end of life

Funerals

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These events are for the living. The usefulness to the living is a final farewell. The tradition helps the living cope with the fact that they too will eventually succumb. (Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we are here and then we are not.) Nice music and often monotonic recitation of traditional prayer provides solace.

This particular funeral service was held for my sister-in-law. Three of us brothers-in-law are widowers now. Is this a trend? I hope not. I chose to sit near the back of the church to avoid sitting with the grieving immediate family and to be alone with my own thoughts. Cheryl is still fresh in my mind.

As the homilist was speaking I heard the first allusion to purgatory in a Roman Catholic sermon that I have heard without using the word for a very long time. (It could be that I did not listen to funeral sermons carefully before this one.) I was interested by the implication that the person might not be in heaven. But me being me I was not alarmed, I went off to the Wait wait What? to read current doctrine of the Roman Catholic church. Every thought, idea, law and religious doctrine exists on the WWW somewhere and it exists for any religious philosophy.

There is a YouTube video for the reading challenged at www.catholic.com that tells all. Reserve an hour or so if you are interested. I have got to admit that the current view of purgatory is much different than what I got from reading the catechism and listening to the Sisters of Mercy seventy years ago.

I have misunderstood the difference of “praying for” and “praying to” for many years. Today I read this: “… prayers for the dead: “In doing this (offering a sacrifice) he (Judas Maccabee) acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the dead to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin” (2 Macc. 12:43–45). Prayers are not needed by those in heaven, and no one can help those in hell…”

There is an in-between state (Limbo of the Fathers, Purgatory, Sanctification) and those souls we pray for. Souls in heaven do not need prayer. They are there. They are sanctified. They are prayed to. Souls in hell (damnation) are lost and cannot be helped. That is sad. The distinction was lost on me when I was six years old and I was not interested enough to ask. Catholic philosophy is laden with guilt and I did not seek out more of it by asking the nun to compare and contrast for and to.

As for me, I prefer to sit near the back of any church. It is a fine old Catholic tradition that if you get in early you can sit in the back. Cheryl liked to sit midway up and to the left side. After her death I sit near the rear and to the right. I can look at the other side of her. I see her often in church, any church, when I am there.

Family is mostly what I thought about during her funeral after I made a mental note to educate myself about the concept of purgatory. Two of my children sat with me. We did not stay for the reception in the church hall afterward. Cheryl’s death is too fresh for all of us.

Cheryl… when she died I was sad and happy… She was better at religion than I was and am now. I think women are better at religion. It is odd, I think, that men are in charge of them, all of them. I was sad that she was gone from my life and I felt that here in church at Teri’s funeral.

Cheryl came to me in an early morning dream a few months ago. It is incredibly vivid in my memory, as though I had lived though it. In the dream there was a special service in our church – Nativity. For some unclear reason we had to bring our own chairs to the service – a mass as I remember it. At the end of the service she hoped up and announced to me that she had to go. I can hear her, “I have to go!” I thought she meant to the lady’s room. She was in the midst of her Parkinson’s and with that her memory and spacial issues. She could not always find her way around. In this instance she was moving with ease towards the lavatory door which was around the corner and out of my sight as she moved through the crowd of folks leaving the service. I waited anxiously near our chairs gathering our stuff up to leave. I looked in her direction often to be sure she would make her way back. She often was unsure of where she was, so, I was worried. She was gone a long time and as I began to move towards the lady’s room a young man came up to me and asked if he could help with the chairs. He explained that Cheryl was gone.(He said, “She’s not coming back. She’ll be okay.) It is a very vivid memory/dream and I cry whenever I recall it. She is in heaven. This is what I take her last visit to me in this dream to mean.

I am happy for her because she was no longer suffering from Parkinson’s scourge that took her from this life and my life. I am happy that I can pray to her.

Carpe Diem

Baking and Memories

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This is the time of the year when I pay more attention to baking and making breads and pasties and pie. It is a winter time past time and it makes my little condo smell divine for a day or two. Lately I have been focused on a pecan pie recipe that I received from my daughter-in-law who is an excellent pie maker and shares my love of sweets.

I started this morning by tweaking my stash of recipes with the Karo syrup pecan pie recipe that I copied off of the world wide wait (that’s an old term – these days it is the Wha Wait What?). When I saved it to the correct folder on this laptop I found the following piece I wrote a while ago. It is a good memory of mine.

