Redirecting My Attention

Well I have been woken from the Katrina dream (nightmare?) by a competing trauma of a more personal nature. I just learned that my Dad is losing his battle with cancer. He is exhibiting signs of liver failure. I am going to be joining my family in Longview, Washington for the duration. The Hospice nurse has said he may have only days before loosing the ability to maintain alertness for communicating. But every patient is unique and he could rally again. He has surprised us all several times in the last twenty months.

So I don't know how long I am going to be separated from this computer with my 12 MB of personal files (stories, poems, essays, novels, correspondence, book reviews--the bulk of it in progress) and 100+ MB of research materials and E-books downloaded off the internet and my stuffed to the gills IE favorites. Nor do I know what kind, if any of computer and/or internet access I am going to be able to finagle. I do know that I can't expect to monopolize the phone lines in the daytime and my tactic of spending the night online as I do here will not wash either as there would be no point in going there if I'm just going to make a recluse of myself in a different household. I need to be available for those moments Dad is still able to interact.

I will be journaling, hopefully intensely, as writing is my life-line in ordinary times and the very air I breathe in times of emotional chaos as this will be. And I expect that I will be suffused with memories and bittersweet nostalgia and I've decided it will be healthier to go with it--to write it instead of fight it. So my posts here (and I do intend to post several times a week) will be mostly cobbled together from material developed in my journal.

But I am also going to do my best to continue to update the previous post with links related to the environmental impact of Katrina. I will also be following the repercussions of the current Rita hurricane. My prayers are with the people of the Gulf Coast states--the survivors of Katrina, the relief workers and government officials at every level. Of the latter, even those with whom I am angry I do not wish ill. I wish only that all can pull together for the commonweal.