It’s not the caffeine

Last year for mom’s birthday I got her three bags of her favorite coffee. I didn’t know until too late, but she decided to finish her huge warehouse-store sized can of nasty coffee before opening mine.

She didn’t live that long. I just opened the first bag of mom’s coffee, to prepare the coffee maker for the morning. It smells wonderful. Wish mom were here to share it with me. Might as well have some; it’s not like I’ll be sleeping now.

Life is too short to drink lousy coffee.

 

It never ends, does it?

I had a dream last night which has stuck with me all day. It was a horrific way to wake up.

I dreamed my mother was still alive and healthy. We were all working on her house, and at some point she and dad brought me to the airport. Mom would be following on a later flight–terrible travel planning on her part, which was pretty normal. Dad would be staying behind. We said goodbye as I got onto a shuttle, and I thought “That’s the last time I’ll ever see them together.”

Then I woke up.

For a moment, I didn’t know where I was or why I’d just said goodbye to my parents. Then I remembered. It was like going through it all, all over again.

It’s going to be a very bad Christmas.

 

Free: one clue.

Here’s a clue for companies that use direct mail: when someone calls and tells you “My mother has died, please stop sending her mail and please do not sell, rent, or give her name and address to anyone else,” I know that’s pretty unclear, and we might seem to be a little wishy-washy on it, but what we really mean is “SHE’S DEAD, STOP IT!”

When I called AARP for the first time, I had a vague hope that the tons of mail, including credit card applications, would stop. Yeah, that was dumb. I’ve called again, I’ve written at least twice, today was the third phone call… really, mom doesn’t want AARP membership, any of the AARP credit cards, AARP insurance, AARP travel, AARP financial services, AARP discounts, AARP local services, official AARP dumbbells, AARP jewelry, AARP electronics, AARP swampland in Florida, AARP “Rolex” watches, cash transfers from the AARP ambassador to Nigeria, or the AARP kitchen sink. Honest. I wouldn’t lie to you. She doesn’t want them. She can’t. She’s dead. Still. Even after all these months. That’s not going to change.

I know, I’m ranting. It’s not a problem to toss this stuff into the shredder–when I actually get my hands on it. But mail has been coming to my house and going to mom’s old house, and until recently, no one was there to get the mail. The change of address forms I filed didn’t make a difference. Mail was still delivered regularly and sat in that mailbox for weeks. Anyone who has dealt with identity theft will tell you what a bad idea that is.

And it’s not just AARP, though they are one of the most stubborn offenders. Whenever dad went to pick up the mail there would be four or five different credit card applications there, and he’d nag me about each one. “Maybe you should call AARP and ask them to stop.”

What, AGAIN? I’ve called or mailed them monthly for the last five months!

So here’s a clue, direct mailers. When someone says “My family member is dead, stop sending them mail,” we mean “We’re already hurting, it’s been a very bad year, and if you persist in selling the name of a dead person you are going to generate a lot of resentment here and you’re going to give yourself a very bad name. Our loved one’s name is worth pennies on your list, remove the name from all your lists and LEAVE US IN PEACE.”

A long time ago, when a person died, they left behind children, memories, photographs, a gravestone, sometimes tangible things that they built that might last 50 or 100 years. These days, when you die, you leave behind your name on thousands of mailing lists. You’re remembered not as the teacher who cared deeply about her students, but as account number 1415926535, who had an interest in travel, automobiles, and gold jewelry. And as long as your name can be sold for a few pennies now and then, you will live forever.

</rant>

 

Some small good has come of all this.

My grandfather has moved into my mother’s house.

My grandfather is 95, and in ill health. His house is typical old New England architecture: small rooms and doorways, stairs everywhere, half a dozen stairs just to get into the house, no full bathroom on the first floor. He’s just been released from hospital and nursing home after nearly five full months, and it’s simply not practical to have him return to his house. If mom’s house weren’t empty I’m not sure where he would have gone.

Of course, if mom were here and healthy, she would be helping and she might have had some ideas of her own.

Mom’s house, while not exactly handicapped-friendly, is much easier to use than my grandfather’s house. There are only two short steps into the house. Everything is on one floor. One bathroom has a tub, one has a shower stall, so while I suspect he’ll be using the tub and a transfer bench, there are options. The rooms are larger, though the doorways are still narrow–too narrow for a standard wheelchair or walker.

