tiff's corner

Some of you may remember Tiffany's tragic death at the intersection of Samaria Bend and Highway 51 business.  She weighed about 90 pounds soaking wet and when she hit the ditch the airbags just smacked the life out of her.  Her family and friends were numb and established a little memorial right there where her tire marks stayed in the mud all winter.  There was a ceramic angel whose wings got broken and I picked her up out of the mud more than one time.  Today when I made the turn her sister Jennifer was there pulling weeds and straightening up.  We chatted for a minute and she told me that a lot of people keep her memory alive in that spot.  Often when I'm on the 412 I see little crosses in remembrance of someone who died there.  It makes me wonder who they were.

There's a clump of Queen Ann's lace playing hide and seek on the lane and I keep looking for it driving real slow so I can dig it up before it gets mowed.  Little things like that show me that I'm coming up out of the hole slowly.  Three hundred sixty five days ago at midnight I got the call from my frantic mother that Daddy had asked to ambulance transport due to severe abdominal pain.  I spent the night in ER with him and clocked in at six as usual.  Except that was the beginning of the end of life as we knew it.  

He had a strangulated hernia with small bowel involvement which is bad enough in and of itself.  Once they got pain meds in him, it got free.  The surgery to repair that turned into something nobody expected which was an infected repair including mesh on the opposite side.  Oh.My.Lord.  They did what they could surgically and sent him to the rehab with a wound vac planning on  surgery at a later date.  He spent his last birthday there and had a little party with the staff and mom and BG.  As usual, I bricked for some reason or another.  A week or so later I noticed he was not in very good shape so here we went back to the hospital for another surgery....this time a big one.  

The infected mesh had perforated his colon and that was discovered by a very astute nurse   post-op.   It took HOURS to fix the mess adding anesthesia to some just a few weeks prior.  He didn't stand a chance against the breathing problems and infection to come.  After a week in ICCU with our personal angels, the decision was made to move to hospice care.   The last time I saw him alive he was struggling to talk through the mask and told me he wanted to die.  That's all it took.  He was out after that, and not struggling or in pain.  Two days later he died peacefully at the sawmill.  

We tricked Mama into thinking she was there when it happened which was quite important to her personally so no harm done.  Our network called and went into motion and all went as planned.  His funeral was at the church that he loved and where he stubbornly climbed the steps to the choir loft even when he would fall out and get caught by somebody close by.  These very same church folk called me four months later to say that Mama actually did fall because her hip broke.  Lerd.

My extensive experience with the eldercare system should be of some value but it's not becuase most of it is about the money instead of enhancing life.  So is everything else, but that's beside the point.   I have no apology to give to my Democratic friends who see a vote for Bernie as a vote for Trump.  I don't care for either one of them and will vote my principles.   They'll never miss me and I can bitch because I voted!!!

Carry on ~