As I re-read the yellow bag story, I could hear Cheryl. At first, after she died, I was anxious that I would lose the ability to hear her voice. He works in mysterious ways. Gladly He helps me to hear her voice. (Sometimes, of course, being male, I do not want to hear it.) … on to the cookie story.

She’s Done it to Me

A couple years ago, when Cheryl was struggling physically more with Parkinson and her struggle with the dementia aspects of it was taking away her ability to follow simple directions, she coerced (maybe too strong of a word) me into helping her make cookies. I did not want to at the time.

Once or twice these were Snickerdoodles. And a couple other times we made chocolate chip cookies, the recipe is on the two pound bag of Nestle’s morsels. “You have to get the yellow bag!” she said to me once when I when I returned from the store by myself in the midst of the COVID pandemonium and price-shopped for supplies. “Those won’t work.” I was disheartened. I had purchased the store brand of chocolate chips. I argued my case for twenty-two milliseconds before realizing that there was no point in contesting the issue further. I returned to the store for the correct chips (“Morsels! It will say morsels on the bag. The bag is yellow.” She spoke to my back as I left.)

I can hear her voice. Little stories like this help me to recall her voice.

Yesterday, because I could avoid it no longer, I went to the grocery to restore my larder to its previous vigor. At the beginning my list had only two things, dried cranberries and raisins. Both of these I add to overnight oats which has become a new favorite breakfast treat. I have a pint Ball jar that is just the right size to contain a half cup of rolled oats, a cup of milk and whatever else I put in with those usually raisins or craisins some honey and chia seeds to set in the fridge overnight. I have also added at times cocoa powder, cinnamon, cardamon, vanilla or tahinni and used brown sugar instead of honey. This mixture goes well with my assembly of the coffee in the evening as well as drinking the coffee in the morning.

While putting all away I discovered that the bag of dried cranberries that I purchased would not fit into my quart jar I use to save dried fruit. Alas, some remained in the Ziploc bag that only zips most of the time. I left them on the counter to become a healthy evening snack near the apples and bananas.

After preparing some lunch I hunted for some sweetness to satisfy my heritage and hit upon spreading the Nutella look-alike I purchased at Aldi sometime in the past on a saltine cracker and sprinkling cranberries on top. That tuned out pretty good. (If you are not a believer, try it.) I realized that I was inventing a variety of cookie – biscuit or digestive to the Brits out there – and heard Cheryl say, “You could try making a chocolate cookie with stuff in it.” I blame Cheryl when I hear these inventive thoughts about cooking. She was not very inventive with ingredients but very inventive with technique.

I launched myself into search for a basic chocolate cookie that I could modify with extra ingredients. Below is the final product:

  • 2 C. all purpose flour
  • 2/3 C. powdered cocoa
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • ¼ tsp. salt
  • 1 ½ C. white sugar
  • 1 C. unsalted butter
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1 C. chocolate morsels (in the yellow bag)
  • 1 C. dried cranberries
  • ½ C. smashed walnuts (crushed in the bag but I smash them further)

I creamed the butter, eggs, vanilla and sugar for a bit. Whisked the flour, salt, soda and cocoa together in a separate bowl dry and then dumped them into my mixer. (I bought a new mixer.) After a bit of mixing I tried out my folding paddle and dumped in the rest of the ingredients.

Bake in a 350F (177C) – medium oven 8 to 10 minutes. This lump of cookie dough makes about 4 dozen if you use a teaspoon from your table wear set to scoop and spoon some on to an UNgreased cookie sheet like I did.

After 8 minutes on the timer, I rotated the cookie sheets in the oven and added 4 minutes to the time. This worked for me because I dislike (maybe hate) chewy soft cookies. There is something special about just the right crunch that makes me smile.

Cheryl! You turned me into a cookie recipe experimenter. It is all your fault. (Dammit.) I love you and you are right. These are good. The tricky part will be spreading them out in my eating habits. I have eaten three while writing this story. They go well with coffee.

I wonder which wine pairs well. Pinot Noir? Chardonnay?

A conundrum.

Carpe Diem.

I will miss her always. I promise to only buy chocolate chips in the yellow bag that say morsels on the bag. Yes, Dear. I love you and miss you on holidays like this. Be safe and well in heaven. (Yep, I teared up when I wrote this.)

Carpe the baking Diem

Sudden Return

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When death occurs we who are still here, alive, often think; wow I was just talking to him.

She seemed so vibrant, what happened?

Anything out of our ordinary begs the question, what happened? Why?

