I've been avoiding this post

Those of you who know me IRL, or on Facebook already know most of this post, but it's taken me a while to get it up here. Partially lack of time and tiredness, partially not wanting to say all the same things one more time.

Dad W. died early Monday morning.

The last few days, he went down incredibly fast. We moved him into the nursing home around the corner from us Wed. night. Thursday we had the Hospice intake interview. Friday we had the lawyer in and Dad signed all the various necessary paperwork (Will, PoA, Living Will, etc.), and we had the intake interview with the Hospice chaplain. By Saturday, he could not have managed the signings, as his lucid intervals weren't long enough (I took his smallest dog by to see him, and in the 90 minutes we were there, he said two comprehensible sentences, one of which seemed hallucinatory.) Sunday he wasn't lucid at all, and was no longer interested in food or fluids at all. At that point we knew it wouldn't be long, but were still expecting that he would last another day or two. Instead we got a 2am call from the nursing home.

It's been a whirlwind since then. Monday was funeral homes and calling what felt like 90 million people to tell them the news, all while staggering around like zombies on about 2 hours of sleep. Tuesday I took Dad's eldest dog to the vet and had him put to sleep (this is the 15-year-old, blind, deaf, paralyzed, arthritic dachshund that probably has cancer of his own). It wasn't really what I needed to deal with that day, but since I felt that Rascal should have been put to sleep about three months ago, I couldn't see dragging him out until I had a "better" time. Wednesday I and the boys drove down to Tennessee, where we were going to hold the funeral. Also, Aaron got sent home from school sick (throwing up), which complicated things in a couple of directions - not least being that I wasn't entirely sure I'd be able to go until an hour or so before we left. Thursday was the funeral, followed by driving back up. Today was starting to deal with Dad's personal effects, collecting the death certificate, and generally trying to sort out what needs doing from here.

The actual funeral went pretty well. It was small (about nine people, including us), and fairly short, but nice, except for a somewhat gratuitous jab by the presiding minister. Pastor Bobby seems like a generally nice fellow, but he's Pentecostal, and by his lights neither Rob nor Doug are properly saved - so him making much of Dad having a "proper" baptism done by him about two years back didn't exactly go over well. Otherwise, he did all right, mainly sticking to Dad anecdotes and scripture. Doug spoke and read the Serenity Prayer, Rob opted not to speak (probably wise, as he was still seething over the baptism thing), and I opted to sing instead of speak - How Lovely Are Thy Dwellings - which came out somewhat wobbly, but in tune (the people who hadn't heard me sing before just thought I had a moderate vibrato). The service ended up with Robbie and Aaron tossing the first few shovelfulls of dirt into the grave.

This weekend I'm mainly planning on staying home and being comatose. I don't think I've been this tired since the time in college I stayed up for five days straight. I'm still debating whether to go to church Sunday and face the inundation of shocked sympathetic people (Based on sympathy card arrival, it looks like the news started spreading there right after I talked to my organ teacher Thursday morning), or to skip a week.

Oh - and in random silliness, it looks like somebody needs to talk to HR at Rob's workplace about the florist they use for these occasions. Because the giant calladium with big fake purple roses staked in it was a real WTF? moment.