Hey, guys. I know this is filler, but I just couldn’t get the next strip together in time. I’ve shared how my grandfather’s health is failing, and how quickly his dementia is progressing. Well, it was a very rough weekend. He’s still with us, but he’s…not really there anymore. Barely able to speak, agitated to the point he needs medication to calm him, confused more often than not…My family is prepping for the eventual funeral, including picking out the clothes he’ll be buried in. It’s been very difficult keeping it together, and I just couldn’t get a full strip done. But, I’ve said it before: I hate leaving you guys with nothing, so I managed to throw a little Claw family Christmas moment together today.
Hopefully, we’ll find out what happens to the aggressive barfly on Friday, and find out how things turn out between the Claw and Diane.
By Tigershark Mon Dec 15th 2014 at 4:15 am
My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family. Don’t feel you need to satiate us in any way rather than prioritizing your family. Thank you for thinking of us, but your family definitely comes first.
Though, I can understand a need for some artistic release during a very trying and stressful time.
I’m very sorry you’re having to work through this, and wish you what comfort I can. Take care of yourself.
By Nayr Mon Dec 15th 2014 at 5:03 am
Hang in there.
By razord9 Tue Dec 16th 2014 at 2:25 am
I feel for you. Sounds a lot like what my grandpa went through, especially during the last year before passing a few months back. It was quick, though still just so odd visiting our grandma and kind of expect him to wonder in, giving people a hard time and just being an ornery old fart. Well, hang in there, take what time you need, and don’t feel like you owe us a damn thing.
By Miyto Tue Dec 16th 2014 at 3:53 am
I’m not sure how ordinary my experience with grandpas and dementia is but, for me and my younger brother, it was relieving when grandpa died and was no longer flickering back and forth between being an intelligent human and a broken record. Wait, record implies words and not garbled fragments, I got it… a broken picture-to-word translator! He had partial images he wanted to convey, but not enough memory to describe the whole image nor speak the whole words.
After he died, people called my little bro heartless for not crying at the funeral, I disagree with the idea. When a person is so broken in life they cease to be a person, or even a functional machine. It is better for that person to rest in piece than live in unrecoverable suffering. We both had already mourned him during his last threeish years, once he was dead he was no longer lost in limbo. I felt happy that day, it was relieving to have finished mourning a man who had been among the moving dead for years, and instead remember the good days I had with him in my youth.
I hope your grandfather lived a good life prior, and that his funeral will bring blessings of remembrance.
Funerals should be a celebration of the life the beloved deceased lived, may his give you good memories and happiness.
By Elihias Wed Dec 17th 2014 at 2:25 am
That you are even capable of thinking of us, and your comic, shows how strong you really are
my friend.
My Gran died a long time ago, but I still think of her occasionally. I try to remember her strength, bringing up a young family alone after the second world war. That’s how I remember her. Not as the ‘lights are on, but nobodies home’ person she became before her final day.
Come back when you are ready. We understand and accept your reasons completely.
Eli.