Miz S

Annual Beach Vacation #mypredictablelife

Our rental house in Southern Shores, NC.

This is our first beach vacation without my mother-in-law. You may recall that she died only a month after we returned from the Outer Banks last summer.  We wondered if it would feel strange to be here without her energy and humor, but it's not.

Not really.

Well, maybe a lot.

In any case, we are at the beach.

Edgar Allen Poo is with us, of course.  At home he sleeps with my father-in-law, but here at the beach house he is sharing a bed with Josh and me. The first night we were here, I reached down to tenderly pat him before I fell asleep and was rewarded with a sharp nip to my hand. I'm suing, of course. Edgar's defense attorney pointed out that he has arthritis and is tender in certain areas, but my lawyer countered with, "Well, April had much WORSE arthritis and never ever EVER nipped anyone in her entire life. GOD!" 

I will let you know how it turns out.

Oh, and fyi, in case you wanted to know how the doggie diapers are working, they're NOT. So now we're just taking Edgar outside every 30 minutes or so to try and prevent accidents. With mixed results, I might add.

Sophie and Edgar. She's a huge help with him, fyi. He's a damned pain in the ass.

When I am not catering to Edgar's every need, cavorting in the ocean with my family, or eating something delicious that #1 Future Son-in-Law Paul has prepared, I am usually getting my ass kicked playing Boggle with Emma and Nathanial.

I think my score in this game was 27. Nate's was probably around 90-something and Emma likely topped 130. Brats, both of them.

Emma encouraged me to download the Scramble app to my phone, which I did, and now I am obsessively playing Scramble and getting my ass kicked there, too. Any minute now I will uninstall it in a huff and reclaim my life.

We had some excitement last night when #2 Future Son-in-Law Nate, who was gallantly helping my niece and her girlfriend get the coals going on the grill, stepped on some stones that had been super-heated by the charcoal chimney and sustained serious burns on the sole of his foot.

IT WAS A MEDICAL EMERGENCY AND I LIVE FOR THAT SHIT!!!

I may have gotten a little bit hand-flappy, I'm not sure.

I know the basic first aid for burns, which is immersion in cold water for at least 15 minutes. But I was certan this was a 2nd degree burn (large blotchy white areas, blisters forming quickly, foot swelling).  Small 2nd degree burns can be treated at home, but this was 2/3 of the sole of his foot. A little hand-flapping followed by some swift Internet research revealed that this injury required professional medical care.

Josh and Emma took him over to the urgent care center where they inspected, bandaged, and prescribed. He came home looking pale and in a lot of pain, but seemed to relax when the pain meds began to work their magic. He has to go back in this afternoon to have the blisters cleaned and scrutinized.

Oh, and may I just say? Nate was cheerful and uncomplaining throughout it all. Apologetic even, for causing such a fuss. I love that boy!

More developments as they occur.

Josh and Nate goofing for the camera in the waiting room. Picture courtesy of Emma.

How is Mom doing? And some pictures.

One of my mother's old friends came with her son to the funeral and to the post-funeral gathering. Her son brought a book that my mother sent to him on the occasion of his birth more than 50 years ago in an African country (the Congo, actually. Can you imagine giving birth to your first child in the FUCKING CONGO in 1958??)  where the father was serving as a diplomat. Here you see my mother, a little confused, reading the inscription that she wrote so many years ago.

As well as can be expected for an 86-year-old woman with Alzheimer's experiencing severe cognitive decline, I guess.  She is devastated, grief-stricken, confused. Her tangled brain has trouble processing what happened.

Mom's bewilderment about my father's sudden death is made worse by the fact that she doesn't remember that he had serious health problems during the last 2 years of his life.  As far as Mom knows, he was perfectly healthy up until the day he went into the hospital and then dead less than 48 hours later.  She thinks that a simple germ felled him, something that could have been fixed with proper care and the right medicine. "If only Mother had been here," she laments, thinking back to the childhood pneumonia that almost killed her in the days before antibiotics, and how my grandmother pulled her through it with nothing but aspirin and bed rest.

A quiet afternoon the day after the funeral, looking at her college yearbook. 

My siblings and I were shocked as well, because Dad had been in a sort of holding pattern for awhile with no recent hospitalizations, no falls, no UTIs or pneumonias in the last 8 or 9 months--perhaps a testament to the vigilance of Pam, Samelia, and Eleni, the caregivers. But we haven't forgotten all the close calls and how much he suffered during some of those previous hospitalizations. We are grateful that it happened so quickly and that we didn't have to make any really tough decisions about life-sustaining procedures.

Someone is with Mom all the time, of course. A caregiver during the day, one of us on several weekday afternoons/evenings, and one of us on the weekend days. She is sad when we are not there.

She misses him so much, you guys.

My impossibly slim and naturally still-blonde sister Sarah organized a pansy-planting activity last weekend. It's hard to see her behind the handrail, what with the impossibly-slim thing.

Ok fine, I'll show you a picture of her where you can see her. Can you believe she's 52 years old?   I used to be that skinny. DAMN YOU, O THOU LACK OF SELF CONTROL.

The caregivers, who all loved my father,  are grieving, too.  Samelia said to me once, "He is my father now, too."   (All the more poignant because her father died when she was a teenager, killed in the Liberian Civil War.) Pam and Samelia were in the hospital room with us when he died. Pam, Samelia, and Eleni all came to his funeral and wept.

That kills me. I love them so much for what they have done for our family, and I can't believe how lucky we have been. I heard dire warnings from so many people about locking up valuables, sloppy care, etc. Our experience has been the complete opposite.

I have so much more to tell you.  Thank you for listening/reading. Sorry I haven't replied to the all the comments, but I have read them all, of course, often more than once.  I have even quoted a few of them (I'm always embarrassed to say, "This person who comments on my blog said...."  Instead, I say, "This friend of mine said....")  

I really do consider you friends, even the people I have never met in person. Thank you for all your support.

Josh, Sophie, me, Emma. Check out Emma's cool vintage dress -- worn by my mother back in the 1950s.

Emma, Paul (Sophie's fiance), and Sophie. Random picture of the kids goofing on each other, but you can see more of Emma's dress here. It had a low back which is really pretty too.