Forty-six Degrees.....

I walk nearly every day, at least two miles, frequently as much as six.  Cold, snow, rain:  It's all just weather, right? Last winter's bitter cold didn't stop Simon and I from walking, but his arthritis did.  Poor little old fat dog!  He turned 12 this month (bringing back memories of our NayNay nearly fainting from witnessing the miracle of puppy arrival while all of her sisters oohed and ahhed about it LOL).  His idea of a long walk on a great day was about a mile and a half anyway.

Maybelle has been a better walker, and now I am the one who is fat and old LOL. But she is, apparently, a Southern Belle.  She's the first Big Dog I have ever owned, and the first dog I have ever had that I needed to buy a doggie coat for.  Back in January when our exceptionally mild winter snapped from 35 degrees to 10 overnight, she suddenly refused to set paw out of the door to do more than tinkle. So then this happened:

It's a little embarrassing, to be honest.  After all, this is a nearly 80 pound hound dog. Of course, I'm walking in pajama pants in public so I guess I really shouldn't cast any stones.

However....

Yesterday it was forty-six degrees outside, a veritable heat wave for the Northeast in late March.  But it was raining.  REALLY raining.  I don't mind cold.  I don't mind rain.  But I actually DO mind cold rain.  I've never had a smart phone before, but my new phone will tell me the temperature outside, and I do check it, so now I know:  Fifty degrees and raining is NOT cold.  Forty-six degrees and raining IS.  I have a raincoat, purchased several years ago, so it is size Extra Large Fat Lady and it acts as a tent whenever I am standing still and it comes down to almost mid-thigh; but after the first mile when my jammie pants have hit the 'sopping wet' point and are slapping my legs with every step, and those modern well-ventilated walking shoes have let in about three and a half gallons of cold water and I'm wishing I owned vinyl socks, forty-six degrees is too damned cold.

I just thought you would all like to know.

DeeDee

Make 'Em Cry......

Our church has a Tenebrae service on Good Friday every year.  It's quietly dramatic.  There are about fifteen readings telling the story of Jesus' last day:  The prayers in the garden, the betrayal, the beatings, and the final hours.  As each passage is read, a candle is extinguished and the lights dim.

At the final reading, when Jesus is laid in a borrowed tomb, the final lights go out, and in the darkness, a door slams.

And from high in the church balcony, an a capella voice begins:

"Were you there when they crucified my Lord?...."

Were You There

When it is over, a few lights go on and people leave in silence.  They frequently leave in tears.

It is one of my favorite services.  It touches deep to the heart of the meaning of Good Friday.

Last year Babygirl and I spent Good Friday in the hospital.  It doesn't seem like much of a holiday to some people, but, you see, I'm the person who makes everybody cry, singing from the balcony.  And last year, I sang only for Babygirl, from the side of her bed, in the dark.  And it made ME cry.

This year was definitely better.

DeeDee

A Single White Chair.....

Citygirl's wedding was held in the courtyard of a local museum.  I never really noticed that it is clearly visible to anyone who cares to peer over the five-foot-tall wall while walking down the street, twenty feet above its floor.

The chairs that were set up for the wedding were white plastic folding chairs, good enough for people of average to, perhaps, slightly above average size.  But Hubby is a big man.  Not only this, but the condition of his back pre-surgery made it hard for him to get up and down from a low, unstable seat.  So before the ceremony we swapped out one chair for one of the museums cast iron white garden chairs.  Not perfect, but good enough for a thirty to forty minute sit.

Weeks later, probably toward the end of September, I was walking Maybelle, and we happened to pass by the museum.  Out of curiosity, I looked over the wall for the first time ever.

The chair was still there, still facing the wall.  One front row seat to a wedding now long over.

A ghost chair.

My Dad's chair.

I stood at the top of that wall, crying, missing him, and thinking how very, very much he would have wanted to be there to see his first granddaughter married.  And how very, very much I wanted him there.  And how I know in my heart that he WAS there, in the front row next to us all, watching.

The next day I went back to get a picture.

The chair was gone.

Message received, Dad.

