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<title>Keith's Web Blog RSS Feed</title>
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<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/index.php</link>
<description>Keith Watanabe's Website</description>
<item>
<title>What Can I Do?</title>
<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/2/1/58c35f9f68e158d1a98312daa7682ada.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[my family issues are so grieving that i think i should just move far away and start from scratch.  my mom seems so miserable and i want to help, but i'm losing sight of the point in all of this. she won't do anything and lets her problems overwhelm her.  again she called into the doctor to receive help, but it's to avoid yet another problem.  apparently, part of her issues are because of work.  they pretty much are skewing her silly and not helping her out because the owner is Japanese and too cheap to really care.  worse yet, she's at the age where she feels she can't move forward.  it's true as she wouldn't be able to reach a higher financial status on her skills and potential.  and the government won't support her.  in some ways it makes me think Japan's old seniority system was far better in terms of creating a stable environment; the only problem is that it didn't allow young lions to really bust out.  America's problem is the opposite, except that they still chain the young lions with the older, more manipulative generations calling the shots and keeping us down.

going back to my mom, a lot of this is her fault because she is or was unwilling to take responsibility for her actions.  letting my father just go without emotional support lead him to his metaphorical demise.  however, as my family aren't bad people, should society just convict them and say, "Hey, you fucked up.  You deal with the consequences?"  

from my viewpoint, i feel awful but it gets me dragged into this mess.  i go back to the idea behind Fight Club where some vigilante group should just blow up all the banks and credit card companies so we can be reset to zero.  realistically though, i feel trapped and horrible.  the easiest thing would be to run away and cast my feelings away.  use the Ayn Rand model of life.  it worked before when i was depressed.  ]]></description>
<pubDate>Tue, 01 Feb 2005 10:09:07 -0700</pubDate>
<guid>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/2/1/58c35f9f68e158d1a98312daa7682ada.html</guid>
</item>
<item>
<title>the head is too stupid!</title>
<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/3/5/318c03050a98d87c47401c699f0c3f4a.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[my mom busted my printer.  an HP that i've had less than a year!  just by making a copy.  can you believe that!  like an animal who got burnt by fire once, she'll probably even refrain further from using technology.  *sigh*  BIG FAT HEAD!]]></description>
<pubDate>Sat, 05 Mar 2005 12:25:11 -0700</pubDate>
<guid>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/3/5/318c03050a98d87c47401c699f0c3f4a.html</guid>
</item>
<item>
<title>Watching Someone Die</title>
<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/4/3/5e6567c3508cb799bd78266ddbe6598f.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Have you ever watched someone die?  I am: my own mother.  I could include my father but I haven't seen him since one time around October.  But imagine being present every day around someone who you feel is internally slowing down.  That's really all of us since we're all born to die.  However, that feeling of death is never really present since we never are aware of our mortalities, until the last possible second.  

Yet this is different.  It's like being purposefully fatalistic.  That's how it feels.  Not myself, but my mom.  I observe her lying either on the couch or her room, simply watching the TV or resting.  It's not a peaceful rest either, but one induced by tremendous social pressures.  The pressures of her father having passed away a little over a year ago, then followed up with my father's severe stroke.  Then there's the other factors that seemingly should be unnecessary.  There's no support, no comfort.  My words are never comforting because they are an edge of reality.  So she's isolated.

I can't get through to her.  She's become completely anti-social except for instances where it's necessary to interact with people, such as at work or at the store.  Anything besides those necessary points and she reverts back into hermitism.  If my friends come over she hides.  She's always been like that but the situation is more poignant than ever.

The sad part is that I know for a fact that her thinking has been dilluted by the poisons of her enclosed world.  Rather than escaping that sickness, she feels comfort in it.  TV is of no help since TV only reinforces and aggrandizes those negative sensations.  So she's trapped.

As her son, I could do nothing.  Every ploy I try is futile.  Each day her will breaks a little more.  If she tells me otherwise, I know differently.  You don't ever need to hear from a person's mouth how they truly feel.  I sense it.  I sense the denial; the attempt to deny reality and lock oneself in a miniscule world.  But that world dies because it's self consuming.  Only something false can restore this like a material element (the lottery).  Still I know there's no relevance in that.

