My mother asked me today, “What do we do now?”. I replied, “Get on with living life.” I can certainly understand her question. It was three weeks ago today that dad passed away. On one hand I cannot believe it has been that long and yet on the other, it seems like it was just yesterday. So now that he is back home and the memorial is over, the days seem empty. Void of some sort of purpose that we had over the past couple months. It is also unfortunate that the focus now shifts to mom and her health. So the important thing now is that mom keeps busy, not overworked or doing meaningless things. Rather, she needs to fill her days living the best she can. That means accomplishing things that she would still like to do. Making plans and doing what is necessary to keep those plans.
Now I should point out that there is still ‘cleanup’ work left to do from dad’s passing. Today we went to the banks, contacted the life insurance company, made a stop at AAA to remove dad from the insurance policies and got the ball rolling on the retirement account changes. We also discussed with the bank what we need to do to set up a power of attorney so that if something happens to mom and she is unable to access the account herself, I will be able to make sure the bills are paid. There are several of those low hanging fruit items that need to be addressed. In time we will get all of those things taken care of and some of them, like the auto titles, cannot be acted on until a certain amount of time has passed. Strangely enough, you cannot change title on the vehicles for 40 days after a person has died. Who knew?
We did make a little time in the day to stop by a taco shop and get the crunchy taco that mom was craving. Although she complained all morning about her tummy being full from breakfast, she managed to find a place to fit in that taco 🙂 She also had a hankering for ice cream. Sometimes I wonder if that is a tumor or if she is pregnant. We had a nice time sitting on the little patio, enjoying the sunshine and munching on fine Mexican cuisine. We talked a little bit about getting a number of things accomplished today and what items on the list we should tackle next and when. This evening when she was asking what we do now, I named off a number of things that we can and should do. She would like to get to the Wild Animal Park.. oops I mean the San Diego Zoo’s Safari Park (stupid name change). We need to get up to Julian and visit the little bird shop that have there to get thistle seed for the goldfinch and of course have a piece of pie while we are there! Mom wants to get up to Rose Hills Cemetery to visit her mother, father and sister’s grave sites. Then of course there is executing the plan she made with Peg, Larry and Diana to meet up in Laughlin for a fun little getaway. We are both looking forward to getting back to the gym when they reopen in a week and 2 days from now. So there are plenty of things that can be done to keep her busy and enjoying life. I will do my very best to make sure those things happen as it is going to very important for her physically and mentally to stay active.
The end of this week will mark four months since mom’s diagnosis. Although we don’t know her actual shelf life, we do know that time is running out. I am very thankful that she had made it this far and that it appears she still has quite a bit of time left in her judging by how she is doing these days. We all hope for a miracle and that she would continue to live for years, but realistically that does not seem likely. Her weight loss is the current topic of concern. You can lose only so much weight before there is no more left to lose. If this weight loss doesn’t even out soon then I don’t know what will happen. It certainly isn’t for a lack of eating. Today she had oatmeal for breakfast, a light lunch and soup for dinner with Boost added in for bonus nutrition. Fortunately she has an appetite, but is limited on the room she has available to stuff food into. Hopefully she can get into the habit of ‘grazing all day’, as the oncologist put it. There is one pesky little hurdle to weight loss that makes eating difficult. Dentures apparently don’t fit the same when you lose a lot of weight, so mom needs to get them re-fitted. Unfortunately she sees that as a waste of money, but just like her eye glasses (her prescription has changed with all this as well), it is better to spend the money needed to correct these things and have a better quality of life than to be miserable.
Well I think that sums up the day. We shall see what fun stuff tomorrow brings!