What It’s Like to Lose Both Your Parents in Two Months
2014 was my year from hell, but also my best.
On an early day in 2014, I presented it to them with a smile on my face.
My mother looked at me and said, “It’s about damn time.”
“Well, mother. I am a procrastinator.”
My father sat there with his nose in a book, and he smiled, too. I got my love of reading from him.
In the next few months, preparations were underway. In May, I took my father to have his haircut.
It was a stumble and a fall. He looked up at me. “Well, shit.”
That was the old sailor in him. Those years in the boats carrying cargo back and forth between Vancouver and Seattle made him rough around the edges. It was also those years of heart disease, finally catching up with him, too.
In May, he began to get sick. It was back and forth to the hospital like a broken record. He would get better and then sick again. It was not looking good. I tried to cheer up my mother. Homecare was in the cards now.
One night in June, just before Father’s Day, we made her a nice dinner. We got her medications and put her to bed. I finally got her to use that wretched walker. I left it by the bed, and I went home. She needed that…
