Author Archives: Cheryl L. Ware

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About Cheryl L. Ware

I grew up in an oil-field family — Dad worked for Sun Oil Company from 1946 until 1982, when he retired. My dad’s family is from East Texas — has been in the same county since before the Texas Revolution. My mother’s family has deep roots in South Louisiana going back to 18th century immigrants from France and Germany, to 19th century Acadians from Nova Scotia, and to 1851 Ireland. I have a Ph.D. in English and taught composition, introduction to literature, and American literature at McNeese State University from 1981 to 2011. I love to read and to travel. I cherish my family, friends, pets, and laughter. So just how did I end up making jewelry? The journey in short: I retired in May 2011 as a Professor of English at McNeese State University in Lake Charles,Louisiana. My father worked for Sun Oil Company, so we moved around, though not as much as many others. We settled in Egan, Louisiana, in 1956. That's where my brother and sister and I grew up, and that's where I found myself as I became a caregiver for my father. I'm teaching again at McNeese, part-time only. Making jewelry was a hobby I'd started a few years prior to this, and over time, the hobby has become an avocation as much as teaching was and is. It is an expression of me, of my love of color and texture and shape and design -- just as teaching is an expression of my loves of writing, of nonfiction and fiction and poetry, of the human experience across time and culture. The hobby grew from one technique or two (wire-wrapping and setting calibrated stones and cabochons in purchased findings) to include working with metal clay (firing with a torch and using a kiln), to traditional metal-smithing. I'm hardly a master of all, but an enthusiastic learning, continuing to read, take workshops, and refine and improve my skills. It's a journey that reflects my many interests -- reading, traveling, teaching, writing, painting, even sewing and crocheting. Creativity in one area feeds others, I've found. My jewelry hobby used to be something I could contain in a few boxes. Now it consumes a room. It's also now a business. I've been selling at area craft shows and fairs. This website is a new venue for my jewelry. It is also a work in progress! Follow me on my journey here on my webpage. I'll be offering jewelry of different types and materials, across a variety of styles and prices. I hope you enjoy learning more about me and my jewelry.

Sense and Sensibility

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Cheryl L. Ware

In Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, the Dashwood sisters embody two opposing world views.  Elinor, the level-headed older daughter, is the reserved sister whose sense marks her as the responsible sibling who puts others ahead of herself.  Marianne, her younger sister, is all passion and feeling, all sensibility.  Elinor’s reserved demeanor is deceptive, for her repression of her true, deep and deeply felt emotions burst out of her, surprising others who have failed to see the depths beneath her surface control.  Even Marianne fails to recognize her sister’s emotional turmoil.

Though I prefer Pride and Prejudice (it’s one of the novels that I reread yearly), Sense and Sensibility reminds me of myself and Kay.  I’ve always felt close to Elinor.  I am the eldest and have had a similar sense of responsibility for others — for most of my life, indeed, I have had responsibilities that many people my age didn’t have to cope with.  As a teenager, I was wildly emotional — over Viet Nam, over imagined ills, over the kind of mother-daughter clashes common to adolescent girls.  My temper usually got the better of me.  I had to learn to control it, to subdue it.  By the time I was in my 30s, I think I was, for the most part, more like Elinor Dashwood.  Calm, thoughtful, sensible and practical.  I could be counted upon to plan and follow through.  I was, quite simply, an almost overly responsible member of the family.  Actually, I had been abnormally responsible as a kid — I mean even at 4 and 5.  Circumstances sort of demanded it.  And that continued.

Kay has always been the more fragile of us, more easily hurt and prone to hide in her room.  She’s the youngest, and inherently shy.  I think she came into the world with an inferiority complex.  She’s much more confident now, and continues to work on that.  But she’s still outwardly more Marianne Dashwood.  Her feelings are paramount — they are all on the surface.  They control her at times.

My feelings are there too — but my Elinor side seems to balance them.  At times, perhaps, to suppress them until I am alone and can deal with them alone.

Perhaps this difference has been most evident since Dad died.  I had been with Dad a lot more than Kay had, not because she didn’t want to be there, but because she is still working.  Weekends were her time.  And he was in the nursing home for a couple of months, too, so we visited him rather than lived with him.  During the weeks he was there, I supervised the house renovations.  I handled other issues.  I also got the irritated Dad more, I think.

But after we brought him home, it was intense, 24/7.  Kay had the first weekend by herself.  I had the two weeks.  I had the minute-by-minute nursing and caregiving.  I made phone calls to arrange ambulance transportation to dialysis.  She came for the second weekend and didn’t leave because Dad’s condition rapidly declined; I was supposed to go to Lake Charles, but didn’t because I was exhausted.  That was fortunate, since we took him to the ER on Friday night and ended up getting hospice on Sunday.  On Monday, hospice was there all morning, and he was in great pain.  Kay and Billie went to Lake Charles, doing some shopping and dropping a check from me off at my house for the repairman who was going to be there on Tuesday to fix my air conditioner; my friend Patty was to be there for the work.

Kay came back to a Dad who was basically asleep — after hours of my conferring with the hospice nurse and administering more and more morphine.  I still dream about those hours before she came back.

But when he died,  I did what I do best — crisis mode.  I do that by long experience.  Kay did well too, but there were moments for her when she broke down, when she said she wasn’t ready to let him go yet.  And that was after the funeral, too.  The many details of arranging a funeral kept us occupied.  But afterwards?

Reality had set in for her.  He was gone, but as she said, she wasn’t ready to let him go yet.  t think it had hit me much earlier.  My predominant feeling after his death:  one of relief, relief that he was now no longer in pain.