A tiny bit of good has come of the horror of the past two years.

It doesn’t help.

 

No more, please.

Just after lunchtime, but before I had a chance to stop and eat anything, I found myself near mom’s favorite restaurant. What the hell; I went in.

Mom’s tastes were a bit expensive. Mine are too, but she could afford it. I can’t. I looked over the menu and realized that the only thing I could possibly afford was the clam chowder. This was mom’s favorite soup. I’m sure they make it with heavy cream. It’s a heart attack in a bowl, and even when I’d stop to get it for her, I’d only allow myself a taste. When she was doing chemotherapy, there were days when this soup was all she could eat.

Since it was all I could eat, I ordered it. The familiar taste and rich, comfort food texture brought me right back to those days. I was back in the kitchen, ladling soup out of a cardboard container. It was the worst best soup I’ve had in a long time.

 

Not happy.

I realized at two in the morning that today is July 22nd. Mom’s birthday.

All month I’ve been fighting off thoughts of “I’ve got to go get mom a gift… wait, no, I don’t,” but I’ve been avoiding looking at the calendar. This morning snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking. It was not a good night.

I called the pharmacy today to refill one of my prescriptions, and their computer linked my phone number with mom’s prescriptions. The pharmacy tech greeted me with her name. I asked again that they correct their records. They’ll ignore me again, I’m sure.

Now I know why dad sounded like crap on the phone yesterday.

Fucking cigarettes.

 

And again.

Four in the morning, just starting to fall asleep. A dream with a very vivid image of mom in her coffin jolted me awake.

The hell with it. Sleep is for mortals.

 

Oh no, not again (and again, and…)

Last night I fell asleep at about 4. I spent the night dreaming about chemotherapy. My brain worked over everything, from the sandbox and the patients and the infusion nurses, to the forever-beeping infusion pumps, to the disagreements about the best place to get a Procrit shot (belly or upper arm,) to the variety of IV bags and bottles, and of course the paper-towel-wrapped IV bags of iron. I saw bags and tubing being tossed again and again into tall, open biohazard containers. I heard my mother venting about how unfair it all was, and watched in slow motion as a bald girl of about 20 walked in, sat down, and was poked in several places in both arms. They finally gave up and moved on to her legs. The girl sat quietly, clearly in pain, but uncomplaining. Mom watched in horror, touching her port, suddenly grateful.

Images came back to me several times today–the glass IV bottle and multicolored plastic lei hanging from the pole, the brightly colored mural on the wall outside, the patient sitting outside with his IV, chain smoking.

Today, visiting someone else in a hospital, we pulled out the Skip-Bo cards and started to play on the hospital table, and for a moment I was back in the nursing home with mom, playing Skip-Bo with her to try to keep her engaged and aware.

It’s three in the morning. I do not want to go to sleep.

 

Never.

When mom was diagnosed and decided to begin treatment in spite of the doctors’ bleak outlook, I was in full agreement. That’s exactly what I would have done. It’s exactly what I would have needed to do. We knew it was going to be difficult and she knew that we would support her every inch of the way.

Looking back, I can’t pinpoint the moment when I became certain that if I am ever diagnosed with small cell lung cancer, unless treatment changes radically, I will NOT undergo treatment.

Mom’s treatment was horrific. The fear, the pain, the other things going wrong with the body, the lack of energy, the nausea, all the physical problems… those were unspeakably bad. I’ve only touched on it in this blog. So many details were too terrible to document. But the loss of intelligence, the loss of self… Never. Never.

It’s possible I might someday be diagnosed with this cancer. “Smoking, smoking, smoking, smoking, and second-hand smoke,” said the doctor as he listed the causes to my mother, and I sucked down 20+ years of second-hand smoke.

If I am diagnosed, I will walk out of the doctor’s office, give away everything I own, have a DNR tattooed on my chest, and board a cruise ship to nowhere. Let me die on a lounge chair on the lido deck. They can toss me overboard when I’m gone. There is no way I am going to go through the same treatment my mother endured.

No fucking way.

 

Brown and dull.

I found a beaded pin given to my mother by Hannah Kaminsky. It’s a lovely pin. Mom wore it for her retirement party, and I heard several compliments on it. I found it in a box today, and the bright beautiful colors–mom’s favorites–are brown and dull.

