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snoozefestaudioDidn'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.
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!
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.
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.
--<>--
Around 12:30, I came back downstairs to find that Tim was finally up and making his own coffee.
We got a text from Colleen saying she had to run some errands before she could get to the house.
I was a bit frustrated that both she and Tim were taking so goddam long to get themselves started today, because I had to go to work, and we were supposed to get cracking on figuring out his life insurance and so forth.
I'd also been expecting Lonnie, the nurse to visit, as she promised us, yesterday, she'd do... but she too must've been dragging her feet.
--<>--
1PM came around, so I gave Dad his next dose of morphine, telling him that we were expecting a new showerhead to come for the downstairs shower, and that I had to run down to the basement for some teflon paste.
The door to the basement is in his room, and I've had reasons to run down there a lot the past couple weeks, so I've been in the habit of letting him know what I'm heading down there for, and what we're doing.
But he was still breathing, and seemed to approve.
The showerhead came around 1:30PM, and we tried to install it, but the old fitting in the shower had a larger thread pitch than this modern shower head, so... we started looking on line for some kind of adapter.
--<>--
Colleen didn't show up until goddamn 2PM... only 20 minutes before I had to leave for work.
I told them that one of the two of them would have to give Dad his morphine at 3PM, and showed them both how to do it.
There wasn't much time for chit chat, and as I left, still no word from Lonnie.
--<>--
I clocked in at 2:55PM and started my day.
Started out like normal getting garbage from my 2nd floor classrooms, until I finally got a call from Lonnie, saying she was ten minutes away.
I told her I'd call my brother and let him know, but when I called Tim, it went to voicemail, so I called Colleen to let her know the nurse was coming.
She and Tim were finally down to business, and Colleen had determined that Dad's life insurance was only good for $10,000.00. Not enough to cover a full blown funeral, much less have any left to help me transition from part to full time.
We got to talking about direct cremation. I told her to look into it and call people, and also ask Lonnie about it once she got there.
Colleen said she'd get on it and we signed off.
Right after I hung up, I felt a sharp pain in my left arm around the inner elbow region that would persist for the next hour. What was that about?
--<>--
I made my way downstairs to start getting the garbage from my ground level classrooms, when my phone rang again, and it was Colleen.
Before I even answered it... I just knew what it was about.
"Dad passed away!"
Lonnie had arrived right after we'd hung up. She went in to get Dad's vitals, while Tim and Colleen were busy making calls and looking into things.
She found he wasn't breathing and checked his heart. No heartbeat. She confirmed a few other ways... he had died.
--<>--
I called my supervisor, Tony... who happened to be in the building, so he came to see me in the hallway. He was visibly shocked, when I told him my Dad had just died.
I asked him how many bereavement days I'd get, and he said he wasn't sure, but he told me to take the rest of the week off, and not to worry about it.
So I left and headed back home.
But on the drive I realized, I'd need to stop for beer and smokes, because once I got home, we'd probably all be drinking, and wouldn't be able to drive later on.
I got beer for Tim and I, but also a six of Guinness bottles, in honor of Dad.
Back at home, as soon as I got in the door, I opened three bottles of Guinness, gave one to Tim, and one to Colleen, and they instantly understood we needed to toast Dad.
--<>--
Dad was still in his bed, looking just as I'd left him... eyes and mouth half open... still with his glasses on... still a rosey tint to his face.
Colleen said he was still breathing even after I left for work, when she'd gone in to say hello to him.
Lonnie clocked the time of death at her arrival, of 3:33PM, but I'm guessing it was more like 3:10... right when I'd gotten off the phone with Colleen and the pain in my left arm shot in, out of nowhere.
Colleen had ended up calling a local mortuary to get his body, because she had zero time to look into anything else, but she did tell them our aim was to cremate him.
Lonnie stayed until the mortuary people came, because she's bound by law to do so, but also just to chat with us. She also destroyed the drugs they'd provided for Dad, including the morphine... after writing down the exact dosages and pill counts that were left.
We were texing and calling people to let them know Dad had died, and Tim was fielding some very upset calls from his kids.
When the mortuary people came, they asked me if he was to be embalmed, and I (with power of attorney) told them no.
We're gonna have a meeting with them tomorrow to go over everything, but the plan is to have him cremated, and the remains returned to us.
Sheila called, and will be arriving on the red eye early tomorrow morning. She went over our plans for Dad with us, and wanted to add revisions, of course.