She is grieving now — emotions much more on the surface, much more in control of her.  Marianne, again.

Me?  I think I have been grieving for a year.  I saw Dad slip away in pieces.  Right now, there are times where I can feel the tears are there, and beneath the tears a gaping hole that is ready to suck me through.  It will hit me, I know, but right now there are other things I must do, business issues to take care of, and family problems to help with.  My emotions are private things, and I try not to let them out in public, which is another part of why I feel more like Elinor.  Her emotions are deep and when they are unleashed/released, they threaten to overwhelm her, and they surprise her as much as anyone.

Unlike Elinor, I know only too well how deep my emotions run.  I also know that I will let them loose sometime.  Just not now, when the practical Cheryl has her list of what must be done.   There will be times, in my house or my apartment — or my car — when I let them out and bawl like a baby, sobbing with my loss.  But that’s not for public display.

Even at the funeral, when I felt that void start to open and the sob caught my throat, I gulped, grabbed some TicTacs and started munching.  At times, I was afraid that the sound of pouring out TicTacs was audible and might disturb the service, but I kept chomping away so that I didn’t just lose it and really distract everyone.  That would be unacceptable.  I kept remembering what Dad told me at his brother’s funeral, years before, as I started to sob — “Wares don’t lose control in public”.  There’s the key:  in public.  Emotions are private, and to be released when appropriate.  So I channeled Dad’s voice telling me that even while I was at his service, looking at his casket.  Closed, might I add.  Funerals are difficult enough, and an open casket makes them even more difficult.

At the funeral, I kept worrying about my sister, about my Aunt Mildred (Dad’s sister), and my Aunt Jean (his sister-in-law).  Dad would be proud, I hope, that we all were teary-eyed but not out of control.  That would be horrible.

And now, almost three weeks afterwards, I work my way through the lists of to-dos.  I’ve seen a lawyer.  I’m getting repairs on the house before we put it on the market; I’m waiting for the appraiser’s report.  Kay and I are working this coming weekend on the hundreds of tools that are neatly housed in the double-garage.  They will get boxed and moved into storage.  I hope to go to the bank to the safety deposit box.

There’s so much to do.

Kay is working through this, trying to find her way through the changes that include Dad’s death and how we shape our lives without him.   We talk daily, often several times a day.  We talk about our own plans to rebuild at my beach lot in Crystal Beach — and I think it’s important for us. This is our family house that we’re building, our future.  We’ll create our own memories there, but we’ll carry others with us.  The new house will be furnished in part with things from Egan.  We probably won’t need anything at all for the kitchen.  We’ve got chests of drawers.  We need to buy new chairs for the table that Phil found and refurbishes.  We’ll need a new sofa (one that is a sleeper).  I want a new rocker for the living room.  We’ve got televisions and a stereo.  Our grandmother’s stereo cabinet from the 1940s will become the DVD storage, placed beneath the living room television.  It may also be the bar, something Kay and I find appropriate. We’ll have 3 bedrooms, one for me, one for Kay, one for Rachel, my niece.  One bathroom.

Channeling my Elinor, I keep going as I work through the list.  I help Kay as she occasionally breaks into her Marianne side.  At home, I let my own emotions out at times, but so far, nothing of epic magnitude has emerged. At times, though, I admit to feeling overwhelmed — not by Dad’s loss as much as by the sheer number of chores that await me.  Panic attacks threaten, but I’ve avoided them with deep breathing and grounding techniques.

Emily Dickinson speaks to me at this time as much as Jane Austen does:  in one poem, Emily D says

XXXV
I CAN wade grief,
Whole pools of it,—
I ’m used to that.
But the least push of joy
Breaks up my feet,         5
And I tip—drunken.
Let no pebble smile,
’T was the new liquor,—
That was all!
Power is only pain,         10
Stranded, through discipline,
Till weights will hang.
Give balm to giants,
And they ’ll wilt, like men.
Give Himmaleh,—         15
They ’ll carry him!

I taught that poem for years, and it speaks to me constantly of how I myself feel.  I’m so used to grief that I can wade it easily.  But comfort — “balm” — that and joy are less well-known to me and threaten to make me slip.  Yes, Emily, yes.  I agree.

Sense — me — and Sensibility — Kay:  We manage.  And that’s positive, good, desirable.  We work together.  Day by day, step by step.  I count our successes.  They make the troubles– the griefs that threaten, the new crises that crop up– survivable.

Not that we don’t bicker.  We do.  Don’t get me wrong — our essential sibling relationship remains.  But both of us are conscious that Dad, our mediator, is gone, and it’s up to us to find our way together.

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What’s in a Name?

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Cheryl L. Ware

Shakespeare nailed it:  “That which we call a rose /By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Yet perhaps Shakespeare failed to consider the consequences of some name choices.

Names are words, words to which we attach meaning from some (often shifting) external context.

And so it was when my siblings and cousins Barbara and Jim were born into a family named Ware.

Yes, we grew up with all of those jokes that seem to follow the name Ware:  Do you have anyone in the family named Stone (Ware)? Corning (Ware)?  You get the picture.  You probably can come up with any number of other humorous quips to hurl our way.

When I was maybe 2 or 3, when we lived in Humble, Texas, outside of Houston, my dad’s working partner, Buddy, had me convinced that my name was other than Cheryl Lynn Ware.  Like another father to me until the day he died, Buddy loved to tell the story of how he had me responding to anyone who asked what my name was:  Cheryl Lynn Stinkpot Ware.  I was working at university when Buddy died, but that story still makes me smile.

