Bah. Bahbahbah. Bah!

I've spent dozens of man hours (not all my own, thanks Toast) trying to migrate the RackRaids domain, data, and wordpress application to a new server. It's not been a smooth ride, but the site is up and running, the back-end is *mostly* working (with one exception, better than before) and overall I'm almost at peace with it.

Now the hard part begins. We're looking at adding advertising, both as available and unobtrusive. I also want to tweak the site, making it a little more distinctive, but I'm really not sure what to do yet.

It's been, well, a pain in the ass, but along the way I've octoupled my knowledge of WordPress and how it's put together, and I have to say, while it's not very n00b friendly (like Blogger, LiveJournal or MySpace) it's got it's perks with the whole plug-in bit. I still prefer Movable Type, but I see how interesting WP can be.

Festivus

Oy, the holidays are upon us, but traipsing through the Eaton's Centre yesterday surprisingly wasn't as nightmarish as it could have been. Of course the insipid pop-star X-Mas carols were enough to want to drive an awl through your brain, but other than that, not so bad. I guess everyone's heading down south of the border to shop this year.

The Inconvenience of Life and Death

My grandmother's husband has been suffering from Alzheimer's for a couple years now (probably longer, just steeply degrading a couple years ago though) and it's bean a rough ride for my Gran. Her husband is a sincere, gentle, kind and friendly man, and it's very difficult for those of us that knew him to see him the way he is, where he's barely cognizant of where he is or what's happening exactly most of the time, or even really understanding who in fact we are (although he still always greets family with a huge, wide eyed smile and firmly gripped handshake).

Though, relatively speaking, they've only been together a short time (a year or two shy of 15, I think), he's been wonderful to and for my Grandmother and an unquestionably welcome addition to our family. He's not my grandfather, but like any step-parent that takes an active interest in your life (as a teen he was always asking about my friends and how they were, which I thought was great) and treats their partner divinely, you greet them and love them like family. I haven't been home much to witness the decline, only having a very detached third-hand relation for most of it. When I have gone home, it was exception hard to see him reduced to what he is, and just as difficult to see the toll it's taken on my Gran. She's always been a tiny woman, but it's only after the past couple years that she's looked fragile. She's invested so much into keeping his quality of life as good as possible, to her own detriment I think... sometimes taking on more than she can handle. But, although hard to acknowledge, there's a strength in her actions, a proof of how strongly she responds to him being in her life, and a love like that is so rare.

The disease makes us so uncomfortable, though, because even more so than death, when you meet someone who's become such a void like that, you can't help but think of yourself in a similar condition, and it's like the same nihilism that terrifies people about zombie movies, basically having no control, and a diminished consciousness. Most of us, confronted with the thought, have said it's probably better to be dead than to have that happen to us. (Roger Ebert reviewed the Japanese film Memories of Tomorrow which follows from the perspective of the afflicted character as the disease starts to take hold, and it sounds depressingly relevant to understanding the condition and how we look at it).

He's taken a turn for the worse, in the hospital, now having contracted pneumonia, which is quite lethal for someone in his condition. It's a real topsy-turvy bag of emotions associated with the news. We who knew him have missed him for some time, none more so than my Grandmother who had the hardest time accepting his condition, but after a while we've come to understand that the physical shell is no longer the man, and have had no choice but to begrudgingly accept that awful fate. But, I don't want him to die, no matter how much I've accepted his fate, and yet, how good is his life right now? What purpose or reason does he serve? How will him living continue to affect my Grandmother? How will his death affect her? So many decidedly pointed and difficult questions with no answers. He could die tomorrow, or he could shake the pneumonia and live for years more, or he could live until Christmas. There's no telling, and, depressingly, no scenario is a good scenario.

It's all just bitterly awful, and there's nothing nice in any of it. For me, at the busiest time of year (personally and professionally, with more things seemingly piling up every day) it's inconvenient, which is a horrible thing to say... but it's the truth, the inconvenience of death. I've made people aware that I may have to leave suddenly, but it's horrible, because I just don't know when and any frustration with not knowing point blankly makes me feel like an awful person. All I do know is that when it happens I have to go, out of no familial pressure or any of that but for my own peace.

Regardless, though, life moves on.

Something else

On other things:
Glenn Kenny of Premiere magazine tries to explain away the ending of No Country For Old Men.

Posted by graig at December 4, 2007 4:09 PM | TrackBack
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