Today is better than yesterday – her mobility is improved a lot and her pain is more manageable. She’s off IV painkillers and onto oral drugs, so she’s in a little more pain, but nothing that she can’t handle. She’s moving almost normally, and I don’t think there will be any problem with getting her home tomorrow. Her staples can come out tomorrow, and that’s basically the only thing keeping her here.

Then the challenges with living at home will begin. Obviously most folks don’t think about recovering from surgery when they’re picking out a home, but just for the record, a split-level is not the way to go. No matter what you wanna do, there are stairs involved. Now if we were a little smarter, we would have set the guest bedroom up downstairs, so that Suzy could move between the guest room and the den, but no, that’s my office. So we’re trying to figure out if she’ll be more comfortable spending most of her time downstairs or up in the bedroom. I’m guessing it’s going to be downstairs, just because that’s way more convenient for visitors to sit. It’s not like we’ve got a lot chairs in our bedroom. So I think most of her waking time will be downstairs, which is okay, because she can sit or recline either in the recliner or on the sofa, and there’s a little dorm fridge down there for snacks and stuff. My sister is coming up tomorrow to stay a couple of days and help out, and friends have volunteered to bring over dinner Saturday and Sunday (tomorrow night’s dinner is still available if any of you have an overwhelming desire to feed people).

The outpouring of well-wishes through Twitter and Facebook has been simply amazing, and we appreciate the flowers (and yes, Otis, I will provide photos of me drinking beer out of the smiley-face mug). This has been a rough week, but all of you guys have made it a lot easier. So thanks. A lot.

This poem started life as a piece of a song that came to me in a dream, and I suppose I should be thankful it was as short as it turned out to be, since the last thing I wrote off a dream ended up around 65,000 words. I’m not sure where it’s going, but I think there’s something in there. Let me know what you think.
Homecoming

I drove back to hell today,

walked in through the front door.

I went back to see my brother,

mother and my sister

but my father said “I have no son”

and they turned me away.

I drove back to hell today,

stood on the front porch

crying to come in

while my mother stared right through me

my tears standing in her eyes.

I drove back to hell today,

but my sister would not leave with me.

She just stood there holding Daddy’s arm

grinning like she’d won a prize

’til I finally turned away.

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