Perhaps my most embarrassing moment, though,  came in high school, when my Chemistry teacher had me go to his Physics class to make up an exam (I think those were the classes, anyway).  Mr. Miller — he of the wonderfully wide and welcoming smile– waited until I was through with the test.  There I was, surrounded by august seniors.  Especially the guys.  And then Mr. Miller aimed the smile at me, announcing that if my middle name were Sunder, and then if you said my name really fast altogether, I would be CherylSunderWare.  Everyone laughed, of course. I blushed.  I wanted to sink through the floor.   I still get variations of this one, even now.

And any time we were on a bus for a class trip, the jokes continued:  Cheryl?  Ware?  Where?  Here, I’d pipe up.  Ware/where?  they’d respond.  Cue laughter again.

The last name seemed obvious for its possibilities.  But what other possibilities were there?  Consider our first names — some of us, anyway.

Barbara Ware:  B Ware.  Hmmm.  Got it?

Cheryl Ware:  C Ware.  I don’t need to explain any more.

But my poor brother Philip had the worst time:  P Ware.  Yes, Pee Ware.  Really embarrassing to him when he was a shy little boy.  I was most often the guilty party in taunting him with this, of course.

My own name, C Ware, has continued to be a source of humor over the years.  It’s handy, even a shorthand of sorts for a way of viewing things.  Hence the name of this new blog:  C Ware in the World.  Not a single meaning, but ambiguity results with that combination, and as a literary sort, I like the ambiguity.  It opens up rather than heading in one direction.

Names are so strange.  We attach meanings to them.  Even at Dad’s funeral (actually, afterwards at the farm), my Aunt Jean was recounting to a friend how I got my name.  When Mother was pregnant, she had a baby shower — and a naming shower.  Everyone had to contribute a name.  My mother’s first choice (Cheryl Ann, I think) was something she shared with a co-worker who was also pregnant.  That woman gave birth first.  And guess what her girl was named?  Yep.  My mother was not happy.  Her “friend” had “stolen her name.”

So Cheryl Lynn I became:  Lynn from the name of one of my dad’s first cousins.

Of course, there’s another twist to my name.  Since Dad belonged to the Church of Christ and Mother was Roman Catholic, when it came time to have me baptized, the Holy Roman Church wouldn’t recognize my name as acceptable.  There were no Saint Cheryls, no Saint Lynns.  Hence I was baptized Cheryl Lynn Maria.  That satisfied the requirements for a saint’s name somewhere in a child’s name.  When it came time for Confirmation, I had to choose yet another name.  I chose Theresa.  So as far as the Church is concerned, I am not Cheryl Lynn Ware.  I am Cheryl Lynn Maria Theresa Ware.  Or if you’d believe the 3-year-old me, Cheryl Lynn Stinkpot Maria Theresa Ware.

My brother and sister had acceptable names:  Philip Franklin Ware (St. Philip, of course); Kay Darlene Ware (Kay from St. Katherine). They didn’t have to have names trailing.  And since neither of them chose to be confirmed, they didn’t have to pick another name.  OH well.

Over the years, I simply learned to play the jokes too.  Why fight it?  After all, words are only weapons if you let them be.

Indeed, when I came to adopt Greece as a second home, I wondered whether in fact names had destined me for a Mediterranean self.

First, my own religious names, especially Maria — a very common name in Greece (and Italy and Spain).  But if you look at my parents’ names, and even my maternal grandmother’s name, other ties emerge.

My mother’s name:  Irene. In Greece, Irini is a common name, derived from the word for peace, Eirene.

My father’s name — or at least his middle name, usually simply designated by the initial for reasons soon to be obvious:  Theophilus.  Theos (God) + philos (friend).  Friend of God.

And my maternal grandmother?  Ella.  In Greek, ela : Appropriately, her name is a command form of the verb come, indicating come here!

Cheryl?  Derives from the French, Cherie, and has the meaning of darling. Lynn?  Depending on the source you look in, it derives from Irish, Gaelic, English or even Spanish, with meanings ranging from ruddy complexion to lake or water or pretty.

A mishmash of cultural heritages are thus blended in the name Cheryl Lynn.  Appropriate for someone who is herself a blend of many cultures, including French, Cajun, Irish, Scots, German, and English.

I figure it could have been worse.  If I’d been male, guess what one of the name choices was?  Henry Theophilus, after my dad.

I’m so glad I’m female.  Even Dad only used T rather than his actual name.

So much for names.  But here you are, in my first post for a new blog.  Join me to cwareintheworld I end up.  To cwareintheworld, see Ware in the world.

Whatever.  I’m on my way.  Ela!

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Vehicles

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Cheryl L. Ware

One of the radio talk shows I came to love was “Car Talk” — every Friday in October, November, and December 1995 when I’d drive to Houston to MD Anderson while Phil was there, I turned the show on and laughed.

Oh that I could call those guys up now!  One of the many details I’m handling now — what to do with the two vehicles.  I’m visiting my cousin in Houston now, and her husband helped me this morning to find values for the two vehicles.

The newer vehicle is the 2009 Silverado that Dad bought.  I remember when he did that — rather apologetically, he told me that he’d paid cash for it.  He didn’t want to leave us with a car note.  I laughed and asked him who he thought would give an 87-year-old a car note?  It’s a solid, well-taken-care-of truck, a 4-door crew cab with a towing packing.  I’ve come to enjoy driving that truck.  In fact, I’ve probably driven it much more than I’ve driven my own Mini Cooper in the last year.  But keeping it?  I don’t think so. It’s handy, certainly, and I can use it.  Yet I can’t justify the cost of keeping it — not for the few times I’d actually need it.  Right now, it is very useful for hauling things back to my own house.  But I’ll be selling it soon.

