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dancing_crowWe are burying him in a sextant box. A box he made for a sextant he refitted with mirrors and caused to function, and gave to me when I graduated high school in 1978. A couple years later, the sextant itself has issues, and on assuring him I was no longer going to need to do celestial navigation, he took it back and used it to repair a couple other sextants that were in use on R/V Westward at SEA. I kept the box, a thing of beauty constructed of mahogany, many many coats of varnish and brass corners, latches and handle. With a special engraved brass plate on top from friends. I just finished polishing all the brass parts, and I need to install the new brass plate that has his name and dates on it. We are headed to South Carolina on Tuesday to bury his ashes next to his sister, and his parents, in the Episcopalian church cemetery.
He died at age 97, after about a decade of increasing dementia. I know, it always increases. For a while he was just forgetful, and then he was confused, and then even more confused, and finally he reached a resting state resembling a placid and venerable house cat. Easy to care for, mostly, spending a lot of time warm and napping on the couch, waking with real enthusiasm for meals, and wandering about the house after dark, sometimes tipping things over. He was at home with his wife (each of their third marriages, this one lasted 35 years, more than both his previous ones combined) until September when he started falling over, and she couldn't get him back upright again. He was also in some pain in his back, which turned out to be cracked vertebra - the third time he fell in a 24 hour period and she couldn't get him up by herself, she sent him to the ER and from there they xrayd him and noticed the vertebra and it was generally decided to send him to rehab. Except with his current levels of dementia, he needed combined rehab and memory care.
I was worried about his wife looking after him for much longer, in part because after spending two days with him I was entirely out of energy and patience and cope. Having him in care was an enormous relief for me, and I think for her. She and I tried to make a point of visiting routinely, but as my husband pointed out, it was more for ourselves than for him. Whenever I came, he was always pleased to see me, no matter who he happened to think I was. I brought my dumb little guitarlele (uke sized, guitar # of strings and tuning) and would play the old folk songs he'd taught me when I was 6 and 7 and 8 years old, when he could play the banjo. The staff there took incredibly kind care of him - when he was night wandering and fretful, they moved him closer to the nurses station so he had people to talk to, and flirt with, when he woke.
Around Thanksgiving he started having odd ...collapses? I'm not sure what else to call them. He'd throw up, and then be unconcious for 12-24 hours, the care center would call us to prepare us for the worst, and then he'd just wake up, a little less there than before, and eat and talk and carry on. This unnerved everyone. And then he caught Covid, in spite of all the precautions staff and everyone else took, and that had him down for a couple days, and he rallied briefly, and then he declined for most of a week and finally died. Of covid? Or old age? or the battery in his pace-maker giving out? I do not know. I know that visiting him while taking covid precautions was extremely difficult - I was gowned and masked and gloved and still trying to play an instrument and sing. And also cry.
I was really lucky in my dad. He made sure I knew he loved me, and that he was proud of me. Honestly I think he was proud of almost everyone who tried things, a crucial part of the he mellowed as he aged. A friend came over to play cello for him this past summer, along with my older kid playing bassoon - he was delighted. He was pleased to have music entirely for himself, and sadi learning both of those instruments was hard - he was proud of them for putting the effort into it.
In a lot of ways I have been missing him for years. We emptied out our garage and installed his machine shop - these big working machines older than me: a South Bend lathe circa 1949, a Bridgeport milling machine circa 1952, several drill presses, a band saw, a truly terrifying table saw - but being in it made him more anxious than it was worth. Sometimes he could wander through it patting his old friends, but sometimes he'd lose a tool or a name for the tool he wanted and would get more and more agitated looking for the thing in his memory and in the shop itself. These machines are also my friends - I learned to use them when I was small, like 9 or 10 years old - but I do not have the facility with them that he did, nor do I have the projects he would use them on - building test beds for for engineering projects that I did not ever completely understand. By the time he'd moved down here, he didn't have the projects to use them either, a different thing that made him anxious - that we'd changed our lives around to install this array of tonnes of machinery, and it was not paying for itself somehow.
I miss talking about boats we sailed on together. I put together a short list of the ones I could remember, and was looking for pictures of ones like them online, they were some classic wooden boats of the late 1950s, designed by Names, but I finally realized that wouldn't help him, it was more a thing I was invested in.
I missed him knowing his grand kids as they got older. He was amused and affectionate when they were small, and captivated by their cuteness which he worked hard to get on film. But he missed out on them as conversationalists, having strong opinions about politics or economics. Aerin is musical and mathematical, and even in their current non-binary shape, they could have talked about a lot of things, or even at one point played music together. I am sorry that couldn't happen. Although they did have a hilarious (to me) conversation about shaving. Aerin is working on a hideous(affectionate) beard, and he asked what they used to shave, and allowed as how he had a thing he called the hedge trimmers. Aerin agreed that those worked, but they couldn't stand the vibrations and stuck with a safety razor. It just caught me Right in the feels. Alice could have argued the existence of economics as an actual thing or that money is made up, and he would be so proud of her off on one of the big WHOI ships as a scientist.
