Dad's Death Day
Wednesday, January 17th, 2024 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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A glorious +14F today, and sunny!.. and it'll stay in the teens over night, hitting 20F tomorrow.
The back room's actually comfortable this morning. First time I've had my shoes off back here in several days.
And I'm happy to report that WE HAVE PARTIAL COLD WATER BACK!..
The downstairs toilet flushes again, and we have both cold & hot in the bathroom sink!
However, the kitchen cold is still frozen, and the shower cold & hot are both still frozen.
Last night I sat out here to edit that first studio video, but I had gloves on by the end of it, and moved into the studio when I was done, to eat and watch YouTube before bed.
I stupidly filmed it in portrait, rather than landscape mode, so I'll have to do better with the next one.
I also forgot about jump cuts, and how useful they are, until I was editing this last night... so in the future, when filming, I'll have jump cuts in mind, and be a bit more talkative.
Today is the anniversary of Dad's death.
Here's an excerpt of that entry, with my commentary a year later...
EXIT DAD: TUE JAN 17 2023
Didn't get up as early as I wanted today, but I was still downstairs by 11AM.
Last night was the first night that Snoop & Prowly had the run of the house all night long.
They weren't upstairs when I first woke, but both showed up for me making coffee and going through my morning routines up here, an then followed me downstairs.
The last days of them being my upstairs kittens :(.
It took the arctic blast to get them both sleeping up there at the same time, for the first time, just a couple days ago.
Also, a year later, I'm still getting downstairs around 11AM.
As I greeted Yvette in the living room, they ran ahead of me, down the hall into the kitchen.
By the time I got into the kitchen, the first thing I saw was the back door hanging wide open!
It was me, who'd forgotten to lock the back door last night, after going out it to throw out some garbage, and now it had been blown open by the wind!.. which was howling in, right there on the other side of the curtain from Tim in the back room, who was still sound asleep.
To my horror, I saw Snoop peek his head IN from out on the back stoop! Both he and Prowly were out there!
But I called to them and they came inside!
I closed the back door, against the gloomy sky outside, and locked it!
Today was THE first day that Yvette's greeted me in the livingroom since then!
Also, I forgot about that door!.. which I would later attribute to Death letting himself in that morning.
And I remember that panic of seeing the cats outside, which is now incredibly commonplace.
After that, I got dad's dose of morphine ready, and gave it to him in his room.
He was still breathing, and kind of reacted to me with his eyes, as I said, "Good morning! I'm gonna give you some medicine, Dad!... It's Tuesday, January 17th, 2023!" because he likes to be reminded of the day and date.
I said, "I'm gonna walk the puppy, and then I'll be back to check on you, okay?"
His response was imperceptible, but... this was the routine, and I knew he'd want me to walk the puppy, so I did.
Yvette and I had a fairly long walk around the neighborhood, which ended as they often do, with a long, lingering spell in the back yard.
He was barely there, but Colleen & Tim said the same as I did here, that it DID seem he was still aware of what was going on until the very end.
I'm also glad to know he was on morphine at the end, and that I was the one who was able to give it to him.
He wouldn't have been distressed or uncomfortable.
Also, a year later, Yvette and I ventured out into the back yard this morning, for the first time since the blast hit.
And this shows it was a year ago that this routine began to develop, of us going out back first thing in the morning... often joined by the cats.
After I got her back inside, Tim was still asleep, and there were no texts from Colleen, so I decided to just go back upstairs for a while to work on the calendar cards... for the first time in days.
The very last days of me still drinking coffee at the computer upstairs before work.
It's been the back room for nearly a year now... and I have only logged on to that computer a handful of times.
That whole calendar card project was abandoned not long after this.
That morning was a bit frustrating, with Tim sleeping right through the fact that the back door had blown open, and the way both Colleen, and Bonnie, the hospice nurse, were dragging their feet about getting over to the house before I had to leave for work.
All three of them clearly thought it would be just another Tuesday, and that Dad was gonna be around for a while longer.
Colleen and I were supposed to be figuring out his life insurance, and thus, our options for his inevitable burial, but she didn't get there until just minutes before I had to go.
Bonnie was also supposed to be there before I left, but she ended up calling me at work, to tell me she was coming in ten minutes.
I called Colleen to give her a head's up about that, and suddenly THEN she wanted to talk about cremation, because she'd figured out he only had 10K in life insurance.
And I remember having that awkward conversation with her in the hallway during dismissal, with a teacher overhearing me and looking a bit shocked to hear me talking about funeral homes.
But it must've been right around that moment... while Colleen was on the phone with me, and while Tim was on the phone trying to line up a priest for last rites... but just before Bonnie arrived...
That Dad, alone in his room, knowing I was off to work and everybody was down to their business for the day... let go and slipped away.
It ended up being a good thing that he chose a Tuesday, and that I'd already clocked in, because TONY clocked me out at 7PM, giving me credit for the whole day, even though I left before 4PM.
And that, plus the three berievment days, meant I didn't miss any pay that week, but had Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off to deal with the immediate issues.
And this would allow me, three weeks later, to take PTO on Monday, February 6th, to finish up painting the kitchen before starting at, "the new building," which was Cloud.
So that anniversary is coming up as well.
I say it all the time, but it really has been a crazy ride of a year!
Here we are on the anniversary and I'm still in crisis mode, now dealing with a prolonged arctic blast, and frozen water pipes, while things remained unresolved with BMO!
I also should not gloss over the fact that I was so serious about having Yvette put to sleep before I went to full time.
It was on the list of things to do, but then Dad's church colleague offered to take Yvette off my hands and... I couldn't do it!
I remember those first few days at Cloud, not liking the fact I had to adapt to a strange new place in the midst of all the mourning and chaos... and I knew I couldn't just abandon Yvette to some new owners like that.
And that's what got me to admit I also could not just put her down. I had to make it work.
I remember last March, having the realization that Dad was actually responsible for all the problems I'd been blaming on Yvette... because he insisted on feeding her those kabobs, which made her fat... made us broke... and lead to the mouse infestation.
They also gave her chronic diarrhea, which is why she used the puppy pads multiple times a day.
And after just a few months, she was thinner, had solid poops, never used the pads, and all the mice were gone... and it cost a lot less to feed her!
That was when I put Dad's broken lawn tractor on the curb with a sign saying, "free."
And that anecdote also illustrates how my feelings toward both Dad and Mom have been all over the map the past year... often being quite negative.
It was only around Christmas that I made the conscious decision to just forgive them and accept responsibility fully for this house and all it's problems, both physical, and financial.
And that was with the smudging ritual, which came just after getting Dad's room fully reinvented as the studio.
I had painted one larger star over the spot where his head was, in his bed, as he slipped away that afternoon... to memorialise the fact that he was able to die at home as he'd always wished.
But I didn't realize until I hung the tapestry that the Hermit's lantern also has a star inside it... which is also just above that same spot.
So the Hermit seems to be conferring some kind of safe passage for his soul.
18F out there tonight.
Yvette and I had the first longish walk after I got home since last week.
Snoop & Prowly are out there caterwauling in the distance.
Must be mating season already.
The back rooms nice and toasty tonight.
Good down to 18F, but not much lower than that.
Okay, time to work on another lyric video for the YouTube channel.
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