Our general plan was to get him and urn, and set up a memorial shrine in the living room that people could come here and pay their respects to, over the next several months... so that nobody was under any pressure to rush back immediately.
The second phase of the plan was to have the urn buried in his cemetery plot, next to Mom, next October... because October was his favorite month, and the month everybody traditionally came to visit him.
Sheila agreed with most of it, but she's insisting we do a more immediate memorial ceremony at the Round House, this Saturday... which is a big restaurant/ microbrewery in downtown by the train station.
That's actually the round house I was going on about last June, in those skybeam entries about what was causing the thunderstorms to evaporate as soon as they hit town!
But Dad also happened to die wearing his round house T-shirt!
So... we will be doing something there on Saturday, probably with the urn and a makeshift shrine with flowers and pictures, with people drinking and stuff.
Then Dad will come home to the livingroom shrine until October, until his remains are buried next to Mom.
------------{=0=}------------
The mortuary people set up a stretcher on the side porch, and then moved his body from his bed, to that stretcher, in just a hammock they carried by hand.
His face was visible as they carried him through the kitchen to the porch, and... it reminded me a little of all the times he'd been carried out by paramedics over the past few years, for different trips to the ER, after different falls or episodes.
This didn't feel too different from those times to me... always imagining he might be dead by the time I got to the ER to catch up with him.
It might've been a bit traumatic for Tim and Colleen to witness, but... for me, there was a strain of relief, knowing it would be the last time he'd leave home in this manner, and that I wouldn't have to be replaying the time worn routine...
...of visiting him, and hearing how he wanted to come home... then negotiating with the staff for his freedom... then busting him out of the joint... then getting him to play by the rules, once home, so that he could regain his autonomy for another round.
Busting him out of Strive last month had been the most harrowing of prison breaks ever!
And caring for him at home had been more challenging than ever, but in the end, everybody had come together to make sure he had the best death bed experience possible... drinking and smoking to the last... in the company of his family... and on that morphine at the very end.
------------{=0=}------------
Lonnie told us that in her opinion, Dad had, "encountered a stroke," in the hospital, after his hip surgery.
It was a mild stroke, but that was the reason for his aspiration of food and liquids, and also for his lack of appetite.
Why she didn't tell me this sooner, I don't know.
Still, even that diagnosis doesn't answer how fast he actually went.
She was just yesterday, talking about getting him on oxygen, and was as surprised as the rest of us today, to find him dead.
Dad not only went fast, but skipped a lot of steps...
He never went through the phase of seeing visions of past loved ones.
He didn't take the big death shit we'd been warned about.
He didn't even wait around to get last rites from his parish priest, which was on our list of things to line up this week!
--<>--
Dad also never seemed to be aware that he was dying.
For as long as he could still talk, he kept saying he couldn't wait until he was back on his feet, walking Yvette, and driving his car again.
He thought signing the Transer Upon Death Instrument was a formality, and, a few days later, when I told him Kevin and I were gonna go register it with the county, he said maybe we could put it off... indicating he didn't think it was much of a big deal.
I spent a lot of time, over the past 8 years worrying, that in his final days on his death bed, he might be crying and terrified of death, and looking to me for reassurance... and that I'd have to say some empty platitudes to make him feel better, but simultaneously be scarred by the experience into fearing my own death that much more.
But in reality, it was nothing like that!
He was never in any distress, or great discomfort. He was pretty cheerful, actually! And he died extremely peacefully... in that quiet part of the afternoon after I'd left for work.
------------{=0=}------------
Brian & Karen came out from DeKalb, arriving just ten minutes after Lonnie and the mortuary workers had left, along with Dad's body.
We all sat around the kitchen table, drinking and talking and joking and trying to wrap our heads around the fact that Dad was really gone.
And while we were all doing that... the back door blew wide open once again!
This was garbage night, so I had gone out that door to get the bins and take them to the curb, and once again forgot to lock it, returning into the house via the side porch.
But this was the second time today it had blown open, and in this moment it did feel like some kind of momentous sign!
--<>--
I concluded aloud that... the first time it had blown open this morning, was when the Grim Reaper had swept in, to hang with Dad in his bedroom... the two of them waiting for the right moment for Dad to go.
Then, a few hours after Dad's death, with his body out of the house, and Brian and Karen settled in... the Grim Reaper swooped back out through the same door!.. off to go take care of other souls.
We joked that he was like, "Welp!.. looks like everything's squared away. I've gotta run. But I'll see all of you later!"
------------{=0=}------------
The long crisis that began with Dad breaking his hip on December 2nd, came to it's end today.
