I meant to say how is it that I ended up with an orthopaedic collar on my neck...  I was just about becoming myself after the surgery, when I went out on Friday to an art gallery.  Long story short, I fell on my back, whacking the head with all force of my 5'7'' (176cm) plus whatever laws of physics, acceleration, etc, against a wood-board floor (thank heavens it wasn't concrete!!!).  As the result of this brief encounter of third degree with the floor, I went into a black hole as in lost consciousness for a moment, earned a 3" (7cm) diameter sore like don't-use-such-words-in-public bump on the top/back of my head, the left half of the back is stiff and sore, the right shoulder is completely out of action (yes, it was sore before, but now I got into the new realm of extremely limited movements: the elbow would go up only if raised in front or - with more difficulties - behind me, but would not bulge going to the side, the pain in the shoulder is simply showing me all the galaxy's most beautiful constellations of stars in front of my eyes...) and - best of all - I have to wear the collar.

Just like in my youth, when at 19 I broke the neck and had to wear first the corset, then the hard collar, then the soft one, to hold the neck together...  And yes, this is precisely when my dearest friend for life and death, fibromyalgia, decided to join me and never to leave me again - even if I didn't know it until the last two years...

But what's really scary is that in recent times I dream more often about my father, or just his intangible presence near me - and today, for a brief moment, I had this oddest sensation that someone is sitting by the shelf on the other side of the sofa - just an impression, felt rather than seen, by the corner of my eye.  By the nanosecond it took me to turn my stiff neck to look in that direction the space was - obviously - empty, but it was the silhouette of him, young and fit, and so caring...

I'm already a pretty much a medical miracle that I hold on for so long, but no matter what the doctors tell me, somewhere deep inside me I know what is my limit: no more than 2+half years from now, when I will be exactly my father's age when he died.  And I suppose it doesn't really matter how old you are when you die, inside your head - and the minds of your contemporaries - you are still too young to leave, and the older and sicker I get, the more I feel now young yet ill my father was when he died...