It is good that I was able to derive as much sleep over the latter evening yesterday as I did, for after sitting up for five hours in the a.m. after I rose during the midnight hour, sleep just ahead of dawn this morning was to be nothing easily achieved.
But to preface this tale, I must first confess that my intentions at the close of yesterday's post were unfulfilled. I had written that I wanted to get some exercising done, and then make a guilt-inspired and time-sacrificial phone call to Sandy W., the ladyfriend of William A.G., my longest and oldest living friend whom I have not seen in over two decades despite us having known one another since at least as far back as 1962, and probably even before then.
He is in a full-time care facility over on Vancouver Island, and has been for a few years now. He spends most of his time lying in bed and wearing a 'diaper' because he has a catheter attached to him. Sandy, who has known him since the mid-1980s, occasionally has contact with Bill because the staff at the care facility will help set Bill up with her calls, and she has even had video chats with him.
Bill's origins are on Vancouver Island, and I think he may have had his boyhood in Port McNeill or / and Port Hardy. However, he spent most of his life in the Surrey / New Westminster / Coquitlam area. Certainly, he had relatives over on the Island who lived primarily in or near Victoria, but why would he leave all of his numerous friends on the mainland and move back to the Island in the late 1990s?
Bill was practically like a close cousin or maybe even a brother to me, and one branch of my maternal relatives basically regarded him as a part of the family.
But he chose to move back to the Island and throw himself upon the mercies of his somewhat reserved or even aloof relatives.
Anyway, Sandy lived with him for a while over on the Island; and after she finally moved back to the mainland where she now lives in a Vancouver apartment, she made frequent visits back to the Island to visit Bill ─ even after he was finally incarcerated in the care facility.
Many of the staff at the facility are acquainted with Sandy. However, because of the ludicrous COVID-19 lockdowns in place, she can no longer visit him without an enormous fuss that involves scheduling a specific time during which she has been told that she will be unable to use the toilet facilities ─ she would have to leave and find relief elsewhere.
To get to the care facility from Vancouver, Sandy has to take public transport. She first has to get to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal for the ferry trip that is reported to take an hour and 35 minutes. Then after she arrives at Schwartz Bay ferry terminal in Victoria, she again has to take public transportation to wherever it is that the care facility is.
Sandy is a social welfare recipient with poor physical and mental health (she may even be diabetic, and she takes medication for certain psychological aberrances) ─ she cannot afford overnight accommodation in Victoria. Thus, unless one of Bill's relatives was willing to have it arranged that she could stay overnight with one of them, Sandy has to begin the return trip after spending a few hours visiting with Bill.
So in all, from the time she leaves her apartment until the time she is at Bill's care facility, the time elapsed can easily be at least three hours by my estimate, and most likely more. Obviously, just as much time is required to return. Add onto that, however long she might be visiting Bill.
Clearly, these visit were an enormous undertaking, so she only tackled them a very few times a year. And now she can't even go due to the health scare lockdowns. The denial of toilet facilities pretty much kiboshed her wish to accede to the care facility's conditions of a visit, so she now only makes an occasional call to Bill.
Somehow he will have his 74th birthday in roughly a month, and she has been putting together an assortment of things that she wants to send to him as a present.
Sandy is my only means of learning anything about Bill. I don't know his relatives. It would take me even longer than it does Sandy to get to Victoria, for I do not drive, and my monthly pension income does not allow me to stay overnight anywhere. It would be one brutal day trip by public transport ─ even if I was familiar enough with Victoria to find the care facility.
However, I have great reluctance to phone Sandy because she is single and has always been, and she doesn't even have a pet. Her entertainment is a T.V. and radio, and her cellphone ─ she has no computer or laptop.
Consequently, she has nothing but time on her hands. She lives for that phone. I am at the other extreme ─ I haven't enough hours to my days to do everything that I want nor should do. And I live in a household of five people ─ I am not 'stir crazy' and craving for social communication with someone.
Thus, I do not take her phone calls, nor do I respond to her texts. If I did, she would inundate me with endless calls and never-ending text sequences that would be an impositional distraction and devour my day.
As I said in yesterday's post, one fellow she knows has twice placed a restraining order upon her because she is relentless like this. If she is given the opportunity, then she will be pitiless in her needs for social connection.
How do I know about this fellow? Sandy told me about him! She knows how she can be.
It is certainly a sad situation for her to be in, but we all create our own hells ─ I didn't create the one she may feel she is sometimes living, if she indeed does recognize or perceive herself to be in some social or communication vacuum; and so I do not feel obligated to sacrifice my time just to fill hers.
But every couple of months I will place a call to her, and I meant to do so early last evening after that session of exercising. I had myself all set up to begin the workout ─ and then my wife arrived home. She had not been home since leaving around 10:30 a.m. Friday morning to go to work, for she usually spends her weekends elsewhere (such is our sorry marriage).
