Not Booooooring!

Today's high temperature was: 83 degrees

Today's humidity was: 69%

Tonight's temperature is 77 with humidity of 97%!!

Humid--way too humid--torrential rain tonight.

Too much thunder--ear plugs in!!!

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So--I am back because today was not boring.  It could have been a bit boring, which would have been good, because it turned out to be way to hectic!  Why can't life just be calm and smooth every day with just enough interest to keep us awake and not so much to cause us stress?

I have been on the new med for 3 days.  I take it at night and I do sleep well--too well--but, when I wake up in the morning I am groggy.  My head and face feels like they are sort of mis-shaped--kind of like---

Eyes sort of crossed--like I am sort of crooked?  Anyway--I am not to stable--dizzy and not good balance for a couple of hours.

I heard a car honking outside my house, so I staggered to the door, thankfully I was dressed, and there was Pearl.

"Merle is in the emergency ward.  Come with me!"

""I gotta go potty--I will be right there."

So I ran in the bathroom and she kept honking the car horn, and I grabbed my purse, car horn honking, and ran out the door.

"Will you hurry up!"  she yelled.

So I jumped into her car and off she went--cut across the corner of my neighbor's lawn and narrowly missed the next neighbor's mail box--she was driving as usual.  She got out on the road in front and immediately got into the LEFT TURN LANE--because in, oh let's say, 1.5 miles she was going to have to turn left into the hospital parking lot.  Down the road we fly--I am hanging onto the door handle---

"Hanging on for dear life, are ya?"

"No--it's just that my door isn't shut and I didn't want to fall out."

Into the driveway she whizzes--unfortunately, it is to the office buildings that house the doctors and about 500 feet from the hospital driveway.  She curses, and then meanders around the offices until she finds a back way into the hospital emergency room parking area.

We rush in--I have never seen her walk that fast in her life!!!  We get back to the room Merle is in--laying there all comfortable in bed, watching "Amish Mafia" and Pearl rushes up to him and says, "You don't do this to me, Merle!  I have told you and God--I am going first!  Don't you dare die on me!!"

Okay--not quite the way I would greet someone who may be having a heart attack, but.....

"I'm still here," he says.

I walk in behind her and he smiles--I walk over and take his hand and look at him.  "You look pretty good to me.  Your color is great."

Then I look up at the monitor--"I can tell you one thing Mister--you are not having a heart attack!!  Your oxygen saturation is 100 percent.  Your respiration is 18 and your heart rate is 62 beats per minutes."

I think that made them both feel better because they know that I am the ALL POWERFUL OZ when it comes to reading heart monitors and knowing what goes on with a heart patient.  LOL.

He was having tachycardia--arterial fibrillation--rapid heart beat.  Long story short--he has been having these episodes for about six months.  When he went for his annual check-up last month, he didn't bother to tell the doctor because he felt fine "at the time."  When he had it today, he decided to drive to hospital so they could check it out while it was happening.  There was no enzyme in his blood work to point to a heart attack HOWEVER--it did show that he might have a blood clot in his lung.  Off he went for a CAT scan of his lungs---Echo cardiogram of his heart.

He was hungry and I told him, "You can't eat while they are doing the tests."

When the doc came in, Pearl demanded they get him something to eat.  The doctor said, "You can't eat while we are doing the tests."  Pearl was pissed.

Then, I reminded them of the day last February, when he got up in the morning and got half way down the hallway and dropped to his knees because his heart was beating rapidly and he couldn't breathe.  Neither one of them remembered--SAY WHAT???  So, now I have to look it up in my written journal so I can get the date, because, the doc wants to know when this all started.

When Pearl heard him say he'd been having these episodes for quite a while, she slapped him on his arm--really hard.  "Why didn't you tell me?"  Then she looked at me, "Why wouldn't he tell me?  Damn men--all alike.  Would rather fall over dead then share that kind of news with their wife!!"

So--they went back and forth a bit--I never knew how they relate to each other, but I got a good glimpse today...still chuckling about it.

They decided to transport him to a "real" hospital.  I was so hoping he'd go to the main one in Ann Arbor, where Fred always went, but he decided to go to the branch hospital  up in Howell--where the title, "The hospital where you come to die," is commonly said all over this area.

So--by now it is 2:30 and I offered to drive his truck home.

"Can you drive a stick shift?" asks Merle.

"Of course I can.  Remember me--the farm girl?  I drove the trucks all the time!"

So out I go--the keys to the UNLOCKED truck are laying on THE FRONT SEAT.  I get in and remember, sure I know how to drive a stick shift--I think I remember how to drive a stick shift--it has been thirty years since I drove a stick shift.

Do I push in the clutch and the brake when I start it?  Had to think and go through some of the motions.  Okay--first is up and left, second is left and down, third up and right, fourth down and right.  Got it!  Now--where is reverse?      I got it home and never lurched, so---I CAN drive a stick shift!!

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The phone was ringing when I walked in the door.  My sister.  "It rained over night.  The ground is easier to dig.  Do you want to bury Fred today?"