DeeDee

Somnus Interruptus...

I woke up this morning at 3:30 AM.  PRE-Daylight Savings Time, as I hadn't changed my bedroom clock before I went to bed.  I've been at this long enough to tell when I am really, really awake, so I got up.  I puttered around with paperwork and didn't realize we'd had a time change until I was nearly late for church.

So after lunch, when I sat down to read for a bit, I fell asleep.

I woke up to a little face next to mine.  "Gamma!  I wanna play da Skylanders game."

Groggily, I gave him the response I often gave to what I considered to be unreasonable requests from the girls:  "And I want a million dollars."

Puzzled, "Why do you want a million dollars?"

More alert.  "If I had a million dollars we could buy a house at the beach, and we could stay there all summer!  Wouldn't that be amazing?"

Squeaker got excited.  "My Mom has a million dollars!  It's in da penny jar!"
 
Muffling a snort, I told him to go tell her we needed a million dollars and why.

Don't judge me.  It gave me time to wake up and face a tarted-up game of Pop-o-Matic fake-Trouble or whatever-the-heck noisy thing Squeaker wanted me to do for the next hour.

He was a little disappointed to learn that the penny jar doesn't hold a million dollars.  But we tied at Skylanders, so it was all good.

Some time later Curlygirl came over and asked, "What did you need $50 for? He said something about leaving for the beach?"  I told her I'd asked for a million.  She didn't even blink.  She remembers how ridiculous I am.  Ah, breaking in the next gen.

DeeDee

Settling Things Out.....

As executrix of my Mom's 'estate' I'v.e been sitting on a scant handful of papers since her death, waiting for all the bills to finalize and the life insurance policy to pay out.

Fortunately for me, my name is on her checking account (those of you with old people:  Get. This. Done.).  That didn't stop them from shutting off all ATM access to the account when she died:  All further transactions must be done in person until I close the account, meaning I must be able to show up on a Saturday morning before noon to get anything done.  I can still write checks.

Her NYSEG (power) bill has a credit of nearly $200.  Billing questions (such as, "When will we see a refund?") can only be discussed M-F during business hours.  Funny, that's when I'm working.

Her nursing home has a bank, in which I deposited $100 for her cable and for the traveling hairdresser.  I'm pretty sure she never had her hair done, and the cable for two months would have been $10.  I have to turn up at the 'bank' between 10 and noon, or 1 - 4 PM to get the money back. Um, again, I have this job thing that eats up most of my free time. I've left messages.

Her nursing home bill for the first 20 days she was there is $16,403.20.  I haven't received the bill for the last 10 days as that was a separate month, but all things being equal that would bring the total to $24,604.40.  She was living on a Social Security check that was just under twice the poverty line (seriously, that got her some benefits - heat assistance, some food stamps and it got her Medicare supplemental insurance paid for. I got very nervous every time there was a COLA for fear it would throw her a dollar over and she'd lose about $300/month).  Because of her income and lack of assets she immediately qualified for Medicaid, so we are, thankfully, not responsible for the monster bill.  The estate's total payout to the nursing home will be $1532.  I wrote that check this morning.

She had a life insurance policy, thankfully, and it covered the funeral she desired completely, with a little change left over. I paid the last couple of premiums after she went into the nursing home to keep it going.

If I'm adding correctly and no other weirdness ensues, my brothers and I will inherit just over $1000, "share and share alike" as the will instructs.  I'll give it another month to finalize.

But when it comes down to it, none of this is what we've inherited from our Mom.

We are, each of us, her children.  Each of us has her grey eyes (not the Paul Newman blue that Dad could have passed on!).  Each of us has her wicked sense of the absurd, the ability to see the funny in the most solemn of occasions (Seriously.  Ask the funeral director if she has EVER had as much fun planning a funeral as she did with us); her sense of right and wrong (and her ability to ignore it); and her deeply ingrained knowledge that life is a competition:  You are in it to win it, so give it all you have whether it's college, a game of chess, or participating in the conversation at dinner even when you can't quite recall what it's actually about.