The other vehicle is one Dad cherished.  It’s a 1977 Blazer that Phil bought.  It was their hunting vehicle.  That he didn’t really use it wasn’t the point; it had been Phil’s, and thus it was kept.  Right now, Kay and I have had 3 people inquire about it, two of them young men who have ridden in it most of their lives.  Their grandfathers were friends of Dad’s, and thus they both have memories of riding in it with the two older men.  They both expressed their interest years ago to Dad, and I’ll take their interests in chronological order.  I don’t want any bad feelings about this.  I kind of like the idea of one of them owning the Blazer.  It will have a history for them too, and I can sort of feel satisfied about that for some reason.  Maybe it’s that Dad’s memory will continue along with the Blazer itself while one of them drives it.

The Silverado doesn’t have that kind of emotional history.  I’ll figure how to get the most money for it, frankly.  I may drive it to Houston to a Carmax and just let that place offer what it will, perhaps even sell it to them on the spot.

Trucks are fun, and for country kids, they’re almost always a vehicle of choice.  Certainly I live in town, and love my Mini Cooper convertible.  I must confess, though, to a certain feeling of comfort, of rightness, when I slide into the seat behind the wheel of a truck.  It’s a known, a staple of my life.  Dad always had trucks — work trucks, mostly.  But after we were older, he started buying trucks.  Mother didn’t drive anymore, so trucks were his vehicle of choice.

When I was a kid in the Egan oil field camp, most of us there had dads with work trucks.  They became part of our playground at times, too.  I remember Dad’s always had huge tool chests welded on.  And a water cooler was always attached somewhere in the bed or on the sides.

Though I learned to drive in a car (an automatic), the second vehicle I learned to drive was a truck — my granddad’s 1956 Chevy.  It was a manual shift, on the steering wheel itself.  My hands can still go through the shifts in memory.  That truck sits at the farm even now.  Many times I remember riding in the back of it as we helped throw out bales of hay for the cows, or just riding in the back as Granddad and Dad and maybe Uncle James rode in the fields to look at things.

There’s certainly a bittersweet element involved with this part of clearing up loose ends after a death.  In America we somehow often attach great personal meaning to vehicles, and so even after the owner’s death, there’s some tie to him (or her) for the family left to deal with everything.

Practical person that I am, I know they’re just hunks of metal that have particular monetary values.  I can sell them with no problems.  I’m only selling the physical items.  The memories are still mine.  Those have no price, and are not up for sale, ever.

So today’s Car Talk session has ended.  I didn’t talk to Click and Clack, but I’ve acquired the information I needed.  Those wheels are in motion.

The house itself is another matter.  Last week I met with an appraiser, paid him, and am waiting for his report.  I do have a list of repairs he suggested were necessary.  I’ve already talked to Tim, the guy who did all the renovations, about what we need, and I’ll meet him Wednesday for a quote.  I’ve paid the phone bill, and will cancel phone and Direct TV soon.  I’ve got a storage room rented already in Lake Charles waiting for stuff.

Over the weekend, I decided that the next mountain to tackle will be the double garage full of tools.  I’ll just load those up and store them, actually leaving the inventory for later.  Kay and I have already decided on furniture to store.

So the bustle in the house continues, as we disassemble the life that it held for our family since 1966.  Someone else will enjoy the house soon, I hope.  It’s been a nice little house, a friendly one.  Egan is a good little town, and people are choosing to move there.

Our family will move on.   It’s time for a new family to fill it.  A new family will move in, change it to suit their needs. I like the idea that someone will choose to live in our house.

It’ll be a home again.  I hope our family’s love lingers to welcome the new family.

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Details Unlimited

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Cheryl L. Ware

No, you read it right:  not Ducks Unlimited.  Details Unlimited.

No one really prepares you for these details after a death.  You think you know — and even with some experience, I thought I was prepared.  But the details just keep cropping up and surprising me.

And keep me making notes about calls to make, things to follow up on.

Juggling the details following Dad’s death with my own struggles to get my life in Lake Charles going again (especially getting work done on the house that I’ve put off) just leaves me/keeps me exhausted.

I guess that a large portion of the exhaustion is my body reacting to the fact that Dad is dead and that I don’t have to be “on duty” all the time.  Yet I still am waking up during the night, just as I did before.  When I (finally) had my annual sleep center appointment (only 1 year and 5 months after the last one), and I was asked how I rated my sleepiness on a 1-10 scale.  I told her a 12.  I yawned while I talked to her.  I could have fallen asleep at any given moment.  When the nurse asked me about my sleep patterns, I just started laughing.  I used to have one, as I told her, but that pretty much disappeared over a year ago.  Sleep through the night?  Not in a long time.  After I explained my situation, she totally understood.  We talked about how it would take a while for me to re-establish a sleeping-through-the-night pattern again.  Even with the lovely CPAP machine (I call it my Franken-mask), I wake up probably every two hours now, checking on Dad.  Only I don’t need to check, not now, but my body doesn’t really know that yet.  I have hopes that it will re-learn.  Soon.

But the other details . . . . Finding out how to get the house appraised, how to find an appraiser to come, how to get it ready for the market.  At first I had this crazy notion that I could get it cleared out and sold by June 12, when I head to Greece for nearly 3 months.  Reality hit me on Monday this week, though when I realized that while there isn’t much furniture to deal with, I have books to pack and move and clothes to deal with.  Not to mention the double garage that is filled with tools.  Dad’s tools.  My late brother Phil’s tools.  My Grampa Charlie’s tools (he’s been dead since 1962).  My Poppa’s tools (he died in 1972).  I don’t really know what is waiting for me there.  And the repairs to make that the appraiser suggested.  Now I just have to wait for the appraiser’s report.  I don’t know how long that will take.

