Grace and Me Standing Quarterless at the Vending Machine of Words

Hi there.

I apologize to you; I have no idea what I'm going to say. I have no message. Just some life I'm living, so I'll witter on about that for a few minutes to keep this blog updated.

This afternoon my brother D. called. Our other brother, R., was taken to the hospital yesterday too weak to stand on his own and with a high fever and irregular heart rhythym.

Later, my wife called one of R.'s doctors who told her his condition and that because they couldn't yet locate the source of the infection (they were running tests) they were unable to treat it beyond giving him a beta blocker for his heart rhythym.

Irregular heart rhythym? Ah, now he's playing on my turf. I had atrial fibrillation for about a year with occasional episodes of ventricular tachycardia. That means I, too, had an irregular heart rhythym until two months ago when I went up to Stanford and underwent a procedure wherein the doctors stopped my heart then shocked it back into life--rebooting it, so to speak, into a normal sinus rhythym.

I called and spoke to R. on the phone about 9 p.m. He was groggy but coherent and seemed in good spirits, given his condition.

My wife, the ever-lovely Sturdy Wench, offered to ride down with me tomorrow if I wanted to see R., and I gratefully accepted her blessing. She keeps me sane around my family and supports me when I'm around them.

This is a time I will need God's grace in unsmall amounts. Given my past and present problematic relationship with R., I'm afraid this won't be an easy visit for me or for him.

R. is the brother with whom I've had the worst relationship of all my sibs. He's seven years older than I am, so when I was growing up, we were often bitterly antagonistic. I hated him until the mid 1990s when our relationship began to thaw and later I moved back to LA and lived with him for several months. We got along fairly well by then, even though I still saw him as a provincial, overbearing control freak (which he is) and he saw me as a stupid, fumble-fingered, ungrateful child turning his back on his family (which I am, minus the stupid and clumsy.) Eh, so we have a ways to go.

There's some more I could tell, but I'll stop here. I refuse to scare away anyone who takes the time to read this blog.

Dear Reader, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas with your friends and family and you make merry in your hearts, loving and being loved. Peace and grace to you this season.