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Papa-Ming

2[H]4U
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Posting silly things from Airports / on a plane / and back at home / in a hospital/ to this forum ; the last few days. Like usual I guess.

My younger sister took our Mother to the hospital in an ambulance on Saturday. I wasn't home. I brought my mother to live with my family this past March.

So, after days of tests, she has congestive heart failure. She is 77 years. Had triple bypass 6 years ago, and the doctors at Brigham&Women's in Boston at that time said anything after 5 years from then would be a gift.

I don't think she's coming home. She doesn't think she's coming home. She's not.

I don't know why I'm writing this here @ 1:46 am EST. But what the hell. We"ve been re-arranging things in the house to make her yet more comfortable when she gets home, but she's not coming. Silly.

Odd to be 50 years -old and realize you won't be anyone's child soon. That you'll have no parents. Silly.

Don't know why I'm writing this, except I don't know how to fix this. But I arrange things in the house anyway... move another chair here, T.V. there. Silly.

Her cat is sleeping in her rocker. He is knowledgable. He's an animal. They know.

My brothers and sisters up in Newport booked emergency passage. We were once 11 kids, well the Irish!

But 9 now, two died from war injuries and buried with my Father at the National Veterens Cementary on Cape Cod. I don't know where Mom's going to go, but she'd like to be there with my Dad and my brothers.... but no. She cannot.

I don't suppose I could get her into Arlington near where we live. I wonder where the wives and mothers, or husbands, of dead Veterens are allowed to go. To what consecrated National ground do they go?

....back to the hospital this morning for a conference.... we'll see.

The woods are lovely dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
 
Papa-Ming, my prayers and thoughts are with you. Stay strong. :)
 
I don't know what to say, Papa. I think I know what you're talking about when you start moving things around. I feel that way when things seem out of my control - I do something that is under my control. Our thoughts are with you and your family. :(
 
[H]ard brother...

I'm sorry for your pain, and cannot express the feelings necessary to help comfort you. Be strong, friend... she'll need you to be strong.
 
I wish you and yours the best... :(

We're all here for you
 
I don't know what to say mate... Your family is in our hearts and prayers.
 
You write these things here because as strange a group of people as we are, we care. For all the differences we profess as individuals we all share a commonality for the love of life.

It’s not a selfish love, it’s not about “us” our just “our” loved ones, it’s about all life and those things that threaten it on a daily basis. One of us feels pain and we all share that pain.

We look back at times like this and realize that although our parents have always been our parents we never really got to know them in our youth. That particular epiphany only happens, as we ourselves grow older. The realization that these people we are just now coming to know and love more then ever are getting older much faster then we are. It never ceases to amaze me how much smarter my father is at 80 then I was at 16, or 50+.

We can’t use our computer power to fix or change the inevitable. We can however use this venue to share our feelings and thoughts. The word friend has taken on new definitions in this age of a totally connected world.

My Irish friend, you do have friends here and all our prayers are with your Mother, family and of course you.

God Bless
 
Papa, I echo the words of BillR. Please be assured that your Mother and your family are in my prayers....

Stay strong brother. Mom needs you now more than ever.
 
I hope you are just being too pessimistic, you have my kind thoughts if you are not.

One thing occured to me though reading your post, your mother can be with your father and brothers if she is cremated - it just depends on your/her views on cremation.

Don't read too much into the cat sleeping in her chair. If she isn't around for the moggie to cuddle up to then the chair that smells of her makes a nice alternative.
 
Papa- I am truely sorry for what you are about to experiance. While this is my first post on [H], I have been lurkign for a good while, and folding since around the begining of June. This post finally convinced me to reg and share with you my experiances. As of Oct 14, it has been 9 years since my dad died, when I was the age of 8. I remember the day vividly- the officer who came to our house's name, what he looked like, where we ordered pizza that day, the walk I took with my best friend, little seemingly meaningless details. The things I don't remember, what one would assume bigger details- the feel of my dad's beard, his hand, the sound of his voice etc. I remember me being outside, not knowing what happened. I thought my dad had been arrested for something (8, see a cop come to your house,) my mom crying at the table. I remember not believing it- even to the point where I had an elaborate idea that they just wanted a divorce, and had assumed this would be easier for my sister and I to comprehend. I remeber our pastor trying to convince me that this was real. Yet, I don't remember the sound of his voice. This week has given me time to recollect on his impact on me, and I very much am his clone. I am my father's son- look like him and think like him. I often sit back and think how my life would be different had I had him these years, where would I be.

As it sounds as if your mother is living out her last days, remember these things. Remember the sound of her voice, the feel of her hand, just remember. May God be with your family.
 
