Forks

Planning for the holidays in a hospice setting is not fun.  There's not a lot of joy to the world, and we see the silent night approaching.  It's an everyday schedule we have: nibbling at very small meals, struggling to get down too many pills, watching the birds when they come, and the television from sun up to sun down. Day after day.

The schedule only changes to take a step down, like finding a new problem.  Mom's skin on her right arm has somehow peeled off to the extent that even putting a bandage on it is dangerous, because peeling off baby-soft gauze takes with it another layer of skin.  Her left arm and her face are swollen at various stages through the day. Her breathing is shallow and labored, and she when she feels the need to cough, the cough lasts for hours and hours, unproductive due to her lack of energy.

It would be easy to sink into a inconsolable state, watching this decline.  And we all get there at one point or another.  Some of us get mad at little, and very big, things.  Things where we believe everyone should know better than to _____ (whatever) - but everyone isn't us.  Some of us are caught unaware by a beautiful Christmas hymn, and then can't breathe the sadness is so deep.  So we sob, hiding in the Wesley Sunday School class until an angel named Nadine comes in, looking for her coat, and ends up holding us until the shudders die away and we're left an empty shell. With yet another day ahead of being a parent to children who deserve a better parent, and a parent to a parent who doesn't deserve any of this horrible disease.  

We could do that.  Or, we could clean out the dishwasher, and talk through a routine task, and learn this:

You know, we have had that fork for a really long time.  It's the first flatwear pattern I remember us having.  

Oh, it's not the first. We have some left from when we first got married.  It's in here somewhere (digging), yep here it is!  I wonder where all the rest went.

Probably in lunchboxes over the last 49 years. Sprinkled in school cafeterias coast to coast. 

Yeah probably. 

That pattern, that's what we bought in 1969 at  Nellis Air Force Base. You don't even remember that.  

Of course I do.  Not buying the silverware, but I remember not being allowed to touch slot machines in the grocery store. 

That spoon - the grapefruit spoon?  It's from Grandma Worrell (dad's mother). 

No, it's not, but she had grapefruit spoons in her drawer too.

And, she did love to eat grapefruit. 

That set?  That's what I bought from the Pottery Barn in Williamsburg, Virginia, before I moved to Turkey.  

No dad, it's not the Pottery Barn. It's just "The Williamsburg Pottery" and there's a big difference.  :)

After that set, we got this new set that your mother really liked.  It's a good thing we have all these forks because we sure do use a lot of them.  

If I had remembered to turn the dishwasher on the past 3 days, we'd have plenty of clean forks instead of a load of dirty ones.

You know your mother's silver set?  She saved her money from when she was a school bus driver in high school to buy that silver.
(I don't think I ever knew that.)

I am thankful for dishwashers and too many forks.  For the many wine glasses I've broken over the past several months, for the meals shared, and for the tears shed with my dad.  For the friends that reach out, for the Christmas cards that are coming in and bringing memories and bits of smiles to Dad's face.   For my angel Nadine who helped me breathe.

For another day.