An actual why is informative yet unimportant

A sudden return to the Creator’s arms is unsettling

Rest in peace, Dr. Karen.

You helped me with insight I would not have had without your presence.

I am glad to have known you.

Questions for God and other Thoughts

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The Grief Share topic for this meeting was “Questions for God.” For me I was grateful that the universe accepted Cheryl back into its keeping. I am sad, of course, for the loss of her companionship and love but there is no value to complaining to God and cursing the existence of the universe. It just is. It (or He) has no grievance with our existence. Why should we wonder why? That concern uses a lot of time but adds nothing.

The video makes early reference to the Book of Job (which I have always heard as joeh-B long O). This sent my mind off into the task of reading the Bible and its stories. In the Book of Job, the first of the poetic books, in my New American Bible is spelled j-o-b and Job did a good job at the beginning of the story and at the end of the story. In the middle he did not waste any breath on cursing the universe that he knew as God for all the unfortunateness that happened to him. Shit happens. He said, “When one door closes, another, maybe better one opens.” I paraphrased. Because he had that attitude, God chased away Satan and did not smote his asses any longer.

God even accepted Job’s praise and forgiveness of his drinking buddies Bildad, Eliphaz and Zophar after they told Job, of course God crapped on you. You crapped on us. It is good to have friends to explain alternative truths and help you to think about things. In the 28th verse, Job talks about how it is easy to dig ore and smelt metal and grow crops but getting wisdom is a bitch. It takes time and patience and then one still does not attain wisdom (smarts about life.) It is like reading Michael Lewis talk about markets and baseball.

I think I get a different take on stories I read in the Bible. (… Kish said to Saul, “Take a servant with you and go out to find your asses…”) Find an older copy of The New American Bible – 1 Samuel 9:3

Mom would have said, “Pull up your socks!” about Job’s predicament but she did not write any books for the Bible. It took me much of my life before I understood what she meant by this phrase. My interpretation of her thought is, you can pray about it but you have to help. Job says much the same thing, albeit, with a lot more words. In Job 40:7 “ Gird up your loins, like a man. I will question you and your will give me answers!” These days we would say, “Get your shit together, Dude! Grow a pair!”

Job lived to be 140. Mom lived to be 95. Both were intelligent loved people.

Sorry, I have wandered off the beam – the video makes early reference to the Book of Job but the discussion is the questions that many ask after death, Why? Is my faith shattered? Is there an afterward? An afterlife? Is there a reincarnation? The Bible tells all. It also has a lot of great war stories and poetry.

I do not wonder why Cheryl died. She was very ill for a long time. If anything I wonder how she hung on for so long. I do not wonder why she became ill. Many people become ill and eventually die. Everyone dies eventually. I personally just hope it won’t hurt much.

I hope our spirits will connect again somehow.

Do I miss her? Absolutely everyday, I miss her. These days, I have a new person in my life to aim my love at. She is off vacationing with her kids and grand kids. I miss her also.

We are destined to miss those who touch us and connect with us in life. It is a source of heartache, home-sickness and bereftness. We miss those to whom we have a strong connection. It is love with no place to go.

Carpe Diem.

The Last Service to Her

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I finished filing our income tax stuff today.  I had put it off for a long time. I knew I (we) would owe this year. She helped me by keeping her Met Life stock in an account I had forgotten about. It was enough to cover what we owed.

Curiously as I was finishing up the state return it (Turbo Tax) asked for her state ID number. I found her purse in the drawer it’s been in for a year and fished out her ID. I suddenly realized that I was not going to need this information any longer. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the thought that this is the last thing that I needed to do for her. This is the last time we file jointly. I became suddenly sad and I am still a little as I write this. It is a grief ambush. They pop up every now and then.

Part of that sadness came when I had to fill in the date of issuance and the date of renewal. Cheryl did not make it to her birthday last year. This nuance reminded me of a conversation I had with her youngest brother a week or two before her death. I cried at both of these thoughts.

I pushed send in the Turbo Tax website and got in the car to go visit Cheryl and report that the taxes are complete. Next year I will not file jointly. It is the last thing that I will do for her and that fact makes me a little sad today.

This has been a year for lasts. This has been a year for firsts.

It is the first year of my life without Cheryl. Sometimes that hits me hard. I am a work in progress.

Carpe Diem.

