Seismic Twitch

Dad’s memorial mass was today at 11 am. It was, as masses go, a good one. I carried the cremains to the front of the church at the beginning of services. My niece, Dad’s oldest grandchild, did one of the readings. My cousin, Julie, did the other reading. Someone I don’t know, my older brother’s boss, did the intercessions. Boy was greatly distressed several times. Bran and I comforted him as best we could.

There was the usual tea after the services where I got to meet people I’d not seen in a long time (cousins I’d not seen since Mom’s funeral – I don’t remember seeing them there but they say they were and I believe them), and others I don’t remember from Adam. Of course, there were those who I’d never met before as they became part of Dad’s life after Mom died.

Other than the funeral home arrangement, there were 4 floral arrangements from family and friends. Bran too photos of them and a photo will be sent to each person along with the thank you cards.

The house was cleaned up yesterday. I vacuumed. I wish the machine was better. The suction didn’t really exist so I ended up having to go over areas I could feel stuff on, but the machine didn’t pick up the first four or five times I passed over it. I also had to pick up bits and pieces of paper (we took outdated books apart for recycling) that were in the carpet. This increase in work load wore out my back. Despite that I did get the dusting done (I don’t think the house had been dusted since before Dad went into hospital). I also cleared off the coffee and end tables of the stuff they had on them, washed up the ceramics (Mom collected Blue Mountain stuff) and put them back out.

My brother, sister and niece worked on getting the food together for the family coming by after the tea and did the other necessary cleaning. Boy and Bran did the powder room off the master bedroom. This was used as a back-up bathroom.

I’m quite looking forward to getting back home. I’m thoroughly peopled out (though my niece, Bran and Boy don’t count in that). My sister, her husband and my brother all smoke, so both my and Boy’s allergies are playing up. That doesn’t even get into the smell.

I may not like my brother-in-law much, but he has done a lot of work in a short period of time to do some of the cosmetic stuff that needs to be done to the house. He got the bathtub area done up so it doesn’t leak, he fixed the powder room toilet so it fills properly, replaced the kitchen faucet and did spot painting that needed to be done on the exterior trim (the rest of the exterior is brick and stucco). He also replaced the locks and some of the worn out light switches. All that since Friday. He’s a person who can’t just sit, so it worked out for him.

Tomorrow my niece goes back to her husband and daughter and we head back to ‘Toon Town. I have a few things that I chose to take back. One is a needle point that Mom did. It used to hang over the living room couch. I’m also taking Mom and Dad’s wedding photo, a small knick-knack stand, Mom’s family ring and a few other small bits and bobs. Boy has inherited a sweater, afghan and letter opener that was made from one of the original rail spikes used on the trans-Canada railway (at least I think that’s what it is). We’ll also be going home with a pile of food. There is a lot left over from the tea and then there was the food that was prepared here.

This isn’t home any more. It hasn’t been for a very long time. I realized it when I was laying on the back lawn with my niece and we were talking. With Dad’s death, the spirit that made this place home departed. It’s time to become someone else’s home. What we kids don’t choose to take will be sold or donated. The house will be sold and the estate distributed according to Dad’s will. The estate will probably go into probate since there is property involved. I don’t know how long that will take, but at the end of it I hope to be able to put a down payment on a house of our own.

Needless to say, going through Dad’s bedroom was like opening a time capsule. Dad moved a lot of his stuff into Mom’s old dresser, but the memorabilia she collected was still there. There were old newspaper articles about awards my siblings won, letters and cards from friends and relatives – some long dead. We found the book that Dad’s mom (Granny) used to keep track of the money that her sons sent her each month to help support her. This was before the days of government pensions for widows. We also found a couple of post cards she had written to Dad in French. Our niece translated them (the handwriting was somewhat unclear). They were both mundane and very special. My sister found a picture of Granny’s brother, Xenon. I’d never seen it before.

Bran volunteered to be family archivist. He’ll scan all the photos in the albums Dad made over the years and then he’ll can the slides. This project will consist of several years of work on his part. But for him it’s a labour of love. It also means that there will be an archive of photos available to all of us instead of only one person getting all the photos, or breaking up the collection.

It’s been a stressful time for all of us. My sister’s dog, Bailey, helped break the atmosphere. Besides grief, there’s also anger and dislike. My sister has been walking a fine line between all of us and had done it with relative grace, though she does tend to micromanage some. That’s ok. She’s executor of the estate and wants to do a good job. Dad trusted her and she wants to live up to that trust.

