Friendsgiving, Thanksgiving, thoughts on aging, an inadequate movie review. WSB

So Wednesday night was Friendsgiving. I had a pretty good time all told. There were a few crucial folk missing, but the ones that were there more then made up for it. Smiles were had by all. I did my best to not be a debbie downer and I think I did alright.

Thanksgiving itself was another story entirely.

The day started for me waking up bummed out. I should have been in Easton with her, hammering out the last details of our wedding. I woke up wrong, just wrong.Then things got worse.

My Dad called his Aunt Mary around 2:30 or so. They chatted for a bit and then he hung up because Uncle Jimmy was giving her a hard time or at least that's what my pop thought. Aunt Mary calls back 15 minutes later to ask my father to come over and help get Uncle Jimmy off the ground. I went with him because, frankly, Pop isn't what he used to be either.

We show up at their apartment and Aunt Mary meets us in the hall. Seeing Aunt Mary always fucks with me a bit because she is my dead Grandmother's twin, so there's that.

We exchange the normal stuff, some smart remarks, she compliments me on my weight loss, says I should get married (knife in the heart), to which my Dad waves and tries to shut her up. It doesn't work, why would it? If you ever met me you know that trying to stop me from talking about uncomfortable shit doesn't do dick, I had to get it from somewhere.

So when we get into their place Uncle Jimmy is laying on the floor. He looks half dead. He has a head wound from something, liver spots all over, a mess of other cuts. I haven't seen him in about a year and at that time he looked awesome, maybe 70 (he was 91), spry, alive and full of jokes. Now, he made me feel mortal, made me afraid of death. Of growing old, maybe alone. This was not at all what I needed.

Two years before, this man was still doing tree surgery and now he was a shell. Two days before his legs were working, now, not so much. This man is 6'1" 200 lbs. Fit, super fucking fit and now his body is just saying fuck you. I still don't know how I feel about it.

I fireman lift him into a seat and we all sit around and pretend that I didn't just have to do that. It's all fucking awkward. "He's going a bit senile" says Aunt Mary and I believe her.

I watch him trying to open hershey's kisses and it's just not happening. It's fucking terrifying and I just want to split.

One of her kids is dying of face cancer, one has some neurological disease that messes with his ability to speak, walk, and motor skill, but his brain is still totally intact (nightmare, I'd put a bullet in my brain before I let it get that far), and her husband looks to be checking out. And all Mary keeps telling me, the one thing she's repeating like a broken record, God love her, is "don't give up hope, things could still work out" in reference to me and Amanda.

FUCK.

I make a motion to my Pop. I need to go. He tells Mare we are going to be late for dinner. She accepts this so we begin making our good byes. I kiss her goodbye and hug Jimmy and leave my Dad there. While I'm walking to the elevator I hear Jimmy bellow "I want to go with Ronald, We should go to Ronald's house", I take the stairs.

We make it home without saying much and Mom has dinner on the table when we walk in. I gorge on everything just to feel alive, to murder that sad, desperate feeling of futility that has now taken up residence in my heart, like a little bird in a tree. Twenty minutes later, I fall asleep mid conversation with my brother.

I don't think it was from the food. I think I just shut down. I hit a wall and my brain said "no more of this, we need a break".

Two hours later I come to. I feel remarkably better. Just bad now, instead of horrendous.

My friend Jennifer called while I was dead, so I called her back. We made plans to go see a movie for 9, my treat. She has been a super hero for me the last few weeks so I wanted to treat her, besides doing nice things for women makes me feel good.

We went to see "Due Date" it was just alright