New Castle, Indiana. I’ve been here for almost a week now, and there’s nothing new to report. My father is in a slowly advancing collapse. Most of the time, he’s sleeping. He’s refusing food and medication and any sort of therapy. Tonight he refused bathing. He doesn’t want to move. He sips water and orange juice and opens his eyes once in a while. No more than three or four minutes an hour, it seems. Charley Dugger, a preacher of some Baptist stripe, came by for a while this evening after Dad asked us to call him. Mom and I left them for a while, but Dugger reported that, really, nothing happened. He read some verse to Dad and prayed with him, but Dad drifted in and out.

I played guitar for him for a while, maybe an hour or two, but most of the time he was sleeping. I don’t know if he hears it, actually. He doesn’t respond. I played for perhaps four hours yesterday, and, while he did sleep a good deal of the time, he said a couple of times that he enjoyed it and perked up on a couple of tunes. Dad’s room mate, an old guy also with congestive heart failure but who has not given up as Dad has, started talking about his great buddy who played a mean rendition of “Blue Suede Shoes,” so I played a version. He liked it fine.

I’m planning on driving back to Brownsville Monday, and should get there Wednesday. I am to be at a supper meeting of TAPPA, the Texas Association of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, in San Antonio Thursday evening, so I won’t be home long. The main business meeting is Friday. I’d skip it, but the group is just beginning to pull together after several years, and it may be important to have a relatively objective point of view on hand. I’m new to the group and haven’t really taken sides on many issues as of yet.

Of course, if I get a call from here, I’ll have to come back. Kathy wants to go to Lubbock during Spring Break. We’ll see how that works out. I hope the weather is cooperative, in any case. This is new territory for me.