My kind of day, today!
    It's our first cool, cloudy day of the year. Rain has been predicted, a better than average chance, although we haven't gotten much up here, but it looks like rain, so I'm satisfied. The heater, which I keep just inside the "Comfort Zone" at this time of year, kicked on this afternoon while the sun was still shining. All windows, except the one above the sink in the kitchen, have been closed all day. When I awoke to the day I couldn't wait to dash outside in shirt sleeves and soak up the wind, the gray, the low temperature and the humidity, so I decided this morning would be an errand morning.
    I serendipitously managed to get a flu shot, too, no waiting. As I went here and picked this up there, I decided, knowing that today is not my mother's favorite kind of day, that we should have a fragrant, flavorful, stewy sort of dinner. I decided on a home made sausage marinara, simmered all day, over shells topped with lots of Parmesan cheese; 9 grain garlic toast slathered with my own garlic-basil concoction; Mom's favorite store bought apple pie (Marie Callendar's Dutch Apple), with freshly whipped cream, if she'd like. I considered making one, as I'd have a piece of one I make, I truly cannot stand apple pie in general and have to really be in the mood to make one I like, stuffed with unpeeled apples and raisins and pecans or dried cherries and walnuts. I wasn't in the mood, I decided, so I got the Marie Callendar's pie and a carton of my favorite lemon sorbet for me. When I told Mom what we're having for dinner, tonight, she rolled her eyes and asked, "Can we have dinner for breakfast?"
    A few days ago I started reading yet another book. Our Hospice RN mentioned it to me: Final Journeys, yes, by one of the authors of Final Gifts, Maggie Callanan. As I mentioned to our Hospice RN a day after I received the book and had cracked the binding, "This is much more the book I needed to read than 'Final Gifts'. That book was okay," I said, "it was interesting, but it was mostly observational and, anyway, we're not there yet." This book, though, Final Journeys, has the recipe. I'm only on page 47. It's packed tighter than Final Gifts, too. So far, it's pretty much been validation of the living process my mother and I have devised over the last several years. I have to say, it feels good to be validated. As well, somewhere in these last 47 pages it confirmed what I thought, that most people sign onto Hospice late into the dying process. She suggests that earlier sign on would make things easier on everyone involved in the process of terminality. I have to agree. My experience tells me that it does. After having read as little of this book as I have, I'm even more grateful than before that we were offered Hospice as early as we were. If we hadn't been offered it I, frankly, wouldn't have known if and when to choose it and, if we'd been offered it late, I wouldn't have been in the proper state of mind to become familiar enough with Hospice to utilize it to our needs, I think.
    I've already begun highlighting and writing notes, of course, and even though I'm backed up by two reviews, I plan to review this book, too, probably in my usual quote-and-comment style.

    By the way, today has been a surprising movement day for my mother, even as it promises to be a day fairly packed with sleep. Considering all the falls she's taken, lately, you might want to check out today's review at Life After Death Sentencing, if you've been keeping up on it. The link will take you right to today's post. Since the day isn't finished, neither is the post, at this point, but it's interesting, anyway, I think.

    Oh, yeah. I want to mention something that occurred to me as I was reading the above mentioned book last night. A different track of my mind, for some odd reason, was, as I read, thinking about my lapsed association with The American Society on Aging. I let my membership lapse because it came due during the cancer diagnosis/hospital/rehab period in our lives during late spring/early summer of this year. I hadn't actually gotten around to reading much of the literature sent to me (as usual), hadn't really been a member active in the organization (although I refuse to say that I wasn't an active member...I believe my involvement in my mother's life qualifies me as a very active member) and membership isn't cheap, so, you know, I'd let it lapse. Thing is, though, it's been bothering me that I lapsed ever since. I have very strong feelings about my value to the organization as an intensely involved, contemplative, writing companion to An Ancient One. I doubt that there are many "on-site" companions who are as intellectually involved in their journey with An Ancient One as they are emotionally, and meticulously reporting on that Ancient One and that involvement. Anyway, even though this book isn't about aging and doesn't restrict itself to death as it visits An Ancient One, as I was reading the book with one part of my mind and thinking about my former association with ASA with another, as I was was absorbing a section in the book which explains that people die as they have lived a third part of my brain kicked in and told me: "I am a scholar of the reality of aging in this time and this place, courtesy of my experience with my mother." So, now, I am settled about my value to ASA and its value to me, even if I am not at a point in my life, at the moment, where I can exhibit that value through active participation with the organization. I need to re-up with them. It's important to me. It is equally important to them, especially since, in reading through the roles of highlighted members, they are primarily academicians, researchers, planners and administrators of aging programs and theoreticians. They don't have anyone like me, someone who's in the trenches.

    I'm letting my mother nap as long as she likes, today, within reason. I think she needs to sleep off the gray and come to in a house filled with the aroma of comfort food. Think I'll do a little more reading, while I have some undeclared moments.
    Later.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 17:56   email  this post