Once I figured out it wasn’t possible to get it all sorted and cleared by June 12, I could feel myself relax.  That was one burden eased.  I can take more time, and Kay can do some work while I’m gone.

Other details are just on hold — until the certified death certificates are ready.  While the bank returned Dad’s Social Security and pension checks and notified those two entities that Dad had died, nothing else can be done without those certificates.  I hope I can turn off the telephone and the dish television services.  I’ll find out soon, when I try to manage those two things next week.

Then there’s insurance, or the annuity – I can fill out paperwork, but can’t submit anything without the certificates.

The bank account?  That was easier.  I was already on it.  Kay and I opened a joint account in the same bank.  I transferred money into it so that she can write checks if needed while I’m gone this summer.  Most of the bills are drafted out of Dad’s account, so there probably won’t be any other items to pay.  I’m already working on more repair work and should get that done in the next couple of weeks and paid for before I leave.

Plus there’s the safety deposit box.  My signature is on the card, so I can get into the box.  But somehow I’ve misplaced the key, on the keyring I can’t find.  I can get it drilled, for $180, if I need to.  I may well do that.  Just because I can, and I won’t be crazy trying to find the keyring.  If I find it, great.  If not, it’s only $180.

At this point, I feel as though I’m stuck on “wait” and the Musak music for some game show is playing in my head.

In the meantime, I go through Dad’s mail.  I have a couple of bills to pay.  But I can’t use the checks from our joint account now — that’s over.  I have to use the joint account that Kay and I opened.  I moved boxes of paperwork to my house yesterday.

Oh — that’s the other factor.  My own house, which I’ve really not lived in much for a year.  I’ve visited it periodically.  I’ve put repairs on hold for too long.  In January I managed to get rewiring done.  But now I’m waiting to hear from a carpenter to get some brickwork taken down and replaced with decorative fencing.  I hate waiting.  I want to see things happen.  I want ACTION.

But that’s not realistic.  I just have to adjust my expectations.  I can’t get it all done at once, even though I want to.  Not reasonable.

So today I went to look for three ceiling fans for three rooms in my house.  I have to go back for those, to be sure I get the right ones.  But while I was shopping, I managed to pick up some things for my garden — I want to have an inviting garden area.  I got started on that, but it stopped too, along with other house projects.

I bought two lights for inside — a floor lamp for my workspace and a table lamp for the living room.  I bought some solar things for the garden, including a sitting Buddha with a solar-powered tea light.  Buddha will join the St. Francis statue I put in the garden last summer.

For too long my own house was just a place to sleep, and I neglected it.  A couple of years ago, I started working on clearing things out, on organizing and clearing.  That’s still an on-going process, and I’m back on it with more steam now.  My house is once more a joy for me, and I appreciate it more than I have in years.  I want it to be a place of light and color, cleared of clutter (well, mostly), but filled with my books and art.  I have my mother’s dining room set — and am making a real dining room area in my living room.  I want to have dinner parties.  I want to have friends over.

So the details keep me spinning now.  I’m learning that I can’t make the details clear up faster, or disappear.  I just have to be patient.

Who knew that a veteran was entitled to a marker from the military?  I ordered a granite foot marker for Dad’s grave.  I knew about the flag, which I still have to buy a case for.  And there are the thank-you cards to write.  I’ve got that bag waiting for me (and for Kay).

It’s time for lunch now.  In Lake Charles, with my friend Martha.  I just had coffee with my friend Brenda.  Remnants of the life I had are knitting back together to help me create my new life.

Details await me.  From the past.  But also from the future I’m now creating.

Details unlimited indeed.

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Details, details

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Cheryl L. Ware

Two sayings come to mind:  “God is in the details”  and “The Devil’s in the details.”  Why am I not surprised that such polar opposites describe the reality of details?

Right now it’s the details that keep me heading for the notebook that goes with me everywhere — notes about things to follow up on, to call about, to find out about.  I knew something about what I’d be facing once Dad died, in terms of the business of an executor or trustee.  But I’m still discovering some.

For example, sometime in the last three weeks I’ve managed to misplace a keyring — and it’s the one with the key to Dad’s safety deposit box.  My signature is on the box, so that’s not a problem.  But if I can’t find the key, I have to pay $180 to get it drilled.  But I can manage it.

I’ve found the insurance papers that I know of, but suspect there’s another one.  I’ve contacted one company that turns out to have gone into receivership, but managed to get the right people to help.  Now I’m waiting for those papers to come in.  The big insurance/annuity policy has been taken to the funeral director, who has taken care of that and once the bill there is paid, Kay and I will get what’s left.  I’ve called the larger annuity that was about to have to be rolled out because Dad was turning 90.  Kay and I have been to the bank.  The officer there has set in motion to have his social security check returned.  I still have to contact Dad’s former employer to stop pension checks.  Of course, now I have to wait for the certified death certificates so that I can complete paperwork.

Kay and I will sell the house, and Dad knew that.  I’ve contacted an appraiser and we’re going to meet soon.

In preparation for that, I’ve rented a 10×15 storage unit for furniture and anything else we’re keeping.  I’ve got most of the books boxed, but more to work on.

