Entry #16

April 4, 2011

Things for us at this point are little more than an extended camping trip like I used to take when I was younger. I know that in time I will look on this with a less sardonic view. We can stay comfortable far longer than most of the others, but eventually our food supplies WILL run out, our water WILL run out and our position will be compromised. I don’t expect its long before groups of other non-infected start roaming around again, venturing out of whatever safe place they have made for themselves. Many of these will just be refugees, some however have no desire to go back to the way things were and will try to impose some malicious will on the rest of us.

Your mother is a strong woman; she has always been a strong woman. Inside I know that she is struggling, as I am, to wrap her head around what is to come. We are both so thankful that you are too young to fully understand what is happening, but one day you will and that is why I write this. It is a great hope that one day, in some future, you all can forgive us for the world we allowed to happen. You will look back, no doubt and say “This is the world our parents created for us.” It is what all children do at some point. I hope that at least my actions, even if they are brief and inconsequential beyond my family will help to stem the inevitable sadness that will hang on those words.

I say this now, as I think of your grandmother. She is not coping with our new life. She became very distant when my father died some eleven years ago and has spent the years in an off-and-on exile of her own making. She retreated away from family and friends for years afterwards and when she did make her way back into the social-rings her mind began to wander into a very “bleeding-heart liberal” world. Bless her for her empathy, but her decisions are not always the most rational. She was always very used to comfortable life style and once again returned to her exile when the Depression forced the family business to close its doors. Now our future is even less certain.

We spent a few years trying to convince her of the validity in preparing for an emergency not unlike this one. She never could wrap her mind around it, or more likely she didn’t want to. Despite the global food shortages the last few years, the threat of homelessness, and us all moving back in with one another so consolidate expenses, it is easier to ignore problems when they first arise, I suppose. And that is what she did. Even now she cast her familiar disparaging remarks on our efforts and scorns us for what she perceives as lack of caring or sympathy. “How can you watch that poor boy next door go hungry” she constantly remarks.

I admit it is a very difficult task, one that your mother and I have had many long and painful conversations on. I did break down one day, as I mentioned before, and made an extra loaf or two of bread to give out, and some other canned goods. Now, however, do they not only look to my gun to protect them, but to my food to feed them. The only response I have for you grandmother is: “How can I watch my own daughter and wife suffer the same?” She has since began to threaten me, like some young child, with exposing our food and supply storage in some convoluted attempt to force empathy onto me. “Well,” shell say, “if you wont give these poor people something to eat, then I’ll just have to and then they’ll know anyways.”

I know parents always see their children as needing eternal guidance, but I greatly fear for her mental condition. She is becoming willfully lost in her own world of delusion like many of the others here who are trying to escape back into a familiar place that no longer exists for us. It has only been two weeks.

I tend overlook the fact that you will not always be the little girl you are now, sitting here in front of me, playing with that most annoying electric guitar toy your cousin bought for you last Christmas. One day you will be a strong woman like your mother is and you will know that there are things we do in life for no other reason than because they must be done. There is the way we want things to be and the way things are. Generally, we exist in latter