Artistic Meanderings

Sunday evening I talked to Mom and got the bad news: They’re discontinuing chemotherapy for Dad.

Several years back Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had surgery to remove it. At the time the doctors pronounced him clean of all cancer, and we thought that was that.

Almost three years ago Dad was diagnosed with bone cancer, having metastasized from the original prostate cancer. Suddenly, things weren’t as hopeful as we’d thought to begin with.

Dad’s fought long and hard, trying everything they had to offer to keep him alive. He was reduced from the strong, vital, sarcastic, vivid man I’d grown up with to someone who is now more frail, drugged, in constant pain. He was larger than life, and people that met him never forgot him. I inherited my sarcastic tongue from him, as well as the desire to make people laugh no matter what.

Bob Sailor – autumn 2005

Dad wasn’t perfect. He had a horrendous temper and was quick to lash out when we were young. The neighbor kids both worshiped and were terrified of him. He worked hard, loved to work, to keep busy. He also played hard. He was always playing catch, or tetherball, badminton, croquet, lawn darts (yup, we owned ‘em), horseshoes, pinochle, you name it. The same aforementioned neighborkids were known to knock on our door and ask “if Bob could come out to play.” In the same vein when Dad threatened the neighborhood bully who had been mean to his daughters one too many times with, “If you step into this yard I’ll cut your ears off,” they believed him. We didn’t, but we did find it pretty funny.

Bob Sailor – about 1965

Dad was also one of those people that always had something happen to them. The stories of his youth in rural Southern Illinois are for the ages. He went to school in a tiny one-room schoolhouse. By the time he made eighth grade he already knew the material, simply from being in the same room. However, he graduated from high school one year behind. The reason? At the age of fourteen he was struck by a car. He was hitchhiking home from a high school dance, got out of the car, and was struck by a carful of his friends going fifty miles an hour, sans headlights. Dad later recalled one girl screaming over him and the others trying to shut her up. The next day his Dad, my Grandpa Sailor, found Dad’s tennis shoe in the exact spot where Dad had been standing. He’d literally been knocked out of his shoes. The other shoe was found out in a nearby field. Fortunately for Dad that night the regular, older doctor was out of town, leaving one of them there young doctors to handle things. I say “fortunately” because the old doctor was one that always amputated. Dad’s right calf was shattered, and his right arm broken. The young doc decided he wanted to save the leg. Afterwards, and for the rest of his life, Dad listed to one side when he walked, because one leg was a half inch or so shorter than the other. Thirty years later he was still pulling bone fragments out of his skin as they worked their way to the surface. His right arm didn’t extend all the way. But, he had both legs.

A few short months later, prior to Dad’s fifteenth birthday, Dad’s “rabbit dog” (beagle) brought Grandpa a rabbit to clean. Days later Grandpa was dead – of complications arising from tulremia, also known as rabbit fever. A couple of months later Grandma gave birth to my Aunt Brenda, so you can see what kind of year 1945-1946 was for them.

They all saved their money and bought themselves a 1939 Plymouth, Dad having been driving since he was twelve, like most farm kids back then. Since he was up to his ass in a cast he decided to teach Grandma how to drive. They went for a spin behind the barn, near the fishing pond. Dad told Grandma to turn, and she did, and did, and did, and landed straight in the pond.

However, if Dad had not been hit by that car, and set back one year in school, he would never have met my mother. He was from a dirt poor background, the family scrabbling for money and food from the small farm they had. Mom was from a semi-prosperous dairy farm, and four years younger than him. They met in high school and started dating; at the age of nineteen Dad went up to Peoria to get a job with Caterpillar, with no car, no nothing except his clothing. A few months later he went back for Mom. By then he was going on twenty, and she had turned sixteen four days previous. That was in 1950.

Bob and Treva Sailor – October 29, 1950

BTW, they’re still married.

Longevity runs in Dad’s family, and I had always thought he’d make his nineties, like his mom, his aunts and uncles. Or, because he has semi-blocked arteries, he’d keel over from a heart attack. Cancer never occured to me. It should have. Dad smoked from his early teens until he was thirty-eight years old, and according to his doctors that was a huge factor.

Mom told me they didn’t ask how long he had. She offered to take him to the hospital and he told her he was tired and he just wanted to go home. If that didn’t tell what was on his mind I don’t know what does. When my son heard that he said that it sounded as if Grandpa had given up. I told him that Dad hadn’t given up, he’d surrendered and there was a difference. He’s fought and fought, and he’s had enough.

Bob Sailor – May 2009. Mom is in the background and my nephew Travis off to one side.

I’m sorry I haven’t been around. I especially want to apologize to , because there were things she and I wanted to do this spring that never materialized. Oddly enough, I do read my flist almost every day. I’m just too preoccupied to post. Birthdays have came and went.  is going to have a baby – imagine that, the Queen of Smut, bless her heart! People are going to school and coming back from school. People are migrating to Twitter and Dreambandwidth. I’m still thinking of migrating to my domain with Wordpress and posting links to fic, artwork, thoughts, at the journals. Star Trek is back – and yes, I watched TOS when IT WAS ON THE AIR. Neener. *g* My first fan fic/artwork was Star Trek – a badly written Mary Sue, but hey, I was only about ten? Eleven? I bought the James Blish books when they were released, ditto the Alan Dean Foster ones (TOS fans know which books those are), have the Technical Manual, the Blueprints, The Medical Manual, and have the entire series on VHS… I mean, I was serious Trek, here. Needless to say the new movie pleased me to no end. Spock kissing Uhura? BOO YEAH! Nyota? WTF? I’d always heard her first name was Penda. Silly me. But, this is an alternate universe, y’know.

I still love House… I mean, I coulda named my cats Kirk and Spock, y’know? House and Wilson are doing very well, thank you. House likes to cuddle and rub in bed before he goes to sleep. Wilson is my oversized lap cat. He’s also a familiar. I thought so at the start, and now I’m convinced of it. That’s another entry for another day.

My sound card died two days ago and I have another on order. Too expensive locally, when I could get a really good Soundblaster X-Treme for very cheap on eBay. I CAN’T LISTEN TO THE HOUSE SIXTH SEASON PROMO. Just watch. Which is frustrating. I hate Hugh’s hair. No curls! Oy!

Oh, and I have some kind of bug. My sister and her husband had it last week. A killer headache worthy of standing up to any migraine (and my sister used to have migraines, so she’d know), a fever and nausea. Ugh.

Everything is the same, yet it’s all different.

Goddess Bless