But lord, the garage!  I don’t think my dad ever threw anything out — just the opposite.  He collected things.  “Oh, I can fix that.”  “That engine is still good; I can use it for. . . .”  You get the picture.  Dad and his siblings were products of the Great Depression and lived accordingly.  He had his own tools.  He had the tools from my mother’s stepfather.  He had tools he’d acquired for all of us.  Some of it is neatly tucked away in cabinets.  Some of it.  But the rest?  Let’s put it this way:  there’s a double garage with no room for any cars.  Come to think of it, I don’t think there was ever room for cars.  We’ve never actually used the garage for that purpose.  That’s why there is a carport.  There is a shed in the back of the yard.  In that is the 1977 or 1978 Blazer that Dad and Phil used for hunting and fishing.  There’s a boat and trailer.  And the riding lawnmower.  And probably more tools.

Once the house itself is empty of the life that it held for decades, of the family that no longer lives there, it’s really just a shell.  I have fond memories of the house in Egan– but it’s not something I’ll pine for.  I was 16 when we moved into this house, and it was the 7th house I lived in, so it isn’t the only home I’ve ever known.  In fact, I’ve lived in this house in Lake Charles longer than I have lived anywhere else.  The constant home in my life?  That would be the farm, I guess.  And oddly enough, the house that I dream about most is the house in Beaumont where my maternal grandmother lived.  And at times, I dream about the oilfield camp in Egan, that I’m moving back there into one of the houses, but the house is different.  And there’s a swimming pool.  Of course, someone else owns the land and has built a large home there.  But dreams don’t rely on reality.  For me, houses have purpose and life, but they’re only things.  It’s the memories I cherish, though the house may have some sentimental connection.

Having grown up on the Gulf Coast, I’ve seen houses destroyed by hurricanes.  I’ve lost a house — my beach house in Crystal Beach, Texas — to Hurricane Ike.  Other than the cracked slab and a few stray, random items, nothing was left after Ike hit Ground Zero not far from my house there.  What survived?  A few blue glass things I’d tiled a cabinet top with.  A Christmas ornament that I left out on a cabinet — a blue angel, now with a chipped wing.  I call her the Beach Angel.  Everything else washed away, piled up on Oak Island or Goat Island or dragged back to to sink beneath the gray-green waters of the Gulf.  It wasn’t my primary home, but I loved it.  And I have survived that loss.  I once left this house, though, for a Category 5 hurricane that was supposed to rip through Lake Charles, Hurricane Lily, I think.  I drove off with my car packed full with pets and computer and photograph albums and music, knowing I might never see the house again.  That’s when I realized I could live without the house itself.  And when I drove off with the car packed similarly for Hurricane Rita, I didn’t look back.  Everything I needed was with me.  If I had pets and cameras and computer and photos and music, and I knew family and friends were safe, that’s all I really needed.  Clothes?  I just needed enough to get by with.  After all, there’s always a Walmart somewhere.

So the house in Egan?  We’ll sell.  I’m not as attached to it as Kay is — she was only 8 or so when we moved in, and she is more sentimental about it than I am.

After all, we’ll still go back to Egan — we have friends who are family now, and I’ve told Billie she has to have room for us when we visit. It’s the house we’re selling, not our connection to Egan.

My notebook sits beside me here on the table now, and I see a few phone calls I can make today.  And I’m sure I’ll think of other things I need to make notes about — things to check on, people to call, things to get when I go to Egan next time.

So whether it’s God or the devil in the details, it doesn’t really matter.  Perhaps one choice indicates a more positive spin and the other a negative one. Regardless, it’s  the details come to drive us, I think, in the aftermath of a death.  They keep us going. Grief and mourning take so many different forms and differ from person to person.  I know from experience that years after, when you’re calm and think you’re beyond it, something will trigger grief so sharp and fresh that it’s a gut-kick back to the past, to the rawness of loss.

Right now, I’m pacing myself through the details.  And daily trying to gather the threads of my life back together, to find my way back to living by myself, in my house, in the town I’ve been in this time since 1981 (and add the 3 1/2 years of college for a total of 34 1/2 years I’ve lived in Lake Charles).

I’m weary, even bone-tired.  And weary with the weight of the last months, where  I’ve been too busy to let myself go too much.  I’ve cried at times, but had to pull myself back together and keep going.  I don’t know if I’ll ever feel as though I’ve gotten enough sleep again.  I’m sure at some point I’ll actually sleep through the night without waking up to check on Dad.  Crying jags will surprise me at some point, I’m sure.

I find myself reading at night, and in the daytime I start a project, a box to fill, or a shelf to clear.  Work, as Dad always showed me, was a way to deal with stress.  If your hands were busy, he’d say, your mind couldn’t be too.  If you tired the body out, you could get rest, and you’d feel productive.

It’s true.  So today I’m clearing out the front room with my friend Patty, and putting some things into my storage unit, making that room for a work area for my jewelry and for my office for writing.

My house is taking on life again, shaping itself around my needs now in retirement, and that’s a wonderful thing.  I’m finding my way back, even while I make lists of details about closing the past.

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Sweet Bluebonnet Spring

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Cheryl L. Ware

Well, it’s still spring, though the bluebonnets are gone now.

Despite that, as I drove up to San Augustine on Friday I kept hearing Nanci Griffith’s “Gulf Coast Highway” in my head, especially the lines “And when he dies he says he’ll catch some blackbird’s wing/Then he will fly away to Heaven come some sweet bluebonnet spring.”  That beautifully simple song of hers has been one of my favorites for a long time.

Music was in my mind a lot this week.  One of the things Kay and I had to do was select music — for the memorial photo DVD that the funeral home created and for the funeral service itself.  There were actually a few clear choices — hymns we grew up hearing Dad and Mother sing together around the house, harmonizing.  Songs we sang when we went to church with Dad, the shape-notes of the Church of Christ hymnal.

