Ma Schmidt, requiescat in pace

Then early Tuesday morning, Schmidt followed up with this email, addressed to Marie, to me, and to his mom's old friend, Georgie. The header read, "It's Over." 

Writing in the small hours of April 22...

If I were to go into the guts of my email program I might be able to figure out how to format it to put a black border around my text in accordance with Victorian fashion but I don't feel like taking the time for that.  Mom died about 8:45 in the evening.  It wasn't as peaceful as one would have liked.  I was out much of the afternoon.  She wasn't going anywhere at that point and I had a major problem to deal with: the enormous dead digger pine along the driveway fell (during the previous night I suppose) -- right across the driveway, completely blocking it.  Thank good fortune I was able to get hold of neighbor Kurt, who has a really big chainsaw -- and the mass to be able to handle it!  He helped me clear the driveway, which I knew I'd be needing imminently.  Anyway, while I was in and out, I wasn't monitoring Mom closely. Then there were the usual chores and then dinner time came along.  As I started cooking, I checked on her and found she'd suddenly been sick -- yellow bile all down her front and on the bed.  Ugh!  [Good for putting me off dinner!] I got on the phone to hospice [I must note here that the local hospice entity is clearly a very small organization.  I've met nurses S— (who was on call tonight) and T—, and social worker J— and that may well be the entire field team] and got some advice and instruction on (we hoped) relieving her nausea.  Going over to the bed to follow nurse S—'s advice I discovered Mom had stopped breathing.  So I had to call her back and tell her that our plans had changed... She's been and gone (and it's a good hour's drive from her home to here), cleaned and dressed Mom, dealt with her meds, and called the funeral home.  It's now 1 AM and they have been and gone as well, taking Mom with them.  All pretty quiet and efficient, really. 

And now comes, I guess, the next, differently hard part: all the paperwork! 

Wonder if I'll get any sleep tonight? 

_____

I have a couple of other things to post—topics I thought about during the long hours—and I'll tag them on the end here pretty soon.