When I wrote my last post in June of 2024 I intended to start blogging consistently.
Instead I allowed life to get in the way.
On February 11th, Super Bowl Sunday, we got the news that my husband’s sister had passed away due to complications from Parkinson’s Disease.
She lived in El Paso, Texas so we had to make travel arrangements to get down there and deal with her estate.
We spent 9 days down there and dealt with as much as we could in that time including the funeral and meeting with an estate attorney. She named Roy as the executor as well as the main beneficiary of her estate.
In June we had to fly back down there for a hearing so that he could officially be named as executor.
Yes, we had to fly back to El Paso for a 15 minute hearing with a judge that could well have been done via a Zoom conference.
Luckily we had great people down there helping us remotely to get her house sold and getting everything done.
That was done in October.
At the same time while we were in Texas dealing with my sister-in-law’s estate, my sisters were here in town taking care of our Dad. When we got back from Texas we found out that he was having auto immune issues causing health problems for him.
He started seeing a Rheumatologist as well as his primary care physician who had him taking a variety of drugs to try and treat him. He was getting increasingly depressed because previous to these issues he had a pretty active lifestyle and was still trying to maintain that as much as he could but the illnesses were beginning to take their toll.
In mid-November he contracted a virus that they couldn’t figure out how to treat.
He was not able to celebrate Thanksgiving because he was feeling sick from the virus and did not enjoy the food or the day. For years he led a team at church that would decorate for each liturgical season. He insisted on going to do the same on the Saturday after Thanksgiving to decorate for Advent. He was clearly not up to it but he refused to let go of his routine. Bless his unwillingness to give up. It was both inspiring and frustrating.
On December 13th he had appointments with both his primary care physician and his rheumatologist. He told both of them that they had to take care of him because he had alot to do yet in his life. At 93 he had plans.
On Saturday, December 14th Roy and I went out to do our errands and then checked in with Dad when we got back to the house. He was sitting in his chair in his bedroom just resting after he had made his bed and completed his morning routine. Roy and I went upstairs to our space and not an hour later we heard a huge thud come from the main floor. When we got downstairs we discovered that my Dad had fallen. It was scary because he didn’t even know where he was or that he had fallen. We called a friend of the family and she came over to help get my Dad up off the floor. Roy got him to the bathroom where he was headed when he fell. And then we got him into his bed.
I am going to stop at this point.