My Life and Medical Travails Wednesday December 2

Well, let me tell you a little bit about my Thanksgiving.  First and foremost, I found that this Thanksgiving at least, I was the ranking officer in the Carr household.  I know this because for the first time ever, the family thanksgiving was held here, even though it was a tremendous inconvenience to most members of the household to come here.

There’s a reason we did it that way, of course.  Barring a miracle (and as you know if you’ve been keeping up with this blog or have read my book, few people believe in those more than me), this was my last Thanksgiving.  By this time next year it’s very likely that cancer will have gotten the better of me.  But I’m not looking for another one.  The miracle I’m looking for out of this situation has already arrived – specifically, through inexplicable premonitions I somehow got word of what was going on in time to quit my day job and work on the novels I wanted to write while I still had the personal stamina to do it.  I published all three and all three got good critical and reader reviews.  Book #4, My Lifetime of Weird Coincidences and Strange Happenings, was extra.  It tells the true-life stories of the premonitions and precognitions that led to all this—incidents that may or may not have been paranormal in nature (I leave that to you do decide).  It’s written with the  hope that the book can do for others what the incidents in it have continually done for me—and that is inspire the reader for a greater enjoyment of and passion for life, partially through exploration of little “coincidences” and other remarkable incidents that may look paranormal at first blush but really are a basic part of the human experience.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I know that a lot of families decide who is going to host the clan thanksgiving on the seniority system.  In some families, cooking the dinner is considered to be the honor; in those cases, the “mom” with the most kids in the house or the most kids available to come over to partake in the meal cooks.  In other families, the senior mom in the clan gets to make the choice of whether to cook or not.  It varies from place to place.  In our little clan for the past several years, my sister Amy, who has three kids, has hosted the Thanksgiving meal.  This year, with one of her kids working out of town and the other about to start a job out of town, she was planning only a very small gathering.  I was invited, of course, but for reasons discussed earlier in this blog decided that I couldn’t make it.  We didn’t suggest hosting Thanksgiving at my house not only because Deborah has had to work very hard over the past few weeks on work projects, but also because I am getting to be more and more of a burden although I am not quite an invalid.  But every day Deborah has to worry about what I’m going to eat and so on.  It does get to be a burden and as Thanksgiving approached, so did her project deadlines at work.  So due to the physical toll on her, we didn’t offer to host thanksgiving.

So what do you think Amy did?  Well, anyone who knows her could have predicted it.  She offered to bring Thanksgiving to me and my wife, lugging the whole thing here turkey, lock, stock, and barrel.  Well.  How could we or anyone else say “no” to that?

The Concannons

But wait.  She wasn’t done.  Amy arranged for all three of my nieces and nephews to be here despite the fact that two had jobs in another city—and one had a fianceé, whom he brought with him, a lovely young lady whom Deborah and I were delighted to meet.

Nothing went precisely as planned; various logistical problems arose and were solved.  Debbie and I live in a rental house that is nice for us but starts to get cramped in terms of seating arrangements, especially for TV viewing, at four people.  No problem.  Amy’s husband Tim drives a  Yukon.  He slung a couple of big extra chairs into the back of that thing and brought them down – problem solved.  We also wound up ordering the turkey and some trimmings locally rather than trying to drag it cross country, but that simply opened up room for some side dishes to be brought in from California.  The result was a sumptuous meal with all the trimmings.

When all was said and done I guess you can call it my best Thanksgiving ever.  Don’t get me wrong – it was still a lot of work for Deborah, and I’ll still have to find a way to  make that up to her.  But she enjoyed it too, of course.  We’ve never had that much family packed into our house before, and I for one had a ball.  The highlight for me was a game of Trivial Pursuit, which I am of course telling you about now only because I won it.  Ha!

We haven’t made plans for Christmas yet.  I’m sure this will be quieter.  It’ll no doubt be my last Christmas as well but that also  means that it’ll be my last chance for a quiet “just the two of us” Christmas together with Deborah.  My travel prospects have not gotten any better.  In fact, they’re getting worse.  When we go to the grocery store now I can barely make it up and down all the aisles before  having to throw in the towel and call it quits and go to Starbucks to sit, mainly because of pains shooting down my sides and across my back.  Sitting in this chair and writing this blog is getting to be likewise uncomfortable; I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep that up, either.   And I really have to guard myself against fainting when standing.  But so far I can at least walk from point A to point B if the distances are short.  All of those conditions are slowly deteriorating and I’d be lying to you if I didn’t admit that I sort of dread what might lie down the road.  It’s an unknown and not a reality I’m eager to embrace.

But in the meantime, let me raise a toast to the best Thanksgiving I’ve ever had, and to the people who love me who made it possible. 

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P.S.  Happy Birthday today to my lovely bride, Deborah.

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