That’s about it. I’m going to go hunt down a sandwich (there are a gabillion of them in the fridge).

Dad died in the night. I’m going to finish out my shift today, there’s a staff meeting I want to attend at the end of the day. Tomorrow will be filled with the business of getting ready to go out of town and getting someone to take care of Dutchess while we’re all away. We’ll be leaving on Friday morning.

Thanks to everyone for your support the past month. It’s helped ease the load.

Naomi

I just got a call from my sister. Dad’s blood pressure has dropped (he’s been hypertensive for many years, so this is bad news) and his kidneys are failed again. Apparently they had them up and running for a few days but that’s ended. It was suggested to her that they could increase fluids to help with the kidneys but that would affect his heart. They wanted to know how aggressive they should be. She said not aggressive.

It sounds like he’ll be gone within a day or two.

Funny how the categories “Dad” and “Death” are right next to each other in my list.

I’ve sunk down a lot with my feelings about Dad dying. I’ve preferred quiet to talking. Boy and Bran went out to Shell Lake to be with friends today. I opted to stay at home. I didn’t feel up to being with people and welcomed the time in solitude.

I got most of my order from Panda Hall. They left out one of the spacer bead orders though. I contacted them that day, and of course, made a typo in the email. It should be straightened out soon, I hope. I didn’t pay much for them, but I’m missing out 2000 pieces of stuff I paid for.

Since the order arrival, and after I checked it, I started to experiment with what I could create. I’ve made several bracelets and some earrings. I’d make more earrings but I don’t have many earring backs (I use rubber backs) left. Getting more will have to wait for a bit. For the time being I’ve deleted my Esty inventory. I’ll let you know when I put anything up for sale there again.

One of the bracelets I made uses up some of the sandalwood beads from a necklace that Boy finally gave me. I love the scent of sandalwood and having a bracelet made of it pleases me no end. I’ll have to get a picture of it for you to see. I’ve not made another like it thus far.

The best part of the items I ordered is that they’re nickel free. Nickel is usually what people react to in metals. There’s no (or little) nickel in surgical steel and that’s what the earring hooks are made of. The eyepins, chain, bead caps and spacer beads I bought are all nickel free. That can be a selling point of my product. I haven’t found any nickel free wire though. I want some half-hard silver wire that is nickel free, but can’t find any.

Because I’m doing something with my hands, my mind needs to be occupied with other things. I’ve always found it difficult to do only one thing at a time, except for reading. I still prefer to have no noise or distraction when I’m reading. But I bead, do crosswords, crochet, knit, etc. to the television. This means that I’ve been watching movies again. Not new ones, that would be far to radical of me. I’d been watching Scooby Doo DVDs (8 of them), Scooby Doo the movie (the first one), The Avengers, Emperor’s New Groove, Kill Bill (Part 1 and Part 2), and now the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tomorrow I’ll be watching more movies, I don’t know which ones, but I’ll be watching more.

One thing about LOTR I’ve been wondering about. The narrator says at the beginning that the elves are immortal folk. If this is the case, why is it that Arwen’s father is middle aged? Shouldn’t he appear to be in his 20s? I mean, sure, he doesn’t look like suffering from old age, but still, he has wrinkles and looks to be of about the right age to have a daughter the age Arwen is.

Dutchess hunted tonight. There was a rather large moth flying about the living room and she was in very close attendance to it. Alas, being an inside cat has caused her hunting skills to rust and she lost track of the prey as it flew toward my light. More to the point, it was my getting up to get out of the moth’s way (vicious things they are!) that caused her to lose the trail. Hopefully the moth won’t creep up and pounce on me when I’m least expecting it.

I got an email from my thesis supervisor yesterday. She wants to see what I’ve done. Of course, I’ve not done a damned thing since I saw her last. I asked her if I could take a year off the program. By the time a year is up I should be able to get back into doing stuff as I should. By that time Dad will probably have died and things will have settled out emotionally speaking. Either that or I’ll need to step away and not get my Masters degree. Regardless, I can’t do anything right now. It stretches my abilities to deal just going from one day to the next. Working is going to further stress that. It’s hard fighting the inertia I’m feeling. Adding stress to that isn’t going to help me any.

That’s about it for now.

