Life

Live it, love it, never take it for granted.

It's short and it can be sweet if you let it be.

It's your choice.

The Era I Grew Up In

Caregiving Journal 26

I am up in the middle of the night, or is it early morning--it's 3:10, you decide.  Too much of my own snoring, too much of my husband's restlessness, too much going on in my mind.  I'm drinking chamomile tea, hoping to calm body and mind and steal a couple more hours of sleep, but first the brain must be emptied.

Today is the private inurnment.  It's going to be the second goodbye.  The first was on May 22 in Mom's bedroom.  The third will be June 25th at the memorial service.  And then there will be all the other goodbyes.  The smallest things get to me--the latest ones have been commercials on television for Ensure and Twizzlers, two of the things I used to buy for Mom.  I'm afraid this inurnment will "get to me", too.  I've never done this.  Dad's ashes were put in the niche and there was no ceremony at the cemetery.  I scattered my brother's ashes in the Elwah River 3 years after he died.  There will only be the three of us, my younger brother, my husband and me, at the cemetery today.

I asked the funeral people to give my brother and me some of the ashes, my brother's to go into a heart shaped container and mine just in a little bag.  My cousin called the other day.  He told me he'd buried his mother's ashes between her mother and father in a local cemetery.  I'll put my portion of Mom's ashes there, too, next to her beloved sister and her mother and father.  I'd rather visit Mom in that cemetery than visit "the wall" at the other one.  I'll go to the Wall on Memorial Days with my little sprig of flowers, like I've been doing since Dad died 10 years ago.  But I'll visit Mom on beautiful Spring days, like the day she died, with the birds singing loudly and the smell of lilacs in the air.

After the inurnment the three of us will come home and put the funeral home lasagna in the oven and we'll make a toast to Mom.  Maybe we'll even be able to muster the good cheer necessary to tell stories.  We'll have a tiny wake.  Too bad we can't have alcohol at the memorial service later this month because I'd sure like to hoist a couple to Mom and sing some songs with all my old friends on that day.

Caregiving Journal 25

What I want to know is this:  WHY DOES IT COST SO MUCH TO DIE?

Today I have to make Comfort Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Caregiving Journal 24

Tomorrow is the first lawyer appointment since Mom died.  Today the Sun will get the obituary right or somebody else will die.  Yesterday my dear cousin, Marc, son of my Aunt Carol, my Mom's sister, called and we talked for a long time.  Yesterday my best friend went, as if going to her execution, to a doctor at UW hospital to see if ANYTHING short of mutilation can ease her years long chronic pain.  Today my husband will go to Silverdale to run some errands and he is very excited to get out, that's how much he's hating this weather.  Yesterday I called Lincare for the third time to ask them to remove the oxygen equipment that Mom used for the 3 days before she died.  Today I am sending my grandson $20 for the birthday I missed.  Today I am sending a birthday card to Marty McLaren for her birthday that I missed (which is hard to do since it's on the same day as mine).  Today I am going to make a thank you card for the people at the ESD, where I used to work, to thank them for giving me a lilac bush in memory of my Mom. Today I am going to wash the dishes and do laundry and make dinner.  Today I am going to watch our three little red squirrels fight over the birdseed.  Today I am going to watch the swallows (either violet greens or tree swallows) swoop in and out of the nest box that is just above and to the right of the patio doors.  Today, if it stops raining for a few minutes, I will start digging the hole for my lilac bush.  Yesterday evening my husband and I went for a walk--I could smell Spring, late as it is.  Today, as I do every day, I will look in amazement at the huge sunflowers my friend, Kay, brought me last week.  Yesterday I emailed my friend, Kay, a dream my Mom had written about and the transcript of the conversation about heaven that we'd had at Northwoods, as preparation for the eulogy she will write.  Today, I might make cookies, though I lack the chocolate chips I want to use. Yesterday my brother called Social Security on his own, without being reminded. Yesterday I washed the sheets and blanket that were on Mom's bed--there were chocolate stains from an ice cream/Ensure shake.  The day before yesterday I cleaned out another of Mom's drawers--her makeup drawer--finding blue, black and brown used up eye liner pencils and bright red lipsticks, tiny perfume samples and sewing kits from various hotels, and many bobby pins.

The days go by.  There are fewer times of crying.  So many times I say to myself, "Mom would have liked that."  Or, "I would have told Mom about that."  There is a sadness that lies underneath.  There is  happiness that I loved my Mom and still love her.