At my parents' house

Lots of tidbits. I don't know if any of them can grow into a full post.

Brother and his girlfriend finally married last month ... the same day, as it turns out, that I talked to Father on the phone about what it would mean if he were to leave the hospital. But I found out only when I got here. Apparently they told Mother only when they got here Sunday to comfort her after Father's death. Her first thought, she said, was "Oh what great news! I have to tell Father. Oh ... right ...." I don't remember whether I've coined a name for her yet, but now I can always call her Sister-in-Law. Maybe SIL.

I slept here last night, on a sofa. In the early morning, I dreamed that Father came into the room while I was there, turning on the lights and opening the windows and generally paying no attention to me. I objected that I'd been sleeping, but that seemed inconsequential: he wanted to open the room up, so what was I bitching about? Of course it was just a dream.

This afternoon I went down to the mortuary to view the body. Mother, Brother, and SIL had gone yesterday. He was lying in a room by himself, cold to the touch but otherwise looking pretty good. Whether it was the light or the makeup, he looked alive and resting. There was a faint smile on his lips. Even more unnerving, the blanket draped over his body looked like it was swaying ever so slightly -- in fact, like it was gently rising and falling with subtle breath. Whenever I looked closely at it, I could see it was motionless. But when I looked away I could almost swear I glimpsed it move out of the corner of my eye. I had the overpowering sense that Father was about to sit up with a hearty laugh and shout "Surprise!" But he didn't.

Last night Mother said that she felt lost without him. The irony is that she was always the practical one of them. I'm sure she knows, at a practical level, how to do all the things she has to do. Still, I get it. When you have lived 56 years with somebody, every act you do, every decision you make, every thought you think -- all these take shape around that other person. Now that he's gone, how is she supposed to know which way is north? I would have been at sea without Wife for many years; the only reason I wasn't more at sea after moving out was that I had started distancing myself a few years earlier. Well, that and I had a full-time job that gave my life some structure. Well, that and Debbie. Still, I understand how she feels, at least a bit.

Odds and ends. Maybe more later.