My sister doesn’t remember our little playful argument we had a few months ago about who gets what when dad passed. At the time I promised to relinquish any claim to the Colander of Awesomeness if she let me have the cookie jar.
The colander is cool - a seemingly normal colander but it’s oversized and holds a lot more pasta than most you find. I don’t know where mom found it but I have had no luck finding anything like it myself. I will however admit I haven’t looked that hard.
The cookie jar on the other hand is tied so many memories of my youth. It was nearly impossible to take the lid off or replace it without the telltale clink of porcelain on porcelain, making the fun of stealing cookies all the more pleasant if one successfully made their stealth roll. While us gang of misfits played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons or our favorite Runequest II in the basement (circa 1980) anyone who needed a beverage or to use the bathroom would climb the stairs to do so. The rest of us would keep an ear out for the quiet sounds of a cookie theft in progress, and demand appropriate tribute if we overheard the event.
To this day I still practice stealth cookie theft and I am proud to say I am still quite good.
This Monday afternoon our theoretical bargain about the claims of moderate inheritance became real with the passing of our father. It is noted that while the certainty of death is at this time unavoidable, the manner and timing of it do involve a certain amount of choice. In his case the manner, dementia, was not a choice anyone would willingly make, but we are grateful for the timing.
Mom had passed back just as Covid began to ravage the nation. There is no indication she succumbed to it though the circumstances were similar as mom had COPD, a lingering result of decades of smoking that she ended through sheer willpower some 25 years or so before her demise, a fact I always held in inordinate pride for her. She made it to 88 years old.
Upon her passing dad continued to live alone but with assistance. He had macular degeneration and could not drive, but he could continue to move about and mostly take care of himself. My sister lived 20 minutes away and went shopping with him, and later on began to make and freeze all his meals as his healthy continued to decline.
Finally in the beginning of 2022 we received the diagnosis that we presumed was coming, that dad had dementia. There had been a couple episodes prior that made it pretty clear that it was likely. Through my sister’s tireless efforts we discovered a service that provided in home care for him, and since he could afford it we opted to keep him in the comfort of his own home as long as we could. That ended up being 8 months until last Friday.
We knew the time was coming, the illusions and delusions were taking over, and the kind gentleman who raised us was being swallowed up by paranoia and fear. We were worried about what to do next and where he should go. We had heard horror stories about unmanageable patients being removed from nursing homes, and where he and my sister live there aren’t that many options. Nevertheless under the advice of trusted health care friends it was decided he should go to the hospital and be referred to a facility for medication review and the next chapter of his life.
Being later on a Friday there was some confusion as to what to do with him and what facility he could go to, but with the help of our advocates a representative of a local hospice did an evaluation and quickly suggested he be removed to their facility.
This was the first time the words Terminal Restlessness had ever entered our vocabulary.
Apparently he was dying, and had been dying for awhile, but in the comfort of his own home it wasn’t that evident. Friday night he was resting comfortably in the hospice. By Saturday he slipped into a coma, and on Monday he passed.
Often asked since then how I felt I can only sum it up as saying emotional, but not upset. Indeed I feel proud that we managed to keep him home and relatively happy until three days before his death at age 91. Given the circumstances he passed about as kindly as I could have hoped.
We made the arrangements this week; no funeral or viewing. We’ll have a gathering sometime in the spring for family and friends, more of a picnic remembrance than a wake. Our family kinda rolls that way.
My sister and I took care of that business on Tuesday then headed down to his house to do a little cleanup to safe the home for being unoccupied. While we were there I reminded her of our bargain, the colander for the cookie jar.
She opted not to take either. I’ll keep them both.
Fortunately our memories don’t require distribution, and have already been gifted to us. For this we are fortunate.