Nicotine.

My cousin came home with me. She unloaded mom’s stuff from the van, helped me do some unpacking, and got to see the area. After years of family problems kept us apart, it was good to see her and spend time with her again. She also kept me sane while I reacquainted myself with the signs of mom’s last days. She left yesterday.

Last night the routines started coming back. When mom was diagnosed with lung cancer I started calling her every night. It was a comfort for her. She got to tell me about the treatments and the fear she was facing, and listen to my explanations, all carefully phrased to make everything sound as safe as possible. I got to talk to her, which I knew would come to an end too soon.

Last night at about dusk I realized that I hadn’t called my mother yet, and I needed to do it soon or she’d go to bed.

She was with me for the last months of her life. I stroked her face as she died. You’d think I wouldn’t have trouble keeping these things straight.

Remembering I didn’t need to call her was terrible.

 

I wouldn’t mind losing the battle if there was hope of winning the war

I realized tonight I’ve been battling the estate sale folks and losing badly.

It’s not that we’re arguing. We’ve both kind of been working toward the same goal. I’m trying to get mom’s house cleaned out. They’re trying to organize an estate sale. The problem is that we have different priorities, and possibly different points of focus.

I’m taking a few things that have meaning to me, and all of mom’s paperwork. I was loading my boxes into the van, and I spotted a box of photo albums I’d added to the estate sale. These were brand new and still in the shrink wrap. I’m bringing home photos, but empty albums will just take up space and add weight to a van that is already riding low. I put the box in with the estate sale items.

A couple of hours later I was loading a box of photo albums onto the van. Shrink wrapped photo albums. The same ones I’d put back in the sale. I put them back in the sale.

An hour later they were back in my pile.

“I wanted to be sure you got all the photos!” the estate sale person said. That may be, but I’m fighting against three or four people who are heaping things on me without looking at them. The albums are one example among hundreds. They’re putting mom’s yearbooks in the sale, and giving me old coloring books. I’m leaving behind (and selling) at least two small pieces of furniture that are very important to me because the van is completely full, and lots of it is garbage.

My father eyeballed an open box with stuff sticking out. “Do you need this?” he asked, pointing to what seems to be a folded poster.

“Probably not,” I answered, “and I don’t need this,” I said as I showed him a collection of soggy, moldy, hand-drawn cards from mom’s grade-school students. These cards wished her a happy wedding, two years before I was born. I know none of these people, and even mom left the cards in the garage for decades. “But I do need these,” I explained, pointing to a bundle of mom’s tax paperwork from last year. It’s impossible to separate the garbage from the essential stuff.

The estate sale folks have been randomly throwing things into boxes for me if they think the things are important. The cards are “cute,” therefore I should have them. The religious artifacts from a church mom left long ago are apparently vital, and one woman was astonished and offended that I don’t want them–even though they’re not from her church. Several of those items have ended up in the van in spite of my requests. I’m going to haul them home and throw them away. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve heard “You don’t want THAT?!”

No, I want the chair my grandmother used in the kitchen. I want my mother’s recipes and favorite cookbooks, and her yearbooks and her favorite sheet music. I want the things that have meaning to me.

This wouldn’t be a problem, but four people work faster than I do, and they’ve filled my pile (and therefore my van) with crap. I’m going to spend years sorting it out and throwing away garbage, and wishing I had the important things I have to leave behind.

 

If I knew then…

If I had known what was to come, I would have waited at hospice until mom died, then I would have gone out into the woods and put a bullet through the roof of my mouth.

 

Hey! There’s a whole world out there!

Met with friends tonight. Had too much wonderful food, not nearly enough wonderful coffee, and lots of wonderful laughs. A beer would have been wonderful, too, but not with all the driving I had to do and all the sleep I haven’t had. Alas.

That’s what the world is like out there. I forgot.

 

5… 4… 3… 2…

I found mom’s retirement box.

She saved the retirement party announcement and the invitation she received, plus a few other papers. And she put the retirement clock in there.

It’s a clock that counts down the number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds to retirement. I gave her that clock, many years ago when it still had hundreds of days on it. She thought she’d never see retirement; it was so far away.

Well, she made it to retirement, but she was still right about not really seeing it.

