Caregiving Journal 20

I am taking care of myself now.  My eyes, my nose, my throat are all acting funny.  They are dripping copiously.  It's not just tears, it's mucous.  Yesterday I took an allergy pill, then I drank a large glass of wine at dinner, and  I took a slurp of cough medicine at bedtime.  The cough medicine has decongestant in it and it seemed to work better than anything for stopping the dripping.  This morning I am dry but a little balmy.

I planted marigolds from Costco in my gardens yesterday, creating some beautiful little scenes, using some colorful, square dishes with Mexican designs for plant saucers.  I'd bought these dishes at Kohl's a long time ago and the first time I washed them in the dishwasher they started to chip.  I used them longer than I should have and then finally put them in my green house.  Now they are gracing my garden.

It was a pretty day, sunny and fairly warm.  A good day for doing things to rejuvenate myself.  Digging in the dirt, cleaning up the strawberries, encouraging my tiny potato plants, transferring baby tomato plants into big pots, fertilizing.  I got several calls: from my son, from my best friend, from my daughter in Norfolk.  I made up a word while talking with my son--Shrap--a combination of a word that starts with "sh" and a word that starts with "cr".  I used it in place of all the things that have to be done now, referring to Mom's house, her effects, my brother's situation, the business end of dying.

Two important things got done yesterday--Office of Personnel Management notification and Social Security notification.  I didn't want to do anything more than that.  Today I will call Miller-Woodlawn and make an appointment to take care of the cremation.  I am lucky.  Mom and Dad both had cremation insurance and there is a remains spot already there, with my Dad's ashes installed in 2001.  When we inurned Dad, THEY wanted to know if Mom wanted her name on the plaque too, with the end date not inscribed.  She said NO!  But now the inscription will be put on the stone.  I wonder if they will allow me to take 1/4 of a cup of ashes to keep or spread.  I will insist on it.

On Sunday two men came to take Mom's body to the funeral home.  One was a regular looking fellow, still in the Navy, doing this work to augment his salary.  The other young guy was skinny in his black suit, with longish black hair--pale, gaunt.  He didn't say much, leaving it up to the Navy guy to explain how it all would work.  He sat with his hands folded in his lap, looking funereal.  My brother said his hand was cold when he shook it.  I whispered to Stanley that he looked like a vampire.  It would be the perfect place for a vampire to work, wouldn't it? I don't want to go there right now, but I can imagine a story about him and why he would like to work at a funeral home.

Kay will come to visit me today and to hug me and help me talk about all that has happened.  She was in New York and New Jersey with her fiance, Alan, when we brought Mom home from Northwoods Lodge.  She called me from New York to find out how I was doing, how Mom was doing.  She said Times Square made her want to turn out all the lights.  She is going to bring food and her love.

I am wearing the two rings that were on Mom's finger the past few years, a pink and yellow gold ring with a grape-leaf pattern and a gold band with five small squares of amethyst set into it.  She wore them on her wedding ring finger but they are too small to fit anything but my pinkie.  I have had to wrap pink yard around the bands to hold them on my finger.  After I go through Mom's jewelry, which I am looking forward to, I will take a few pieces and have a pin or necklace or ring made out of them.  The rest of the good stuff or retro stuff, I will show my daughters and daughter-in-law and see if they want it.  There is jewelry decades old, probably not a single piece worth anything except that it was chosen by my dear fashionable Mom and worn with panache.

My brother is doing okay.  He called yesterday to see how I was doing.  He told me he'd walked to the coffee shop just a block away and bought two 20 oz. quad lattes.  That seemed like a nice thing to do for himself, even if I can't imagine drinking that much coffee and that much caffeine.  He seems to be grieving normally but he admitted to one Stanley-esque activity.  I had bought Mom a bottle of liquid Tylenol because she couldn't swallow pills toward the end of her life and I had given her only two doses before she died.  I gave it to my brother to use for headaches or other aches and pains.  Yesterday he admitted to drinking the whole bottle.  I guess he has quite a capacity for abusing his body because it didn't do anything to or for him.  I suppose he thought he would get some kind of buzz from it.  My husband cried out, "Oh great!  That's all we need--a double funeral!"

It's the oddest feeling to have a loved person in your life for as long as you've lived and then in an instant to have them gone.  I remember the feeling when my father died.  Here one minute, gone the next.  I saw men who looked like him, in stores, on the street.  It was the same with my brother--I saw him everywhere.  Will I see Mom?  The day she died, an hour or so later, I was putting some garbage in the can and there was a loudly chirping bird on the very top of a tree, just past the yard fence.  I called my brother out to hear it and asked him, "Is it Mom?"  The bird continued calling for a short time and then flew away.