranded in Kansas unable to be with her family or unable to go to work.

Now, mind you, one couldn't tell this now by looking outside. We're in the middle of another heat wave this week -- it's 88 right now, with lots of sun and fluffy clouds. It's gorgeous outside, except for the heat. There's nothing on the radar anywhere around me, and it's 2:30 PM. I hate that fear-mongering weather shit -- the last time they called for godawful storms and possible tornadoes here, it rained for about an hour and hailed little, tiny balls of hail for about ten minutes...and then did nothing else. Of course, during the summer they really didn't call for that terrible wind-driven thunderstorm, either, the one that destroyed half the trees in town, blew in garage doors and tore off roofs, until about an hour before it happened. I'm rapidly getting to the point where I don't trust what the weather people say until I see it happening with my own eyes. I just end up getting pissed off. If it looks like it's going to do anything, I'll put my car in the garage. Until then? Fuck it.

There's a lot of little upkeep-like things I have to do this weekend, a fair amount of them being student-related work and issues. Because I had to cancel class yesterday due to my eye, I now have to send a more detailed email to my students about what we'll be doing next week and how the week itself will play out. I have to stay there on West campus all day on Thursday anyhow, as it's the first night of my 210 night class, so I'll probably tell them that since I canceled class yesterday, if they want to or can stay after our class ends on Thursday to conference with me and have me look over all of their papers individually, it's the least I can do. I hate canceling class. Hate it.

If the storms aren't too bad and/or there's not too much rain today and tonight, I need to mow the grass this weekend. Regardless of what weather hits, the highs tomorrow and Sunday are only supposed to reach about 65. I'm not mowing when it's nearly 90 outside, because I've sweated enough over the course of the past few months, and again, eye issues. I'm letting the eye heal as much as possible and I'm going to mow when I can. I have to, or should at least, mow the grass one last time before real fall/winter weather sets in, as my yard isn't a complete jungle, but it's been a month or so, roughly, since I mowed it. It's been cool enough and dry enough to where it's not that bad, but still needs to be done. 

I can tell the weather is coming in -- my sinuses, especially the ones in the back of my head above my neck, are really aching badly, and my face/nose is clogged up. This is also probably because I'm a bit dehydrated and haven't been drinking as much fluids (even coffee) as I normally do, since Daisy was here. That tends to happen more than I realize, actually -- I don't eat a lot except when we cook, and I don't really drink anything except what we drink when we eat when Daisy is here. It's like I go through some sort of metabolism change.

As for my sleeping habits -- aside from Tuesday night -- they've been...somewhat passable and/or normal, I suppose. I've been getting rest. It's not always useful, helpful rest (especially when it's been hot here the past two or three days) but it's rest. I'm used to sleeping with Daisy now, to the point where I'm not uncomfortable and don't have the desire to push her off the side of the bed in the middle of the night because I have an unconscious desire to spread out more (this was a problem during the first few times she stayed here). I think I really needed Daisy here this week a lot more than I realized; I may have gone nuts if I didn't have her here to talk to, to interact with, to have in my physical presence. I can't really talk to the cats about the sorrow surrounding the death of my sister, because all they do is look at me and meow. Obviously. And it's not like they know what a pineapple or an eyeball is.

So yes, this is my life right now, and that's all I can do with it. Tonight I'm going to watch for, and make sure, Daisy gets home okay. This afternoon I'm going to make something to eat and try to watch a movie (hopefully my eye lets me enjoy it) to relax, and avoid the storms that are now beginning to fire up around the area. This weekend I will have to do some minimal student work while I watch football. Other than that?

Time heals all wounds, I suppose.

 

The Pineapple Incident, Part I

Fall semester: day thirty-four

This will be a long one, folks, so...well, if you're ready to hear one of the most bizarre stories ever, settle in now and get comfortable. Also, I apologize in advance for any weird typos or other errors that may pop up in this post, errors which I would not normally make. You'll understand why in a bit. Just go with it.