I know mom was alive when the clock ticked down to 0 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes, and 0 seconds. Still, it’s creepy looking at a clock that’s hit zero.

Update: I can’t leave this post like this, so I’ll write the next episode of As the China Turns.

I found a box today that contained one grandmother’s china. Many years ago this grandmother gave me my dishes–pink flowers on pink dishes which are undoubtedly lovely, but I’m just not a “pink flowers” person.

I opened the box containing her china, which I’d swear I’ve never seen. (This is good–no bad memories. We used everyday dishes for every holiday at her house.) You guessed it: pink flowers.

There’s one more set of china somewhere in this house, from my other grandmother. I swear it’s going home with me if it’s got pink flowers, dancing poodles, and Jason Bieber on it.

 

It slices! It dices! It juliennes!

Actually, it hacks and tears. It’s a cheap crappy knife, possibly a TV offer, or maybe it came from the grocery store, free with the purchase of $50 worth of groceries. It’s got quarter inch teeth, and it cuts through anything. It’s joining my (very small) collection of knives.

I don’t think for a second that this is a wonderful knife to have in any kitchen. But I look at that knife and remember the night of the hurricane–I don’t remember which one–when mom had to take that knife outside and hack through some branches. I don’t remember the details. I do remember her going outside in the middle of the hurricane with the knife. I remember when she held up a branch, nearly as thick as my wrist, so I could see what she’d cut through with that knife.

I also remember the dog going outside and finding a terrified skunk in the middle of that hurricane.

Good times…

 

People’s United Bank – The Bank That Revolves Around Screwing Over Dying Cancer Patients

Bravo, People’s and RBS. Nice work.

I’ve been digging through mom’s bills from the past couple of years. I’ve written about the effects of chemo brain before. I’ve written about the assholes at People’s United Bank before. And given the way the banks are functioning right now, I shouldn’t be surprised.

Mom had a People’s/RBS MasterCard. Every month she bought gas, or maybe dinner. She owed anywhere from $10 to $90 each month. Each month, she paid her bill in full. Each month, thanks to chemo brain and illness from chemotherapy, she was late.

Each month, People’s charged her a $39 late fee. Every single month.

A person who was reliable for years suddenly has more than a year of late payments every single month? A decent company would contact the customer, find out if there’s a problem, waive a fee or two, maybe offer to change the due date to a date that’s easier to remember or better in sync with the chemotherapy cycle.

People’s United Bank and RBS just kept sucking up that $468, every year. Oh, and the $25 membership fee.

A $10 purchase this month? That’ll cost you $10, plus $39, plus a couple of bucks interest. Putting $10 worth of gas in the tank cost $52.

Good job taking advantage of a dying cancer patient, People’s. You got your money. I hope you choke on it.

Update: Now, the entry from Sam’s Club. (Full disclosure: I dislike Wal-Mart and all their stores, including Sam’s Club.) Mom paid for her membership twice last year. I’m guessing a reminder crossed her check in the mail. They could have kept the second check and applied it to a second year of membership.

They sent it back.

I hate to admit it, but Sam’s Club handled that well. It’s amazing that People’s Bank can’t hope to treat its customers as well as Wal-Mart.

 

Ah hell.

Two rooms are completely set up for the estate sale, a third is nearly done. I wandered through them tonight, looking at things for sale.

My mother would not have been able to watch this. The amount of stuff in this house was frightening, but she wouldn’t have parted with it. Hell, I can’t stand all this stuff and I’m having a hard time watching this. So many items catch my eye. She paid a lot more for that than the asking price! This is brand new! That thing over there was so important to her!

Then there are the things that genuinely baffle me. Mom’s china. How can I let that go? She loved that china!

But what would I do with it? Why should I keep it? She almost never used it. It was taken out twice a year at most, on Thanksgiving and at Christmas, and always with so many warnings–be careful with that, don’t break that, I can’t replace it–these are my only memories of that china. And if the holidays were spent at my grandparents’ homes, I never saw the china at all that year. It’s a very large, fragile set with massive emotional weight and no happy memories.

But it’s my mother’s china!

The things I really want are the things that are worn out, the things we used, the things with real memories associated with them. I know that she kept the china locked away and hovered over me when we did use it so that I could have it someday. And now I really, really don’t want it.

