Caregiving Journal 23

This is not the real wall that Dad's ashes are in or that Mom's will soon be in, 

but it's a good representation.

How long will I continue to call what I'm writing the Caregiving Journal?  I don't know.  As long as I feel I'm still writing about Mom or my brother and the aftermath of Mom's death, I guess.  Or my feelings about her or my feelings about the business part of dying and there always is a business component to it, isn't there?  The funeral home, the death certificates, the cancelled credit cards, the transference of the car ownership, and on and on.

I am sleeping better, but psoriasis has appeared on my elbows.  I use cow juice on it--it's not really cow juice but I can never remember the real name, which is Bag Balm.  I can also use some prescribed stuff I had for my scalp when it was so bad.  Remember the little shower caps I had to wear every night while I used Derma Smooth?  Thank heavens I know how to prevent an infected scalp now.  So my elbows are itching and I'm having some allergies, but then, so is everybody else.

I finished writing Mom's obituary on Saturday, added two pictures to it (Sun said one picture will go in the paper and two will go in the online version) and sent it into the cyber void.  Today the piece I wrote appeared online, but without the pictures I so carefully scanned and attached.  I am mad.  I know the paper will not have a picture either.  And I know what it's like to try to get the Kitsap Sun to fix anything they've botched.  I spent 3 months trying to get my Mom's newspaper mess ironed out.  I wanted to pay for it yearly, they were charging her monthly on her credit card.  I got them to stop doing that, after three calls to three different people at the Sun, but they didn't ever send the invoice for the year.....AND they stopped delivering the paper, too.  Since Mom got sick shortly after that I let it slide.  So now I get to wrangle with them again.  Can't wait.

The cremation will take place this week.  I spent some time with the folks, Bob and David, at Miller Woodlawn on Wednesday.  They were nice, particularly Bob, who talked to me a long time and instantly got my "I'm tired of talking now and want to wind this up" signal--I looked at my watch.  Can you believe my parting gift was a frozen lasagna?  Did I tell you this already?  I still can't get over it!  Lasagna.  My husband and I imagined the scenario.  The Lasagna company is going out of business but they have a whole bunch, thousands, of boxed lasagnas left.  "Who can we sell them to?  Schools?  No, they have their own kitchens.  Hospitals?  Their own kitchens.  Jails?  They eat better than this.  The fed government?  No, they eat chicken.  Welfare system?  No, they offer cheese, but no meat.  Oh wait !  Funeral homes!!!  They have their own freezers--what do people need when somebody dies?  Food! It's a win-win!"  It was funnier when we were thinking about it, but I guess my funny bone has arthritis today.

Next week my brother and my husband and I will attend a private inurnment at the funeral home.  I think it will be hard.  It will be fast.  Sit in chair in the outdoor memorial thingy, have the urn delivered to us, one of us will climb on a step ladder to reach the "niche", put the urn in, mumble some words to ourselves, shake hands and thank the funeral home people and then go home.  Maybe we'll eat the lasagna.  Yesterday I went to the "niche" where my Dad waits for my Mom--his ashes wait, if ashes can be imagined as waiting--and put one of my rhododendron flowers in the tiny metal vase affixed to the marble slab--what the heck do you call these things--up on the wall.  I do this every year.  I think I am the only one in the family who knows where it is.  Mom saw it once, but never visited it.  She didn't like cemeteries at all--"morbid" she said.  But when her ashes are in there, the "niche" will have more visitors.

I think there were lots of other things I wanted to write about, but I didn't seize the brain window of opportunity yesterday and I still have "grieving brain amnesia".  There's no cure for it except time.