Mary_Mary
07-15-2008, 10:09 PM
If your parent dies suddenly:
Don't forget to pack lots of underwear for yourself. Overestimate your needs.
Take dress clothes for several different temperatures...not just how the weather is the day you leave.
Take plenty of 'regular' clothes too.
If someone offers to help with your kids accept the offer immediately. You'll need the help.
Don't worry if you don't cry immediately...the tears will come.
When you're packing your stuff in your daze of disbelief, it's best to just pretend that you've just taken a shower and go through the motions of getting ready to go somewhere. Put everything you touch into your bag. You're less likely to forget things like contact solution and your toothbrush that way.
Remember to take a razor.
If you have time before you CAN leave, start going through your pictures and find ones with that parent in them and take them along.
If your parents have a safe, make SURE someone else knows how to open it.
Seriously consider writing something to be read at the funeral...even if you KNOW you won't be able to read it, you can always have someone else do it for you.
My father died last Wednesday evening, July 9. He'd had no health problems whatsoever. He was a man who faithfully got his physical every year and had bloodwork done and if there was ANY little thing that the doctor said he should change he changed it.
He'd spent the whole day with friends and family. He'd attended a funeral in the morning with my sister (my mom was out of town for the last four days before he died). The funeral was for my aunts mother-in-law, who was also a member of my parents church.
Then he went home and changed his clothes and my sister helped him arrange some flowers to take to antoher funeral home because the wife of one of his lifelong friends had died. He saw many friends there as well.
After that he went back to his house and my sister was there with her kids and they were swimming in the pool. Dad and my sister were weeding around the pool, working on getting ready for a family reunion that my parents were to host on Saturday.
My sister was sitting on the ground weeding and my dad was using a hoe just behind her. He fell down. My sister thought he had tripped but when he didn't respond she started CPR immediately. Her son (17) called 9-1-1, then came out and helped with CPR.
The ambulance people shocked him with the defibrilator but nothing helped. After over 40 minutes of CPR they pronounced him dead.
We are taking as much comfort as we can from the fact that this is the way he always said he wanted to go. His sister had died of cancer just last July and he didn't want to go like that. His last day was filled with family and friends. I'm so glad that my sister was with him...she has done CPR before in the course of her work...and so she did everything she could for him from the very first second. We didn't have to find him lying there and wonder how long he'd been down or if he suffered at all.
He was an active man...he was never one to sit still. He always had some project or another he was working on. He was always there to help my sister and I with things that needed fixed.
He was kind of quiet, but a big goofball too. He hugged everyone a lot. He loved to nibble on little kids ears.
He was involved with many, many activities. Bowling, hunter safety, the fair, he was a clerk at the local hay auction, the conservation club, Habitat for Humanity, and the list goes on and on.
He was not the type to sit home and complain that his kids didn't call often enough...on the contrary, we were lucky to catch him at home unless it was 7:00am. More than once, when I needed to ask him something on a Monday evening, I knew I had to call the bowling alley because that's where he would be.
He read a lot too. He was a fan of the Little House books, and of Torey Hayden as well.
I just don't know how we're going to cope without him. My husband said, "Whenever I needed something I would always call YOUR dad before I'd call my own, and my own dad is closer geographically."
I worry about how my mom is going to cope. Even though they were both busy with their own activities, they did a LOT of stuff together too.
My mom and dad were members of the Farm Bureau council. There were quite a few couples in the group, but over the years others dropped out. But the core group of about five couples have been meeting on a monthly basis for the past 45 years or so. You don't find that too often. They had their regular meetings and also got together on New Years Eve and Halloween and stuff.
I would never, not in a hundred years, have thought that it would be MY dad who was the first of that group to die. Never.
I worry for my mom...I worry a lot. Fortunately she is very active herself and involved in many different things. But when she starts coming home to an empty house...I worry how she's going to cope.
And my poor sister keeps replaying things in her mind and wondering if there was something she could have done differently.
And my nephews and my niece...they were there. My 17 year old nephew helped with CPR. My 15 year old niece kept my younger nephews (9 and 7) busy while all this was going on. Got them out of the pool, kept them safe, kept them occupied.
I wasn't able to get there until about 4 hours after everything happened. They stayed at the hospital until I got there so I could see dad before they took him away.