We were down to see Dad on Monday and Tuesday. Things haven’t changed any since I wrote last. Dad is not eating though he did take a few spoons of porridge on Monday morning and ice cream on Monday and Tuesday evening. They are still using Seroquel to sedate him when they are able to get him to swallow anything. If they don’t sedate him then they’d have to restrain him. For most of the visit Dad was non-responsive. He was responsive for very short time periods (two to three minutes) in a day. When he became agitated he’d strip himself of bedding, bed clothes, endanger the IV by pulling it (the entire pole and mechanics) down and out of his arm.

He would point at things that weren’t there and try to talk. However, because he has been breathing through his mouth it was impossible to understand much of what he was saying. He did tell me he loved me after I said I loved him, asked me “where is she” and when I asked who the she was, he looked confused and said he didn’t know. Then after a couple of spoons of ice cream he said “that’s enough”. I know he was trying to say things, he would repeat sound patterns when I said I couldn’t understand. This was quite frustrating.

This was only for a short time last night. Monday evening he was non-responsive and unconscious. Now we just wait while his body slowly poisons itself because of his kidneys not working properly. They work some as he has some urine passing through his body (the catheter bag had urine in it), but not enough to properly detox his body. He’s also slowly starving to death since he refuses to eat except for a few spoons of food in a day.

I emailed work while I was out of town and updated them as to what was going on. This way when Dad does die, they’ll be semi-prepared. I’ll need to be gone somewhat longer because, as with the power of attorney, both my sister and I are named as executors of Dad’s estate. There will be business I’ll have to be out of town for.

The stay at home was painful and awkward. I don’t want to be around my older brother and wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Dad dying. Bran was having difficulty with this as well since what affects me, tends to affect him as well, especially with family stuff. The entire house reeked of cigarette smoke. It probably wouldn’t have repulsed me so much but for my distaste for being around that particular person.

Bran went through the house and looked at things that needed to be done in order to get it fixed up for sale. Most of the work is cosmetic (paint, new flooring, cleaning carpets) with the exception of needing to gut the main bathroom and update the master 1/2 bath.

I went through some of the stuff in the basement. You can tell that Mom and Dad were children of the 1930s and lived on a very limited budget for many years of their marriage. I found an amazing number of things that most everyone now-a-days would have thrown out. Mom saved things like aluminum take out containers and styrofoam plates from under meat (she washed them up and saved them for who knows what). There were also various plastic containers for condiments, peanut butter and other things saved. I don’t know how we’re going to work out things around the work needing to be done around the house. I know my brother can’t be there for much of it since a) it needs to have the house cleared and b) he smokes. Any renovations need to make the house smell fresh to make the house more saleable.

I’m glad to be home. II missed Boy a lot while we were gone. We left Dad’s at about 9:30 this morning and arrived home around noon. While we were gone Boy did a lot of work to have the kitchen mostly clean. When we got home he made us Lipton’s chicken noodle soup for lunch (he forgot to take bread out so couldn’t make us sandwiches) and then he washed up all the dishes he used to create and serve lunch. He’s a darling boy. I’m glad I’m home and he’s around me again.

I got home to the happy news of receiving my mail package from China. After lunch we all piled into the car (I let Boy sit in the front since Bran had also greatly missed Boy) and off we went to the Shoppers Drug Mart where the package depot is. I now have a couple of different styles and sizes of nickel free silver spacer beads (Tibetan style), a couple different styles and sizes of nickel free bead caps (Tibetan style), two different lengths (2 cm and 3 cm) eye pins, and 200 metres of nickel free jewelry chain. Yes, it was a heavy package. They didn’t send me one item that I ordered 2000 pieces of. So I sent them an email telling them.

Everything I got has been repackaged into labelled plastic containers from the zippered plastic bags except for the chain. I want to spool that onto dowels to keep it from getting all tangled. Right now that’s also in a plastic bag. I didn’t expect that. I expected it to come spooled.

Anyway, I’ll be looking at my beading stuff and seeing what needs to be redone. I want to make sure it’s all quite durable. I used super glue on some of the pieces and those ones need to be redone because of it. The super glue makes two weak spots in the wire at each side of the glue site. The closer is also a weak spot because the crimp bead might slip (for things like bracelets and necklaces). This is especially important for the bracelets since more people tend to wear bracelets more long term (days at a time) than they do necklaces.

