March 25

 Did some running around this morning - Suzie needed some crickets and minnows for the museum (the minnows are to amuse the otters) and it was the morning of the Pioneer breakfast.  Despite the fact that my mouth and breath still feel like I've been licking ashtrays I didn't want to pass up pancakes or, especially, long-cooked country grits, cooked by someone who is not me.  And I got to spend some time with Judy, who is always fun.

Afterwards I delivered those cat trap covers that I made.

I was beginning to wonder if I would ever make it home.  I'm used to the drive down Hwy 20, but for some reason today it just seemed to drone on and one, like those sci-fi/horror movies where a hallway just keeps stretching out longer and longer.

Tomorrow I have to go back in again to help out with a group of wannabee spinners, so I was getting my samples of equipment together this afternoon.

I look back at next year - at this point I had gotten the garden a little under control, had cleaned out years of crap tossed in the back and even put in some tomato plants.  So far this year I haven't opened the gate.  But I did have my trip, and the flu afterwards.  And I at least did some serious pruning on my poor lemon tree that really got knackered in the hard freeze, and I've been whacking through the underbrush out front, so that's something.

March 25.  This was supposed to be the absolute, outside, no-more-moving of the goalpost day.  The day where if anything was going to happen, it would.  The nurse came in, brought up the numbers, and wrote on the whiteboard: "neutrophils: <.01

In other words, nothing.  Now it was just the final waiting game.  On the 30th another biopsy would be done, and we would get the results two days later - which we already knew what they would say.  Then it would just be a matter of seeing how long they could keep him alive until they couldn't anymore.

So we actually talked about it some.  I started  telling him how desperately I would miss him.  That I wouldn't be 19 anymore (in his eyes, I was always the 19-year-old that he had just met).  His response what that maybe it was time for me to turn 20.

He apologized for not taking me to Norway for our 50th anniversary, as we had planned.  He was trying to impart words of wisdom for me, living in his absence, but he was getting muzzy and the best he could come up with was that it was OK for me to cancel the cable because I didn't watch much TV, and to remember to keep the dirt shoveled off the bridge.  I don't know why he didn't want dirt on the bridge, but that reminds me - I need to go shovel it off again.

I don't know what angel whispered in my ear when I was trying to think of something to comfort him, but that's when I remembered that we still had Fiona's ashes.  I asked him if he would like to keep Fiona with him, have her little ashes mixed with his when his reef was made.  He actually smiled, and in a soft little boy voice said "Fiona?  I can keep Fiona?  I would like to have Fiona with me."And with that, he was able to drift off to sleep.