Ahem. So.

Let's start on Tuesday night.

Tuesday, as you know, was not the greatest day for me. In fact, it was probably one of the worst days I've had in a long time, as I found out that morning that one of my sisters had been killed in a car accident the night before. If this is news to you, I recommend scrolling down and reading the two posts below before reading this one, as both of them sum everything up pretty well.

Despite the bad news, I was determined to make Tuesday positive in some fashion -- along with the flurry of messages of support and condolences I had coming in, Daisy was also coming down that night. Today is our anniversary; we both wanted to spend it together. Because of this, I pushed everything I could out of my thoughts and took care of my business at hand. I cleaned the house as much as I had energy for. I graded my students' quizzes and prepared lesson plans for yesterday's classes. I wrote most of the two posts below. I was still quite distraught, obviously, but it wasn't anything I could personally fix or do anything about, so I still had to go about my life. Daisy arrived around 10PM, and we put away the food and other groceries/cooking supplies she'd brought with her, and quickly went to bed. Distraught or not, I still had to get up at 5AM and drive to campus to teach my 011 class yesterday morning, and I did so -- leaving Daisy once more asleep downstairs in bed in the dark.

Traffic was terrible. Parking was terrible. I was tired, because I hadn't slept well (for mostly obvious reasons). My allergies were killing me. It was misting rain and was foggy. The humidity made the car sluggish and growly, as it always does. Etc.

I'd not made the news about my sister public, as I mentioned before, and those who knew about it (about four or five friends, max) knew that I really didn't want it spread around too much. It didn't affect them, it doesn't affect my ability to teach effectively, and it's something that I'm dealing with personally. As mentioned before, I didn't want any pity or sorrow directed at me. Yes, my sister died. Yes, I'm dealing with it. Yes, I am still a professor, and life/classes must carry on. I tried to avoid most of the department yesterday, as if they saw me looking morose, they'd know something was wrong. So, I put on my smiley face as always and went about my day. I talked to Parker for a great while, who helped put things into perspective a little more -- he is one of the few I'd told about my sister -- and I went to teach my class.

Upon getting to my class, I gave them the same brief speech I gave my 101 class on Tuesday morning -- to looks that somehow seemed even more horrified that I was there teaching in front of them in the midst of personal tragedy. Regardless, I pressed forward, I covered my lessons, I gave them a quiz, and I collected their paper rewrites. Next week we're covering another reading, then they have their in-class conference/peer review day with me, and then it's fall break (where they'll finish their papers and turn them in after we come back).

When I got home, Daisy was still in bed. She'd slept most of the time when I'd been gone, apparently, and had gotten up to eat and the like before going back to sleep. It had already been a rough week; I needed a break. We decompressed around the house for a bit, and I let her wake up, get a little something to eat, etc.

In the meantime, I had a message from one of my friends from high school and college, someone who I hadn't said anything about my sister to -- she was sending me her grief, prayers, and condolences.

"Thank you," I told her, "but how did you know she was my sister?"

I'm only friends with my oldest sister on Facebook; there are no connections otherwise to the rest of my "immediate family" (a term that, of course, I use loosely) in the household where my deceased sister lived and grew up. Therefore, for anyone to even know that my dead sister was my sister, they either had to know me really well or they would have to have background knowledge of my familial situation. Generally speaking, the only people who have said knowledge are the members of my extended family on both my mother's and father's side, and my own parents.

"I saw your post on the rumor mill page," she said. "So did a few other people."

"Ah, yes."

There's a Facebook group for news and events around the area back home; I joined it a long time ago. Someone in that group posted a link to the news story about my sister (the one with the bloody car picture), and I made a brief comment that thanked them for sharing it, that she was my sister, and thoughts/prayers/condolences were all sincerely appreciated. News travels fast on the internet. News stories are shared via multiple sites on multiple pages, and said news will reach places that you don't think or even consider that it will.