We grew up hearing Mother and Dad sing a lot — they sang to us, with us, sacred music, popular music, country music.  She had a lovely alto voice and he had a beautiful baritone.  Many nights he sang me to sleep — with Jimmy Rodgers songs, songs like Gene Autry’s “Silver Haired Daddy of Mine,” “Red River Valley” . . . more songs than I can list.  We sang in the car when we traveled to Beaumont to my maternal grandmother’s house or to San Augustine to the farm. That’s what most people don’t know, that we sang together so much.

Music was an important part of our lives together and thus of planning Dad’s service.  Selecting music wasn’t hard.  On the DVD:  “Precious Memories,” “I’ll Fly Away.”  During the service:  “I’ll Fly Away,” “Shall We Gather At the River,” “Trust and Obey,” “Blessed Assurance,” “In the Garden.”  Each of those songs had some connection with Dad.  He enjoyed listening to Alan Jackson’s “Precious Memories” album.  The others are songs I have many memories of — of listening to Dad sing them in church, of his baritone in harmony, especially if he was singing with Mother, which he often did.  “Shall We Gather at the River” was important to him; it was sung at his mother’s funeral.  But while “In the Garden” was playing, my cousin Carolyn leaned over and whispered to me that she remembered that song.  At our great-grandmother’s house in Beaumont, she remembered our grandmother playing the piano while Mother and Dad sang “In The Garden.”‘ And at the end of it, my mother immediately segued into “Tampico Bay” — that was Mother.  Playful, humorous — and Dad loved that about her.

Music was just something we always shared.

All of us kids loved music.  I’m the only one who took piano lessons — for 6 years.  I still play at times.  I have the piano that Mother and Dad bought when I was in fourth grade.  My Aunt Jean, who taught piano, actually picked it out.  I remember my mother’s mother sitting down and playing it every time she and Poppa came to visit us, though she didn’t read music.  Mother had lots of albums, everything from pop music of the 1950s to sacred music.  Dad had albums we bought him– Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson.  He had lots of country music.

If you look at my house, you’ll find what I refer to as the “wall of vinyl.”  My first music purchase was “Elvis’s Golden Hits.”  The second:  “Rick Is 21” — Ricky Nelson.  You’ll find the Beatles, the Stones, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Steppenwolf, Willie Nelson. You’ll also find classical music.  Then there are the CDs.

My grandmother Ella, Mother’s mother, taught me to dance to Cajun music the way most kids learn here:  she put me on her feet and that’s how I learned.  She’d put music on and dance around the house as she cleaned house.  She loved to dance — indeed, when I lived in Beaumont in 1975, I was out one night with friends at a local honky-tonk in the boonies of the Golden Triangle area.  Club 88.  I was out on the dance floor and when I got back to our table, one of them asked who the old lady I’d bumped into and hugged was.  “Be careful how you talk about my grandmother,” I answered.  “No, seriously.  Who was it?” he popped back.  “My grandmother.  Really.”  And over she came, meeting everyone.  She was 67 at the time, widowed, and out with friends.  We still have her records too, from 78s to 45s, and her stereo cabinet.

Even a couple of days ago, a friend sent me a message of condolence, telling me he’d thought of a Lucinda Williams song, “Lake Charles” (appropriately enough) —

“Did an angel whisper in your ear
And hold you close and take away your fear
In those long last moments.”

Oddly enough, I replied, that very song had been rolling around in my head too.  I found it very sweet that he thought of it, and very comforting.

That’s what music is for me, many times, as it is for many people, I think:  comforting.  I use music to calm me, to express my frustration or anger, to energize me for driving, to contemplate.  I used it to grade for decades.  Like literature, it serves a multitude of purposes in my life.  I cannot imagine life without it.

I’ve been in Lake Charles for a couple of days now, with my pets and my house, sleeping in my bed and feeling both at home and at odds.  Readjusting will take time, I know, and I’ll be back and forth to Egan.  I’ll stay there at times too.  There’s still business to take care of, a house to pack up and things to put into storage.

But tomorrow I’ll be on the road to San Augustine, to the farm, to pick up the plants we could’t fit into the car on Sunday.  Then I’ll head to Kay’s to spend the night, because on Friday I’ll be there to watch her get her master’s degree.  Dad knew she was getting it and was very proud of her.  I want to applaud her and celebrate with her.  So I’ll be packing some CDs and the iPod.

But today I’m here in my house, sitting at the dining room table that was Mother’s.  Today, a bit over a week after Dad died, I am playing Nanci Griffith and Lucinda Williams songs, gently soothing me into my newest life, a journey without Dad’s physical presence, but not really without Dad.

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On the Road Again

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Cheryl L. Ware

Okay.  Today’s theme music:  Willie Nelson, “On the Road Again.”

Because we are.  Or will be shortly.  Today Kay and Billie and I head for the farm in Texas.  We’ll meet my dad’s sister, my cousin Mike and his wife Sissy, and have tonight to visit.  Tomorrow is the big day, the funeral.  Lots more family and many friends will be there then, and there’s a lunch after the burial, and then probably lots of people dropping by the farm afterwards.  We’ll spend the night there again on Saturday night and head back to Egan on Sunday.

Traveling days, driving days.  And that makes me think of Dad again.

Because, you see, it all started with him.  Maybe, now that I think about it, it started with Mother and Dad buying a house in Beaumont on Detroit Street.  That’s the street I came home from the hospital to.  Indeed, my birth announcement was themed:  I was the 1951 model — complete with squealing lungs.  Destiny.

