April 7: part 2

I wasn’t ready in so many ways.

After Randy died I started on the immediate tasks, because who else could do them? I called the hospice group to report his death and they said they would send a nurse out.

Then I called daughter Kendall, who was on her way home and she said she would come back. I called daughter Erin, who was working because she had a brand new job with no PTO. I told her Randy had died and she said she would come home.

Then I called Todd, Randy’s son, to let him know. I was pretty unsympathetic because he hadn’t wanted to visit once Randy was, what, comatose? unresponsive? Todd just said, Tell him he’s my hero - and I thought, tell him yourself, you ass. I mean, WTF?

When the nurse arrived she explained that she had been at home and had to turn around to come back and that she was being paid overtime to be there. I had never seen her before, and what was I supposed to do - say I was sorry? Or you’re welcome that since my husband died after your shift was over you get extra pay? I think now about how many people were not telling me things I needed to know and how many things they told me that I did not need to know.

So the nurse called the crematorium and spoke to someone on speaker, though clearly the person did not know he was on speaker because he was chatty as opposed to somber and serious. If I hadn’t been in such a state of shock I would have asked her to leave the room.

By this time, daughters Erin and Kendall had arrived and the nurse told us the crematorium would send someone to pick up Randy’s body in an hour and that the medical equipment firm would come to pick up the hospital bed the next day. And we all just sat there, waiting. Hayley asked if she could close his mouth and I told her I didn't think that was possible, but she tried.

Hayley had said that she would stay until they took his body away, but in the end she was too distraught and had to call her husband to pick her up. And soon Kendall’s husband came to be with her.

Someone told me that the people had arrived to pick up the body and I went downstairs so I wouldn’t have to watch - I couldn’t stand it. I went and stood in the dining room so I wouldn’t be able to see the coming and going, but I heard the gurney coming through. Kendall came downstairs and stood behind me, rubbing my shoulders. Erin had an emotional reaction to the removal of the body - she came down to say that she didn’t want them to take him and I told her he was already gone - it’s just his body that’s left.

And then it was just the family sitting in the living room looking at each other. I said I would be staying at a hotel, that I couldn’t stay there with the empty hospital bed. I went to strip off the sheets and the towels and the pillows, and my lovely son-in-law, who I don’t know well at all, wrestled the bed down to the garage.

Kendall said someone should stay with me and I said there was no need. She said she didn’t want me to be lonely and I said being alone was not the same as being lonely. I didn’t want anyone around moving, talking, making noise. I needed to just sit in the quiet. The only person I wanted to talk to was gone.

I don’t know what I did after that except that eventually I changed the sheets, crawled into the bed - just me and the cat - and, surprisingly, went to sleep.