SuperEggplant

I want to thank all of you for your kindness and support. I am really overwhelmed! I had no idea there were so many of you out there, and I really appreciate all your heartfelt comments.
My mother, brother, and I are all doing fine. I kind of feel like we shouldn’t be doing as well as we are, but you can never predict how your emotions are going to react under such peculiar circumstances. I mean, I’ve never had to deal with such a close death before. We had a meeting with the funeral director yesterday, and he basically just spelled out everything we are expected to do. It’s just easier to go along with everything, and who knew that a funeral takes on a life of its own?
Anyway, maybe this is really morbid, but I took that photo of the little quilt in the ER. It was placed on top of my father’s feet. It added some color to an otherwise monochromatic, sterile room, and I thought it was so sweet that they placed it there. My father was unconscious by then, so it’s not like he could appreciate the gesture, but we could. I would like to make similar quilts for us, but you know how long my craft to-do list is! Still, the pattern looks easy enough for even a non-quilter like me to manage.
The memorial service will take place this Friday evening at 7pm at the Oregon Buddhist Temple (SE 34th just off of Powell). I haven’t been to a Buddhist ceremony since I was a kid, so this should be pretty interesting.

Well, I have some pretty big news. My father died today. He would have been 91 years old on May 8. It’s rather morbid, but my brother, mother, and I have kind of joked about him dying for years, and now that it has finally happened, it’s a little shocking.

I actually didn’t see my father that often, since he was usually asleep whenever I was over at the house. I took this Polaroid just this last Friday, though, when my mother and father unexpectedly showed up and hung out for a couple hours. He was fine that day and in his usual mood–complaining that our house was too cold, asking for juice then griping that it tasted nasty, shouting at Deedle to sit by him. We went out for Japanese food and had a nice time.
Saturday he slept all day, which isn’t that unusual, but he also didn’t eat anything, which IS unusual. Then today he fell down the stairs and had to be taken to the ER in an ambulance. My brother called me, and it didn’t seem like such a big deal, but with each successive call, the situation became more serious–they had to intubate him, put him on a ventilator, perform CPR on him when his blood pressure dropped to zero. When it became clear he was probably not going to survive, I headed to the hospital. He never regained consciousness, and I have to admit I am grateful for that. He had been afraid of dying, so this way he didn’t really know he was dying. He died pretty peacefully and was not in any pain (not even from the tumble down the stairs). My mother declared that he was lucky and also that this was the nicest thing he had done for us (not that he died but that he didn’t have a long, miserable illness requiring constant care). It is nice that we can laugh and joke about it, actually. My father lived a long life, and his body was ready to go. He was a nutjob, and memories of his little quirks will stay with us for many years.

Dang but it’s crazy busy around here, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to slow down much! But anyway, Thursday is my insane brother’s birthday. He is my older brother (well, only by 16 months), but most people nowadays think I am the older one, and I don’t think it’s because I LOOK older than him. Heh heh. It might be hard to believe, but he used to be the sweet one when we were kids.

Yeah, here I am blowing out the candles on HIS birthday cake. And one wonders how he got to be so psycho and bitter.