Miz S

I Went To Portugal.

So much has happened in the 6 weeks since I last updated.

I went to Portugal on my spring break, for one thing. I feel all apologetic about it for some reason, like I have to explain how it all came about or how it didn't cost that much money (which would be an outright fabrication) or how I'm not one of these people who jets off to Europe all the time.

I AM A COMMONER, LIKE YOU.

A commoner who just happened to spend 8 days in Portugal recently.

Portugal rocks, y'all. Cancel that trip to Disneyland. Go to Portugal. I got a bed and breakfast for you in Lisbon that you will never want to leave. You will fall a little bit in love with tall, beautiful Pilar, the young receptionista. Her boss, Francisco, will sit with you in the morning for coffee and ask you about your family and tell you about his, and how he grew up in an apartment building that contained all his aunts, uncles, and cousins along with his own parents and siblings. And you will want to talk to him all day.

My sister Sarah and I thought we would die from the cuteness of laundry hanging from every window in Portugal. NO ONE in Portugal has their own washer and dryer, y'all.

(Please pause and feel spoiled. I did.)

We saw a lot of...stuff. True confession: I don't give a shit about castles, museums, or statues.

Here is what I liked:

The old men at the cafe tables, each one leaning in to hear the other, nodding and laughing. 

The young waiters and waitresses, fluent in 2 or 3 languages.

The huge and immaculately tended community gardens on the outskirts of Lisbon and in all the small towns.

The couple on the subway with the toddler, cooing and singing songs to her in Portugese.

The tiny little grocery stores tucked into every block, where you could buy absolutely anything you needed.

Sitting at a table on a narrow winding street, drinking sangria.

Good Friday in Évora, where the entire town gathered at the church at around 10pm and lit candles for a somber parade. 

And so much more. I would go back there in a heartbeat.

My sister and her husband. You guys wouldn't even believe how much we walked in Lisbon. The proportion of walking time to sitting around at a cafe table drinking sangria time was totally skewed in the wrong direction. My brother-in-law is a stern taskmaster when it comes to exploring a city.

In the small town of Comporta I was overcome with delight by the storks that were nesting everywhere.

Storks! STORKS!

Josh at the Moorish castle ruins in Sintra. He's the assistant manager of the worrrrrld!

A rather glum-looking lad, playing his accordion. Awfully young to be doing this, in my opinion. His father or grandfather was doing the same thing just down the street so I guess it's a family business?  I gave him some euros and asked politely if I could take his picture, but he just didn't seem too happy about the whole arrangement. There were many people like this in Lisbon, doing some kind of entertainment for tourists.

Ah. Disaffected youth. Gotta love 'em.

We arrived home on Easter Sunday and work started for me on Tuesday. Since then I have been up, down, sideways, and occasionally in a fetal position. But I can say, cautiously, that I think I am feeling a little better, a little less bruised by the events of the past 9 months. A little less fearful of what lies ahead.

Thanks, as always, for your kind comments, emails, and prayers. There are days where they have made all the difference to me.

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.

Sorrow A Hundredfold.

My father reading to the 7 youngest grandchildren, probably around 1994.

Last Thursday, I stopped by my parents' house after work and hung out for a bit. My brother and my niece were there. My oldest nephew was in and out.  Hilarity abounded.

On Saturday, my sister Julie went to my parents' house and fixed lunch for them. My father ate like a trencherman.

On Sunday (which now seems like a thousand years ago), my sister Sarah and I met there at noon to fix lunch, hang out, and cook an extra meal for dinner that the aide could serve to them later. 

My father didn't come to the table because he felt nauseated. It's not like him to refuse food. 

So we took him to the emergency room. He was admitted to the hospital with a bowel obstruction.

That evening, he was transferred to the ICU because of difficulty breathing. He spiked a fever.

Do you see where this is going?

The doctors asked us, "If it becomes necessary to intubate him, do you want us to?"

Wait. SHIT. What?

We said, "Yes."

Late in the afternoon on Monday the doctors told us that Dad had developed severe sepsis, and the situation was grave. We told them that we did not want intubation, chest compressions, or any extraordinary measures.

A priest came and gave him the last rites. I watched my father make a wavering, loopy sign of the cross. This killed me dead.

They began to try and keep him comfortable with morphine, and after that he was sort of out of it.

On Tuesday morning, the family assembled. When we were all there, the nurse turned off the medications that were maintaining his heartbeat. He died about 3 or 4 minutes later.

It was 48 hours from his first symptom to his dying breath, and for that I am thankful.

But, goddamn.