Jess was telling me that I needed to have another Come to Jesus talk with Mom- I tried. It didn't take at all.

Naturally, the SECOND I got off the airplane, I was dragged off to visit Dad. Mom had brought Mauricio along (for reasons I found out later). Luckily for me, he's got some night job in addition to his day one now, and thus we weren't there for longer than about 20 minutes.

Mauricio strikes me as a perenially optimistic guy. Perhaps in the total blind optimism way that er, most of my exes have had. Because he was going off about how we were going to get Dad home and how he looked better and how he's still in there and wants to live- and again, I am not seeing this. Especially when it has to be called to Dad's attention multiple times that I'm in the room, and he has to be "forced" (i.e. grab his hand and wave it at me) to say hi. Mom was going on about how when Mauricio was in there earlier, Dad "gave the biggest smile" when he came into the room. He doesn't do that for me or Mom. I still find this hard to believe.

In other medical news, Dad is supposedly slightly improving and is off morphine. (Huh?) Mom pretty much knows nothing more than that. She called the head nurse chick with a long list of questions and the nurse said she'd call when she had answers. Naturally, there's been no response.

I can't figure out if (a) this hospital is incredibly fucking lazy and can't be arsed to deal with family members, (b) they're a bunch of liars (especially for claiming Dad could be rehabbed and they'd have some sort of "team meeting" with the family to discuss it- they completely canceled that meeting), or (c) they're too afraid to tell Mom there isn't any hope.

I found out later that the reason Mom brought Mauricio up was that Dad's newest roommate (a guy who can still speak) asked her if Dad was in the last stages of dying, because she talks to him like he is. Mom of course denied all of the above.

*sigh*

Why am I not seeing all the "Dad's doing so well!" signs that everyone else is spouting to me? Am I just a negative person who doesn't want to see signs of recovery because I'm such a bitch? Are they seeing things that happen when I'm not there? Are they just ignoring reality? All I can see when I'm there is a guy who's suffering, and it feels bad to me to leave him in this state indefinitely for weeks, months, or years.

Did I mention that I'm really dreading the holidays this year? I just can't fake that we're normal this year, not that we can any more anyway, and I sure as fuck don't want to sit through 48 hours of Auntie Dolores without Dad. I wish we could leave town for the dreaded event (Jess said we could always go to her place in December if we wanted. Hey, there's always Disneyland!), so we wouldn't be expected to pretend like it was every other year that's happened before. But of course, that's not going to happen unless you-know-what occurs. Instead, we'll probably spend the day in the hospital. Whee. Well, maybe that'll count as an excuse not to see D&B. Who knows.

In short, the second I got off the plane I got hit with "Hey, your life sucks!" again. Depressing reality.

More later.

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