As a short aside, said news website posted a video of the response to the accident, including a several-seconds-long shot of my sister's car being hoisted onto the wrecker and hauled away. The car was a VW Beetle, as I mentioned before, and while the front three feet of it or so looks fairly untouched, the rest of it is unrecognizable as a vehicle. No wonder my little sister didn't survive. Also, what appeared to be blood in the pictures looks more like the reflection of the red response vehicles' lights in the video, so I'm not as sure about that anymore as I was before.

Anyway.

I figured that the news had spread a lot by this point, and I also knew that my sister's obituary would be in the paper yesterday, so I used the access code and password I have to log in and view the paper so I could read it. I was...well, astonished.

Top story. Front page of the paper. Big article. With a picture of my sister.

My father and stepmother, along with my sisters, live in a very small community back home, a community well outside of Morgantown (to the west) which only has about 500 people in it. The death of my sister, a well-liked, well-respected, National Honor Society member and track team star/cheerleader at the small high school virtually everyone in my family graduated from -- well, it really, really hit the community hard. I should have expected this, of course, but people die in car accidents every day, right? Well, it's apparently pretty rare that it happens out home.

My immediate thought was that if it's this big of a story, and people are crawling out of the woodwork to offer condolences and the like -- people who didn't know before that she was my sister -- obviously I must've been listed in the "she is survived by" section in the obituary for her, right?

Nope.

No, I'm not kidding.

It read something like "she is survived by her mother and father, [names], her two sisters, [names], her boyfriend [name], the family dog, Casey, and numerous cousins, aunts, and uncles."

Yes. The family dog got mentioned in the "she is survived by" section. By name. Yet, me, her brother, got no mention at all.

I believe that says all I need to say about my father and stepmother, really.

On one hand, I'm actually a bit glad I wasn't mentioned; I don't need, or want, the extra attention that would come with such a mention when friends back home would make the connection upon reading my name there. On the other hand...the family dog? Really?

"This is how I know the obituary wasn't run by any of the relatives before it was sent off to the paper," I told my friends who knew about it. "My relatives would've called that shit out reeeeeally fast."

And they would have. Guaranteed. My father may conveniently forget that he has a son, but the rest of my family on his side doesn't. Again, it's the pink, tap-dancing elephant in the room that never gets talked about.

"Maybe it's a genuine oversight," Daisy said, playing the devil's advocate. "I mean, they're grieving and under stress."

"It's possible," I said. "It sounds like the obituary was written by my middle sister, because I know my older sister's writing style from Facebook, and I know she wouldn't forget about me. My middle sister, however, has only talked to me briefly a few times, and she was a lot younger then."

This is true. For the people who knew her and knew her well, it was a heartfelt, sweet obituary. For an English professor like me, it was a grammatical and stylistic nightmare typical of what I see in the papers of my 18-20 year olds in class. My middle sister is 20. Unless my stepmother wrote it (which is also possible, since she's not particularly bright, and that would be a great reason why I was omitted) I can't see anyone else but my middle sister writing it based on the grammatical and stylistic choices alone.

My friends told me that it was "complete bullshit" as well.

"Cancel class and drink heavily," Parker told me. "No one would think the worse of it. You may need it more than you realize."

Oh well. I'm probably letting it bother me more than I should. Onward.

Daisy and I went out last night to several places -- taking Parker's advice (at least somewhat), the first stop was the liquor store, where Daisy and I spent probably a combined $60 or so on beer and wine. The second stop was the Dollar Tree, where I needed to go to pick up some essentials. The final stop was Dillon's, where my second nightmare of the day (and the reason this post is titled "The Pineapple Incident") happened.

Let's just put it this way, as this is the way I described it to my students upon canceling today's class last night:

There's more than that to the message of course, but none of it has to do with the "incident" in question.