Winter Is Coming

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“Winter is coming!, is a line repeated often in the Game of Thrones series. In the middle west, here in southwest Ohio, many are highly focused on the weather. It is the only reason I turn on the TV news. The weather guys and gals have the same message, precipitation of some sort is coming. Saying that out loud though is undramatic. “Pink!”, John Gumm (the gummer) says to the side of the camera while he points and gestures and gives a short lecture on various weather models.

Donald Trump tried it years ago while talking about hurricane tracks. He was not nearly as effective as John. John is good at it. Other weather folks merely report that we’re all gonna die. John is able to explain with confidence the amount of death that will be achieved and how you will perceive your own death while you are dying.

Right now at 4PM the sun is shining. It is cold outside so any of the singing birds are shivering while they sing. The smart ones have left for Florida. Tomorrow at 10:06AM, death will come.

“Winter is coming!”, screamed the knight staffing the wall. He then politely bowed his head as the king cut it off. The king remarked to his sons that he had brought with him, “If you sentence someone to beheading, you should be the one to do it.” Is there honor in there somewhere? It is a gruesome series.

Keep up the good work , John. It is going to snow here maybe. It will be inconvenient for a few hours. The internet might die if a tree falls on the wires outside.

Perhaps I will read a book.

Carpe winter day Diem.

Wordle and Remembrance

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Knowing They Can Fix Me

The gentleman said as a response to an unknown question in an advertisement about a medical institution. I was watching the morning newsy program(s) and thinking about the day. It is a concept that many, myself included, wish for. The hope is that a higher power, a greatness, a consciousness greater than one’s own will take care any difficulty and fix it whatever it is. Is that realistic? What about self reliance? All of this became too hard to think about, so, I awakened the New York Times Wordle game page and did it for a minute or two of distraction.

I inadvertently touched the archive button which I had paid no attention to previously. I found that it would let me go back and work on incomplete games. (down the rabbit hole I went) November of last year was when Cheryl moved to Bridgeway Pointe in the memory care section. There were a half dozen incomplete puzzles. I kept going backward in time working puzzles and thinking about what was happening in our life.

I got to my birthday in August of last year (2023). I did not finish the puzzle that day. I cannot recall anything about what went on that day. Perhaps it was merely another day filled with Parkinson. That goes without saying. The beauty of a journal or a blog is that often I have noted what happened on a certain day in the past. From my blog/journal:

—

That day I wrote about our day. Cheryl was struggling.

—

I am not surprised that I cannot remember my birthday last year. The event itself was unimportant to the task of keeping up with her Parkinson and her dementia. Perhaps one day an oncology style doctor will emerge to straddle the care complexities of PD, dementia and dying which no doctor seems to be able admit is the prognosis for this damnable combination of symptoms and inabilities. The phrase – no one dies from PD, usually you die with it – is very much a distinction without a difference. In fact it might peg the meter on my bullshit detector.

Perhaps next year I can recall what I did this year for my birthday and smile instead of cry.

Carpe Diem.

If Only

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If Only

There is no percentage in “if only”. None. Although many of us spend considerable time with if-only style thoughts. If only I had completed (insert item here) I would be (insert perceived superlative or horror here). If only I had asked (him, her, them) about the consequences of (this, that , those) we would be (better, worse, still wondering). One can go anywhere with a good if only.

There is no percentage in it. Nothing is gained by speculative thought and other attempts to predict present out comes from “if only I had”. Additionally there is no real risk except perhaps diminishing self worth. God (or whatever one’s concept of God is) as the eternal knows the future and needs no predictors. Past, present and future is the same to the eternal.

Fuzzy philosophy there but what-iffing your past actions does not help today’s actions.

Grief Share talks about this in long winded generality. The “if only” that I deal with often when it jumps into my head is why could I not see that she was moments from leaving this existence when I kissed her good night the evening before she died.

This is my “if only”. What would be different today if I had sat up with her as she took her last breath? I will never know.

If Only.

On that sad thought – Carpe Diem.

Connections

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I really enjoy playing this game from the New York Times. It gets me to think beyond what I perceive.

One of the words today was “shiva”. To me in my environment in my meager knowledge of the world, other cultures, other traditions, “shiva” says mourning and is part of Jewish faith tradition. I am also a poor speller. That shiva is spelled with a h on the end. It can also be something that one does in a cold late Autumn drizzle while waiting for the bus if you are located in the part of New England where the r is often dropped at the end of the word. These two thoughts in combination led me to type shiva into Google’s AI driven (assisted?) interface.

