Six AM at Southwest Airlines Gate B-9, the Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood Int’l Airport, waiting for Flight 2548 to Indianapolis. The sun’s not up yet. It won’t be up for another three-quarters of an hour. I’m straining but I still can’t see any hints of light in the east. I’m running on five hours of sleep and probably still have traces of alcohol in me thanks to the titanic pina coladas and shots of Sex on the Beach we all downed last night on Ocean Drive in South Beach. The Loved one, my sister Charlotte and my brother Joey.
We made plans to get together for Thanksgiving way back when I was still fighting the most dramatic effects of the platinum poisoning and radiation that came this close — by design — to snuffing the life out of me but, in the process, murdered the bejesus out of the cancerous tumors in my neck.
That was such a short time ago but back then I felt as though this Thanksgiving week was as distant as the year 2075. I thought we’d never get here, but we did. And while I waited for the minutes, the days, the months to pass, the world still spun. Brits voted to split from the European Union. The Rio Olympics happened w/o any explosions or hostages taken. In September, global CO2 levels exceeded the symbolic 400 ppm mark, meaning we’re pretty much environmentally fucked from now on. Huzzah, my beloved Chicago Cubs won their first World Series since the first vertebrate land animals crawled out of the primordial seas. Then, a sadistically evil buzz kill, the American people chose Hillary Clinton president of the United States of America by a vote of more than a million votes, meaning Donald Trump is now the president-elect. (Good luck, anthropologists of the future, in trying to figure the previous sentence out.) And yesterday, Fidel Castro died.
All the while, I healed. I’m still healing, although I think the pina coladas and shots of Sex on the Beach may well have retarded that process a bit. Here’s a slideshow from Miami Beach yesterday late afternoon and evening:
Anyway, the long-awaited T-giving week is done (sad face). And I have a pressing need to offer special thanks to those who got me through my poisoning/zapping/healing adventure. I mentioned yesterday The Loved One and bro Joey, natch. Today, I salute a quintet who supported me, urged me along, and even drove me, daily, to the radiation and infusion centers.
- Susan & David Jones
- Hondo Thompson & Les Crandall
- Tyler Ferguson
The five of you…, well, you helped save my life. I love you.
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