Where the day takes you.

Life has taken on a surreal flavor these days. Ever since the EYOC wound up in the hospital back in early September, any semblance of a regular day has gone out the window. It’s not that it’s bad, it isn’t. I don’t mind the kind of free form structure the day takes on, as a matter of fact, it’s more akin to the way I like to live.

So, since the day doesn’t really have structure, there’s more a running list of things needing to get done. Sure, you have the ordinary, sundry things that are just part of life maintenance, the cleaning, the laundry, the things which must be fit in each week but, there’s also the “fireman” aspect of getting a call in the middle of the night alerting you to the fact the EYOC has been moved to a hospital ER or even worse to a hospital ICU.

It’s happened twice in the last two weeks, the trips to the hospital.

Just when it looked like he was getting better and I was beginning to think he’d be coming home sometime soon, I went to bring him something at the rehab (read nursing home) facility and arrived to see a fire truck sitting in front of the facility with its lights going. Sure enough when I got back to his room he had quite the small audience in attendance as they were preparing to wheel him out to an ambulance for a trip to the ER.

There was a strange coincidence in my arrival. My timing couldn’t have been more opportune as I walked in and he was being treated - imagine the eye of a hurricane and you get a sense of the moment. A big storm is passing and there is the momentary lull, in this case the pause between the EYOC having a bad day and getting progressively worse and arriving at the ER itself.

The night in question, I was hemming and hawing over going up for a visit thinking I would put it off to the following morning when suddenly I just felt this overwhelming pull telling me I had to go that evening and immediately at that - strange how these things work.

Well, that was a two weeks ago and we‘ve since been to the hospital and back and then back to the hospital again. Last week was probably the worst of it since the whole ordeal began. There were moments when it looked like EYOC making it to the morning was a long shot.

Still, here we are a few days later and I’ll be damned if he hasn’t improved a bit. It’s amazing, really, to watch someone become so fragile that you sense their life could slip away with a strong breeze. I am not overstating things in this case either, there have been times in the last few days when I’ve walked out of the hospital wondering if I would get a phonecall.

So, back and forth we go. In the interim, in the gaps besides the life maintenance, there are the phone calls to make to family and friends, the benefits two step - a dance between insurance companies, Medicare, hospitals, doctors, the nursing home, billing departments, managing his finances (not pretty) and taking care of my own - sorting through the accumulation of clutter and crud which has built up over the years, it’s quite a bit to keep track of. Every time I start to think I have a handle on things, I get another curve thrown at me, his condition worsens and the focus shifts back to the crisis of his immediate state of health.

Now, I’m trying to explore funeral options. I don’t mean to be morbid and it certainly isn’t meant to convey some diabolical design on the situation as a whole, it’s just I had been warned by some family members to prepare, ‘just in case’ because it really is a lot harder to have to organize all these things after the fact and under the gun.

I’m doing laundry the other day, a nice sunny afternoon and while the clothes are in the dryer, I’ve walked up to the post office to pick up the mail, I decide to check out a funeral home to see if I can get some idea of what is involved with the funeral thing. I don’t dress up to do the laundry so, it’s not as if I’m at my level best when I walk up to the place to speak to one of the funeral directors standing out front having a smoke.

The meeting takes about 45 minutes and I’m presented with a list of options - it seems very similar to the experience of buying a new car. You get a sense there is the funeral equivalent of rust proofing being added but, you are damned to know exactly what and where that is.

Then, there’s the discussion of caskets, which strikes me as funny because hearing a funeral director try and sell you on the finer points of a box is interesting, “Well, imagine you’re buying a piece of furniture... something made out of mahogany is of better quality and will last longer than something say of particle board with veneer over it.”

Suffice to say I can’t see digging up a casket on a regular basis to show off to friends and to sit upon so, I’m a bit oblivious to the hard sell.

Strangely enough, I had been surfing awhile back and came across a category of ‘vessels’ up on the CostCo website. My first thought was there would be some catchy alliteration going on: CostCo/Kirkland/Caskets - lots of heavy ‘K’ sounds. It may be an option but, just seeing that CostCo is also in the casket business only adds to the whole bizarre nature of this experience.



Oh, and by the way, I’m not really sure if this will come across in bad taste or not but, like the song goes, ‘what a long strange trip its been.’ If I do wind up offending a reader (family that is), you’ll excuse me I hope.