Lockheed- said:
Papa- I am truely sorry for what you are about to experiance. While this is my first post on [H], I have been lurkign for a good while, and folding since around the begining of June. This post finally convinced me to reg and share with you my experiances. As of Oct 14, it has been 9 years since my dad died, when I was the age of 8. I remember the day vividly- the officer who came to our house's name, what he looked like, where we ordered pizza that day, the walk I took with my best friend, little seemingly meaningless details. The things I don't remember, what one would assume bigger details- the feel of my dad's beard, his hand, the sound of his voice etc. I remember me being outside, not knowing what happened. I thought my dad had been arrested for something (8, see a cop come to your house,) my mom crying at the table. I remember not believing it- even to the point where I had an elaborate idea that they just wanted a divorce, and had assumed this would be easier for my sister and I to comprehend. I remeber our pastor trying to convince me that this was real. Yet, I don't remember the sound of his voice. This week has given me time to recollect on his impact on me, and I very much am his clone. I am my father's son- look like him and think like him. I often sit back and think how my life would be different had I had him these years, where would I be.

As it sounds as if your mother is living out her last days, remember these things. Remember the sound of her voice, the feel of her hand, just remember. May God be with your family.
Click to expand...
This is one of the most real posts I have ever read. I am actually tearing up.....

Makes me appreciate the good things in life.
 
AtomicMoose said:
This is one of the most real posts I have ever read. I am actually tearing up.....

Makes me appreciate the good things in life.
Click to expand...

me too :(

papa-ming, my prayers and sympathies go out to you :(
 
Lockheed- said:
Papa- I am truely sorry for what you are about to experiance. While this is my first post on [H], I have been lurkign for a good while, and folding since around the begining of June. This post finally convinced me to reg and share with you my experiances. As of Oct 14, it has been 9 years since my dad died, when I was the age of 8. I remember the day vividly- the officer who came to our house's name, what he looked like, where we ordered pizza that day, the walk I took with my best friend, little seemingly meaningless details. The things I don't remember, what one would assume bigger details- the feel of my dad's beard, his hand, the sound of his voice etc. I remember me being outside, not knowing what happened. I thought my dad had been arrested for something (8, see a cop come to your house,) my mom crying at the table. I remember not believing it- even to the point where I had an elaborate idea that they just wanted a divorce, and had assumed this would be easier for my sister and I to comprehend. I remeber our pastor trying to convince me that this was real. Yet, I don't remember the sound of his voice. This week has given me time to recollect on his impact on me, and I very much am his clone. I am my father's son- look like him and think like him. I often sit back and think how my life would be different had I had him these years, where would I be.

As it sounds as if your mother is living out her last days, remember these things. Remember the sound of her voice, the feel of her hand, just remember. May God be with your family.
Click to expand...

Lockheed,

Thank-you for writing. Not easy, I do know.

Of we 11, there were 7 boys and 4 girls. Though my father's death to cancer was an ordeal to the entire family, some of our boys "wondered" after that. They looked at the photos of Dad surviving D-Day, then the Cuban Missile Blockade. Big strong Dad in his Navy uniform. Dads don't die.

But they did him proud in the end, we all served in the Military, cause Dad did. But none of used joined the Navy! LOL.

Mom, she dealt, as Mom's do. My father's death we tried to accept with the inevitabilty of life. It didn't help much, but we tried.

Still, the two worst days of my lifetime , were watching my Mother pick-out caskets for my brothers. Events 9 years apart. Pine or Mahogany. An obscenity.

My brother Mark was the first.

That repeated 9 years later when Jeff died in a Veteren's Hospital. He was dead two days as a patient with a room at a Veterens Hospital before anyone knew it? Yet they knew him in Oklahoma City, Kosovo, and Bosnia.

Pine or Mahogany?

They flew him from Virginia to the Cape for burial @ Otis in what looked like a beer cooler. I thought my oldest brother Van was going to have a heart attack when he saw Jeff like that. He cried so! And my Mother?

But Van served two duties with the Air Force in Vietnam. He got ambused with his friends in 65, shot his back -up a little bit. Went to Japan for recovery Mom said come home. But he went back to Vietnam for a second tour; because he said " Dad would". Dad did it for 4 years in WWII. Dad would do it.

So it destroyed him that Jeff went like that in a VA hospital. He's so like my father, and he was destroyed by that. He is a sweethart my oldest brother, he cries at the movie ,Yankee Doodle Dandy. I hope I die before him.

Pine or Mahogany?

My brother Mark was the hardest still , if one can say that of family members. But Mark was the hardest. The first to go.

He loved all things electronic. [ He would have loved computers.] And oil painting. The only surviving painting of his, my Mom had me hang in the hall when she moved here. A still life, and a pretty good one.

Mark died , after leaving the Army, with his business partner while doing restoration work in historic Williamsburg, Va.

