Yesterday my father's sister Frances died. She was eight days shy of 100. She had been living at the same care center in Ft. Dodge as my parents before I moved them in with me five+ weeks ago. Last week my cousin Nancy brought her mother Frances home to die because otherwise, with COVID-19, they were not allowed to visit her. On Saturday afternoon my dad had his final conversation with his sister.
Of 11 Berryhill children, my dad and his 104-year-old sister Edith are now the last ones living.
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Randy update: No longer in ICU, Randy sang "Edelweiss" to his daughter on Sunday. The hospital is talking about releasing him to a care center. My sister and her daughter are trying to determine if they can meet his rehabilitation needs at home.
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On Saturday at 3 p.m. Iowa time, my son and his wife Andrea in New Zealand hosted a 6-time-zone ZOOM trivia contest. It was 8 a.m. (Sunday) in NZ, and Saturday 3 p.m. (Iowa), 2 p.m. (Denver), 1 p.m. (Montana), 9 p.m. (Northern Ireland), and 10 p.m. in Spain.
My parents and I were one of the two Iowa teams. We did not win, but we knew who discovered penicillin, the animal with the longest gestation, and the top-grossing film (Fleming, elephant, Avengers). My Denver daughter won the home-made hat contest with a pushup-bra and doggie-bag combo.
Dan finished planting beans.
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My parents are newspaper readers, as am I. We get two daily papers, but we do not get a Sunday paper delivered to the house. When my parents moved in, my dad called the Register and asked that his Sunday paper be sent to his new Eagle Avenue residence. Five weeks later, there was still no paper in the mailbox on Sunday.
During the two hours I mowed the lawn, my mom walked to the mailbox three times looking for the paper. I should have stopped the mower to re-orient her, but it was a lovely day and I thought the exercise was a plus.
But later in the afternoon when I visited my parents in the basement, I could sense tension. "What are you doing?" I asked.
"Arguing about the paper," quipped my dad.
"They're supposed to have the paper here by 5 a.m.," my mom said.
Back and forth, my parents quibbled, my dad telling my mom the paper hadn't come, and my mom complaining that she'd checked and checked and the paper still wasn't there.
I explained that the Sunday subscription had not yet kicked in; I would call the Register to check on it.
"We don't even get a DAILY paper," my mom said, inscrutably.
"Yes you do," I said. "I bring you the Register with your lunch each day, and you also get the Ft. Dodge Messenger, although it sometimes skips a day and then comes two at once."
"Well, I haven't seen them," my mom scowled.
My dad chimed in to agree with me, but this did not ease my mother's distress.
Suddenly I thought of an idea: "I have papers in the recycling bin," I offered, "Would you like to read those?"
"YES!" my parents cheered in unison--my mother to at last have the thing she'd been hunting for all day, and my dad to have my mother's day-long complaint addressed.
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I'm realizing an aspect of my mother's dementia is that she at times gets on jags, cycles of worry or confusion that take on an energy of their own. Sunday it was the paper.
By suppertime, she had worked her way through a stack of last week's news and was in a better place.
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| Multi-continent ZOOM Trivia |
Stay well.
Write.
Allison
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