Craptastic

My language is usually pretty clean, I try not to swear, which is funny considering I sounded like a sailor in high school. I titled this blog craptastic because that is the only word that comes to mind to describe a movie I saw tonight. "Everybody's Fine." I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, so I won't give away details. About halfway through I had a thought that it should have been called, "Everybody Sucks."

In a nutshell, Robert De Niro's character is a widower and has four kids scattered around the country. He decides to take a road trip to visit each one of them. Now I figured the story line of the kids losing their mother would have brought me to tears, no, it was the way the kids treated their dad, or maybe how they didn't treat him. They barely talked to him. This broke my heart. I hope I am forming the basis of a long and close relationship with my kids that will outlast me.

The part of the movie that made me craptastically sad was when the father ended up in the hospital. There was a scene of just empty hallways, white walls, and he was alone. It brought me back to that Brooklyn hospital where I spent so much time.
Hospitals are so depressing. Every corner looks the same, and the smell of the food, ugh, gag me. The only way I was ever able to find my mom was by looking for the prison guards stationed two doors down, prisoner hand cuffed to his bed. I always made sure I crossed to the other side of the wing and circled back. I know the man was handcuffed but I had an irrational fear of him jumping out and the prison guards pouncing on him. Maybe I was somewhere in the heap or thrown to the side, either way, I steered clear.

I can't imagine the feeling of laying there alone, nothing to look at but a postcard sized TV and the walls while monitors constantly beeped, slow, slow, slow... fast, but nobody came to check as those red and green lights flashed unless we flagged a nurse down.

Mom had two surgeries, after her second surgery, she was bed ridden and out of it for quite awhile. When I finally spoke to her she told me about her roommate. Her roommate had some kind of cancer, she was loud at all hours of the day, on the phone until late at night, and had the nerve to ask my mom to quiet down. She had surgery after my mom did, she didn't make it... I could tell by her tone that this event broke a part of her spirit. She was upset, saying it could have been her, but that she didn't feel ready, it wasn't her time yet. I told her to stop talking like that, that she was going to get better and do things. Of course I said that, it was a craptastic situation. I couldn't exactly say, everything is fine...