So, guess what I’ll be doing for the next few days. Yeah, knitting. HAH!

The decision of the family is unanimous. No heroic measures are going to be used to resuscitate Dad. We are also not going to have them do much in the way of other measures, including dialysis. There’s not much point to it really. The blood tests aren’t all back yet. They’re trying to find out if he has an infection that is caused his kidneys to shut down.

Dad does have basic responses, but none of them bode well. When the nurses attend to him, take his pulse/blood pressure or wash him, he fights it.This doesn’t mean that he is aware of what he’s doing. He can’t swallow and therefore hasn’t taken any meds since he was found unconscious on Friday afternoon/evening. He doesn’t respond to commands of any sort and doesn’t respond to my brother’s voice.

We’re going to let nature take its course. The nurses will keep him comfortable, that’s all.

So now we wait for the inevitable.

To help me Bran has taken me on two car rides to help settle me down. He did that when my dog died in 1985. He would’ve done it if we had a car when my Mom died in 1993. He did that tonight. We went and got snacks for all of us. Did you know that Chapman’s Ice Cream company makes a no-sugar added, lactose free ice cream? They do. Only 14 grams of carbs per 1/2 C serving. That’s better than regular ice cream.

We went through the real estate listings for town as well. It was something to occupy my mind with and do a little bit of dreaming. It was a nice distraction. While we did that Golden Eye played on the DVD player. Laundry tomorrow so that we have clean clothes to to down to see Dad on Monday with. I’ll be sorting through the stuff collected over the years of Mom and Dad’s lives together (including “treasures” given to them by us kids). I don’t know what to do with things like their letters to each other from before they were married, Mom’s nursing uniform (100% cotton that had to be ironed and starched), Mom’s wedding dress and Dad’s wedding suit, and a plethora of other bits and pieces of so much living.

Thank you all, those who commented and those who are just thinking of me and my family. Your support means more than I could possibly say.

I got a call from my sister tonight. Apparently when the nurses went in to check on Dad earlier today he was non-responsive. They did some tests and found that he is in renal failure. They called my sister to find out how heroic we wanted them to be if Dad worsens.

She didn’t want to make that decision on her own. So she called my two brothers. They weren’t home so she left a message. Then she called me.

I told her that I didn’t think that Dad would want to be the way he is, at least not the Dad I knew before all this. The Dad I knew was a vital, energetic, and intelligent man with a very wry sense of humour. I love Dad a lot, but the person I saw was a mere shell of the man he used to be. He was hesitant, confused and not really there.

I told my sister that they shouldn’t resuscitate him if the need arises. I think that palliative care is all that’s needed now. We just need to let him go.

I’ll be going up on Monday regardless of what happens over the weekend. I could go up tomorrow, but what is the point? I don’t want to be the one to comfort my brother. There’s no business that I can take care of on the weekend even if he does die.

So that’s how things are now.

I took today off (yesterday was Canada Day and therefore a statutory holiday) so I’m in day 2 of the 4 day long weekend. I’ve not done anything today. Yes, I’ve truly taken the day off. I got up at 4 pm and other than editing photos, I’ve not done a whole lot. I’m just uploading them to Flickr right now.

It rained again today. When I got up we were in the midst of another thunderstorm that Environment Canada had a “thunderstorm watch” for. This means it’s a big’un. At the end of the storm, when the light breeze was blowing a tornado warning was issued for our area. This means that a funnel cloud or rotating clouds were seen around. I have no idea if anything came of it, but nothing happened at our end of town. I went out onto the front steps and took a few photos for you.

After the storm (I’d been reading my online comics while it was going on) I edited up some of the photos from my Edmonton trip. Considering the scenic photos were taken through a dirty window of a van travelling at 110 kph, they turned out not too badly.

Now, the photos have all been uploaded and are ready to go so…first we’re doing the trip to Edmonton.

One way there we saw this weird cloud wall. It appeared to be like looking at mountains with clouds that are lower than the top of the mountains. It was very spooky:

It wasn’t until we got closer that we realized it was a fog bank with higher level clouds. Then the conversation turned to Stephen King’s novella (short story?) The Mist. It’d been made into a bad movie. The movie (no, I haven’t seen it) could not possibly compare to my own imagination. That story has been haunting my pre-sleep brain since I first read it in the late 70s or early 80s.

