Nov. 18th, 2019 03:49 pm
Mourner's corner
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muckefuckSo it only took about 36 hours between my father's death and my first anxiety dream about it.
I was in a hospital waiting area with Nuphy, trying to help my sister revise the obituary before the noon deadline. But none of my devices (I had a phone and some kind of tablet) was letting me log in to view it. Meanwhile, my mother was trying to schedule some kind of procedure. This is presumably why at some point I was being paged, which I didn't notice until Nuphy pointed it out. But I couldn't figure out who I needed to speak to at which counter and no one was coming forward to assist me.
The only part of that which mirrored reality was that my sister did have a noon deadline to submit the obituary. I got to work hoping she'd have a draught ready for me to review (they'd composed it longhand the day before and she said something about having our stepsister type it up) but she didn't e-mail it to me until 11:23 a.m. Mom was included (for some reason, our stepmom had omitted her from an earlier version) but Monshu wasn't and I advised her that the names of the places where he studied and taught would really be useful if, say, any former classmates or students wanted to attend the service.
This is both harder and easier than my brother's death. At least it didn't come out of the blue; he'd been declining for a couple years. But it wasn't until Thursday that I learned he'd taken a turn for the worse. He'd been in rehab so I'd assumed he was getting a higher standard of care than usual, but there's some suggestion that the staff screwed up his medications, kickstarting his kidney failure. (I don't know if his wife plans to litigate, but she did demand a copy of all his charts and medical records at the facility before taking him to the ER.)
Coming on the heels of M's death and shortly before the third anniversary of Monshu's is also a mixed bag. Part of me is like, "Let's just get this all over with in one go". And we're all prepared. When Mom showed up to help out my sister on Saturday, she brought the checklist they'd put together for my brother. We're even using the same venue. (My neighbour and I even joked about just pasting dad's picture over my brother's on the programmes and even using the same songs.)
It's a little more complex this time because my stepmother has her own children who--to be frank--have been kind of shitty to Dad at times. I'm hoping they don't show up with any scores to settle, but you never know in advance how someone's going to react in a time like this.
I was in a hospital waiting area with Nuphy, trying to help my sister revise the obituary before the noon deadline. But none of my devices (I had a phone and some kind of tablet) was letting me log in to view it. Meanwhile, my mother was trying to schedule some kind of procedure. This is presumably why at some point I was being paged, which I didn't notice until Nuphy pointed it out. But I couldn't figure out who I needed to speak to at which counter and no one was coming forward to assist me.
The only part of that which mirrored reality was that my sister did have a noon deadline to submit the obituary. I got to work hoping she'd have a draught ready for me to review (they'd composed it longhand the day before and she said something about having our stepsister type it up) but she didn't e-mail it to me until 11:23 a.m. Mom was included (for some reason, our stepmom had omitted her from an earlier version) but Monshu wasn't and I advised her that the names of the places where he studied and taught would really be useful if, say, any former classmates or students wanted to attend the service.
This is both harder and easier than my brother's death. At least it didn't come out of the blue; he'd been declining for a couple years. But it wasn't until Thursday that I learned he'd taken a turn for the worse. He'd been in rehab so I'd assumed he was getting a higher standard of care than usual, but there's some suggestion that the staff screwed up his medications, kickstarting his kidney failure. (I don't know if his wife plans to litigate, but she did demand a copy of all his charts and medical records at the facility before taking him to the ER.)
Coming on the heels of M's death and shortly before the third anniversary of Monshu's is also a mixed bag. Part of me is like, "Let's just get this all over with in one go". And we're all prepared. When Mom showed up to help out my sister on Saturday, she brought the checklist they'd put together for my brother. We're even using the same venue. (My neighbour and I even joked about just pasting dad's picture over my brother's on the programmes and even using the same songs.)
It's a little more complex this time because my stepmother has her own children who--to be frank--have been kind of shitty to Dad at times. I'm hoping they don't show up with any scores to settle, but you never know in advance how someone's going to react in a time like this.
no subject
i hope that everyone in your family and extended family is as good to each other as possible.
no subject
It's reassuring to hear you say this. I have to say that just the thought of having to go through everything we went through for my brother once again--making arrangements, coming to town, accepting everyone's condolences, going through his shit--is really exhausting.