I’m sorry for your loss.
I been there.
It’s such a difficult time for you. I hope you can find some peace in the coming days as you grieve your mom’s passing and continue to care for your father.
A very common outcome. Take care of yourself; all the rest of the administrivia can wait. Sis can take care of Dad’s immediate needs in your absence.
{{Hugs}} my friend.
I’m sorry for your loss. From your description it sounded like things were moving fast. There’s a point when that’s a good thing. I’m glad you were able to come to terms with it. For me it was harder to lose my Mom even though I was my Father’s son. Birds of a feather and such.
But Mothers are the people who bring us into this world and there’s an indescribable connection that comes with that.
I’m so sorry. It’s indescribably hard to lose a mom.
I wanted to reassure you on this account. My mom also donated her body to science. She was a teacher and loved the idea of people learning from the body she no longer needed. This was in December of 2010.
That summer, the uni that got her body had a service for the family members of donors. My sister went. She said all the medical students and faculty wore suits, and the students talked in turn about how much they appreciated the opportunity to learn and how much they respected the donors and the bodies. She said it was heartfelt and very moving.
I am so sorry for your loss. That must be awful, having to tell a spouse. I never did that, dad was called while my mother was present.
Keep getting enough sleep and eat properly. That sounds silly, but you are going to need your strength.
So sorry for your loss.
My own mother died in 1998, and I miss her every day. I remember little things that remind me of her, and I know she’s with me.
My granddaughter is named for her. So every time I mention her by name, I smile to myself and think of how much Momma would have loved that.
Tenderly hold those pieces of your mother, all the ones you’ve collected through the years. They are for you to draw comfort and love.
~VOW
I recently read an essay in the news about a medical students’ first experience with an anatomy lab. It was quite moving.
The ability to learn is a powerful gift, and the decision to continue nurturing that gift after death is a wonderfully selfless one.
My condolences for your loss, Digital_is_the_new_Analog and family.
Thanks again, all.
I’m back in town, and made my to-do list for the weekend and early next week.
I need to sort through the recurring charges on Mom’s back account and credit card. I know most of them but need to make an organized list so I can keep things going until we get the trust up and running. Her accounts are currently frozen pending the death certificate materializing. At that point, everything gets moved into a trust that my sister and I control. I’ll be able to move all the expenses to there, and it’ll run mostly on auto-pilot.
I also need to unsubscribe from some of the mail list that Mom was on. I’m monitoring her e-mail for useful notifications, but there is a lot there that is just, well, noise.
Dad has two doctor’s appointments this week. I believe the aide will come to one of them, because it recurs every 3 weeks and she should be able to manage that with him. I get the results on my phone, and it’s really a maintenance - did his hemoglobin drop a bit? If so, get a shot. If not, go home.
I also reached the point that I felt it safe to post on Facebook, because I figured there were probably some people “on the edges” that I hadn’t thought of to notify. Indeed, it had completely slipped my mind that, a lifetime ago (ha!), we worked at the same company for 5 years. I have a bunch of random friends that actually worked directly for, or with, Mom. So that’s been kinda nice, seeing the outpouring of love and respect from them.
I wanted to call back to this particular piece of advice. It makes so much sense as soon as you read it, but it’s important to actually realize it in the moment. I do know things that I could have done better, but I’m also confident that we did so much right in planning and prepping, and that in many cases, there really were no “good” answers. So thanks for that statement.
Thank you for this. I’ve heard that the students are taught how important it is to respect this part of the process. It’s good to read stories like this.
^This.^ Like LSLGuy, like you, after my wife passed I had a healthy portion of guilt over what I could have done better. In the months between diagnosis and death she, naturally, was depressed and had some therapy about it. A couple months after she was gone when I was up to going through her papers one of them was an exercise she had done at her therapist’s behest, a list of things she was thankful for. I was chief among them, particularly the support that I was giving her and included the phrase, “in sickness and in health, indeed.”
It meant a lot to me.
It brings me comfort every time I think of it. I wish I could have gone to the service, but I was living 1,000 miles away and couldn’t afford to return for that and the funeral service. (We delayed the funeral until summer so Mom’s grandkids wouldn’t have to miss classes. She would have hated them to miss school.)
After the whole experience with Mom, I decided to arrange for my body to be donated to science. I was a teacher, too.
I wish you peace, peace and comfort.
I’m very sorry for your loss. Remember to take care of yourself.