It’s two in the morning, and I’m stuck going in circles over something I don’t want, but somehow SHOULD take. Selling it would deeply hurt someone who loved me very much, but she’s not here anymore. Good job, mom. You can still make me feel guilty.

If I take it, I’ll have to get it home without breaking it. I’ll have to buy furniture to display it, since I don’t own a china cabinet. Or I’ll have to find a way to store it safely. The next time I move, I’ll have to haul it with me. And I’ll never use it. When friends visit, we play cards and throw peanut shells at each other.

If I sell it, will I feel guilty? Will I regret it ten years from now, long after the damage is done? Will I be having formal dinner parties for 12? Will I wish for antique china?

Will I EVER sleep?

 

I wasn’t expecting that

The woman organizing the estate sale has been running the dishwasher so that the dishes and glasses that are sold are at least clean, not covered in dust. I was next to the dishwasher when it stopped this afternoon, so I opened the door and pulled out the racks to let the dishes dry.

Something on the top rack caught my eye. It was a coffee cup with gold trim and no handle, and it had one mate. I picked it up to look at it, and saw a gold logo of a globe with a wing in front, with the word Интурист.

It took a little digging. Интурист, according to Wikipedia, is Russian for Intourist, a “contraction of иностранный турист, ‘foreign tourist’.” Now it’s a Russian travel agency. When mom was there, it was “staffed by… KGB officials. Intourist was responsible for managing the great majority of foreigners’ access to, and travel within, the Soviet Union.”

Mom stole coffee cups from the KGB.

What other really cool stuff did mom do that she never told me about?

 

Happy Mother’s Day.

The only thing worse than sitting here, sorting through mom’s jewelry, picking out the favorite pieces to take home, and cleaning, repairing, and carding the rest for sale, is doing this and thinking about tomorrow.

Happy Mother’s Day, mom. I miss you.

 

More paperwork.

The more I dig through my mother’s paperwork the sicker I get. I wish she had asked me for help.

Sometime around late summer or early autumn I convinced mom to let me pay her bills. It wasn’t easy. I hinted, I suggested, I tried to make her think it was her idea. I nagged, I gently reminded on the rare occasions when she admitted making mistakes, I promised her it was just for a little while. “Just until you’re feeling better,” I said, terrified that I was lying. She fought every inch of the way. She didn’t want to let me do it.

I felt awful trying to convince her. I felt like I was forcing her to give up her independence. I really did the best I could, and looking back I can’t find anything I did wrong. Somehow she and I managed to remember all the things she needed to pay in spite of the fact that she received no bills from some of them–she just remembered she had to send a check to this address every three months. We kept the utilities on and and the credit cards current and, most importantly, the health insurance paid. But I still felt awful.

Now I wish I had done it sooner.

Her paperwork is a disaster, and I’m finding so much important stuff that simply was never handled. It might be too late now. These are errors costing thousands of dollars.

Chemo brain: the gift that keeps on giving.

 

Oh look, another learning experience

Digging through paperwork tonight, I found a car accident claim letter from mom’s insurance company. Apparently last year she had an accident which required repairs to the car. The letter is an acknowledgment; it doesn’t give details.

I’d like to know what happened. I’d like to know why she didn’t tell me.

Is this from the time she hit my grandfather’s garage? Did something else happen?

Really, what difference does it make and why am I dragging myself through this?

I guess I’d like to know if I missed something I should have seen. I’m wondering if I failed her in some way or if I did the best I could with the information I had.

I found a blanket made by my grandmother. It was my favorite, and I haven’t seen it in years. It’s covered in dog hair, and it was torn and badly patched. Looks like it became the dog blanket.

Oh well.

 

Mmm, bait and tackle

The tornado dressed like an estate sale professional arrived half an hour early today, Bait and Tackle and I Love Lucy sandwiches in hand. My sandwich was every bit as good as I remembered. It was too huge to finish, and made a wonderful dinner a few hours later.