They had rented a cherry-picker that day to do high work. The thing was defective and both men fell 130 feet to their deaths that morning. A photo of that moment was taken by a reporter for the Williamsburg, Va. Gazette.
Someone, likely meaning well, sent that front page to my Mother. But she could have done without it.

Mark, like Dad, like Jeff, survived the war, then died at home from obscenity.

There are 2 casket flags folded into neat triangles in oaken frames, that Mom brought here. The third one, she donated to the Veterens Cementary on the Cape and it's Avenue of Flags. It was Mark's, but she felt like he'd be " flying over his father " that way.

Her framed letters from 2 Presidents are hanging in the living room too, yada yada. Yet I see them and only think, "big deal." She's got two letters to replace two sons.
Gee Thanks for the from letters.

We, all of us, all 11 of us, never felt we did enough for Mom.

Her kidneys failed today too. And so, I sat with my Mother in the Hospital today while thinking of her life, and had no idea what to say to her! Since I could really never know how my Mother felt. Only Mom knew that. And I had no idea what to say to her! I don't know what to say.

So, we watched the Red Sox kick the Yankees butt after coming from behind three games, to win four in a row. That made Mom happy.

Mom dealt. She enjoyed the moment. [ Until the nurse came to inform her of the bill for $100:00 dollars she'd be getting for the new walker needed for her to navigate to the bathroom. Though that might be covered by Medicare in 2006? Still she felt that she couldn't wait that long! Yet she laughs and says, "Your father and I paid into Medicare for years, and I can't go to the bathroom?" Ha! Moms! And her Cardiologists forfieted his flu-shot for her, should they ever become avalible. Might have thought of that back in April? ]

She just went along though. But I never knew how she does.

Mothers have the biggest balls in all of humanity! ;)

God Bless Lockeed to you and your's as well. God rest the memory of your Father.

Don't be a stranger. We have Moose to tease and things to do. It's gonna be alright. :)

Best always,

Papa-Ming
 
You have my sympathies, Papa-Ming. We're all here for you if you need a shoulder to cry on or a buddy to have a glass of scotch or bourbon with.
 
Thank you Papa-Ming and Lockheed for reminding me of how precious our loved ones are. Time to go hold some hands.
 
In a way, what I am about to say may seem cold, but I would do nearly anything to have had the time to say good bye to my dad. He went to work one Saturday and didn't come back. There are two good things to come of this, my mom started a non-profit org. for grieving families with children, and the company who was responsible for my dad's death- a settlement out of them paying for my sisters and my college education. The guy who owned this business, last my mom knew, was a drunk pumping gas. While it was a tramautic thing, I am fine talking about it now, maybe it even feels good in a way as it is kind of taboo in real life.
 
Papa-Ming, you're in my thoughts.

In a bizarre parallel, my 60-something mother just returned home from her three days in hospital about two hours ago. What seemed like a coronary event turned out to be the worst case of esophageal scarring the doctors have seen in years. It's an apparent side effect of Sjogren's Syndrome, which has made her life miserable over the last few years, but she's still getting by..

Hang in there. The Red Sox can pull it off, Mom has a shot as well.
 
Lockheed- said:
In a way, what I am about to say may seem cold, but I would do nearly anything to have had the time to say good bye to my dad. He went to work one Saturday and didn't come back. There are two good things to come of this, my mom started a non-profit org. for grieving families with children, and the company who was responsible for my dad's death- a settlement out of them paying for my sisters and my college education. The guy who owned this business, last my mom knew, was a drunk pumping gas. While it was a tramautic thing, I am fine talking about it now, maybe it even feels good in a way as it is kind of taboo in real life.
Click to expand...


Nothing you said there was cold. Not at all brother.

On another point...

Say Lockheed- have you found that a weird sense of humor helps? I hope so, if you "hopefully" become a steady poster on this forum. [ But humor is certainly not required, so don't have a sense of humor, if you don't feel like it. If you're not ready. Just be yourself. :) ]

But for instance, do you sing? Another benefit of posting things on the web that make folks in real life uncomfortable, is singing. Yeah, cause they can't hear how really bad we might be.

Myself, I mangle other people's lyrics and use them. No doubt to the puzzlement of members here, but damn it's just fun!

Sing if you feel like it. Sad or happy, it's up to you.

But keep expressing yourself. It's why words were "created". Easier on the web........probably.

Ok Lockheed, what do you say, do you have a verse from song ,or book ,or poem, that has meaning to you: put it up. Share.

I'm just asking respectfully. Any Irish in your family BTW? :D

Best,

Papa-Ming.
 
Quite often it’s only our sense of humor that gets us through day-to-day life. It’s sort of like a built in safety valve so to speak. No sense of humor (taking life too seriously) has been linked to all sorts of illness and other problem.