And from this I am forced to watch without recourse.]]></description>
<pubDate>Sun, 03 Apr 2005 21:40:48 -0600</pubDate>
<guid>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/4/3/5e6567c3508cb799bd78266ddbe6598f.html</guid>
</item>
<item>
<title>Another Bad Dream About My Dad</title>
<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/4/6/7e382f198c5d1412ffbeb29b7769dab6.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[Now and then, I've been receiving horrible dreams about my dad.  Sometimes I dream that he gets to leave the nursing home and he's okay.  Tonight I dream that I was at a dormitory party, like in a spot from college, yet the party was like that Com Inn place in Japan for language exchange, and all the people there were Japanese.  There was a Korean girl that I don't remember whose name it was that I liked.  Then I saw my poor father lying in a bed while everyone danced around him.  I approached him in the bed and most of the people disappeared.  I saw him lying, still paralyzed, without much hope.  I began hugging him and telling him how bad I felt and how much I missed him.  He could only utter sounds and I feel him weeping.

Then I woke up.

Afterwards, I told God that I wanted to challenge him.  I wanted to beat the fucker up.  I wanted to have him and slam my fist into his fucking face until there wasn't anything left.

Then I uttered a prayer.  If it was true that Nostradamus wanted us all dead in his vision on 5/5/2005 because of a massive realignment in the planets in the solar system, let it happen.  Wipe everyone out here and start anew.  People here don't deserve to live.  That's my conclusion.

If I were Jesus Christ reborn to take on the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I know exactly who I'd save.  And there aren't that many people on my list.

All you greedy fuckers out there trying to hurt my friends, my family and myself, just know that I know whom you are and if I had my spaceship to save everyone, we're gonna have PPV watching you guys die a painful, horrible death.]]></description>
<pubDate>Wed, 06 Apr 2005 00:52:42 -0600</pubDate>
<guid>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/4/6/7e382f198c5d1412ffbeb29b7769dab6.html</guid>
</item>
<item>
<title>Saw my Dad Today</title>
<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/5/8/5a5a0f0f770aa0b0aac78388a23a8ad5.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[It was mother's day.  I missed my dad's birthday, new years, christmas, thanksgiving, and even Halloween.  But of all days I saw him on Mother's day.  It was really hard for me to see him as always.  When my mom woke him up, there was a look of shock as he saw both of us, his head turning left to right as if the entire thing was some kind of dream.  Then he started crying again.

I tried to communicate with him but I found it hard.  Not just that he can't talk or even nod his head anymore.  But just coming up with something that wouldn't evoke that sense of depression instilled in him every time I have to see him.  Not my depression but his.  There seems to be a slow recognition, a very slow sense of response but it exist at the smallest level possible.

He spent most of the time looking at me and was trying to utter something but only a hollow sound issued from him since half his face is paralyzed.  I felt so awful watching him struggle to one side of the bed, his hands shaking with fragility.  Then watching him trying to move his now useless right arm.  

Simultaneously, I felt bitter, sad, angry, helpless, and sullen.  If I were god, half the world wouldn't be able to stand at this point because I'd hurl lightning bolts at everything and waste most of the world just as it wasted my father.  I wanted politicians and countries to crumble, doctors to melt, and capitalism to eat itself from existence.  To find out that a person who'd worked as an honest person for most of his life to be reduced by this uncaring, unsympathetic, animalistic society brings all the clarity of what the world represents to me at once.

I'm going to utter a curse in that I curse George W Bush and Dick Cheney to exchange places with my father.  I want them to suffer what my dad feels everyday.  I want them to lie in a bed with a diaper, mouth dribbling from words that cannot be spoken, tears for yearning just to escape while they remain in the shells of their decaying bodies, the world a witness to what happens to those who truly deserve such a fate.  Yes, I believe there are those that deserve such things, but it's not my father.  He was an innocent man that was duped by this society into thinking that a certain mode of living was correct.  Instead, he wasted his existence struggling only to provide a fraction of a percentage point to the machines of destruction.

The illusions of graduer he was briefly granted from time-to-time turned on him.  The food, the drugs, the alcohol, the late night meals, the smoking, the TV, all things that represent hedonism of unnecessity are what literally took his life and turned it into a grovelling snail, permanently couped up with a tube sticking from his chest.