But there are still several weeks worth of bullshit to deal with in the aftermath.
And all of that begins tomorrow.
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
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.
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!
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.
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.
Around 12:30, I came back downstairs to find that Tim was finally up and making his own coffee.
We got a text from Colleen saying she had to run some errands before she could get to the house.
I was a bit frustrated that both she and Tim were taking so goddam long to get themselves started today, because I had to go to work, and we were supposed to get cracking on figuring out his life insurance and so forth.
I'd also been expecting Lonnie, the nurse to visit, as she promised us, yesterday, she'd do... but she too must've been dragging her feet.
1PM came around, so I gave Dad his next dose of morphine, telling him that we were expecting a new showerhead to come for the downstairs shower, and that I had to run down to the basement for some teflon paste.
The door to the basement is in his room, and I've had reasons to run down there a lot the past couple weeks, so I've been in the habit of letting him know what I'm heading down there for, and what we're doing.
But he was still breathing, and seemed to approve.
The showerhead came around 1:30PM, and we tried to install it, but the old fitting in the shower had a larger thread pitch than this modern shower head, so... we started looking on line for some kind of adapter.
Colleen didn't show up until goddamn 2PM... only 20 minutes before I had to leave for work.
I told them that one of the two of them would have to give Dad his morphine at 3PM, and showed them both how to do it.
There wasn't much time for chit chat, and as I left, still no word from Lonnie.
I clocked in at 2:55PM and started my day.
Started out like normal getting garbage from my 2nd floor classrooms, until I finally got a call from Lonnie, saying she was ten minutes away.
I told her I'd call my brother and let him know, but when I called Tim, it went to voicemail, so I called Colleen to let her know the nurse was coming.
She and Tim were finally down to business, and Colleen had determined that Dad's life insurance was only good for $10,000.00. Not enough to cover a full blown funeral, much less have any left to help me transition from part to full time.
We got to talking about direct cremation. I told her to look into it and call people, and also ask Lonnie about it once she got there.
Colleen said she'd get on it and we signed off.
Right after I hung up, I felt a sharp pain in my left arm around the inner elbow region that would persist for the next hour. What was that about?
I made my way downstairs to start getting the garbage from my ground level classrooms, when my phone rang again, and it was Colleen.
Before I even answered it... I just knew what it was about.
"Dad passed away!"
Lonnie had arrived right after we'd hung up. She went in to get Dad's vitals, while Tim and Colleen were busy making calls and looking into things.
She found he wasn't breathing and checked his heart. No heartbeat. She confirmed a few other ways... he had died.
I called my supervisor, Tony... who happened to be in the building, so he came to see me in the hallway. He was visibly shocked, when I told him my Dad had just died.
I asked him how many bereavement days I'd get, and he said he wasn't sure, but he told me to take the rest of the week off, and not to worry about it.
So I left and headed back home.
But on the drive I realized, I'd need to stop for beer and smokes, because once I got home, we'd probably all be drinking, and wouldn't be able to drive later on.
I got beer for Tim and I, but also a six of Guinness bottles, in honor of Dad.
Back at home, as soon as I got in the door, I opened three bottles of Guinness, gave one to Tim, and one to Colleen, and they instantly understood we needed to toast Dad.
Dad was still in his bed, looking just as I'd left him... eyes and mouth half open... still with his glasses on... still a rosey tint to his face.
Colleen said he was still breathing even after I left for work, when she'd gone in to say hello to him.
Lonnie clocked the time of death at her arrival, of 3:33PM, but I'm guessing it was more like 3:10... right when I'd gotten off the phone with Colleen and the pain in my left arm shot in, out of nowhere.
Colleen had ended up calling a local mortuary to get his body, because she had zero time to look into anything else, but she did tell them our aim was to cremate him.
Lonnie stayed until the mortuary people came, because she's bound by law to do so, but also just to chat with us. She also destroyed the drugs they'd provided for Dad, including the morphine... after writing down the exact dosages and pill counts that were left.
We were texing and calling people to let them know Dad had died, and Tim was fielding some very upset calls from his kids.
When the mortuary people came, they asked me if he was to be embalmed, and I (with power of attorney) told them no.
We're gonna have a meeting with them tomorrow to go over everything, but the plan is to have him cremated, and the remains returned to us.
Sheila called, and will be arriving on the red eye early tomorrow morning. She went over our plans for Dad with us, and wanted to add revisions, of course.