The Hindu god of destruction appeared with a picture. All became clear. Before I returned to the NYT Games page to search for the rest of the connections to shiva, I spent some comfortable blissful time reading about Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. (Creator, Preserver, Destroyer) I play this game every morning but I do not always finish it because I become impatient with myself and the search for the connections. Patience is a virtue that has to be practiced often even in small ways to become comfortable. And I am not a keen observer of pop culture. Some connections are those kind.

All of this came while I am baking another new recipe and became distracted with thinking that Carl Sagan had written a book called Connections but his book is actually entitled, “Cosmos Connections”. I used to have it somewhere. His show from the 1980s is called simply Cosmos. Astronomy, planets and stars and night time sky phenomena also fascinate me. Oops I have fallen down another rabbit hole but it has led me to thinking about Cheryl. Or maybe the smell of baking has caused me to think about her.

Cheryl at the very end of her life became enamored with the moon and its phases. A couple times sitting with her in the evening in front of our home watching the moon and airplanes and the international space station go by, I saw the wonder in her eyes and voice as she marveled at the bigness of it all and the smallness of us. These little snippets of lucidity appeared at random. I think she was sensing something that I could not.

I miss that and I miss her. I am glad that our connection is so strong. I am glad that she leaves me little messages around when I hunt for things.

Carpe Diem… (I’m sure you can smell it. Banana Nut bread)

Astral Planes?

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I have been reading a lot about death lately. Looking for something else in my little office, I rediscovered a book by Robert Fulghum entitled From Beginning to End, the rituals of our lives. It seemed to fit with my overall end-of-life curiosity and reading I have pursued of late so I placed it on the table near where I often sit to read in the evening. I have not re-read it yet. I have many of his books. I may re-read all of them eventually.

I did not think much about death before these past few months. I am driven in this direction because Cheryl is gone. When she was alive either with me or comfortable in the memory care section of Bridgeway Pointe, I searched for information about her condition, how to help, how to react, how to, what if, generally I was hunting for the manual. I became very observant while she stayed at BP. The other day I looked back through my journal. I read this entry: “Thursday, April 18, 2024: (after several notes) – I think today I see that Cheryl is close to death. Her eyes are receding into their sockets. Often her right eye does not open. Her voice is almost gone. – (list of vital signs)” Reading this several months later brought me to the realization that I anticipated her death many days before it occurred. This notation was 3 days before.

Jodi Picoult in her novel The Book of Two Ways which is about an egyptologist turned end-of-life doula, the main character in her role as doula helps the dying to transition. She also helps the caregiver(s) after the death. Being an end-of-life doula is a real occupation. Had I known there existed people who did this sort of work I would have tracked one down to help me and Cheryl (but mostly me.) In the characters role as egyptologist she delves into ancient Egypt, their gods, belief structures and spells and rituals. In 1500 BCE these guys were concerned with the resurrection of the spiritual body and the immortality the soul. The rituals of helping the soul to transition into the after-world are captivating to me. I still hunt for the manual.

I want to know what is next. I write that thought with the realization that I cannot know what is next. Even so, right now, it is a strong desire. I found a book called “Life after Death”. My first thought was “Aha! There is a manual!”

Deepak Chopra in his book Life after Death writes, “Soul bonds occur on the astral plane just as they occur in the physical world. Relationships in the astral plane mean that you are vibrating in concert with someone else’s soul and therefore feel a heightened sense of love, unity and bliss. … When the disembodied soul tunes in to the frequency of a loved one back on the physical plane, that person may feel the presence of the departed…” I sure hope that is what is going on when I feel Cheryl near me.

I long to hear, strain to hear her voice. She knows what is after this physical life. It is very hard to hear what she is saying to me from that higher plane.

I have so many more questions. I could not ask Cheryl about what is next. I think she knew but was unable to tell me what she knew. It was not until after she left this plane of existence that I realized I still had questions. She gave me little hints. I did not recognize those for what they were. Many months before she left, she spoke to me about not being here for her next hair appointment. Her timing was off a little but I remember at the time thinking, you are wrong dear. Most smart men know that their wife is rarely wrong.

“… I went in seeking clarity

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
We go to the doctor, we go to the mountains
We look to the children, we drink from the fountain
Yeah, we go to the Bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival, we stand up for the lookout

There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
(The less I seek my source)
Closer I am to fine …

Songwriters: Emily Ann Saliers / Amy Elizabeth Ray

Carpe Diem