Then as I look at the medicaid spending going to the military, the handshaking going on ranches between oil friends, the trees and environment being slashed up by greedy corporations, the wasted lives of brainwashed youth being sent daily in troves to Iraq, the spewing rhetoric of lies being exchanged by old, useless, powermongers, I think that I'd want to strike nearly everyone down with a billion volt lightning bolt, except that it wouldn't be in instant, but a prolonged, agonizing stab where the human race would see for once what it is in front of themselves, what this whole useless meat existence represents and the guilt of the foundation of wasteful, meaningless hedonism it built.  That's this planet's fate I decree.]]></description>
<pubDate>Sun, 08 May 2005 18:33:30 -0600</pubDate>
<guid>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/5/8/5a5a0f0f770aa0b0aac78388a23a8ad5.html</guid>
</item>
<item>
<title>eating at my home</title>
<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/5/22/911e0667c8590763244450de1bd43b2e.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[With all the obesity cases going around, some preach that you should eat more at home than going out.

Then there's my home.

My dad was a good cook, but you all know what happened to him.  Then there's The HEAD.  The Big, Fat, Veiny Object.  You're safer eating rat feces from a rodent that was injected with poison than touching my mom's....uh...what would you call it?  It's not cooking.  I call it attempted homocide.  

I've heard people complaining about dysentery from buffets in Vegas (like Surf Town, Murkus Murkus and IP, no, not intellectual property).  Then there's my mom's hand with the stove which probably  contributed to my father's stroke more than his bad habits combined.  This isn't your innocent, little granny with good intentions, but someone who intends to cause punishment to the universe.

That's how bad it is eating at my home.  

I keep swearing never to eat at home again.  After tonight's, I still don't know what to call it, let's saying weekly poisoning, I made an oath that wasting is better than being infected with whatever crap she produces.  No more sorrow.  I prefer starving honestly at this point.  I think whatever decision my mom makes about food will automatically be nullified by me.  I will flat out refuse all food served or suggested by my mom.

Right now I feel as though someone stuffed a rock in my belly.  And I thought I learned after all those years in high school.

And people wondered why I got fat in college.  Well, it's because whatever was served elsewhere certainly beat the hell of what my mom "prepared!!!!"]]></description>
<pubDate>Sun, 22 May 2005 21:59:18 -0600</pubDate>
<guid>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/5/22/911e0667c8590763244450de1bd43b2e.html</guid>
</item>
<item>
<title>there's no point</title>
<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/9/23/bbcf0a575be48c833cad59fb56eb7839.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[of trying to help my family out any longer.  i think it's impossible to try to change a situation where the people involved in the situation refuse to change.  there's only so much one can do before it becomes a waste of time.  i've told my mom so many times what to do and what not to do.  yet she refuses to listen.  i don't want to deal with her anymore.  everyone here seems to have alienated me.  i want to return to japan so badly because i want to start (mostly) from scratch.  many of my friends are there still and i try to maintain contact as much as possible.  i feel closer to japan more than ever.  tonight i even went to Hakata Ramen (Shisen Gumi) because i needed to be in contact with something japanese.  the world of america is no longer a viable place for me to be.  i feel too sad to even try anymore here.]]></description>
<pubDate>Fri, 23 Sep 2005 22:45:05 -0600</pubDate>
<guid>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/9/23/bbcf0a575be48c833cad59fb56eb7839.html</guid>
</item>
<item>
<title>my mom has lost it....</title>
<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/9/24/ea9c4e589d4502fc6dc9b6529ecb4e85.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[my mother is irrecoverably insane.  before she was teetering on the edge.  now, she's fallen over.  tonight she flipped out again.  it feels so horrible being here. i feel sick and depressed being at home.  everyday for me is a fight with insanity.  

earlier i had told my mother that i didn't want to eat what she bought.  i had been growing sick with the crappy food she buys.  for some reason she refuses to take a hint.  i told her a while back that i didn't want her to buy me food.  she refused to listen back then.  so all i did was provide a bit of honesty and told her directly i was going to buy something else.  i never asked for a single cent.  then suddenly she made a choking motion to herself.  it was really freaky.  

i had already been suffering from severe depression and a headache because of jury duty.  how could i eat food that would make me feel worse?  so i told her honestly that i would go out.  what's wrong with honesty?  do i have to lie to myself and my feelings?  why should i get sick when i'm already feeling bad as is?