Our general plan was to get him and urn, and set up a memorial shrine in the living room that people could come here and pay their respects to, over the next several months... so that nobody was under any pressure to rush back immediately.
The second phase of the plan was to have the urn buried in his cemetery plot, next to Mom, next October... because October was his favorite month, and the month everybody traditionally came to visit him.
Sheila agreed with most of it, but she's insisting we do a more immediate memorial ceremony at the Round House, this Saturday... which is a big restaurant/ microbrewery in downtown by the train station.
That's actually the round house I was going on about last June, in those skybeam entries about what was causing the thunderstorms to evaporate as soon as they hit town!
But Dad also happened to die wearing his round house T-shirt!
So... we will be doing something there on Saturday, probably with the urn and a makeshift shrine with flowers and pictures, with people drinking and stuff.
Then Dad will come home to the livingroom shrine until October, until his remains are buried next to Mom.
The mortuary people set up a stretcher on the side porch, and then moved his body from his bed, to that stretcher, in just a hammock they carried by hand.
His face was visible as they carried him through the kitchen to the porch, and... it reminded me a little of all the times he'd been carried out by paramedics over the past few years, for different trips to the ER, after different falls or episodes.
This didn't feel too different from those times to me... always imagining he might be dead by the time I got to the ER to catch up with him.
It might've been a bit traumatic for Tim and Colleen to witness, but... for me, there was a strain of relief, knowing it would be the last time he'd leave home in this manner, and that I wouldn't have to be replaying the time worn routine...
...of visiting him, and hearing how he wanted to come home... then negotiating with the staff for his freedom... then busting him out of the joint... then getting him to play by the rules, once home, so that he could regain his autonomy for another round.
Busting him out of Strive last month had been the most harrowing of prison breaks ever!
And caring for him at home had been more challenging than ever, but in the end, everybody had come together to make sure he had the best death bed experience possible... drinking and smoking to the last... in the company of his family... and on that morphine at the very end.
Lonnie told us that in her opinion, Dad had, "encountered a stroke," in the hospital, after his hip surgery.
It was a mild stroke, but that was the reason for his aspiration of food and liquids, and also for his lack of appetite.
Why she didn't tell me this sooner, I don't know.
Still, even that diagnosis doesn't answer how fast he actually went.
She was just yesterday, talking about getting him on oxygen, and was as surprised as the rest of us today, to find him dead.
Dad not only went fast, but skipped a lot of steps...
He never went through the phase of seeing visions of past loved ones.
He didn't take the big death shit we'd been warned about.
He didn't even wait around to get last rites from his parish priest, which was on our list of things to line up this week!
Dad also never seemed to be aware that he was dying.
For as long as he could still talk, he kept saying he couldn't wait until he was back on his feet, walking Yvette, and driving his car again.
He thought signing the Transer Upon Death Instrument was a formality, and, a few days later, when I told him Kevin and I were gonna go register it with the county, he said maybe we could put it off... indicating he didn't think it was much of a big deal.
I spent a lot of time, over the past 8 years worrying, that in his final days on his death bed, he might be crying and terrified of death, and looking to me for reassurance... and that I'd have to say some empty platitudes to make him feel better, but simultaneously be scarred by the experience into fearing my own death that much more.
But in reality, it was nothing like that!
He was never in any distress, or great discomfort. He was pretty cheerful, actually! And he died extremely peacefully... in that quiet part of the afternoon after I'd left for work.
Brian & Karen came out from DeKalb, arriving just ten minutes after Lonnie and the mortuary workers had left, along with Dad's body.
We all sat around the kitchen table, drinking and talking and joking and trying to wrap our heads around the fact that Dad was really gone.
And while we were all doing that... the back door blew wide open once again!
This was garbage night, so I had gone out that door to get the bins and take them to the curb, and once again forgot to lock it, returning into the house via the side porch.
But this was the second time today it had blown open, and in this moment it did feel like some kind of momentous sign!
I concluded aloud that... the first time it had blown open this morning, was when the Grim Reaper had swept in, to hang with Dad in his bedroom... the two of them waiting for the right moment for Dad to go.
Then, a few hours after Dad's death, with his body out of the house, and Brian and Karen settled in... the Grim Reaper swooped back out through the same door!.. off to go take care of other souls.
We joked that he was like, "Welp!.. looks like everything's squared away. I've gotta run. But I'll see all of you later!"
The long crisis that began with Dad breaking his hip on December 2nd, came to it's end today.
But there are still several weeks worth of bullshit to deal with in the aftermath.
And all of that begins tomorrow.
°¦}
