Intermission - Grit Grave
Quicksand's cousin, slowsand: Significantly less lethal, and much worse for hourglasses
Duckstack like no one’s watching
Due to changes in Jethro’s health, today’s Duckstack is late, and an intermission issue.
One of the quirks of having a lightning fast mind and a razor intellect is having too many peers on your level, making it difficult to feel truly unique. Anyone can get the right answer to 2+2. But how many people can laboriously and cautiously work for hours on that and still get a totally wrong answer? How many wrong answers to such a simple math question are there? I can think of at least three.
Jethro Health Update
The MRI showed this week that Jethro’s cancer has broken through the latest wave of chemotherapy, and in a very worst-case-scenario sort of way. What this means is, last week we start Jethro’s final medical intervention- a series of chemotherapies delivered through a central line on a monthly dosing cycle, but this is the final timeline. You can’t get cancer out of the bone. He is unlikely to reach his 5th birthday. Four months.
This is obviously very bad news, but there is peace to be had here. Jethro, I believe, is satisfied with his life. And while I have written a very bitter screed which I do not plan on publishing right now, I really do feel God’s blessings around us.
Jethro has been singing songs and telling us jokes. This week, he danced for the first time since we irradiated his brain. Not because radiation did some sort of personality damage, that's just how sick he's been. He has, all at once, rediscovered the joy of eating again. He's regained his taste for chicken nuggets, gogurts, and apple juice, gaining I think 4 lbs in like a couple weeks. Like, he is really enjoying life right now. We will probably be able to cross off basically his entire bucket list1.
I have re-enabled Jethro’s GiveSendGo2. I am not asking for donations, but we will try to use any that are sent with sensitivity, to increase his quality of life and where appropriate family care and mental health, as well as to cover projected upcoming funeral expenses.
Jethro came to Earth knowing that there was a risk his time in mortality would be cut short. Because of this, since infancy, he has always tried to pack as much experience into it as he could, and as much time with his family as he could. Although this is tragic, I believe that he has done a great job.
As a parent, there are a lot of “he’ll never get to” that we’ll need to confront. Of course, we have already been through a lot of them, since we knew his cancer was mostly terminal when it relapsed a year and a half ago. We have a lot of friends in far worse situations than ours. Some people don’t even get to tell their kids goodbye.
Joseph Smith had people angry at him many times throughout his life, even before any of the controversial stuff. At one point, a mob dragged him out of his house, covered him in boiling tar, and then dumped feathers over him, a common treatment for people who had done no moral wrong but who had upset the social order, a humiliation ritual. From the attack, his child caught pneumonia, more ore less untreatable at the time, and died. In fact, Joseph and his wife Emma had six children die in infancy.
Later, Joseph Smith was separated from his wife and in jail, on charges of being too large of a political constituency, shortly after the Missouri government had declared it legal to kill Mormons. Joseph allowed himself to be taken in a fruitless attempt to negotiate peace and get the government to spare the saints, and was locked there for several months. He asked God, basically, “What are you doing. Aren’t we your people? Where are you?” And received in response what is Doctrine and Covenants 121-122 in our scriptures.
7 if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.
8 The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?
-D&C 122
I do feel some depression, and some dread for when his health, truly, starts to decline. “These things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good” is all very well to keep in mind for like, scuffed paint jobs and dealing with tantrums, but it isn’t a very comforting line when facing the death of your child. With apologies to God, who does know what he’s doing. Unfortunately, there are things in the eternities that work no other way, and that is why we couldn’t remain as spirits in the pre-existence, but had to come to Earth.
I think we had some idea of the kind of things we would face in our Earth lives. Not like, a high definition picture but I know God went over some of the broad strokes with me. I think we were able to sort of model what the emotions would be like and make some educated guesses about our reactions, but that’s different from the real thing. Painfully different. There’s only so much growth you can do without practical application. Even in life, how much math can you learn without having to solve the problems yourself? But that doesn’t make resolving problems less painful.
Likewise, there are sometimes very encouraging testimonies you hear from people in regards to like, addictions and even losing limbs and stuff. “It was horrible, but it made me who I am today.” “Despite how it was to go through at the time, looking back, I’m grateful that it happened.” These are all very comforting lines that work in almost every situation but this is kind of an extreme case and these last couple years I’ve found thoughts like this kind of inadequate.
What has brought me comfort is knowing that this is a very human thing. While we live in a fallen world death is with us, and many, if not all, of the human family have gone through tragedy like this.
I have also gained comfort from knowing that Jethro had been preparing for this since before he came to Earth, and knowing the whole plan of salvation, not just earth → heaven/hell. I was able to explain it to him yesterday, the whole picture, being able to prepare him. Not being helpless.
Being able to ask God for aid, and knowing that we would receive it. He’s been working with us on this for years now, for those with eyes to see it.
