It’s been a few weeks since I posted, and the reason is a bad one: I forgot. I have mentally started on a couple of posts, but then it all just slipped away. This weekend I went down to the beach and made a determined effort to just “have fun.” Friday I went whale watching (more in the next post),…
This week would have been Maggie’s 72nd birthday. While I’m not really one for keeping track of birthdays after someone has gone, it seemed like a good day to tackle the chore I’ve been meaning to do for eight months: Mom’s final history. The memorial service was April 13 and was well attended, with people coming over from great distances…
Preface: I had hoped to have my website completely updated and finished before pushing a new blog post, but I needed to vent a little. We’ll call this a “soft opening.” History I don’t think I’ve ever written about “The Beach House” before. My mom and dad purchased the land, in a development south of Lincoln City, with his “Vietnam…
Through the process of Mom dying, I rarely got stuck. When I started thinking, “I can’t do this,” my inner voice would say helpful things like, “Just make the next phone call”, “Take a minute to breathe”, or “You don’t have to fix this, you just have to be here.” Over the last month, I’ve gone through some of the…
I have a habit of writing emails and posts that contain numbered lists. Occasionally, I find this a little obnoxious, but there is something extremely comforting about a list. I had 18 things I wanted to accomplish this weekend. At the same time, I’m having trouble remembering how doors work. Friday Friday was day two of the replacement of one…
Tomorrow I go back to work for the first time since Mom’s death. While I can’t say I’m excited (at least not with a straight face), I do think it’s time. It will be nice to talk about normal things again. While there is still a long list of things to get done, sorted, addressed, or otherwise dealt with, I…
As most will know by now, my mom, Maggie Choate, died yesterday in the late afternoon. I posted the information on her CaringBridge site and then on social media. For those left out of those venues, I have spent the day emailing and (as a last resort) calling with notifications. I sat down just now with the intention of doing…
The last few days have been tough. Mom fell on Sunday morning and call for me for an hour before I heard her (it was early morning and I was sleeping.) When I finally woke up, we called the firemen for a “non-emergency lift” and later that day I got baby monitors so I could hear what was going on…
Morphine is not living up to the hype. As a “Generation X”er, I am sure that most of my colleagues remember sitting in health class and being told terrible things about drugs. How they were so addictive and terrible. Of course, heroin was the most terrible of all. One dose and you would become a depraved addict, roaming the streets…
Today it has become clear to me that humans were not meant to live a long time. We were meant to be killed and eaten in our prime by a saber tooth tiger. As Thomas Hobbes put it, “Life is nasty, brutish, and short.” I wish! Mom had a bad pain day today. I’m not 100% sure what happened, but…