A Three Story Life Farewell

We're burying Dad this week. He died in November, and the ashes have been at home until I passed the urn along to my big brother. In preparation for selling the house on Drummond Island, most of the offspring are on the island clearing out, tidying up. Since most are there along with Dad's ashes, my sister called the county to prepare the site. Feels rushed. The original plan was to coordinate this for later summer, early autumn.

It's always too soon, isn't it? Plans for this week changed abruptly Sunday when I heard the intent to bury Dad on Thursday, and I decided that I couldn't not be there. I don't want to wake up one morning down the road and feel bad. As if. Meanwhile, I have to prepare for making my brother share this long road to good-bye.

Our mother died in 1998. Scott won't get out of the car when we visit her grave. 20 years down the long road, he is mostly uncommunicative. I sometimes think he knows Dad has joined Mom, but there is no way to be sure. I told him Dad died. Dementia prevents him from keeping this knowledge. Some days he says it's over repeatedly. Some days he says back the way it was.

My closest friends think I'm crazy to make this trip at all, albeit with no other family in the car for 750 miles round. I have to pack mounds of incontinence supplies. Scott may or may not find closure, and even if he does, it's momentary. I protected him from the physicality of our parents leaving their bodies. That may not have been a good idea. I'm questioning everything. I pretend I can evaluate his needs. I cannot. I am wandering away from identifying my own needs.

All part of life's rich pageant. All grist for the writer's mill. In a life wherein I start writing again, this trip will be the closing scene. As it happens, the day Dad moves to his final place is the anniversary of us moving from A Three Story Life to A Two Story Life. May 26. It's also his brother and best friend's birthday. His brother died in 1998 also.

In that light on that stage, I imagine the items that might go in the grave with Dad's urn. Like ancient deceased expected to need stuff to negotiate the afterlife. I can't find my medicine bag (the collected donated items to help me kick cancer) that has the saxophone reed Dad gave me.

What I need to do is envision what I need to consign to earth. Leave whatever does not serve me on the Island when we get on the ferry. Use the mantra my lovely friend Carol taught me. All will be well.

I'm taking the golf ball.

Wish us peace.

Three Story Life: End Game

So it's come to this. Me, a fifth of Jack Honey and a black hole. I snagged the Jack because I parked in the liquor store parking lot to take my brother to the doctor to pee in a plastic cup because we need to know if he still has an infection, after dropping in the mailbox thank you notes to medical personnel who helped, books in the library pick-up bin I haven't read, after starting at the house wondering if I'd remember how to start a pushbutton car.

I didn't remember. Nor did I remember how to shut it off. Three times.

Still not sure if my brother knows our father is dead.

One piece of business done today: I called DTE to change the auto payment from my father's account to mine because I started opening his mail, which feels intrusive, but the letter was dated the day Dad went into the hospital. Halloween. My mother's birthday, begob. Of course, the letter required a 2 day turnaround in their favor. DTE transferred me to Revenue Compliance. I need to send DTE a death certificate. Who pranks someone by switching their auto billing to their own wallet?

I instigated a breakout from Providence Park Hospital for my father. More on this later, but I haven't been 13 years of my life in his care and for his care to have him die in a hospital. The Attending thwarted for ego. Somewhere in my writing future this is the evildoer.

At the end, my siblings stepped up with love. I hope everyone in the house had a moment in the 24 hours Dad was home in bed where he wanted to be.

I was stroking Dad's hands. Keeping him, in his anxiety, from tearing at his oxygen tubing. When holding his hands away wasn't enough I lay on him, my face in his neck. He calmed. Minutes passed. I'm a pain in the ass he said. Well then, I learned from the best I said.

Scott had no moment. He was in the next room, witnessing the mayhem attached to a death: Dad yelling pee and drink, and when he figured we weren't fast enough, using his strobe flashlight to get attention.

I can't escape wondering what I could have done to make this easier on my brother. He lost his grandmother in 1987. She was his best buddy, finest champion, Yahtzee partner. My mother insisted on her being at their house. Did they handle his grief well?  It took our cousin from England to open my eyes in inquiring whether we'd dealt with Scott's loss. Scott then watched his mother at home in hospice care; objected to the police in his mother's bedroom when she died. And now this. The three most important people in his life died in his presence.

When everyone had left the house, Scott and I had dinner. I didn't know what to say to him, what he'd take in, what what. Then I held his face in my hands and I said, "We lost our Dad today. I am sorry for both of us. I want you to know you are loved, we are loved, and you are not alone. Do you understand? We will be okay."