Half the garage is cleared, organized, dusted and swept, and set up for an estate sale. I accomplished none of this. I spent the day cleaning and organizing jewelry for sale, with occasional breaks to unload and reload the dishwasher. A gold test kit and diamond tester are here, but they are largely wasted. The jewelry is costume; much of it was a gift from mom’s students. Seventh and eighth graders can be enthusiastic, thoughtful, and caring (if they want to be,) but their taste in jewelry is generally not highly sophisticated. I find myself looking at rhinestone-studded G-clef pins and white plastic eighth-note earrings and thinking about keeping them, not to wear, just to remember the huge armfuls of gifts mom brought home at the end of every school year. The hundreds of pounds of chocolate (really) are gone, but the coffee cups with eighth-note handles and the plaques with large brass apples and the hand-drawn artwork and the framed “Teacher” poems remain.

These are the things worth remembering.

And the apple shaped ashtrays. Forgot about those.

I’m sure those were intended to be a thoughtful gift. Mom probably got them many years ago when ashtrays were common.

Too many ashtrays were loaded into the dishwasher today. I’m told they don’t sell as well as they used to.

That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.

 

I’m lucky, I guess.

The woman doing the estate sale started today. She ripped through an entire corner of junk in the garage, and when it got too dark out there to work she moved in to one of the bedrooms. She filled a large trash can, and from what I could tell it was all trash. She handed me several items she thought I might want to look at, including a high school ring that belonged to my grandmother and is old enough to be gold. I didn’t know it was out there, and she could easily have pocketed it.

There’s no way to know if she’s doing that with anything else, of course. But I’m so overwhelmed and buried in stuff that I have to trust that she won’t do that. She’ll get 40% of the sale, and if she continues working the way she did today, she’ll earn every penny.

She unpacked a box destined for donation. “Donate after the sale,” she said. “Sell what you can.” She’s right, of course, but I was so swamped with stuff I have no idea how to manage it all. Somehow she’s organized part of a room I couldn’t even walk in, so she’s clearly very good at this.

I found myself wishing we’d done this while mom was still alive. She would have enjoyed seeing all the old, hidden things we found. But I know mom could never have parted with three quarters of the items.

I don’t have this kind of attachment to these things, but it’s still difficult.

She offered to stop at the deli near her house on the way here tomorrow. It’s a local favorite and the food is unbelievable. “What can I get you? I’ll be having an I Love Lucy,” she said.

“Oh, a Bait and Tackle, please!”

“What? Bait and Tackle?” she asked, surprised.

Mmm, prosciuttini, oldani salami, nice sharp provolone and marinated Portobello mushrooms. I’m hungry just thinking about it. I’ll be trying to sleep with Bronx Italian deli food on my mind tonight.

 

That was tough.

I got a survey from hospice asking how I felt about the services they provided. I filled it out, counting out the days mom was in their care, and expressing my deepest gratitude.

Mom’s hospital back home was a Catholic teaching hospital, the same hospital where her mother died. My grandmother’s last days were unspeakably horrible. After too many strokes to count, there was nothing left of my grandmother but a barely recognizable body and unimaginable pain. She’d lie in bed and scream, and she had no awareness of anyone or anything around her. The hospital kept her alive.

After a week of this, when the entire family begged her doctor to stop the extraordinary measures and let her die, he took a booklet from a holder on the wall. “Patients’ Rights” was the title, and we listened in amazement as he pointed to a page and informed us that their religion obligated them to do everything possible to keep my grandmother alive for as long as possible. The patient’s and family’s wishes would be respected only to that point. She suffered for days.

Earlier this year, when mom was talking about going home, I’d have nightmares that she’d end up the same way, kept alive for weeks or months, in pain, no pain medication, her living will and the requests of the family ignored.

Hospice saved her from that. The end was still difficult. But it was the best it could be under the circumstances.

Filling out the survey meant reliving the last month of mom’s life. It was horrible.

All this so she could look cool smoking a cigarette.

I said when I started this blog that I hoped just one smoker would reconsider their smoking. Not quit, just reconsider. Think about what this does to your family. Ask yourself if these are the memories you want to leave for your loved ones.

As far as I know, I’ve failed.

 

Go figure.

How is it that total strangers are kinder to me at this time than people who are supposedly family?

(It goes without saying that friends are kinder than strangers and some family. I’m just amazed that people who could be rotten under cover of anonymity are kind, and people who are supposed to care are vicious and hurtful. Go figure.)

 

Not a clue.

I’m looking over mom’s china cabinet, selecting a few small items to take home. The rest will be sold.