Next are some lovely prairie shots. When people ask me why I love the prairies these photos demonstrate why. Yes, I know we’re not as cosmopolitan as the larger areas to the east. Yes, I know there is a frustratingly large population of people who could be best described as “hicks”. But it would be hard for me to live anywhere else. I really am a stubble-jumper to the core.

And now for the two best photos of our rain this afternoon. I took the photo of the houses because of the overflowing gutters and the massive outflow from one of the spouts. It was amazing to watch. I should have taken a video. If I get my spit together next time I’ll do that instead of taking still shots. It’s hard to get a real feel for the sheer amount of water moving in a still photo.

This is our intersection. You can’t tell the difference between it and and a river.

Boy got me a bonus Pokemon that was being offered as a “gift”. He went to all the work of going to a new city and getting the gift being offered. He’s so sweet.

Bran made me Kraft macaroni and cheese for supper. It’s all I could think of on the spur of the moment that wouldn’t take a lot of time to make.

I’ve got a lot of feelings around what’s going on with my Dad. I’m sure that’s normal. Along with the grief and fear and other things I’ve got other stuff happening. I’m not sure it’s quite normal to have the odd resentment I feel that my cocoon of uninvolvement has been taken away. Now I have to get involved in the goings on of my Dad’s life. Now my sister will have more involvement in my life, even if peripherally. It is this that leaves me wishing that Dad had just outright died instead of this slow crawl to the grave. I feel very selfish and bad for feeling this way.

Well, I’ve done some processing of my visit to see Dad this past weekend. I don’t like processing. It implies feelings and I don’t do them very well.

What it all boils down to is that Dad’s mental condition is such that he’s not going to go home again. His needs far outstrip my brother’s capability of caring for him. Dad needs 24/7 care. My brother would have to have someone come in and, in essence, babysit Dad just so that grocery shopping and the like could be done.

I think the most painful thing for me was to see Dad, in his moments of clarity (and there were few of them) didn’t realize the state he was in. It’s better for him, I know. I mean, it would break him to know the state he’s in. But it brought home to me just how bad he is if even in times of relative clarity, he can’t recognize things. The weirdest thing was he remembered Bran’s name. I’m not sure he remembered it more than a hand full of times since we’ve been married in 1986.

Dad’s short term memory is shot. If you leave the room and come back he’ll greet you like he’s not seen you for an age. His cognitive abilities are damaged. He can’t keep track of conversations. He regresses in his memory, thinking that the entire family is at home or remembering my sister or oldest brother as living in Saskatoon.

Physically he’s very feeble. This man, who used to walk upwards of 10 miles a day doing errands can’t walk 10 feet without losing balance. His strides are about 1 foot.

He’s totally preoccupied with his watch and time. When he first arrived at the hospital the nurses took it from him (as they do with all jewelry in ER) and it distressed him enough that they gave it back to him. He told them that he was a navigator in the war and precise time was very important to him.

The practicalities are taken care of thanks to him creating a power of attorney for my sister and I. He thought that was what was needed in case of his death. It’s a good thing he had it drawn up because now we don’t have to go to the work of a competency hearing and such. The down side is that neither my sister nor I live in Dad’s city. We’ll be doing things as a team. That’s how the power of attorney works. Anything that needs to be signed needs both our signatures.

Interestingly, a power of attorney ends at death, so it would have done no good then. The business of the decedent is handed over to the executors (again my sister and myself) to dissolve, pay taxes and distribute the estate. However, it’s a damn good thing it was made up to take care of things now.

So that’s how things are right now. My sister is mailing up some paperwork for me to take care of when I get back from Edmonton at the end of the week.

Speaking of Edmonton…I have to be at the office at 6:30 am. (0630 – for those on the 24 hour clock). I’ve got most of my stuff gathered together but not packed up. I’ll be doing my showering in the evening before we go anywhere (if we do) tomorrow evening and Thursday) I imagine the other 2 women will want to shower in the morning. This saves some congestion at the bathroom.

That’s about it.

Ta-Ra

and we got a flat tire.

I need a bit of time to process yesterday’s trip to see Dad.

In the nonce, enjoy the new PR site (promos, give-aways and ratings) created by Smelly Anne It’s new so there’s not a lot there yet, but I’m sure there’s going to be a lot there to take advantage of given some time. It’s called Fishing and Wishing. Just click on the image on the right and you’ll be taken there right away.