Better to be a bit weird then not in my opinion. I just plain feels good to know you made someone smile or laugh just as we feel better when we are made to smile or laugh.

A cow is of the bovine ilk
One end is moo
The other milk

“Ogdan Nash”.

First poem I was “forced” to learn, and it made me laugh. Hope it at least makes someone smile :D
 
Irish... I think there may be some :D

I don't sing, mostly for the sake of my family and friends so that they don't go deaf. What I meant by cold, is that I am in a way wishing that my dad died of cancer or some other long term illness so that I could have had that chance to know when he was going to pass, so that I could have had that chance to say good bye. And like I think I said in my first post, I have been closet folding since around June, and lurking longer than that.
 
My Mum's parents (never considered my grandparents as they died long before I was born) died in different ways, her dad suddenly and her mum took a long time due to cancer. She always felt that her mums death was worse for all of them.

I suppose it was similar with my real grandparents as my grandad died in absolute style; a whisky and off to bed to die in his sleep which rather annoyed my nan, a hypochondriac, as she was the one that was really ill. If you believed her she had something terminal the minute she appeared from the womb, what fools we were for not believing her as she proved us all wrong by expiring in her 84th year.She made us suffer with her "ailments" for a long time!

BillR, I dont know about songs but I wish I'd been taught Roald Dahls Ruthless Rhymes instead of those soppy nursery rhymes as a kid. How much more prepared for life I would have been instead of being cosseted by all that mush.

I've often heard people who think that there is something wrong with them for not being able to remember the faces of their dead parents and they feel that it is dishonourable, don't, there is a reason for this; throughout your life their faces are changing. When you was a kid they seemed younger and Mums face smoother, then as they got older their faces crinkled, their hair greyed or vanished. You can remember your house as a kid as it didnt change but which face should you remember of your father or mother? I dont see my parents regularly so each time I see them they appear slightly differnet but whenever I think of them I remember the love I feel for them rather than any physical feature, that's how I'll remember them once they are dead. Remember their soul, not the shell that their soul existed in whilst it was with you.

I may seem harsh but I became slightly inured to death working around the business in which there is a saying:
Funerals are for the living, not the dead
- funerals are a part of the grieving process for the living left behind, the dead don't care anymore because hopefully they are in a better place (wherever that is depends on your religion or lack thereof).
 
Well since I started telling this:

Mom is going to be released from the hospital because there's nothing more to be done.

They give her maybe through the Holidays, so she wants to go home to Newport and see the ocean there again. Along with her great grand, grand kids, etc.

She wants to die in New England where she was born, where her parents came over to from Ireland. I can relate to that. It's all good.

So we are packing her stuff-up and making arrangements to hopefully get her moved back by Thanksgiving.

If I could have one thing, it would be that she made it through Christmas in Newport with all the family. She loved that Holiday more then anything.
There's some 22 totes of her Christmas decorations here alone! LOL. And that will of course, be moved up too.

To give you an idea, when Dean Martin died on Christmas Day, my mother was inconsoleable! A wreck!

But music was a big part of growing-up with Mom. She used to clean the house with
music blasting! In her day, it was, Nat King Cole, Mel Torme, Ella Fiztgerald, Duke Elligton, etc.
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, the Rat Pack ya know...it was the 50's folks. LOL!

So at Christmas, It was Dino singing; " It's a Marshmallow World" , or , " I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm" and " Baby it's Cold Outside".
Or Nat King Cole doing " Chestnuts Roasting". (That song was new then!) Or Johnny Mathis, " Winter Wonderland".
And Nancy Wilson, "The Christmas Waltz". and whatever Christmas albums , "on vinyl", the biggies from those days produced. We had 'em all!
But she didn't like old carols very much. LOL

She also began to like Brian Setzer and Boogie Oogie Santa Clause; and " So They Say It's Christmas" that Brian did with Lou Rawls.
And Harry Connick Jr. " Sleigh Ride", and well... anything of his!

Oh damn, I forgot her favorite: from "White Christmas", Danny Kaye " : "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing."

So when Dean Martin died on Christmas Day, there was mouring in our family folks!

So yeah, if Mom could enjoy her music idols from her youth singing those Christmas
songs from the old albums; and the 92 foot "real" tree she insisted "would" fit in the living room.....

Yeah, that would be a beautiful thing. And it would be OK after that.

So we're packing and I'm listening to Christmas music I'm burning for her... the old vinyl's are long gone. So I'm making some CD's today, lot's of Harry Connick Jr. and dear ole Dino, and packing.

Folks talking about Christmas on the forum today, funny.

But once again, it's just around the corner! It's alright.



:D
 
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