so i took a drive.  originally, i just wanted del taco.  then i upgraded my list to ramen because i needed to drive in the hope of getting rid of my headache.  the cool air of the night helped a little and i stopped over at the old Pacific Square just to walk around.  very little was open so i went to my other plan of having the ramen.

when i returned i felt better from the food and drive.  however, my house remained like a haunted mansion, with an eerie glow perpetually emanating from the front window sill.  usually, my mom leaves the light on in front for me.  this time it wasn't turned on.  so i figured things had transgressed to a worse point.

inside, my mom lie in a curled fetal position watching the usual poison on TV.  i said little and simply took my socks off and left them in the living room.  i went to my room to watch the 11th installment of Densha Otoko as my heart was already filled with a great deal of bitterness from such a horrid week.

Densha Otoko represents everything good that remains in this world and presents to me my escape and my catharsis to an otherwise wretched existence.  towards the end of the show, my mother started cleaning up in a brutal fashion.  then like in the past began screaming, "I hate my life!!!!!"  she repeated this for at least 15 minutes, more to intimidate me and instill greater guilt in me as she would do in the past.

some people feel that i might be cold towards my mother, especially at a time like this in her life.  but again i have to ask what about my life?  i have given up so much in the past to the point where i feel enslaved like a prisoner with mannacles, chained to my family.  i literally am like the main character in Soseki's Kokoro, being forced to return due to filial obligation.

my life has always been terrible when it involved my parents.  they never saw me as a mature person and never will.  this i see now.  i feel despite their age, they have regressed to the point of infancy again, clinging to dead memories that meant little in the first place.  i had tried warning them many times on how to handle this world.  however, the world is far too cunning for them and they, in their weak, anile, and fey minds have never been able to cope.

i look at my mom's sickness to only be hyperextended by her unchanging lifestyle.  i see how she flocks to the carefully marketed Lifetime network.  those shows make women sick and only inflate what they want to see.  they are used to enhance the anger and provide a voice for women in an unflattering way. the weak are unable to distinguish the garbage they show, things which exacerbate their fears, angers and concerns.  

then my mom's diet.  although my mom takes blood pressure and cholesterol regulating pills, my mom won't change her diet.  she continues to buy the worst items!  i truly believe what the show "Supersize Me" had demonstrated in showing how one's diet psychologically can influence a person.  all the fast food crap my mom consumes increases her sense of depression, her weariness and her moodiness.  her lack of exercise only pents up all the additional calories that need to be burned.  she comes home only more frustrated and unable to do anything yet restless because her health is poor.  

i have been accused many times in the past of not sympathizing enough with her because she's my mother.  however, what if she didn't feel like a mother?  what if all you had was a sense of this emptiness inside of you that everytime you come to your biological home, you feel queer?  that you feel even more alienated because the care provided is perverse and misunderstood?  it's like being inside of a cell.  my only sanctuary is my room.  

fortunately, i do have friends.  my best friends are overseas though.  occasionally, they drop me emails with their concern about my welfare.  i feel like Densha Otoko at those times as my online friends (actually those i've met in the past) have served to be the closest people i've met.  here, my friends are cold and distant.  i feel little or no connection these days.  if you are my friend here and i have offended you greatly, i must apologize.  but what i have here is not what i conceive as people i any longer can trust with my problems.

my heart and soul are in Japan and i miss it more every day.  it truly feels like a disease gnawing at my marrow being here.  it's a sickness that i feel, an uneasiness that i had never realized before.  when i went to japan, my disease had been cured and i finally felt comfortable with myself.  

i do not truly consider myself as a horrible person.  my environment has tested my heart, soul, patience, mind, and body to the point where i've lost so much faith that i have to locate and utilize these pockets of salvation to prevent myself from completely self-destructing.  you have to understand this.  i don't want to become a byproduct of a cruel environment.  i want to retain my soul and do real good in this world.  but i can't in my current state.]]></description>
<pubDate>Sat, 24 Sep 2005 00:58:35 -0600</pubDate>
<guid>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/9/24/ea9c4e589d4502fc6dc9b6529ecb4e85.html</guid>
</item>
<item>
<title>my mom has calmed down a little</title>
<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/9/24/448266347524f45381408a0e7f65a755.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[there's still a lot of tension here though.  my stomach churns just sitting here typing as quietly as i can.  i listen to MAX since they are one of the few groups i feel give me good luck and can make me happy.  but i fear leaving my room since my mother will not be in the right state of mind.  hopefully, she expelled her anger to the point that she grew tired.  and hopefully, she did nothing irrational (though it's questionable at this point what her limits are).  still i won't leave my room for a while.  maybe until the morning.  i feel like little Anne Frank locked up somewhere as the Nazi's patrolled looking for Jews to exterminate.