"Sure."  (I guess.  Not really.  But--okay.)

"We have to run into town.  Meet us at the cemetery at five-thirty.  Okay?"

"Yipper Skipper.  See ya."

So--I loaded Fred into the back seat and the heavy cement angel dog statue.  Went potty.  Put more water in the cats dish.  Grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator.  Wrote a note for Pearl.  Stopped at her house to leave the note and make sure her cat had food, petted him and off I went.

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Forty minutes later, I pulled into the cemetery.  Chuck and Susan were there, clipping grass from around our family stones.  Fred and I spent Christmas Day with Chuck and Susan, two years ago.  They went back to Binghamton, NY on December 30th.  Fred died New Years day and when I called to tell her, she wanted to turn around and drive back and I told her not too.  So---after Fred's marker was in place at the cemetery, two weeks ago, I asked them to pick a day that was convenient for them to bury him.  We wanted a day when the ground wouldn't be dry and hard.

Chuck measured Fred's "casket" and started digging and it was like he was digging in top soil.  It wasn't full of clay and it wasn't hard to dig.  I probably could have done it myself, but I kind of wanted them involved.

(I hope these pictures don't offend.  Remember, this is now my journal, as I can't write anymore with my arthritic right hand.  So I am putting here, thoughts and pictures that I normally would put in my private, paper, written journal.)

Yes--I know--I look terrible.  You cannot believe how heavy ashes can be!!

Chuck measuring the hole--because, after all he was an engineer.

Inside, Tootz the dog's ashes, in a nice tin box 

with paw prints on it. 

Fred's ashes, a picture of the two of them, 

inside a Ziplock bag, and a letter I wrote.

Then, Chuck wanted me to put in the first few shovels of dirt.  And then Susan wanted to also.

Chuck filled in the rest and put the sod back on top, I got to tamp it down.  

I apologized to Fred for stomping on him and then.....

My sister said these words--that she knew by heart (!!)

John 14

King James Version (KJV)

14 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

Chuck had his hat off and told Fred, "Don't worry.  Michael Waltrip is still racing and the Tigers are doing great this year!"  and then Susan said, "Fred, we all miss you so much. Everyone in our family loved you and we are so happy that you can still be with us--here in our family's place of rest."  Then I said, "Thanks for the best seven years of my life, Sweetheart.  I love you."

Then we joined hands and said the Lord's Prayer.  Then I said, "I should have brought my French Horn so I could have played Taps."  (Because you know how irreverent I am!

and.......it is done and he is at rest.

Then we went back to their place, The Farm, where they are finally getting their new siding put on, had supper and I drove home--IN THE WORST RAIN STORM EVER!!!  AND IT WAS DARK AND I DO NOT DRIVE WELL IN THE DARK AND WITH THE RAIN COMING DOWN CATS AND DOGS--I sang, "Be not dismayed what 'ere betide, God will take care of you. Beneath His wings of love abide, God will take care of you.  God will take care of you, in every way, ore all the day, He will take care of you.  God will take care of you." and he did and I made it and stopped in to see Pearl and Merle DOES NOT have a blood clot in his lung, but they are keeping him a few days for a stress test and observation.  YAY!!  Personally, I think he may need a PaceMaker/Defibrillator,  or even a stent, but I did not mention that to Pearl.  She is just happier that he isn't going before her---------Okay!

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It feels so good to me to have Fred buried.  To feel that he is finally, really at peace.  

While, I do not like cremation--it just creeps me out!  I KNOW--it is just a body.  His soul has already gone to Heaven.  But, his physical body is the one I knew and adored and to have him put in a oven...........

.....sorry--can't stand it.

I remember something the mortician told me when my Mother died.  Mortician's can be weird, you know.  I think it goes along with their kind of work.  They talk "shop" sometimes when they should say nothing!!  Anyway he said, "If you opened your Mother's casket, twenty years from now, she would look just like she looks today."  That was actually very reassuring to me.  I'd go to the cemetery and stand by her grave and know that...she still looked beautiful.  Of course, on the 20th anniversary of her death, I got a bit nauseous and creeped out, but............

I just didn't like the idea of his ashes sitting out on the end table or on my bedroom dresser. It felt almost disrespectful to me.  He was not "at rest".  

 I know a lot of widows who keep their husband's ashes in a nice urn on the mantle, or have a shrine set up, but.......I have always feared, the house burning down or a tornado taking it away.  What would be left?  Nothing!  Fred would be "lost" again--truly lost.  So---to me it just feels better to know where  his remains are and that he is safe from everything.  Unless, of course, when the aliens come and do their archaeological research and dig up our graves to see how we took care of our dead and find-------------Fred and his dog buried together?  Separate containers, but yet together. They may wonder what a strange and weird people we were.

Hopefully, before that happens, the Son will come from the east and the graves will open and Fred and I will look at each other and say, "Thank God--together again.  I have missed you!!"  and Jesus will say, "Thank God indeed!"

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Sorry I have been so wordy today--maybe tomorrow I will be quieter or have nothing to say.