Time’s a bitch.

John Gragson
Aug 26, 2017 · 3 min read

The Greek roots of the word nostalgia include “pain.” I’ve recently gotten a dose of why. Some of you might know that my Dad’s been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for a while now—it was officially discovered somewhere around 2011, but it’s gradually gotten worse, and worse, as such wasting conditions do. I’d never really realised how horrid this particular condition is; my Grandpa had had the early stages of it in the late 1980s but it was more of the minor inconvenience, a bit of shaking, a bit trouble writing. Grandpa ended up passing away after a major blood vessel in his neck burst—tangent, it just took me way too long racking my brain and not even managing to drag out the right word for this,† even though I just used it this afternoon in a conversation with April my niece-qua-cousin (she’s my generation, unlike my other nieces who are Generation Y or Z), and this kind of scares me too—so I never saw what the rest of the stuff it does is.

We—well, Mom, with my general if somewhat reluctant agreement—called in the “hospice” people this week. The purpose of this was ministerial: to make it easier to obtain certain types of nursing services, rather than the result of some particular medical change, but it was still a watershed, an acknowledgment that I was resisting for a while to the effect that the end is near. And that the end has, in some ways, already happened. I see a frail figure, more-or-less confined to bed of late, that both is and is not the man I grew up with. I tried to clean up the garage, filled with his tools and projects, a while ago and nearly broke into tears. It reminded me of all that used to be and that I have no more, though Dad taught me most of what I know about working with them. I look around the house and see stuff we did together in the 1980s and 1990s and while I was never one for “the good old days”, I wish I had some of them back. That garage will need some more tidying whenever I can get there this autumn. I’m not looking forward to it.

At the same time, my child is now going off to high school. He’s all excited about this. We took him to the freshman orientation/open house last night. He tore off on his own to go find all the classrooms without any help or interference or dork factor from his parents. (I look at some of the other parents, who seem hardly older than their children.) It is now ten years ago that we took him to kindergarten for the first time and I said to Aly, who was even then stressing about middle school, that “2014 is a long way away.” Now middle school is done and gone and it’s college that is looming on the horizon, and puberty, and all that stuff that seemed only a hazy dream.

I know there’s nothing particularly unique about these experiences or about me for having these feelings. But it somehow all piled up at once—and somewhat à propos of nothing—I had just remarked on Quora the other day that I usually manage to avoid feeling particularly “old”—and I normally do live in the moment without getting wrapped up in the past, but those have gone out the window right now.

I figured this was as good a place as any to let people know what’s going on. Saves having to come up with words for it on multiple occasions; I’m one to find talking about a difficult situation might just reinforce the pain involved, so it took me a few days with all this swirling around my head to put some words to it.

Prayers, or just plain sympathy (whatever mode suits you) are appreciated.

† Finally thought of it. “Aneurysm.”

)

John Gragson

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studied linguistics long ago, but plays with words for a living.

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