my mom has always been frightening.  when i was little, i had become afraid of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark (because of the ending and despite the hype from my other friends).  my mom had bought a comic book which showed that cruel ending of the Nazi's burning from God's Wrath, and that had been permanently etched into me as a major fear.  however, whenever i would screw up or anger my mom, she'd threaten me with saying she'd make Belloq's eyes glow in the dark from that comic book.  being extremely young, naive and small, i'd believe her.  yet that memory had haunted me even until now.  i can't ever watch the ending.  i'll read about it but i'm forever afraid of seeing it because my mom had instilled into me the fear of God in her own metaphor.

i don't know if all parents are like this, but i've felt my mom has always had a natural penchant for psychological warfare against myself and my father.  i feel she's greatly to blame as well for the near demise of my father.  her character is incredibly dark, foreboding, kinda reminding me of the mother from Psycho.  my friends often felt creeped out whenever i invited them over.  my friend kris even remarked that when he came over once, my mom was and has always been in the same position, on the couch, watching TV with the same expression on her face.

can you see why i'm a little freaky myself?  i've attempted to negate her terrible personality by surrounding myself with people who are unlike her. i don't want this irrational bitterness to exist in my heart and soul, this constant regret i know she eternally feels for all the mistakes in her life.

honestly, i should be more fucked up than i am.  i ought to be one of these people bombing the white house or doing some other traversity to the world.  somehow i'm not.  the bitterness does exist, but not the will to actually do it.  somehow i've built up enough of a consciousness, and a sense of responsibility towards society where i've learned to vent my anger in a constructive fashion (i.e. here).

i wish my mom would do the same.  my mom is purely destructive and self-destructive in nature.  i have to escape from this place under all circumstances.  ]]></description>
<pubDate>Sat, 24 Sep 2005 01:21:20 -0600</pubDate>
<guid>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/9/24/448266347524f45381408a0e7f65a755.html</guid>
</item>
<item>
<title>premonition/dream about my dad</title>
<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/8/26/4cf4b78a9ddb9a22aba0618644086273.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[i had another dream again about my father. i dreamt that he had called me up on my phone and i was able to enjoy a nice conversation with him.  he had been transferred to some place nearer to my home.  somehow he was able to get his voice back.  but i cried during all of this because i felt so relieved in just hearing his voice again.

then i woke up and felt awful.  i had only slept about 90 minutes before getting up and feeling my body quiver from anxiety.  it might've been from the corned beef hash from the previous night (which is something my dad always loved and would make me).  sometimes i wish i could give up eating because everytime i eat something like corned beef hash, it reminds me painfully of my father.  

i'm so sorry dad.  i wish this never had happened to our family.]]></description>
<pubDate>Sat, 26 Aug 2006 14:52:51 -0600</pubDate>
<guid>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/8/26/4cf4b78a9ddb9a22aba0618644086273.html</guid>
</item>
<item>
<title>another terrible dream</title>
<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/1/25/e4ad136c76b7fa6cff3329b741f1e8b7.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[it might've been the sugar from the krispy kreme i had to invoke a sense of anxiety early this morning, but i woke up earlier than i should with a sense of guilt.  saw my father in the house.  he was placed alongside the boat in the garage.  poor guy was barely bundled up in a blue blanket during the cold of winter.  it was as though my mom and i had truly abandoned him to this terrible fate.  i came up and tried to hug him, but he tried pushing me away, crying the entire time.  thereafter, i woke up feeling dejected.

