The Long Day

May 27th was Lila's last day of school and her 8th grade recognition ceremony. She didn't even want to go, said it was stupid and some other kids were skipping it. I said tough noogies, you're going and Don and I are going to recognize you whether you like it or not. And she said (rolling her eyes) Mom! You're harshing my mellow! And I said Don't use that tone with me young lady! Then she stormed out of the room, I grounded her and we haven't spoken since.

Ok, that's not what happened. She said it was stupid and some other kids were skipping it and I said that we're not skipping it and she said ok.

But she did think that people were making too big a deal out of it...until she got money out of the deal. 8th grade recognition isn't so bad after all.

I thought they did a good job of it. The jazz band played and the choir sang. They gave out a few awards (not too many) and let the kids walk up and get their certificate. Short and sweet and to the point. My kind of ceremony.

Afterward, it was so crowded we couldn't find Lila. We went out to the car and she texted us within a few minutes. She ditched us to go hang at the park with her friends. So we went out to lunch, but she still managed to get her feelings hurt that we went without her. Oh well, sucks to be her.

That evening, Lila was down the hill with her neighborhood friends enjoying the first night of summer vacation. She's allowed to run wild in the streets until 10:00 during the summer. I had taken a shower and put on my jammies. Don and I were watching TV around 9:30 when the phone rang. Georgie had died.

Don's parents, Don and Georgie, both still lived at home under hospice care. They both were dying of COPD. Georgie was the worse between them. She had been steadily going downhill for the past two years. Multiple hospital stays, long stays in rehab centers, several times when it looked like the end. By the end, she was on so many meds and getting so little oxygen, her mind was going. As much as everyone loved her, everyone wanted her to die. It was too painful , too heartbreaking, to watch her suffer.

I got dressed again and we headed up to their house. I called Lila to tell her what happened and that we were going up there and did she want to come. She started crying and said no. She was with her friends that love her and would take care of her. It was ok with me.

When we got there, I think there were two sheriff cars in the yard. Fred and Teresa were already there and Butch, the widower of their sister who just passed the week before. I think some other people were there, I can't remember. Fred was outside, ready to strangle one of the sheriffs because they had treated him like a crime suspect when he arrived. These sheriffs all knew Don and Georgie, they all knew they were on hospice care, there was no reason in the world to treat it like crime scene. I could understand them not wanting the body touched until the hospice nurse came to declare her, but other than that, it was ridiculous.

We finally went in the house. Don's dad was there, sitting in his recliner like he always does. Georgie was on the floor, covered in a sheet, lying were she fell. Earlier in the evening, she gone into the bathroom and was in there for a very long time. Don had gone to check on her several times, she said she was ok. When she finally came out, she walked a very fast pace (for her) past Don in his chair and towards the window. Don got up and tried to get her to turn around and to get her to go back to her chair. She spun around, knocked him down and fell dead. She scrapped up her arm on the fireplace hearth as she fell, but there was no bleeding. They think her heart had already stopped by the time she got to the living room and she was just moving on adrenaline.

The hospice people had to come up from the Springs so it was over an hour, I think, before they arrived. The one nurse checked her pulse. Then she wiped Georgie's face and, at Don's request, took off her rings and her watch. It appeared she had vomited blood, there was something red on the carpet by her face, but it was really spaghetti sauce. Her favorite hospice person had cooked a spaghetti dinner for them earlier and apparently she ate very heartily. They covered her back up with the sheet until the funeral home came for the body. I didn't like leaving her there like that. I would've liked to have straightened her out, washed her face and hands, brushed her hair a little. But it wasn't my place.

The other hospice nurse proceeded to dispose of all the meds that Georgie was on. This baffled me. Every bit of drugs in the house with Georgie's name on it had to be destroyed. Whether it had ever been opened or not. Now I completely understand destroying anything in containers that had been partially used. But there boxes and packages and bottles of stuff that had never even been touched. It all got dumped into a Ziploc bag full of kitty litter. I thought it was such a waste. With so many seniors struggling to pay for their meds and they were just destroying it. I just don't get it.

There were many moments during the evening that people couldn't hold the tears. Dumping the meds was one of Teresa's moments. She was Georgie's primary caregiver, putting her life on hold to be with Georgie during these last few years. Taking care of, scheduling, making sure all the meds got taken properly, was a big part of it. Now she had to dump it all into kitty litter.

Finally the funeral home came. They asked us to leave the room while they put her on the stretcher. Again, I would've liked it if we were the ones who lifted her and wrapped a sheet and blanket around her. Then they said a little prayer over her and wheeled her out.

The full moon had risen over Pike's Peak, which is the view from their front yard. I drove home alone, Don stayed the night with his dad.