Knowing that the future includes my son living again.
Knowing what death looks like, in animals and people. Known things aren’t quite as scary.
Venting to friends. Not that I always want to, but its been nice when people actively wanted to understand.
These are the things that have seemed to be “of eternal worth”, I suppose. Not that I’m telling the half of it. There’s too many dimensions, something like this makes too much of an impact. And it hasn’t even happened yet.
Regardless, I am grateful for my God and for my Friends, and though this situation is very scary, I know we aren’t alone. And God has given us so much- We named Jethro for it- that it seems like it would be foolish to stop trusting him now.
Duckstack Health: Lazy Eye
The difference between good and bad eyesight is elbow grease.
If you’re an optomologist, or an optomotrician, or an opticodontist, you’ve probably encountered this many times. Lazy eyes just don’t work. They freeload the human body and don’t earn their keep. They’re entitled and stuck up, and they’re what’s wrong with the world today.
Basically, one eye doesn’t move, “enough”. How do you define enough? You use the other eye to gauge it. This is a relative measure to be sure. What if the other eye isn’t moving enough either? You’ll need to open the third eye and check against that. If you’ve got justified suspicions about the third eye3, put glasses on them and call them four eyes. A lazy eye needs a good kick in the rear that way. Once insulted, hopefully the lazy eye shapes up its behavior for the good of the community.
Otherwise, it might find itself in violation of Jesus Christ himself. If your eye offends thee, pluck it out4.
History
despite dying, Jethro is cuter than ever
We were driving, and Jethro said “What’s that smoke for?” and I told him “Its a factory, they're burning a lot of fuel to make things.” and Jethro thought about it for a second and said “I wonder what they're making? Maybe ginger bread men.”
Jethro tells us: “We don't have to fight the Easter bunny. It just gives out eggs.”
I told some nurse that our toddler likes attention. Jethro chimed in from the background: “and he likes hurting me!”
Jethro has some new name suggestions for the new baby girl: “Carls Jr” and “Wendys”
Jethro coming to bed: “guess who’s coming!” “is it my precious Jethro?” “The preciousest Jethro that you could ever ask for!”
“I'm glad that the Easter bunny brought us candy. I always wanted that.”
As we were going in to Jethro’s MRI this last week, Jethro had some peeled skin around fingernail. He kept saying with great gravity: “The doctor is not going to be happy to see this.” And then he would say: “I think some Texas sheet cake would make me feel better.”
After driving in silence for a while Jethro told me: “I actually know who Iron man is.” “Yeah?” “Tony.”
Grandma bought some Swedish fish jellybeans5, and after snacking on them Jethro remarked: “Those were good jelly beans. I think they are eggs.” “What?” “Swedish fish eggs.”
Jethro has been on quite a lot of drugs6 which cause both constipation and urination. A lot. Jethro tells us: “what a lucky pee--er I am. To get all of that pee out of my belly.”
The constipation is less fun. Picture Jethro on the toilet, yelling over and over again, “I HATE that poop!” with the toddler outside the bathroom, angry that he is angry, angrily yelling at him over and over again “STOP POOPING”
The toddler continues to have unlimited energy. My wife walked in on him sleeping and he immediately bolted upright, and then flipped over backwards into a head stand. Which is apparently how he naturally wakes up.
They video called us while we were in the hospital. The toddler excitedly told us “I’m in the baby rectangle!”
Waroscopes
Your future, War(t)s and all.
Ares: Greek out, dudes. You’ve got a good fight ahead of you.
Mars - You know what they say, all paths lead to Roman. A fight is unavoidable.
Tyr - Peace is on the horizon. Your enemies are going to igNorse you.
Anhur - Egypt and every one of you has a little fight inside, to match the bigger fight, on the outside.
Huitzilopochtli7 - Aztec advances, casualties increase. Stand ready to pay the price.
Guangong - A fight will destroy your fine China. Break out that bubble wrap.
######EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE BE CAREFUL#######
We’ve been crossing off his bucket list for like 2 years now so what’s left is things like:
- Go to fun museums
- Go to the mall with grandma
- Go to the library
- Eat lots of meals so my belly isn’t empty
- Eat Texas sheet cake
- Ride in my Jeep
- play with my friends
There’s a few things I wanted for him too, like to play bionicles with him and fly his drone around again. We’re well on our way.
It should also be noted that, for many of my friends who are anonymous for political reasons, givesendgo, substack, and similar services do report your email address in their receipts, not that I am going to pass anything along. Yopmail and similar services offer disposable email addresses.
a proper human only has two
gross
Link is for descriptive purposes only, I am no affiliate and I will derive no profits from anything you spend on swedish fish jellybeans, therefore I urge you not to buy them
He’s really too young to have a drug problem smh
they’re just typing letters at this point