A Living Wake

 Entry 1.    1:16 a.m.

My crate mates think I am member of the pack.
Tired finally. My mind preoccupied. Jenny wants to start planning a party for March, a living wake.  I suggested we do it on her birthday. Left unspoken is my fear March is too late. I hope I am wrong.  This evening, she couldn't really leave the couch. She keeps offering to help clean. What she could accomplish just a week ago she cannot do today. If she can push herself to a car, she has energy to drive places, but getting out of the car and making it.  .  . say. . . to the back of Bartell's is now unimaginable.

Entry 2     2:44 p.m.

Hello. Willow woke me at 2:49 a.m. to go to the bathroom. I stayed awake until after 4. I awoke at 7:50 a.m. to the sound of a yip yip dog barking up the street. A true miracle, the dog alarm clock has an emergency backup, who knew?  Slammed at work. 

Entry 3.    5:35 p.m.

Abby doesn't have school until 1 on Tuesdays. This means we don't see her until 12:30-12:40 in the afternoon as she is rushing out the door.  This morning, she was upstairs just after 8, beaming--positively radiant.  She told me she got 1300 on her PSATs. Just like dear old dad.  99th percentile in English and writing, and they had to send out a mining crew to find her math score. Nevertheless, she killed it on the language side. Next year she will take a prep course before she takes the SAT.  We are going down to Scripps sometime after the 1st of the year, when tours start.  It is in San Diego. That wouldn't suck.

Jenny played Scrabble with Kathy and Pam today for a long time.  Pam always arrives bearing gifts, today lots of whole foods goodies. They played for quite a while. Jenny has never lost to Pam, probably not to Kathy either. They have been doing this somewhat regularly since diagnosis, and hope they continue to do so as the days progress.



Jenny told me she wants to have a living wake.  A celebration of her life. She wants to rent a facility out, like her school gym.  I am thinking Lakewood Community Center. She is thinking March.  I, believing that too far away, am thinking January.  I have heard of such things, and remember going to the wake of my mother's Uncle Ted. He was hated, he went crazy in later years from drinking. I don't know if he was a bastard before that. I really don't. The story goes my Great Aunt Dorothy divorced him after he chased her into the street with an axe, stinking drunk and stark raving mad.  That wake was a drunken celebration--both my mother and my own sonofabitch Uncle actually put aside their great differences to celebrate Ted not being in the world anymore. Amazing.

Because Jenny is beloved by so many, thankfully, it won"t be the same tenor  as Ted's.  But, since I plan on organizing it, I want it to be even better than that.  Better than her 40th birthday 80s high school reunion theme. Better than the night I dressed up as Georgie Miller, complete with wig and Henny Youngman jokes, and performed standards for her, accompanied by my friend Jorge on his grand piano that he and his boyfriend Ed fit into a 1 bedroom Manhattan apartment. So, I am thinking about it.  I always wanted to jump out of a cake.  What a disappointment that would be.  Funny, but wow.  I want to go for funny ha ha, not funny like the taste of chicken that has gone bad.

Not sure I would want a living wake.

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