I heard him speak for the first time yesterday since the stroke. Most of what he was saying wasn't understandable. It's like he's talking normally, just in another language. The only thing I could make out was the phrase "I cannot fly". He kept repeating that over and over again. Nobody is really sure what he means by that. It may mean nothing at all.

I've put off writing about this because I wasn't extactly sure what I was going to say. I realized I never was going to.

My father had a stroke about a month ago. I don't know how to feel about it. I don't know how I actually feel about it. Part of me is feeling kind of numb because there isn't a lot that I can do. Another small briefly-showing part of me was having some kind of melodramatic existential-morality debate in my head, but that didn't last long. I quickly realized that this isn't about anything, this is just something that happened. My mother is choosing to see everything regarding this as some sort of divine sign. Everything, including day-to-day things that would have happened anyway-and have been going on for eons. Part of that makes me mad, because it implies to her that this happened for some reason. For some reason realizing there was no reason puts me more at peace with it than trying to find one.

He won't be able to work again, he won't be able to speak anything more than simple words or phrases. He'll have to be in a wheelchiar for most of his waking hours. And that's that, so begins another chapter in his and my whole family's life. So begins a new way that I have to learn to interact with him. We've determined that he can understand us ok, he just can't react or respond in the way that he used to.