The following are various quotes from Derek. I am providing very little context because this post is for me.
About coming home after more than a year in the hospital (unfortunately, he would be home less than two months before going back to start his progression toward the inevitable):
“Yes, the babies [Grendel, Loki, Kako, and Kazon] will help with my sanity. You’re right, none have any sanity to give but it’s WAY past the time I needed to be with all of you again.”
“Hey, you…”
Regarding Kako (the vet said it first; Derek just clung to it):
“She’s very unpleasant.”
The best example of, as Jenny put it, his “unconquerable optimism, even in the face of death”:
“Although there is no end [to the disease]. I’ll never stop believing things will get better – I’m just not built to think any other way. I’ll never stop trying. Things will get back to normal (regardless of what anyone thinks). Remember, originally I had but ‘months to live.’ Dr. Scott, Dr. Khan, Dr. Rojas (although he won’t admit it), and even Dr Nuygen are shocked right now. Dr. Nuygen told me I’ve defied his expectations already (that felt good). They may know some things, even medical science, but they don’t know me. You know I’m an asshole that doesn’t like the word ‘no.’ Tell me I can’t have a cookie and I’m buying a fucking bag of Oreos (that’s why Kako and I get along – mmm…mmm. No you didn’t). It keeps me alive and it’s gotten me this far. You know what a control freak I am (They’ve figured that out here and suggested I seek help for my OCD! – seriously). I don’t want you to worry when I get home. I’ll make it work.”
For Kazon:
“It’s the Mr. Man Show! Starring Mr. Man!”
His personal song when Grendel walked into the room (I can not describe how it still rings in my head and brings tears to my eyes):
“Who is that cat? He is so fat. It’s Grendel!”
After he got over the first signs of his illness. Also, a text message he left on his cell phone and realized after a training class that others might have seen it:
“I can poopies all by myself.”
Again, about coming home from the hospital for the first time:
“Apparently, the meeting they [his doctors] had today about me went so well (progress and the like) that they were set to dump my ass earlier than even I was thinking. They’ve set up the whole process already, getting the resources for the [wheel] chair, ostamies, all of it. Everything’s already in motion. This place is wasting no time throwing me to the curb. And I promise, I’ve done nothing wrong.”
About wanting to smoke marijuana when he got home because he’d done without for so long while hospitalized:
“If ‘reading’ is what they call it these days, then plan on reading on a novel the night I come home. It’s been way too long for that too. Just don’t lie to me about how good a book it is! [because I was notorious for saying it was ‘OK’ when in fact it would knock your dick in the dirt]”
“If I was too sick to understand [what you were saying], then you probably beat me too! I told you I didn’t know where the wounds came from.”
When his doctors first mentioned he might get to go home (it would be months later before that happened):
“I just want to see the babies again. It’ll be the first time in eight months. Prepare for me to have a nervous breakdown. I know it’s going to happen. Actually being around them again is going to be more emotional than I can handle at first (I’m now crying like a woman again as I write this — imagine what it will be like).”
Somehow thinking The Kids would never forgive him for being gone so long:
“And I’ll never be able to explain my abandonment of them, but I’ll try to make it up. I’ll be home most of the time – maybe that will help. They won’t be alone but here and there.”