I titled this thread as a general question because it seemed most appropriate at the time. Looking back on that first post, the pandemic was obviously the inspiration, but I anticipated we’d use this to talk about life in general at some point.
This morning, I need to use this space to vent and grieve a bit, as my father-in-law passed away a little while ago.
He’d been sick for a while. Early this year, a previously painless lump on his shoulder became painful and hot to the touch, and a biopsy confirmed a relatively rare form of cancer. A follow-up scan detected a mass on his lung, later confirmed to be a different type of cancer. He’d had a melanoma removed about ten years ago, and it apparently metastasized to his lung.
He hung on pretty well for a while. Initial treatments seemed promising. But his latest round of treatment left him unable to eat much, and he went downhill very quickly. He was hospitalized late last week, doctors determined pretty quickly all they could do was keep him comfortable, and they transferred him home yesterday so as much of the family could be with him as possible before he passed.
When we got the word Monday morning there was nothing more doctors could do, we loaded up everything we thought we might need and drove like a bat out of hell from New Hampshire to central Illinois. I’ll forever be thankful for every cop who didn’t pull me over on the way here. Got here late last night. It was very important for us to be able to say goodbye—my dad passed suddenly last summer, and not being able to talk to him one last time has eaten at me ever since.
I’m lucky to have had my father-in-law in my life. My wife’s family is incredibly religious (my wife’s an exception), and we were initially concerned they might not take too well to their Christian daughter marrying a Jewish guy from Connecticut. But they’ve always been very supportive and made it clear they just want their daughter to be happy. My father-in-law, in particular, couldn’t have been more kind and caring. His top priority was taking care of his family; as long as I could do the same for his daughter and our kids, I was good in his book.
He’s always made it clear we were all important parts of his family. Considering that family includes 8 children, 5 sons/daughters-in-law, and 20 grandkids, that’s no small feat. He was a wonderful, wonderful man, and I’m gonna miss him.
Better than any potential in-law I’ve ever had. Cancer is shit, mate. My condolences on your loss.
Condolences Mike, sounds like he lived a good life.
Very sorry to hear this, especially combined with your own recent loss. May his memory be a blessing.
I am so sorry for your loss.
It sounds like he was a great man.
Sheesh Mike, it must be tough - the best to your wife, you and all the family…
Thank you for trusting us and for telling us about your father-in-law.
Condolences Mike to you and your family. I am sorry for your loss… always hurts me to know a good person left us… but they leave so much good for us behind , and that is probably all he ever wanted.
Sorry for your loss, Mike. I was lucky enough to marry into a really great family as well, and I think as actual adults, we really understand the value of that a lot more than we could as young people. From your description, it’s wonderful that you got to know him and feel appreciated by him. That’s a rare thing that you can carry with you every day.
I think Omicron is going to be worse than Delta here in the UK. The few people we had in government willing to take steps to curtail the spread of disease are gone (just typing that makes me feel insane) and have been replaced by people who are happy to let it burn through the rest of the population. Omicron currently looks more infectious but less severe, with the net result that the outcomes short term are just as bad, and potentially much worse long term.
I am battening down the hatches again over the Xmas and New Year period. Gentlemen, I wish you luck.
I literally just switched tabs over from reading about the increase in hospitalizations here in NYC on the NYT website and I am just getting angry about this now.
Maybe I am wrong, but I can’t help but believe the whole reason we are heading back into this danger zone is because there are so many selfish assholes in the world who just can’t get a god damn vaccine and wear a damn mask and maybe, just maybe be a little more careful in life until we can all get through this.
I have business trips to Argentina in Jan, Vegas in Feb and Seattle in March that I was looking forward to, and I can just see us heading back into travel bans again and having to cancel them all. Just like when this shit all started 2 years ago.
I feel like my adult life has been one long series of “If we don’t get a handle on this very soon, it’ll be a catastrophe. Here’s what we need to do to prevent that,” warnings, followed by us not doing that and bringing on the catastrophe. Climate change, wealth inequality, democracy—it’s just always “we need to do this!” followed by fucking around.
The difference with the virus, at least in the US, is that there are many people who are pro-COVID, acolytes of Nurgle, if you will. They want it to remove populations they don’t like–the poor, minorities, liberals–while also blaming Biden for the carnage they helped create. It’s despicable, but quite common here.
For the second time in a month, my Dad has been admitted to hospital with respiratory problems. The previous time was bad enough for me to fly home and see him because, well, you know. This time, because of Omicron, the hospital has a strict no-visitors policy. My Mum or one of my brothers gets to do a 50-mile round trip to drop off essentials at hospital security tomorrow.
Hopefully this time the hospital,will also work out wtf the actual problem is before sending him home, rather than going by the logic of well, he’s been here a week and a half and seems better so 
And yet:
One exception to that: the Y2K problem. “We need to fix this, or it’ll break all kind of things” followed by actuallly putting the resources in to fix it in time, resulting in most things not breaking (and consequently, of course, people assuming “what was all the fuss about?”). Turns out that our systems respond much better to fixed-deadline, immediate-impact threats than they do to longer-term, diffuse-responsibility ones.
(I still expect addressing Y2K38 to be a similarly last-minute panic, though.)
Oh, absolutely. The ozone hole, acid rain, overpopulation—there are a bunch of examples of impending doom we actually headed off. But then there’s stuff like several different waves of COVID failures, Amazon deforestation, orbital debris, multiple avenues of enshittening the oceans, and I start to lose sight of the successes.
Whole bunch of new restrictions going into effect in British Columbia (and pretty much all of Canada) due to Omicron.
They did have it where if you were crossing the US border for a trip less than 72 hours, you didn’t have to get a COVID test, but starting Monday, you do. Thus, I’m no longer going to OrcaCon in January. And my two GMT games that are going to be shipped to our US post box are going to have to sit there for a while.
I know it’s all necessary, but this is really getting tiring.
If you think it’s tiring now, just imagine what we will be dealing with five years hence.
How soon until COVID is a democratic plot to kill republicans? They just did such a poor job making the virus that they are killing democrats too.
Feel like some people can rationalize anything. 