And yes, this is exactly what happened. I was smelling the pineapple and wasn't paying close enough attention to it, and one of those sharp, pointy leaves went right into my eye. It sliced open a little flap of my cornea, right in front of my iris, and it made my vision slightly blurred. I could feel it as soon as it happened, and went into the store's bathroom to, ahem, survey the damage. It's tiny, but it's also right in front of my iris. That means, obviously, it blurs my vision a bit. Not terribly, not severely, but enough to where yeah, it's totally noticeable.

It watered and hurt a little when it happened, but I was fine a few minutes later. I drove us home, even. No worries there. By about an hour or two later, it was watering and hurting a lot more, and bright light just killed me with pain and watery eyes. I showed Daisy the injury with a penlight, so she could see it, and she agreed that it didn't look great, but it wasn't doctor-worthy or anything like that.

"Do you want me to get you drops and an eye patch?" she asked me. I initially refused, but when my eye got to the point to where it was so sensitive to light that I couldn't go to the bathroom (with it's five globe light bulbs) and keep it open when I had to pee without it watering and burning due to the light, I relented and told her yes, to go out and get it as I didn't know what else I could do to make it relax and heal.

At this point, I was still soldiering on and planned to teach today. Patch or no patch, I figured that it would be simple enough to go to West campus and get through my lesson. And then the headaches started. Every time my eye would start hurting/burning, I'd get a headache. My nose would fill up with snot as a reaction to my eyes watering, and as a side-effect to my own normal allergies, and I'd have to blow my nose frequently (a side-effect that yes, still persists this morning). She got the patch and the drops, and I used them. I'm still wearing the patch right now, actually.

Anyway, after a while, and after still needing to wear the patch in the dark as we ate dinner, I decided before bed that I just wanted to cancel my class. I couldn't exactly perform my duties as a professor if I was partially blinded, and having Daisy drive me to class and back, attempting to go normally about my day didn't make me want to do it any more. Especially with the headache I had. So, I wrote the message above to my students, and went to bed.

As for the alcohol, I didn't get drunk, but I was pleasantly tipsy throughout dinner. I needed a drink in the worst way, more than I realized. Parker was right. Being able to have a beer and wearing the patch made this somewhat hilarious picture possible:

  

Classy, right?

When I woke up this morning, my eye felt much better. I've been wearing the patch all day thus far, and I'm not in pain or anything in the eye itself. I've lifted it a few times to check the blurriness of my vision, and while it's still a little blurred, it's leaps and bounds better than it was last night. Apparently it's healing up pretty quickly, which is nice. The downside is that the patch itself is good lord incredibly uncomfortable and I'm pretty sure it's why I had a headache last night, as I have a mild headache right now. There's no truly comfortable position in which to wear it, the elastic band is tight around my large, bulbous head, and the shape of my eye socket isn't incredibly conducive to blocking out all light whatsoever with the patch -- there's still a little sliver that will get in around the edge by my nose. I continually have to adjust it for comfort. I don't know how pirates ever wore these things.

I'm hoping that by Monday, I'll no longer need the patch; I can't really drive to class with it on, and I really can't miss Monday since there's a really big thing happening on campus on Monday afternoon (which I'll write about later). For now, though, yo ho, yo ho, it's a pirate's life for me. And Daisy is here now (obviously), so I'll do the best I can to enjoy and otherwise celebrate our anniversary today, given the circumstances of my eye and all of the events of this week. 

October is shaping up to be a banner month, isn't it?

A Death in the Family, Part II

Fall semester: day thirty-three

I don't know how I slept last night. Thoughts of my sister and her untimely death had been running through my head all day, to the point where I did basically everything I could to keep my mind off the subject. I did not, and have not, been succeeding that well.

My cousin messaged me last night to let me know that her viewing is on Thursday, and on Friday morning she'll be buried.

"Wow, they set that up really fast," I said.

"Yeah," my cousin replied. "Our small community really pulls it together when things like this happen. That's one good thing about this area. The people really do care."

