Mourning

A week ago today, My Honey got the phone call we all dread--his father had suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. Incredibly (and luckily), My Honey was home with me when he got the call instead of being alone in California. What has followed has been a roller-coaster ride of emotions and surprisingly organized, from meeting with the funeral home director to the visitation to the funeral to meeting with the lawyer to being on the verge of filing for probate.

My Honey's dad never threw anything out. This has been a blessing and a curse. Fortunately, he was far more organized than I ever gave him credit for, so we have (so far) been able to locate all the vital documents we've needed to locate, and in a timely manner. We found a will, we found bank statements, we found tax assessments on his two properties, we figured out who his insurance broker was, we (finally!) found the mail key...it's like a scavenger hunt with a partially complete list of items.

I can't help but draw comparisons between My Honey's experience in dealing with his dad's affairs and what mine will be like when the time comes for me and my brother to deal with my mom's. In the majority of ways, the experiences are completely opposite: she's already arranged and paid for her cremation; she has organized her finances down to the last minute detail; I know who her lawyer and accountant are; we don't have to dispose of any assets because her husband will continue to live in the house. By contrast, My Honey has to make some very important decisions about what to do with the two houses he now owns in a northern Ontario city several thousand kilometers from his current residence.

One thing these two people will have in common in death is that they will have touched the lives of countless people in ways one only learns about after their passing. Hearing the stories this week about My Honey's dad has been wonderful and insightful. You know a person usually only in one or two slices of their life--when they die you get the opportunity to connect with people from the other slices and see that person in a whole new way. This is what I look forward to when my mom has gone--hearing people's stories about her and knowing that she had an impact on so many people in such a diversity of ways.

My grieving process for my mom started 3 years ago; My Honey's started 7 days ago. In spite of this, his strength and desire to do what was right for his dad have humbled and impressed me. I am also impressed by his family and how they have deferred to him on nearly every decision and gave him the support he needed without hijacking the proceeding to pursue their own agendas or further the strife that has existed within the family for the last several years. Again, I didn't give enough credit.

My Honey has a monumental task ahead of him, and I hope and plan to be there for him every step of the way. I have the utmost confidence in him and his ability to make the right decisions for himself because he knows who he is and what he needs and wants to get out of this tragedy. He said to me the other day, "When you have a child the only certainty is that there will be one of two outcomes--either he will mourn you or you will mourn him." In some respects, I think My Honey has been preparing for this his whole life.

Gloria's Story

Please click on this link and read this article about my Mom, written by her family doctor. The article also includes a letter my Mom wrote to the local paper about Hospice Huntsville and their plan to build a palliative home in Huntsville.

I'm so thankful to Dr. Trenholm and David Harris at Huntsville Online for helping to tell my Mom's story. Her story is an important one, not because it is unique but because it is so heartbreakingly common.

I am so proud of my Mother and her indomitable spirit. I cherish these last few weeks we have together and I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity to walk by her side on her final journey. It has been a wonderful gift for all of us.

Tinsletown Comes to Our Town

A very unexpected thing is happening in my parent's town--"The Fonz" is filming a movie. That's right, just down the street from their house Henry Winkler is chewing the scenery along with Graham Greene some guy named DJ Qualls whom I've never heard of but is apparently pretty famous. The town is obviously excited and the shoot is attracting large (by small town standards) crowds who are hoping to catch a glimpse of our favourite, cuddly little rebel.



But the story doesn't end there--a little over a month ago, my parents were approached by the production company to use their house as a main location for the shoot. The woman (whose name escapes me at the moment) fed them some line about how the director/writer grew up in a house just like theirs,* that they loved what they've done with the landscaping, yadda yadda yadda. Long story short, turns out they were only going to offer my parents $200 for what could have been multiple days of shooting which could have resulted in untold damage to the property and premises. Now, we may be small town, but we're not stupid. Despite initial excitement, the $200 up for grabs just didn't justify the potential disaster this could have become.

Don't worry! Our failure to cooperate in no way disrupted or derailed the filming of what is surely to become a Canadian independent film classic. Amazingly there is another brick bungalow in town that worked in a pinch and I'm sure the film crew is down there as we speak turning that guy's front lawn into mud and hoping to hell that all these hicks in Hicksville will (golly gee!) be honoured to let them drag their Klieg lights and cables all over their hard-earned homes for the princely sum of 200 bucks (which is pretty much all an independent film can afford to pay for a location) and the privilege of basking in the glow of Hollywood glamour.

*This house doesn't belong to either my parents or Thomas Michael, but as you can see it is hardly unique. (My parent's house is prettier though!)

Downtime

I'm back at home until Thanksgiving (that's the Canadian Thanksgiving to my millions of American readers) and I have mixed feelings about that. I really need to be here--for me and for my sorely neglected cat--but I can't help but feel anxious about leaving my Mom. She seems to be doing well on the outside, but inside they have discovered a new tumour on her chest wall, tumours on her orbital bones and some small tumours in her neck. The tumour in her chest is partially cutting off arterial blood flow to her lungs, which is obviously not good, and the tumours on her orbital bones are pressing against her eyeballs which makes her eyes water and affects her vision. She's probably legally blind at this point; it's that bad. I keep waiting for the phone call that tells me she's taken a turn for the worse and I better get my ass back there.