When I kissed him he was already cold. It just wasn't right for him to be cold.
Don't forget to pack lots of underwear for yourself. Overestimate your needs.
Take dress clothes for several different temperatures...not just how the weather is the day you leave.
Take plenty of 'regular' clothes too.
If someone offers to help with your kids accept the offer immediately. You'll need the help.
Don't worry if you don't cry immediately...the tears will come.
When you're packing your stuff in your daze of disbelief, it's best to just pretend that you've just taken a shower and go through the motions of getting ready to go somewhere. Put everything you touch into your bag. You're less likely to forget things like contact solution and your toothbrush that way.
Remember to take a razor.
If you have time before you CAN leave, start going through your pictures and find ones with that parent in them and take them along.
If your parents have a safe, make SURE someone else knows how to open it.
Seriously consider writing something to be read at the funeral...even if you KNOW you won't be able to read it, you can always have someone else do it for you.
My father died last Wednesday evening, July 9. He'd had no health problems whatsoever. He was a man who faithfully got his physical every year and had bloodwork done and if there was ANY little thing that the doctor said he should change he changed it.
He'd spent the whole day with friends and family. He'd attended a funeral in the morning with my sister (my mom was out of town for the last four days before he died). The funeral was for my aunts mother-in-law, who was also a member of my parents church.
Then he went home and changed his clothes and my sister helped him arrange some flowers to take to antoher funeral home because the wife of one of his lifelong friends had died. He saw many friends there as well.
After that he went back to his house and my sister was there with her kids and they were swimming in the pool. Dad and my sister were weeding around the pool, working on getting ready for a family reunion that my parents were to host on Saturday.
My sister was sitting on the ground weeding and my dad was using a hoe just behind her. He fell down. My sister thought he had tripped but when he didn't respond she started CPR immediately. Her son (17) called 9-1-1, then came out and helped with CPR.
The ambulance people shocked him with the defibrilator but nothing helped. After over 40 minutes of CPR they pronounced him dead.
We are taking as much comfort as we can from the fact that this is the way he always said he wanted to go. His sister had died of cancer just last July and he didn't want to go like that. His last day was filled with family and friends. I'm so glad that my sister was with him...she has done CPR before in the course of her work...and so she did everything she could for him from the very first second. We didn't have to find him lying there and wonder how long he'd been down or if he suffered at all.
He was an active man...he was never one to sit still. He always had some project or another he was working on. He was always there to help my sister and I with things that needed fixed.
He was kind of quiet, but a big goofball too. He hugged everyone a lot. He loved to nibble on little kids ears.
He was involved with many, many activities. Bowling, hunter safety, the fair, he was a clerk at the local hay auction, the conservation club, Habitat for Humanity, and the list goes on and on.
He was not the type to sit home and complain that his kids didn't call often enough...on the contrary, we were lucky to catch him at home unless it was 7:00am. More than once, when I needed to ask him something on a Monday evening, I knew I had to call the bowling alley because that's where he would be.
He read a lot too. He was a fan of the Little House books, and of Torey Hayden as well.
I just don't know how we're going to cope without him. My husband said, "Whenever I needed something I would always call YOUR dad before I'd call my own, and my own dad is closer geographically."
I worry about how my mom is going to cope. Even though they were both busy with their own activities, they did a LOT of stuff together too.
My mom and dad were members of the Farm Bureau council. There were quite a few couples in the group, but over the years others dropped out. But the core group of about five couples have been meeting on a monthly basis for the past 45 years or so. You don't find that too often. They had their regular meetings and also got together on New Years Eve and Halloween and stuff.
I would never, not in a hundred years, have thought that it would be MY dad who was the first of that group to die. Never.
I worry for my mom...I worry a lot. Fortunately she is very active herself and involved in many different things. But when she starts coming home to an empty house...I worry how she's going to cope.
And my poor sister keeps replaying things in her mind and wondering if there was something she could have done differently.
And my nephews and my niece...they were there. My 17 year old nephew helped with CPR. My 15 year old niece kept my younger nephews (9 and 7) busy while all this was going on. Got them out of the pool, kept them safe, kept them occupied.
I wasn't able to get there until about 4 hours after everything happened. They stayed at the hospital until I got there so I could see dad before they took him away.
When I kissed him he was already cold. It just wasn't right for him to be cold.