Her parents (my father and stepmother) and my surviving sisters have been noticeably absent and quiet on the whole affair, understandably so. Of the four of them, the only one I'm friends with on Facebook is my oldest sister, and while prayers and condolences have been pouring in on her wall and timeline, she has been silent. Even most of my cousins I'm friends with on there have been silent as well; my aunt is the only person on my father's side of the family who has said anything about my sister's death over social media, and she posted a picture of her with a simple "R.I.P." message.

Having the viewing and funeral so soon means that even if I would have been able to make the trip back home, I wouldn't make it there in time anyway. I guess it's not incredibly fast, though; died on a Monday night, buried on a Friday morning. 

I had a lot more people reach out to me in the afternoon and evening hours, people who found out who I was, who know me through another family member or in some other ancillary fashion, and have been flooded with condolences and prayers myself. I want to tell them that though she was my sister, it's not like I got to know her. I want to tell them to focus on her parents and her surviving sisters since I'm so far removed from the situation. I don't have it in my heart to do it. 

Daisy arrived around 10PM or so; she got a late start headed out. She knows everything that's going on; I've kept her updated on what I know. We put all of her stuff away, including the groceries she brought down for our anniversary dinner(s), and went to bed very shortly thereafter as I had to get up this morning at 5AM.

I've had several friends now tell me that I should cancel my classes, tell me that I should just stay home and process things, and to get time with Daisy while I can. There's nothing to process, really -- people die. I can't do anything about that. As I said before, me staying home and spending the day in mourning isn't going to help anything, and it's just going to turn my classes next week into a mess as I'd basically have to re-do my lesson plans for the entire unit. My 011 class is starting work on their second papers, and I'll collect revisions of their first one today. While I could, conceivably, tell them to just read the chapter I'm going to cover in today's class, give them their next reading assignment and journal assignment, and go back to bed...yeah, no.  There's no point to it. Physically and mentally, I am fine. I'm not going to cancel my classes because a sister 1,000 miles away who I've never met is now no longer alive. That would also make the latter half of the semester much more difficult if there's a true emergency or issue that pops up (such as my car blowing a major part or a freak snowstorm) that I would need to cancel class for then. I told my 101 students yesterday that unless it is unavoidable or too dangerous to come to class -- such as in the aforementioned "freak snowstorm" scenario -- I don't cancel class. And, if I have to, I try my damnedest to let my students know at least twelve hours in advance. I've canceled class less then five times over the past four years, and three of those times have been weather-related. The other two? Car in the shop.

Daisy feels great sympathy and empathy with me; she knows I'm upset. She also knows that there's not much she can do about it, and understands that. I'm perfectly fine to teach and go about my daily life, but she also knows that under the surface and under the fake-smile-mask I'll have to slap on while I'm doing my job, I'm barely holding it together. I feel better this morning than I did last night, though. I'm hoping that as the days go by, as my sister is buried and everyone else slowly moves on with their lives, I'll start feeling a little less grief day after day myself.

I mean, I'm guessing they're burying her, anyway. My cousin only told me of the date, time, and location of the funeral. I don't know anything other than that. I don't think anyone in my family has ever been cremated, though. I don't know.

I've told a few people in the department, mainly close friends (like Parker) what happened, but no one else. I don't want to elicit sympathy from people, and I certainly don't want anyone wasting time and effort to have the entire department sign a card for me or anything like that. I'm going to go about my days and weeks as per the usual because I have to, and don't really want the news to get out because, again, I don't really want anyone's pity. I love my friends and coworkers -- they're like a second family to me -- but again, since I'm so far removed from the situation, it's not like they should make a big deal out of relatively minor tragedies in my life. I'll tell people eventually, of course. A few weeks or months down the line, if necessary. But I don't want any undue focus on me. 