I remember some of these pieces from my childhood, but I have no idea what the meaning behind them is, or if they have meaning at all. A gravy boat without a match anywhere in mom’s collection; a handmade ceramic baby with wings on a ceramic cloud, with mom’s name in red on her gown; a pair of brass swans, one long and slender and elegant, one curved and clunky and poorly made, still, obviously a matched set. Where did these things come from? Why are they important?

There’s no one to ask.

It’s my birthday, the first one in memory when I will not be reminded that I rudely kept mom from watching her soap opera on the day I was born.

Thanks so much, Philip Morris.

 

This is when it gets easier, right?

Mom’s house has always had plumbing problems. With all the laundry and dishes I’ve been washing, I wasn’t surprised when the water started draining slowly.

That lasted less than a day. Now, in spite of all the drain cleaner and several attempts with four different plumbing snakes, not one drop of water is exiting this house, except for the toilets.

This makes showering rather difficult.

Dad loaned me his wet/dry vac today, and I’ve been bailing out the bathrooms with it. Then I finally got to take a shower, and vacuum the water out of the bathrooms after that. Now I’m doing a load of laundry, vacuum at the ready.

My friends hear me laugh over this, and they’re quiet. It’s probably an inappropriate reaction to having bathrooms a quarter inch deep in raw sewage. No matter how bad this is, it’s trivial compared to last month.

If mom were here she’d be furious, not at me, but at the house, as though that would somehow change the plumbing situation. Come to think of it, she’d be furious at me, too, for doing so much unnecessary cleaning. It’s a funny thing, though. When I’m faced with a pile of mouse droppings four inches deep, I clean.

Mom owned way more chocolate than she could ever eat. The mice appreciated it, though. Hopefully they’ll like the peanut butter in the live catch traps, too.

Last week I called three estate sale companies. One person seems competent, but she’s expensive. One came in here, sniffed at everything in the house, and informed me that she might be able to buy a few items from me and get someone to help me donate most of the stuff here. She offered $40 for a figurine which is currently selling online for about $250. Nice profit margin she’s got going there. And one more person came in here and yelled at me for moving stuff around, and informed me that I need to be throwing things away, not moving them around.

“You’re making my job harder! Look at this!” she yelled as she picked up a box of food that I was planning to have for lunch. “You need to get some garbage bags and throw these things away!”

Well. Why didn’t I think of that?

I should have showed her the note that the city left me telling me I’m throwing away too much trash.

“Don’t go into the bathroom,” I told her. “The shower overflowed and there’s raw sewage on the floor.”

“Hmph,” she informed me as she waltzed into the bathroom anyway. “Hmm, not much in here.”

Um, yeah, it’s a bathroom. I’m probably the only person on the planet who might want my toothbrush. And thanks for tracking sewage all over the carpets.

When dad dropped off the vac today he also handed me a check. I asked what it was for. “Your birthday,” he told me. I tried to hand it back, since there will be no birthday this year.

“Just take it,” he said. “I wish your mother were here to make it a happy birthday.” And he turned to examine the contents of the china cabinet.

I wish for that, too.

 

This sucks.

This is a difficult night. I’m going through mom’s clothes, deciding what goes to the estate sale and what is being donated. It seems like her favorite clothes are being donated. Those are the clothes that are showing some signs of wear. There’s a lot here that I’d love to take home for myself, but I’ll never be that size. If she could see me doing this she’d be furious.

I seem to remember that estate sale companies ask the family to be elsewhere on the day of the sale. I hope that’s true. I don’t think I’ll be able to watch it happening.

 

Learning.

Cleaning mom’s house has been a learning experience.

There are cough drops everywhere. Nearly empty bags of 100 are in about half the kitchen drawers, on every countertop and table, in every desk drawer, and in handbags and totes scattered throughout the house.

Then there’s the cough syrup. So far I’ve found four new large bottles–each the last bottle in a three-pack purchased in a warehouse store. There are partial bottles in nearly every room.

Years ago I started commenting on mom’s cough. “Oh, that’s the first time I’ve coughed today!” she’d say, and I’m certain she believed it. It obviously wasn’t true.

When mom was first diagnosed, her doctor explained that this type of cancer is usually quite advanced by the time it’s discovered. I’m starting to understand why.