i'll be forever cursed knowing that i never could do something to prevent my father from having his condition.]]></description>
<pubDate>Thu, 25 Jan 2007 15:09:09 -0700</pubDate>
<guid>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/1/25/e4ad136c76b7fa6cff3329b741f1e8b7.html</guid>
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<item>
<title>this weekend</title>
<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/5/14/288d36cf91a7186dbbe9a941e5caae2a.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[i went home to LA this week to take care of some business.  more importantly i was able to be with my mom for Mother's Day and take her out for dinner as well as see my father.  i didn't realize that i haven't seen my father for over two years. so i forced myself to see him this weekend  under all circumstances.  i was very relieved to see him. i want to say happy but it's never a joy seeing someone who once had tons of life and love now crippled and helpless in bed.  i can't even tell if he can recognize myself or mom anymore.  it's so sad that a stroke can cause this much damage to a person that he can be become almost completely non-functional.  but still i got to see him and hugged him.  i won't ever forget the dream of seeing him piled outside in a little bundle, freezing.  i swear i'll never let that ever happen to him.  i'd prefer God to strike me down with a nuclear bomb than anything to ever happen again to my family.  you hear that God?  don't fuck with my family or i'll take you out once we meet!

i wanted to stay by my dad's side for a long period.  mom must've felt uncomfortable, not knowing what to say.  i don't think she's ever going to be mentally the same and partly is living in the past in order to deal with the situation.  but she did admit afterwards that she was happy i took her to see dad.  i think it's just hard to be able to respond to someone who seems vaguely sentient at this point.

right now, i really want to quit my job and go back to LA.  i feel awful and wish i could do more for my family directly.

on a positive note, i was able to get someone to assess my mom's roof. it turned out to be fairly reasonable (at least from my expectations).  i have enough saved up.  it's just a matter of consolidating my money, getting the contract in, and picking a date when it can be handled.  i want to do it sooner than later.  but if all goes well and LA has no more rains for the year, then i'm good and can set this all up around August.  i really hope that will help my mom a little bit.]]></description>
<pubDate>Mon, 14 May 2007 00:02:54 -0600</pubDate>
<guid>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/5/14/288d36cf91a7186dbbe9a941e5caae2a.html</guid>
</item>
<item>
<title>This is probably the hardest thing i've ever had to write</title>
<link>http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/9/20/3d30546dc7b19985d92b1fa41632600f.html</link>
<description><![CDATA[I got up at a normal time today, despite feeling physically down after drinking the previous night with a coworker.  My keitai battery had somehow lost all energy; I realized I forgot to plug it in this morning so I'm amazed at how I was able to wake up.  Before taking a shower, I had a few chores to run because I was preparing for my last day in the office.  I somehow managed to drag my recently inert tub to the office.  In the morning, I had a brief chat with a coworker as she came to say goodbye to me.  Afterwards, I decided to do my main task for the day: call my mom.<br />
<br />
Her tone came in normal but the next words she uttered would be something I'd not forget until the end of my life:<br />
<br />
&quot;Dad passed away last night.&quot;<br />
<br />
This whole day I've been in a funk.  I'm just devastated.  Every time I called my mom, truthfully I was always scared to hear those words.  Somehow I knew that it was inevitable.  Just not this soon.  The worst two things for me are that I'm going to fly out tomorrow and that I had an opportunity to return to LA two weeks back.  I had been planning to see my dad this Sunday once I got back.  Now, it looks like I'll never see him again.<br />
<br />
I don't know when the funeral arrangements will be made, but I'll stay in LA as long as I need to.  I'm really worried about my mom and her mental condition.  Originally, I was planning to go to LA to help fix our old, leaky roof.  More importantly though, I really wanted to see my dad and make sure he was doing okay.  <br />
<br />
Right now, I feel so empty.  I feel angry, sad, depressed, frustrated, anything but happy.  This isn't the way I wanted things to turn out.  I wanted to help him out by launching a successful application, having Google or Yahoo buy it out and take the money and give it to my mom so she could pay for his medical bills and give him better facilities.  Certainly, he wasn't going to ever recover unless some miracle in medicine would happen during our lifetime.  At the very least, I wanted him to be comfortable.<br />
<br />
I think the saddest two images for me about my dad are seeing him in his little blanket, curled up in such uncomfortable positions trying to sleep or get around in his bed at the nursing home and knowing that my dad died in pain so alone.  I wish I was there for him at least to see him every day and make sure he wasn't by lonely.  I totally fucked up and regret it.]]></description>
<pubDate>Thu, 20 Sep 2007 04:20:34 -0600</pubDate>
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