Parker said he'd come in earlier than usual this morning to that we could talk, hang out, and decompress. He's having a rough semester too, what with the fact that he's spending eight or more hours a day poring over texts and criticism while he studies for comps, which he'll take shortly before Thanksgiving. I told him that he's golden already -- I mean, he's Parker, for fuck's sake, one of the most intelligent people I've ever met -- but he wants to be sure he's extra-prepared for everything, and I don't blame him. As you'll recall, I was the same way. I drove myself nuts in the final stretch trying to study, cover, and memorize everything I could for my own comps.

My class today, at least, will be short -- as mentioned above, I'm just covering a short chapter in the book, collecting paper rewrites (which I'll grade over the weekend once Daisy leaves) and giving them their next reading assignment. Daisy will more than likely sleep through my entire day of being on campus, as she did the last time she was here on a Wednesday. I should be done and home around noon or so, give or take fifteen minutes. If she doesn't, she knows where the vegan waffles are, knows the cats are fine, etc. 

After I get home, I don't know what our plans will be. We're going out shopping, more than likely, just to get the little things we'd need for our anniversary dinner(s), and we are making a trip to the liquor store at some point because I'm out of beer. And after the past day or two, shit do I need a drink.

A Death in the Family

Fall semester: day thirty-two

I don't talk about my family much on here. I try not to, actually. I have a lot of extended family, and most of them aren't in my life on a daily basis, what with all of them living back home in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Aside from that, my family tree has a ton of different branches from marriages and divorces, remarriages, etc. I have cousins I've never met, via blood or marriage, and those cousins have married and had children, etc etc. Of those family tree branches, there's my mother's side of the family (who I'm talking about, usually, when I mention my extended family at all here in the blog), my father's side of the family, which extends just as far and branches off into unknown miniature extensions, as I don't have a whole lot of contact with them, and my dad's family -- the extended family of the man who raised me, including my brothers and sister who aren't actually my brothers and sister by blood, but I look upon them the same way.

Yeah, I know, it's confusing. Keep with me here, as (you could probably guess from the title) there's a point to all of this.

My parents -- mother and father -- divorced in 1987. My father remarried in 1989. I was there; I was in the wedding. With his new wife, he soon had two daughters in 1991 and 1993, and a third daughter in 1997. After mid-1993 or so, my father cut off contact with me; I've spoken to him for less than an hour's worth of time in the past twenty years, and have only seen him in person twice during that time -- one of those times being at my aunt's funeral in 2001. In 2006, I had a brief instant-message conversation with him via my oldest sister's account, and told him that I was moving to the midwest. That was the last I heard from him, and the only conversation I've ever had with him in my adult life, for long ago I'd basically been "written off," so to speak. We don't have contact, I'm pretty sure his wife never liked me, etc. I don't know why, of course, to this day -- if there's even a reason at all -- why he cut off contact with me. Still, I tend not to let it bother me too much. I grew up, became a man, got my degrees, etc. I left it all behind me; it's in the past.

The shame of it all was that I got denied a life shared with my three little sisters while they were growing up. I am in somewhat regular contact with my oldest one, who is 22, and the younger ones knew of me -- the middle one I've talked to once or twice, and she's 20 now. The youngest one, born in 1997, I've never met -- though I've been told that she knows I exist and all that, and she's of high school age, so it's not like she hasn't reached the age of reason. 

Well, I should say she knew I existed, I suppose. And everything else about my youngest sister should be in past-tense now as well.

This morning, about half an hour before leaving the house to teach my classes on West campus, I got a slew of messages from my extended family back home on my father's side -- the four of those people I am still in contact with, anyway. Last night there was a car accident. My youngest sister -- only sixteen -- was killed. Speed was a factor, but that's all they know. And I'd never even met her.

This is, to say the least, a difficult situation for me.

One of the news channels back home (ever so tackily, of course) published a photo of the car. It appears to be my oldest sister's old VW Beetle, which (I can only assume) was handed down to my youngest sister when she got her license, as my oldest sister now has a Jeep. The top half of the Beetle is gone. The bottom half, what can be seen of where the roof struts meet the doors...it's covered in blood around the edges.