If you smoke, and you’re buying cough syrup or cough drops in large quantities, please get yourself checked out. I wonder where we’d be right now if mom had listened the first time I asked her to see a doctor for that cough.

In other news (or rather, olds, since this is from last year) I just stumbled across this:

Jun 3, 2009 05:00 PM in Health & Medicine
Health insurers want you to keep smoking, Harvard doctors say

By Brendan Borrell

Health and life insurance companies in the U.S. and abroad have nearly $4.5 billion invested in tobacco stocks, according to Harvard doctors.

“It’s the combined taxidermist and veterinarian approach: either way you get your dog back,” says David Himmelstein, an internist at the Harvard Medical School and co-author of a letter published in this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The largest tobacco investor on the list, the 160-year old Prudential company with branches in the U.S. and the U.K., has more than $1.5 billion invested in tobacco stocks. The runner-up was Toronto-based Sun Life Financial, which apparently holds over $1 billion in Philip Morris (Altria) and other tobacco stocks. In total, seven companies that sell life, health, disability, or long-term care insurance, have major holdings in tobacco stock.

Why is it a big deal? “If you own a billion dollars [of tobacco stock], then you don’t want to see it go down,” says Himmelstein, “You are less likely to join anti-tobacco coalitions, endorse anti-tobacco legislation, basically, anything most health companies would want to participate in.”

The letter is the third report that the doctors—who all support a national health care program—have published in the last 14 years.

We decided to check in with some of the insurance companies mentioned in the letter to learn more about their policies with respect to tobacco stock. Prudential was unable to respond by press time. Sun Life, however, flatly denied the charges.

“Sun Life does not carry significant holdings in tobacco stocks,” says representative Steve Kee, “We do not disclose specific holdings and, for good measure, we conducted a review further to your inquiry and our exposure to ‘tobacco’ stocks is less than 0.005 percent [about $5 million] of the investment portfolio. Importantly, tobacco-related businesses can be part of a broader conglomerate involving other aspects such as food production.”

Himmelstein rechecked his numbers in the Osiris database, and said, “I fear that if Sun Life has a dispute, it is with Osiris not with us.”

In any event, the doctors’ persistence over the years seems to be working to some extent. They targeted MetLife and Cigna in their 1995 and 2000 letters to medical journals, but neither is listed in the latest reckoning, indicating that the insurers no longer hold enough to stock to be noted on filings for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, a representative for Cigna says they currently have no direct holdings in tobacco stock unless it is part of an index fund.

But with $4.5 billion still invested in Big Tobacco, many insurers are reaping profits from a cancer-causing industry. As Himmelstein puts it, “Is this who we want running our health care system?”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=health-insurers-want-you-to-keep-sm-2009-06-03

 

“Your grandmother was right about you.”

Dad and I brought dad’s father to the emergency room tonight. He was too weak to stand. The horror of going through this again, with one of the two close family members I have left, is almost more than I can face.

My father has a brother. I haven’t mentioned this because it wasn’t important. That brother and his charming wife suddenly stopped returning dad’s calls, two days before mom’s wake. They did not show for the wake or the burial. Dad and I were confused, dad was deeply hurt. The rest of the family was outraged.

Tonight we sat outside the curtain in the emergency room, listening to a catheterization going wrong. My grandfather was not complaining, though I can’t imagine how painful it must have been. Suddenly I heard a cheery, breezy voice from behind me.

“Sorry about your mom!”

The mystery brother and wife appeared, brother vanishing behind the closed curtain (which is used for privacy,) wife perkily offering that little tidbit with no hint of where the fuck they were for the wake or why they hurt my father so badly. I looked at her and said “I’m going to go get something to eat,” and walked away.

“Good idea!” she called after me. “Boy, she hasn’t changed a bit, has she?”

I went out into the waiting room and called a very dear friend to calm me down. I needed to regain some control, because I didn’t want to go in there and do something to upset my grandfather. After a while, I went back in. Hurt, rage, sorrow, frustration, loss, all these things combined to make my head pound and cloud my vision. I listened to the attack dog make several comments about me, then tell me I don’t have to go. “Can she really be that obtuse?” I asked my father.

“Your grandmother was right about you,” she informed me.

I left rather than say or do something to upset my grandfather.

I’m told they’ve left, since they’ve put in the appearance which will keep them in the will. Time to go back to the hospital.