But for better or for worse, I'm here and trying to make the best of it. My cat has missed me desperately, evidenced by the fact that he won't let me out of his sight. Truth be told, I missed him too. He's a pain in the ass, but he's also warm and cuddly and very reassuring. And he loves me. Almost as much as he loves food.

I've also been thinking a lot about the future, what it might hold and where it will be spent. It's becoming more and more important to me to find a way to be in California with My Honey. There will be a lot to work out, but it's been too long this way and I just can't do it anymore. When Mom is gone, my most compelling reason for staying will be gone too. I have other very good reasons for staying--friends, family, universal healthcare--but weighed against being with the man I love there's no contest. Sorry guys! You'll just have to come visit me in sunny California!

Farrah Flip and the Nut Huggers

I am the best aunt in the world. Seriously. Just ask my niece, Hayden. She will happily show you the "stuffy" (Hayden for stuffed animal) I bought for her, then she'll tell you about the crafts we made, the banana chocolate chip muffins we baked and our visit to the pet store to play with the kittens and look at the bird with the funny name.

She will confirm I gamely played "doggy goes to the vet" and pushed her endlessly on the swings. She'll giggle when I mention how she got my pants all wet when we paused to splash our feet in the water during our walk along the docks, and she might even remember that I took her for ice cream and let her drink almost a whole can of orange pop.

All of this we accomplished in one day, the day we got to spend together, just the two of us with no parents and no little sister. It was an awesome day that I hope we'll both remember for a long time.


And with respect to the title of this post:

The next morning, while my brother made us all pancakes for breakfast, an episode of "The Littlest Hobo" came on. The episode was called "Boy on Wheels" and it featured a very young nobody from Scarborough in the role of "Tommy." Tommy sported an awesome Farrah flip (even 17 year old boys couldn't resist it's allure) and some very tight short-shorts. So the title of this post is the name of my new band, in honour of a native son who will hopefully never forget his roots.

Sing along everyone!



Addendum:

Sadly, I couldn't find video footage of Mr. Myers and his iconic look, but here and here are some stills from the episode I located through Google Images. Ah internets, I think I love you <3

Holding Court From Her Hospital Bed

Just a quick update you let you know my Mom's doing great! She's been outside a few times in her wheelchair--the physio ladies, Sue and Jane, have perfected the system for getting Mom out of bed and into the chair so that Mom's not even anxious about breaking anything anymore. The first time was nerve-wracking and more than a few tears were shed, but now she's doing it like a champ and is even teaching the nurses how to move her!

She's getting lots of visitors and phone calls--so much so that we've had to make up a schedule so everyone gets a chance to do some "one-on-one" private time with her. The grandkids have been making lots of wall art to decorate her room, and the flowers on the windowsill are so jam-packed you can hardly see outside.

She and I have had some wonderful conversations about all sorts of things--I'm so glad to have this time with her where she's lucid, in minimal pain and able to enjoy herself. There's lots of laughter, a few tears, but always a feeling of well-being and genuine happiness radiating from her room at the end of the hall. I hope it's rubbing off on some of the other patients (and nurses, too!)

Two months ago, my Mom was given two months to live. They shoulda known she wouldn't give up that easily!

"It's hard for me to be in a bad mood when you're being so nice to me."

One of my co-workers said this to me yesterday, and it got me thinking. I guess I am a pretty upbeat person, which I realize can be annoying to some people at times, especially when they're having a bad day and have a low tolerance for cheefulness. I come by this trait honestly--my Mother is perhaps the most cheerful and upbeat person I know, so apparently that apple didn't fall far from the tree.

I sometimes feel it's my job to bring up the mood of those around me--be the "cheerleader", if you will. I know my Mother has felt this way throughout her illness and she always makes sure no one sees her having a bad day. Even when her pain is almost beyond the limits of human tolerance, she'll struggle to put a smile on her face and do her best to reassure you that she's "just fine."

Last Saturday, my Mom had an operation to stabilize her fractured femur with some pins. The operation was a success and she had no troubles at all coming out of the anesthetic. By Sunday morning, she was her usual chipper self, joking with the nurses and other women on the ward. Another patient on the ward was evidently annoyed by my Mom's cheerfulness and complained to her nurse about it. Okay, I get it--some people are not "morning people", especially when they're in the hospital and probably feeling pretty shitty. No problem. Here's my problem--the nurse actually told my Mom to be less cheerful.

Are you fucking kidding me?

That really pissed me off. No health professional worth his/her salt should be telling any terminally ill patient that they're too happy and need to be less happy because their positive attitude--which is painstakingly constructed each day in order to make the specter of looming death less scary--is annoying someone else who lacks the same positive outlook.

My Mother's positive attitude is the reason she's still here. When she was first diagnosed, she was given 3 months to live--that was 3 years ago. She has defied every doctor's expectation and continues to do so. So forgive me if I get a little angry when someone suggests she should "tone it down" because it's like saying we, and she, aren't worth living for.