I miss her.  Every single day.

DeeDee

Clearing It Out.....

When my Mom died ten days ago, the nursing home called immediately to notify me and to ask if I wanted to come up and sit with her and say good-bye before they called the funeral home.  I told them I would be right there.


Naturally, five seconds later Squeaker's school called to say he was ill, needed to come home, and they couldn't reach his parents, so could I come?  I had just brought hubby home from having his stitches out not ten minutes earlier and he was in no condition to wrangle a toddler into a car seat, so I told them I had a bit of a family emergency going on but that of course I'd be there and hung up the phone.  And cried. 


Fortunately The Squeak's parents went on break at work and got the messages that they were needed, and called me to let me know they were on their way to get the little man.  So after calling my brothers to let them know, I left for the nursing home.


I've been around a lot of death.  I've seen the results of struggle - I watched my Dad doing it.  But I can say with a certain degree of confidence that Mom let go gently.  I sat in her room with her, I don't know how long.....long enough for the first storm to pass and the peace to settle over me.


As I was leaving, the staff asked if I wanted to take her things with me? 


Well, crap. 


I was doing pretty well, but I couldn't, just couldn't! go back into that room and collect what little was in there.  Not with her still there.


I asked if I could come back later, and they said that of course I could: They have a storage room for just this reason, and I could come back any time.


Today was the day.  I drove over and asked, and then spent the next half hour watching with some bemusement as they struggled to locate my Mom's things.  They do, indeed, have a room, but they recently moved it to a new location.  Her stuff was neither in the new nor the old storage area.  So the very kind gentleman from housekeeping hiked up to her floor with me and the search continued.  It was finally determined that her things had been placed in the social worker's office for safekeeping, and this needed a high-security key to be opened.  By the end of an hour we had it all located and loaded in my car.  (I can't get the money out of her 'bank account' there because the 'bank' is only open about 4 hours a day on weekdays. I'm still working on that.)


So.


It came down to so very little.  A couple of knitted afghans.  The pretty handmade pillowcases that Hospice gave her.  The new TV I bought for her room there.  The picture of Citygirl, Mom and me from the wedding last summer.  Her phone and her handbag.  She didn't even have her own favorite nightgowns and robes because the hip fracture made them impractical. 


When I was a little girl, I was never allowed to touch my Mom's purse.  It was private, her own, almost sacred; and we were never, ever allowed to open it.  But over the past five years I've been in and out of her purse and wallet, paring down the contents for her safety (taking away credit cards and checkbook) and ease (adding appropriate toiletries as needed).  By the time she got to the nursing home her wallet held only her pacemaker and heart valve information cards, some loose change, a picture of her youngest grandchild, some Sweet-n-Low and a pen.  I pulled them all out today to put away, and found, tucked inside, her nametag from her last job. 


Every single item made me weep.  Representations of her survival, her family, her struggles, her joys, and her very identity in a pile that fit easily in the palm of my hand.  When I was a child I thought the secrets of the Universe must be in a mother's purse. 


I may have been right.


DeeDee

Saying Goodbye....

This morning my brothers, some very dear friends and family members and I went to the top of a cold, windy hill and laid my mother to rest next to her brother. 


We've lost both of our parents, seven months apart.  We're officially orphans, I guess. 


But there has never, in my memory, been an event involving my mother that didn't include some laughter, so when we got to the gravesite and turned to look down the hill, we spotted it:  A BIG yellow smiley face graffiti'd onto a big tree a just  few feet below the foot of her grave.


Seriously. 


I'm tempted to think she did it herself to lighten things up a little.  That's the kind of sweet kook she was. 


The problem with dementia is that death only makes obvious the separation that has been in place for years already.  The sweet, funny, confused person at my dinner table for the last couple of years was not my Mom, not really.  I've missed my mom BEING my mom for almost six years now:  That's how long I've been HER mom.  But I miss that confused little old lady too, a little, since she was all I had left.


My brother did an absolute amazing job of capturing her life in this video, set to his own music:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnddQ6XaJKQ&feature=youtu.be


DeeDee