Yes. The news published a photo of my sister's car with her blood staining it. I'm not making this up. Zooming in on the picture? Yeah, it's quite visible. Everywhere on the edges, staining what can be seen of the interior (from the angle of the photo), blood covers the car.

No, I'm not going to share the picture here. It's bad enough that the news posted it.

I think I'm still in shock to a certain extent. It's a low-level shock, but it's there. I am quite logical and clear-minded in everything I do, even under duress, so I looked at it scientifically. The first thought that entered my mind was there's nothing I can do.

This is true, of course; there's not. I debated on canceling my class this morning (very briefly, anyway) before I realized that even if I canceled class, there was nothing I could do to help the situation. Sitting here at home alone talking to family members about my sister's death wasn't going to bring her back. Sitting here finding out more details about it was only going to make me feel worse. I had a job to do; my students knew nothing of what had happened, and I had lessons to teach and go over.

I emailed my mother about it to let her know, but I've not heard anything back from her yet. My mother doesn't know anything about the girls other than their names; obviously, they're not her children or anything like that.

My second thought was something along the lines of was she anything more than a name to me, either? And, immediately, I felt shame for asking myself that question. Yes, she's my sister. But I've never met her. I didn't know her. At all. I knew her name. I'd seen many pictures of her -- of all three of my sisters, I always thought she looked the most like my father -- but I'd never met her. When she was born, unlike my two older sisters (both of whom I was at the hospital for), I didn't know. I was told about her birth a few weeks, or months, later. I'd been out of contact with my father for years at that point, and it's not like social media existed in the 90s. Hell, the internet barely existed. I processed it. It was not my fault I didn't know her and didn't get to see her grow up. At this point I don't want to point fingers and put "fault" upon anyone. It doesn't matter.

She was more than a name to me; she was blood. She is blood. It doesn't matter that I didn't know her, and it matters even less now that she's dead. I may not be a huge fan of my father and stepmother, but I do have an incredibly heavy heart for them right now. Nobody should ever have to bury their child, obviously.

When I went to teach my class this morning, I told my students (only about half of whom were there) that if I seemed a little scatterbrained today in my teaching or in my lessons, this was why. All of them looked at me with shocked/terrified looks on their faces that I was even there in front of them.

"As most of you know, I am from West Virginia, as is all of my family," I said. "That's where she is. I can't do anything about that; cancelling class isn't going to bring her back, and there's nothing I could do to help the situation back home. That being said, for the moment I am pressing forward and will do the same job I always do on Tuesdays and Thursdays in this class."

And with that, we did move forward. I covered my lessons as admirably as I could given the circumstances, gave them the grammar quiz that I'd planned a week or two in advance, and dismissed.

"Are you going to be able to go back for the funeral?" one of my students, an older woman, asked me once the classroom had cleared out.

"No, I can't," I said. "I don't have the money to do so, nor do I have the time -- we're getting to midterms, I have papers coming in from all of my students, I start teaching my third class on the 10th, and while I'm sure my presence there would be appreciated..."

ahem...appreciated by *some* of the family...

"...I won't be able to go," I finished.

My car barely gets 20 miles per gallon, has 238,700 miles on it, and its shocks/struts are shot. It has a wheel bearing going out and occasional slipping of the transmission (depending on the day and the weather). It leaks coolant and oil at different intervals, interchangeably. I'd be lucky if the car got me east of St. Louis before it died or before I ran out of money for gas to fill it up every 200 miles or so. Plane tickets on short notice are exceedingly expensive -- an expense of money, and of time, that I cannot afford with an adjunct's salary or with the time constraints my job forces me to keep.

According to my cousins and aunt, they're making the arrangements for the funeral at some point this afternoon, and I'm being kept posted on everything going on through them. I sent my oldest sister a message this morning, telling her that if there was anything I could do to help to let me know. She hasn't read it yet. I don't blame her.

