There's no place like home.

It is so, so good to be back in the normal chaos of Casa de Locos! Kids didn’t kill each other, the house didn’t burn down, and every one has all the body parts that were attached when I left still intact.. Props to Miss Thing for keeping the house together for me for a whole week! well the Beast did end up making a trip to the ER, but that's a whole 'nuther story.

What a trip! On every level you care to use the term for.. Brother #2 is a mess, but alive and hopefully will be just as good, or better- provided he behaves himself. Quadruple bypass, he picks now to be an over achiever- OY!

Spent 2 nights taking the overnight shift at the hospital. Yeah, I vowed to wait till he got home.. but became convinced I could be of use the last few days after getting updated on things… Anyhoo- he needed an overnight sitter as he tended to want to do stupid shit like get up in the middle of the night and attempt to go on walkabout- ended up trying to get out of bed and nearly cracked his skull open on night number three of his stay because he went to look for our dead Mamma.. Big fella doesn’t react well to either general anesthesia or painkillers.. No sleep at all, they gave him everything they could think of and he just couldn’t get settled down. I do however now hold the babysitting record of getting him to sleep for 4 hours straight.

So I get there and he’s fairly looped on painkillers and thinks I’m Mamma.. heart wrenching doesn’t even begin to describe it. He was Mamma’s boy, and to have him ask me why it took so long to get there just tore me into more pieces than I imagined possible.. So I petted him and sang to him and settled him down until he came back to the real world, and he looked at me and said “Hey kid, when did you get here?” I had to step outside.

To see the strongest man I know reduced to this mess- I had to take a moment. This huge man, who has spent 30 some odd years as a Blacksmith and a Farrier, a man who spends his life outdoors and is the most physical creature I know now can’t sit up without help. A large piece of my heart broke. And the moment it fell to the floor, I really did hear it shatter, and I’m still not sure how to pick it up and put it back together.

So we spent two very, very long nights getting up and down. Vacillating between reason and insanity, in some strange twilight place that neither of us wanted to be in. Being a gentleman who was raised to be as polite as a person can be, while lucid he’d apologize for wanting to get up or having to move, or go to the bathroom.. and when out of it he was an ornery cuss. He had to try and walk to keep the fluid from settling on his lungs, and he’d still try and hold the door for the nurses and let the little old ladies pass..

My lord, how hard could it be for him to have his little sister have to stand in the bathroom with him so he didn’t fall? We managed to find a relatively dignified way to get around it so he wasn’t mortified- and I wasn’t terrified he was going to get hurt. But those weird twilight times when he’d wake after managing to doze for a few moments were the worst.. he’d wake up in a start and get panicked if he couldn’t see me.

As predicted, he wasn’t home an hour before he had to try and walk out to his shop.. Yeah, that went real well. Part of the reason I got called in for the sitting was just general relief, the other part being I appear to be the only person that tells him when he’s being an asshole. Yep- called him on that one, big time. Had to pull out the “I’m launching your ass back into another time zone” threat All the other concerned parties are treating him like an infant and hovering, which was (is) driving him nuts- I pretty much sat back until he either needed me or was getting ready to do something stupid, talked when he wanted to talk, and shut up otherwise and let him be. Another little chunk of the heart broke off when he asked me when I was leaving if I couldn’t just stay a little longer, because I was the only person not treating him like “someone else”, as he put it. Now I’m not being mean, but taking care of someone and smothering are two different things- and everyone else is smothering big time at the moment, and I just happen to think a stubborn and independent person like him needs a little latitude. I’m in the minority of one it appears..

I did however learn an interesting lesson- siblings often don’t really know one another as actual adult humans. Sure, we love each other and keep up with the general goings on in respect to our lives and such.. But the flood of calls and people dropping by with casseroles and offers to tend the horses and such gave me a view of my brother I expect I may never have had. A good friend of mine once told me that the measure of a life well spent was the love you received, there’s a lot of truth in that. My brilliant brother, a man that had the smarts to do anything he wanted to do chose to follow his heart and his natural inclinations. Given the avalanche of love and concern, it’s a life very well spent. We’ve decided we actually like each other as grown up people and have made a date for a weekend just for the two of us- as soon as he’s allowed to drive.

Wow, that went on forever didn’t it? Processing the experience y’all- just processing it, and I expect I will for quite some time to come...Blame it on acute sleep deprivation- 8 hours of sleep in 5 days makes a person a little crazy. Or in my case crazier than usual.