![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/map_wkpln_day6_3usec_enus_440x297.jpg\" "\\"map_wkpln_day6_3usec_enus_440x297\\"")
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(Etneded forecast of central Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Image courtesy of The Weather Channel.)<\/p>\n
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I got stabbed in the heart while seated in my wheelchair at the dining table. It was a reminder from the flower shop in the Little Village By the Bay about Mom\u2019s birthday. I always sent flowers for that event, and for Raven\u2019s later in the summer, and the anniversary in September.<\/p>\n
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No requirement for that now, unless it is to send a floral bouquet to myself in remembrance, or to the cemetery in Pennsylvania. I don’t like it when sentiment sneaks up on me like that, and I clicked through the menu to delete the account.\u00a0 Then I remembered that this is the coming weekend for the funerals- and there is no getting around it- I am going to be traveling again.<\/p>\n
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Damn- it will be 22 days since the surgery by the time we get to next weekend, and the ceremonies and burial of the ashes of the folks. I hope I can pull off my little portion of the event with a little class. Then, suddenly, I realized I needed to publish something about the ceremony for any of the distant relatives who never left the hamlet there in south-central Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
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And I realized I ought to think about flowers for the gravesite, and maybe glance at the extended regional weather and see if we are going to need a tent. Ten percent chance of showers, they say. I guess we will take our chances.<\/p>\n
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Thinking about Mom\u2019s birthday drew my attention to my own. I normally try to ignore it. Last year was one of the round even numbers and it freaked me out a little bit. This one is not so bad- it is a low number, albeit in a decade I did not ever really anticipate actually happening, and there are many more of them before I have to confront something with a \u201c7\u201d at the beginning.<\/p>\n
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That I would be spending the birthday in a wheelchair is something that would not have occurred to me this time last year. What an amazing journey it has been.<\/p>\n
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Everything I knew was wrong, and you can start the list anywhere you would care to and it winds up the same way. I get the sense that the world was shouting to get my attention and not succeeding.<\/p>\n
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It finally did, big time, and now I am healing, and remembering, and thinking. The sense of loss has diminished, except for those occasional stabs of sudden immediacy.<\/p>\n
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It is a lovely day. I can make it out to the balcony and catch the late afternoon sun. The pallor is leaving my skin. Looking at the extended forecast, I think that life is good, with a ten-percent chance of showers.<\/p>\n
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Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra<\/p>\n
www.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Etneded forecast of central Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Image courtesy of The Weather Channel.) I got stabbed in the heart while seated in my wheelchair at the dining table. It was a reminder from the flower shop in the Little Village By the Bay about Mom\u2019s birthday. I always sent flowers for that event, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3175"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3177,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3175\/revisions\/3177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}