I've remained mostly silent about all of it; Rae, Daisy, and a scant few other friends know what happened, but it's not like I'm going to post all over Facebook about it or anything like that. Again, I'm a fairly private person. I burden no one with my grief, and don't want anyone to feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for her parents, feel sorry for her two older, surviving sisters, who knew her well. Yes, she was my sister, but I will grieve in a wholly different way than they will. I am both present and detached, sad and in shock but coldly scientific, all at the same time. Still, those who know she was my sister have been reaching out to me on Facebook -- mainly because the news story was cross-posted to a lot of local groups and shared between families and friends on there -- and I do appreciate it. Most of those reaching out to me don't even know me; they're friends of the family or they know my mother/father/grandmother/etc. One of my mother's teachers from high school reached out to me to send her condolences, for example. I've laid low because, again, I don't want pity or attention -- those feelings need to be sent to my sister's real family and friends, those who lived with her, who saw her grow up, who knew her. Her parents, her living sisters. I share blood with her. I knew her name. I have pictures. But as much as I wanted to be, I was never a part of her life.

I had a plan once, years ago. Once all of my sisters grew up, moved out, started lives of their own independent of our father and their mother, I planned to reach out to them much more than I have already. Again, my oldest sister knows me, and I do occasionally talk to her on Facebook. I wanted to plan get-togethers, meet-ups, and actually be able to spend time with them and be a brother to them. I refused to let my own experiences with our father affect the way I looked upon my sisters; the sins of the father are not the sins of the son (or the daughters, in this case). I wanted that relationship. I still do, with my surviving sisters. I love my sisters; I may not know them that well (or, in the case of the recently deceased, at all), but this doesn't change the fact that they're my sisters.

"When [cousin] called me about [dead sister]," my aunt messaged me this afternoon, "I instantly thought about you. I wonder if your dad will realize what he has missed with you. I hope so."

"I'll wonder that too," I said in reply.

It's no secret on my father's side of the family -- especially amongst my cousins, aunts and uncles -- that he basically tossed me aside as a son; it's the tap-dancing pink elephant in the corner of the room that nobody talks about. My mother's side of the family knows everything involving this as well, and have tried to talk to him about it from time to time (one uncle on my mother's side worked in the mines with my father for many years), yet to no avail. As for what my sisters know about me, or have been told over the years, from what my oldest sister told me a while back, it's very little. Yes, I'm their brother. I have a different mother. I lived with her after the divorce. Etc. Not much at all. I don't mind this, really; it's better for them than knowing that our father suddenly gave up on trying to have a relationship with his son.

Do I think my father will try to make contact with me after this, and/or try to patch things up? No, really I don't. Again, I'm not necessarily a fan of my father, but I don't really hold anything against him. He wanted a new marriage and a new life, with new children, and that's what he got. I had a lot of hate in my heart, a lot of resentment, for many years -- mostly as a teenager. But I grew up. I got over it. I stopped really caring. The only feelings I have for him right now are sorrow that he's lost his youngest daughter. That's all that matters. I should be the last thing on his mind at this point, and rightly so.

In the meantime, I must continue to go about my life as per the norm. No, obviously, I'm not happy about it, but again, there's nothing else I can do. My life and budget doesn't allow me the luxury of attending my sister's funeral, or seeing her lowered into the ground. My life doesn't allot time for grief other than what I've experienced already. I'm not grieving for the sister who died; I'm grieving for the sister I never had the chance to know, who never had the chance to have a brother in her life. And nothing can be done about that now.

Daisy will arrive this evening. When she does, I will put on my brave face and push as many sad thoughts out of my mind as I can in order to spend time with her and to spend our "anniversary" (Thursday) together in a way that won't bring us down or cast a pall on everything. My family back home will keep me abreast of the situation and will give me details on the service and/or everything else as those things come to light; most of them are going to my father's home this afternoon, and some of them are more than likely already there.  As for me? I must keep pressing forward, even if my heart is indeed heavy.