I was not to have the liberty and privacy to exercise, nor to make the phone call.
Actually, the very same thing happened one or two weeks ago when I was going to phone Sandy, so it has been quite some time since she and I spoke.
Well, last evening ─ around 8:50 p.m., I believe ─ I went to bed because my younger brother had arrived home from wherever he had been drinking. I try to do what napping I can during the latter evenings as I await him to go to bed so that I am free to rise and spend the next few hours here at my computer getting various tasks accomplished.
My wife was home, but so were her two adult sons, both of whom are in their 20s. She had them to socialize with if she wanted to avoid my brother who would soon be watching T.V. in the darkened living room while drinking more beer.
I was lying in bed working at relaxing, when I heard a text arrive ─ the time was 9:04 p.m. And it was Sandy:
My dad might not make it by tomorrow according to doctors in hospital
Somehow she sent me that message four times at 9:04 p.m. ─ I have little doubt that doing so was intentional and designed to elicit a response from me, even if solely through being an irritation.
I didn't dare respond.
However, I know Sandy's Gmail address, which she can access on her cellphone. So after I was up for the overnight, I E-mailed this to her at 5:15 a.m. today:
Sandy,
I am truly sorry to learn of your father's downturn in well-being ─ it's dreadful when we're faced with the loss of a parent.
I don't know if it was a blessing, but both my mother and father died suddenly, and neither my brother nor I were anywhere near them at the time. Their deaths both came right out of the blue, for we were not expecting anything of the sort.
Is that easier to handle than being able to say good-bye? Maybe not.
Anyway, believe me, I am thinking of you. May you find the strength you need.
But it's 5:15 a.m., and I 've got to get back to bed ─ I've been up since during the midnight hour after going to bed last evening just ahead of 9 p.m.
She did not reply. Or at least, I did not hear anything more until 5:33 p.m. this afternoon when this text arrived on my cellphone:
My dad passed away this morning.i seen him before he passed
Please note that Sandy is not alone in the world ─ I am by no means some reluctant lifeline. She has at least one sister and at least one brother; and her mother ─ who was long-divorced from Sandy's father ─ is alive and married to a man Sandy is very close to, for she has in the past referred to him as her "dad" to me.
And I know that she has at least one niece or / and nephew.
For all I know, Sandy is with family members right now, and just happened to take the time to text me. And perhaps she has been texting other people she knows ─ she does have a strong sense of religion, and knows lots of 'Christians'.
I am not going to drop everything and reply to her text nor phone her (it is 6:04 p.m. as I type these words). It would very much surprise me if she was alone right now at her apartment if she was with family earlier.
Who among us would prefer to return to our solitude upon the death of a parent that self-same day in the stead of being with one's sibling(s) at such a time of loss?
Certainly not anyone with natural relationships! Is it, then, for me to fill some void of Sandy's creation that her own family is unable to fill?
I admit that I did feel that I would bring my post to a close and have some quick exercise and make the sacrificial phone call (my wife is not here ─ she disappeared while I was having a nap just after mid-afternoon). But I have since had those aforementioned rational thoughts and have managed to convince myself to hold fast and wait.
But enough of unfortunate Sandy for this post. I want to turn my attention now to some T.V.
Early last evening I watched what I believed was the series finale of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but I now see that there is still one final season to come. I had watched season seven's finale "Lights Out" which even sounded like a series finale.
Originally I could barely watch the series, but it grew on me as the seasons passed. The aggravation that the juvenile antics of actor Andy Samberg caused me almost caused me to drop the series, but thankfully the guy matured somewhat over the years and did not look as preposterous as a law enforcement officer as he originally did. He looked to be a mere boy, and acted like it.
I didn't much like Andy Samberg in the first season of Cuckoo, either. I was quite relieved that he bowed out after that season.
Since Brooklyn Nine-Nine is not yet done, then I will say nothing more concerning it.
This latter morning from 10 a.m. till 1 p.m. I watched (with my brother) via our Android TV Box three hours of previously downloaded videos that I wanted to finish viewing from a USB flash drive. I suppose the most notable among them may have been The Sequel: The Fall of the Cabal part 4.
My brother and I were quite surprised when the final video we watched that was titled The New Normal - Happen.Network (Documentary) began to almost match so much of what "The Sequel: The Fall of the Cabal part 4" was outlining towards its conclusion!
Note that my link to "The New Normal" documentary is just a suggestion, for I now have no idea which source I originally downloaded the documentary from. If you refer to this BitChute search, and provided that link remains valid, you can see that there are quite a few sources for the documentary under a different title (i.e., "Wake-up Call ─ What Is Happening").
Oh gosh, it is now already after 7 p.m. ─ I must halt here for today.
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