This weekend was your first visit home, unsteady steps behind a walker equipped with tennis balls getting you from your beloved Passat, to the front porch, to the foyer whose flooring we never much cared for but never replaced.

The cats smelled your shoes and found them fascinating; we learned quickly that Tenzing had no fear of the walker, and Edmund who can't remember where his tail is half the time remembered that some number of months ago, you gave good scritchies.

Over years of texting and communicating through IM, you develop linguistic conventions that communicate emotion even through the impersonal medium of text. For me, an ever-present one has been the ellipsis; it denotes a moment without words. Often it's slackjawed astonishment. Sometimes it's laughter.

Yesterday it was tears.

I've been intentionally silent here on cat.net. What few words I've had, have needed to go out to family and friends as updates regarding day-to-day changes in Jeff's condition and care. I keep telling everyone that what we face now is a marathon, not a sprint, and that means I'll have to change my tactics, too.