And he said. Okay.

Tonight there's just me and Jack Honey and a black hole.

In the morning there's our life as it is now. Me looking at him for guidance, him looking at me.

Keep Me Posted

I don't have any art for this, so a 1000 pieces are enough. I've been a live-in caregiver for 13 years.  I've written a blog about Three Story Life for most of that time. The art's cute. Real ain't cute.

Dark Humor.

Tonight my father is in the hospital, next stay in a month, with a partially collapsed lung. He's 90. We're in for the hospital stays until he passes because he has lovely insurance.

My brother who has Alzheimer's has Medicare, and his infection was treated today as well. I set him in the shower tonight and he came back out, said "there's somebody in there." That's a long sentence for him, and I wonder what he saw. And then wondered if I needed to call 911 for me.

My father calls with what I need to bring to the hospital. One of those things is hearing aid batteries, so I can ask when the list starts "did you call FedEx?" because 1) he never listens to me and 2) he has no working hearing aid batteries. These calls can begin as early as 7 because he hasn't slept so everyone else in the known universe is awake.

I'm happy to be joined in this we all die thing by wonderful people like Caitlin Doughty. 

And in the truly fine way to move with much loved Leonard Cohen.

And in the blooming interim there's the true weird and wonderful. This is the intersectionality I live in. Between life and death there's old age, infirmity and diminishing capability for us all.

The Three Story Life posts are going to be a play. I'm using NaNoWriMo to be well on my way, and I hope to be at Ragdale to finish. Or perhaps it won't be finished.

Keep me posted is what my family texts/says. Maybe they all need hearing aid batteries. Maybe I don't know how to ask for help.

Lady Tree Down

Trout Lake in Island Lake Recreation Area is a deep gravel pit. The land surrounding has few big trees, except on a ridge that separates Trout Lake from another lake, probably another pit with the immediate area scoured long ago. Towering over the other trees on the ridge was a dead tree I called the Lady Tree. It was a solitary majestic presence- could see it at great distance. I felt strongly the presence of my matriarchal ancestors at her feet, and I'd trudge up the wide path to share the views. A lake on either shoulder. When my best friend died in 2010, I'd lean against the Lady Tree and cry until I couldn't cry any more. I stopped walking at Island Lake when a couple of hunters came out of the bush next to me 3 years ago. You could see the Lady Tree from Kensington Rd., but the last year I haven't spotted her. Today I walked to find her. There's just a narrow path now and I walked slowly uphill. Fallen. Feels like a transition that I can accept at this point in my life. The ancestors and other women I loved have moved on. The tree is now habitat for other generations of living things. Feels like the natural order of life. Walking back to the parking lot, I thought about how nature and women are the same. I thought about man's ongoing efforts to control nature. And women. And I understood today that the unrelenting pursuit for control of nature and women's bodies won't succeed. Nature has her own plans.

So Big a Concept

A human mind isn't wired well to contemplate infinity. Toss in our culture's aversion to talking about death, and it's a brain twister. Flavor with a pinch of our distance from nature. Fold in ego. Ruminate at room temperature for an hour or a month. And voila! Headache. And unease. And writer's block. Neytiri says all energy is borrowed and must be returned one day. Feels reasonable and comforting. Neytiri is a 9-feet tall blue Pandoran, who may be a good guru, but I feel a little bizarre taking philosophical cues from a fictional character.  No. I don't. Not really. I believe the way the Na'vi do. 3 paintings are done and framed for the VFAA PAN night. All are images of water. I feel close to water always. PAN is Poetry&Art night, so all original poems must be accompanied by original art, and vice versa. Previous years, I wrote the poems, and slapped together the art to go with. This year I have the experience of watercolor classes, and an affinity for the form. So I have art finished. No poems. Feels inside out, but okay. Except I can't write the poems.  Submissions are due March 21. I'm not ready! One painting is whitewater and my intent is to poetize an analogy of watercolor and fast water. Another painting is an idyllic scene that I had the joy of seeing after an arduous and terrifying climb up a narrow path on the side of a cliff. Not sure where the metaphor is here, but it's certainly about life and being open to challenges. The third painting is the sea. I repainted this painting, trying to use words in the waves to depict what I believe - that the sea contains all stories through all time. It looked unnatural and artificially represented Stories of Earth, and the people who walk on Her. Endless and ever changing. I feel in my right brain that this is true - that death is frightening only when you think the story is about you. Meanwhile I started yoga (oy! I had no idea I'd gotten this... rigid and weak!) and perhaps that will get the contemplation circulation flowing again.