I'm not sure why I am writing all this down. Unlike the Muppets, it is not plot exposition. But it has to go somewhere, and I want someone lese to know these things.
He died at age 97, after about a decade of increasing dementia. I know, it always increases. For a while he was just forgetful, and then he was confused, and then even more confused, and finally he reached a resting state resembling a placid and venerable house cat. Easy to care for, mostly, spending a lot of time warm and napping on the couch, waking with real enthusiasm for meals, and wandering about the house after dark, sometimes tipping things over. He was at home with his wife (each of their third marriages, this one lasted 35 years, more than both his previous ones combined) until September when he started falling over, and she couldn't get him back upright again. He was also in some pain in his back, which turned out to be cracked vertebra - the third time he fell in a 24 hour period and she couldn't get him up by herself, she sent him to the ER and from there they xrayd him and noticed the vertebra and it was generally decided to send him to rehab. Except with his current levels of dementia, he needed combined rehab and memory care.
I was worried about his wife looking after him for much longer, in part because after spending two days with him I was entirely out of energy and patience and cope. Having him in care was an enormous relief for me, and I think for her. She and I tried to make a point of visiting routinely, but as my husband pointed out, it was more for ourselves than for him. Whenever I came, he was always pleased to see me, no matter who he happened to think I was. I brought my dumb little guitarlele (uke sized, guitar # of strings and tuning) and would play the old folk songs he'd taught me when I was 6 and 7 and 8 years old, when he could play the banjo. The staff there took incredibly kind care of him - when he was night wandering and fretful, they moved him closer to the nurses station so he had people to talk to, and flirt with, when he woke.
Around Thanksgiving he started having odd ...collapses? I'm not sure what else to call them. He'd throw up, and then be unconcious for 12-24 hours, the care center would call us to prepare us for the worst, and then he'd just wake up, a little less there than before, and eat and talk and carry on. This unnerved everyone. And then he caught Covid, in spite of all the precautions staff and everyone else took, and that had him down for a couple days, and he rallied briefly, and then he declined for most of a week and finally died. Of covid? Or old age? or the battery in his pace-maker giving out? I do not know. I know that visiting him while taking covid precautions was extremely difficult - I was gowned and masked and gloved and still trying to play an instrument and sing. And also cry.
I was really lucky in my dad. He made sure I knew he loved me, and that he was proud of me. Honestly I think he was proud of almost everyone who tried things, a crucial part of the he mellowed as he aged. A friend came over to play cello for him this past summer, along with my older kid playing bassoon - he was delighted. He was pleased to have music entirely for himself, and sadi learning both of those instruments was hard - he was proud of them for putting the effort into it.
In a lot of ways I have been missing him for years. We emptied out our garage and installed his machine shop - these big working machines older than me: a South Bend lathe circa 1949, a Bridgeport milling machine circa 1952, several drill presses, a band saw, a truly terrifying table saw - but being in it made him more anxious than it was worth. Sometimes he could wander through it patting his old friends, but sometimes he'd lose a tool or a name for the tool he wanted and would get more and more agitated looking for the thing in his memory and in the shop itself. These machines are also my friends - I learned to use them when I was small, like 9 or 10 years old - but I do not have the facility with them that he did, nor do I have the projects he would use them on - building test beds for for engineering projects that I did not ever completely understand. By the time he'd moved down here, he didn't have the projects to use them either, a different thing that made him anxious - that we'd changed our lives around to install this array of tonnes of machinery, and it was not paying for itself somehow.
I miss talking about boats we sailed on together. I put together a short list of the ones I could remember, and was looking for pictures of ones like them online, they were some classic wooden boats of the late 1950s, designed by Names, but I finally realized that wouldn't help him, it was more a thing I was invested in.
I missed him knowing his grand kids as they got older. He was amused and affectionate when they were small, and captivated by their cuteness which he worked hard to get on film. But he missed out on them as conversationalists, having strong opinions about politics or economics. Aerin is musical and mathematical, and even in their current non-binary shape, they could have talked about a lot of things, or even at one point played music together. I am sorry that couldn't happen. Although they did have a hilarious (to me) conversation about shaving. Aerin is working on a hideous(affectionate) beard, and he asked what they used to shave, and allowed as how he had a thing he called the hedge trimmers. Aerin agreed that those worked, but they couldn't stand the vibrations and stuck with a safety razor. It just caught me Right in the feels. Alice could have argued the existence of economics as an actual thing or that money is made up, and he would be so proud of her off on one of the big WHOI ships as a scientist.
I'm not sure why I am writing all this down. Unlike the Muppets, it is not plot exposition. But it has to go somewhere, and I want someone lese to know these things.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-12 09:27 pm (UTC)Write it down for later, when things are harder to remember, then stumble on it and remember and smile (even if it is sad).
no subject
Date: 2023-03-12 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-13 10:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-13 12:24 pm (UTC)I was already thinking of that when I got to the last paragraph of this post, and I thought: yes. Now I am on the other side of this equation, being asked to do the seeing too, and I am up for that role, thank you for asking it of us.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-17 02:13 pm (UTC)