Kenny

Turns out Kenny is not going to make it after all. We're going down in awhile to see him in the hospice, probably for the last time. He was a good man, and didn't deserve this. Then again, who does?
(Though, as the saying goes, many who die deserve life, while many who deserve to die, live. Go fucking figure. But that's why Vramin the Green Magician said "It is neither life, nor is it fair.")
To further quote Roger Zelazny: "Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to ensure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen."
This prayer is called the Possibly Proper Death Litany, and is all I have to offer in these moments.

So, Kenny, my blood brother of the hospital, goodbye. If you're a fisherman, as I recall, I commend you to the hands of my grandfather and uncle, who are fishing in Heaven, if there's a Heaven. (And, as they would say, if there's no fishing there, how can they call it Heaven?) Tell them I'll be along in awhile (presently, in Southern parlance, rather than directly, as we feared last year), and we'll all go fishing together...

Not that it comes as any surprise, but this trip was hard on Chris. We ended up getting lost on the way home, having a fight, and making up over dinner. Not nearly, of course, as hard as it all is on Marsha, who we left lying next to her dying husband... My heart goes out to her.