On September 12, 2017, just before 1 pm mountain time, a car pulled up behind an Outback steak house located at 3650 New Center Pt in Colorado Springs.

That’s the one in Colorado.

The passenger then got out of the vehicle and took up a position far enough back to frame the aforementioned vehicle, it’s occupant who was driving, and the sign for the steak house into a single picture designed to recreate a meme which had been seen on the internet by the driver’s son.

As I do at the end of every year, I post a retrospective of what’s happened in previous months, or what I expect to happen in the coming months.

When I posted my reflections on the difficult year that 2022 turned out to be, I knew deep down that there would be some tougher hurdles coming in 2023. 

Faith, the TharpSter TreadMill had been diagnosed with a malignant tumor above her gum line shortly after she turned 16.  My days of patrolling the neighborhood with her a few times a day were coming to an end soon. 

I just didn’t know when.

Mom, on the other hand, was in the grips of a rapid onset of cognitive decline.  At the end of last year, she was in a nursing home and I was still doing all sorts of acrobatics and other maneuvers to ensure she was well taken care of.  Those days would come to an end soon. 

I just didn’t know when.

In the weeks leading up to the 2022 mid-term elections, I was sitting in the dining room at the nursing facility with Mom.  She couldn’t feed herself anymore, so I made it a point to help feed her dinner on the weeknights, and at least once on each weekend day.  There were about 15 other residents in there, and I would estimate all but a few of them were experiencing some sort of cognitive decline.

There were two residents in the dining room that night that still had their mental faculties intact.  They just happened to have been talking about upcoming election as it applied to local politics.  One of the nurses chimed into the discussion.  “Biden is President, and he’s more confused than all of you combined!”

Anyone who’s ever been ensconced in the verbal brilliance which appears here on TharpSter.Org will understand that remark resonated with me like no other. 

It occurred to me at that time that I had encountered a colorful cast of characters at the facility where Mom was living.  Between that and the effort it took to get Mom from Colorado to Texas in her low mileage, 2011 Subaru Outback, I had a wellspring of material to write about. 

I started writing a series of posts which were initially slated to be published here on the website. 

This created a few problems.

I wasn’t writing them in the order in which the events happened.  They jumped back and forth in time.  Sometimes they were about what happened in the dining room one day.  Other times, they were about something that happened on the road trip.

There were also too many posts to make it just a series of blog posts.  Confusing my readers with tangential side quests, grammatical assaults, and all of my other verbal ticks is challenging enough for all parties involved.  Offering up a series of non-linear blog posts while jumping around on the timeline doesn’t work as well as it does in other mediums.

So I did the next best thing.

I threw it all into one document and came up with colorful series of tales from the road and the nursing facility which took place over that year that Mom was in my care. 

I call it The Outback Diaries.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t posted a lot this year, that’s one of the reasons why.  My writing has been focused on other things.

But you aren’t wondering about the refreshing lack of posts this year as much as you’re wondering about the opening salvo that kicked off this post.

When Mom told me about her recent purchase of 2011 Subaru Outback, I told her about the meme I had seen on the internet somewhere, and suggested she go recreate it.

It was just a smart-ass remark, and I never dreamed she would.

But she did.

The result is a picture that I had framed and displayed in her room at the nursing facility.  It featured Barb, outback the Outback in her Outback.

My next steps will be to get The Outback Diaries published.

So I told you about the book to tell you this.

Faith the TharpSter TreadMill passed away in her sleep in April at the age of 16 1/2.  Just the night before, she was sitting at the table, berating me for not sharing my drumstick.

Mom passed away in July after being in hospice care for a month.

I still think about those two every day and miss them dearly.

Under normal circumstances, I could look back on 2023 and consider it a bad year.  After all, I lost my dog, and I lost my Mom.

I don’t look at it that way though.  If Mom and Faith had survived this year, it would have been a bad year. 

It would have meant that they continued to be victimized by the ailments they had endured in recent years. 

It would have meant that they and all of their loved ones would have continued to wait until the waiting was done.

Instead, they both left us without having to endure any more than they had to endure.

I finished my 2022 year end post with a simple question.

What’s next?

I knew the answer back then.

Now, not so much.