When I was in first grade, I was the little Rice Festival Princess from Egan Elementary School.  I had a huge (and I mean HUGE) dress, complete with hoop skirt.  It was so large that a state trooper had to carry me up the steps to the stage because the skirt wouldn’t fit between the banisters.  (There is a photo somewhere that my mother took of that moment — complete with the hoop skirt flipping the dress up, leaving a view of my lace-trimmed undies.)  What was I most excited about?  Not anything about the dress, or the competition (I didn’t win.) Riding in a convertible, on the back of the back seat.

Yes, the dress was okay.  I just remember that standing and having it pinned and fitted was a pain.  No, it was the convertible that was most important to me.

Only two years later I learned to drive.  Mother was ill — panic attacks, severe anxiety disorder.  If she had a panic attack while driving, someone had to be able to drive us home.  I was elected.

We had a 1955 Chevy Bel-Air car, two-door, pink and gray.  Dad took me out to the road by the ballpark, and the first time I tried to drive, I flooded the engine.  We had to walk home.  Within two years, Mother just liked having me run errands here in Egan to the little grocery store.  Ten.  I loved it.

Then there was the 1956 or 1957 Chevy truck my granddad Ware bought.  I learned to drive that too, as all the grandkids did, I guess.  That was the first manual I ever drove — and it was a shift off the steering wheel.  Three gears and reverse.  We got to drive in the pastures, never anywhere else.  That truck is still at the farm, and it still runs.

In fact, I remember every car Mother and Dad ever had.  Even the first one, before the ’55 Chevy.  I remember standing up in the back of that 1948 (I think) Plymouth, with my head hitting the roof liner.

Only last week, Dad and Kay were laughing about me as I was mowing the yard here.  It’s a riding mower, of course.  What were they laughing about?  That I love driving.  “If it has 4 wheels and an engine, she’ll drive it,” Dad said.

So when we hit the road in a few minutes, that’s no problem for me.  We’ll talk, and maybe play some music.  But I’ll be driving and remembering Dad.  Every mile.

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The Bustle in a House

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Cheryl L. Ware

The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth, –

The sweeping up the heart,
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.

Emily Dickinson

What do you expect from a retired professor of English whose specialty is American literature?

Seriously, though, this poem has been running through my head for two days now, pushing itself into my consciousness at the very time I’m creating my own bustle in the house here.

Dickinson has always been one of my favorite poets, though I know she’s not everyone’s taste.  I find, though, that her poems have such variety and contemplate such life issues that mirror the conflicting ideas and even confusion that I have felt at many times.  Some poems when read together indicate that she had two opposing ideas and wasn’t necessarily sure of things, even of belief.

But this one, just now, is what has insistently made itself part of my life since Monday.

Truly I have been (as has Kay) part of the bustle that is necessary at such times.  Even as we were just realizing he had died, Kay and I had to be active.  We had to call hospice, and that started the wheels in motion.  First the nurse arrived to officially deal with his death; she cleaned him.  I called Charles, who was here in a few minutes.  I called Billie, who dressed and came over.  About ten minutes later, her son Joe showed up too.  Mind you, this is at 2 in the morning!  We were not alone; we were surrounded by friends.  And we found ourselves telling stories to the nurse, laughing.  When the funeral staff came in to pick up Dad, one of the guys was one of our cousins.  Small town life again, comforting in ways you don’t really anticipate as you are growing up.

Then he was gone, and they were gone, and we were by ourselves.  But we couldn’t sleep — too much to do.  The bustle had begun.  With a 9 a.m. appointment at the funeral home to make arrangements, we had to locate necessary items — clothing, photographs, insurance papers. And then I started texting cousins and close friends.  And started getting responses back, even at 4 or 4:30 in the morning.

Kay and I got through with the funeral director by 11:30 or so, and stopped in Egan for a little while before heading to Lake Charles.  I needed to check for something at my house, though I couldn’t find it.  We had coffee with a friend of mine.  We also had pampering time — I treated us to a spa pedicure and manicure.  I figured we needed to feel better, and this was the perfect treat.  We were back in Egan by 7, and found the hospital bed and other equipment was gone (thanks to Charles, who let the people in to pick it up).  We got something to eat, and  I made some phone calls.  Then we crashed.

Today, Wednesday, we spent here at the house — my friend Patty came from Lake Charles.  She and Kay cleaned up and washed clothes.  I made more phone calls, worked on funeral arrangements, went through paperwork, went to Crowley to the clerk of courts to get a copy of the living trust that Dad had set up and registered.  Then it was on to the funeral home.  Then I picked up delicious shrimp poboys and came home.  It was a bit after 2 by the time we finished lunch, and then went back to work.  By 5, I loaded my two dogs into pet carriers, and Patty took them back to my house in Lake Charles for me.  If we have visitors drop in tomorrow, I won’t have to worry about the pups.

The bathrooms are clean.  Clothes are washed.  My room is neater than it’s been in weeks.  I managed to get the rest of the house in good shape, but really didn’t bother getting my room as organized — I was just too tired, and there were more important things to do.  Now, though, it is much better.  Thanks, Patty!

And tonight, Charles came over for supper.  He’d cooked some jalapeño pinto beans in the slow cooker.  I grilled some sweet peppers and bell peppers and onions.  Kay cooked some fajita meat and made queso.  We had a great meal.  The strawberry daiquiris were also quite tasty.

Now I am relaxing.  Soon I will head to bed and hope to get some sleep.  Tomorrow is another day of bustling, both in the house and elsewhere.  Friends may drop in.  I need to get a haircut.  And Kay and I need to be at the funeral home at 4; close friends and the two of us will be there until 5, when the visitation begins.  That runs until 9.  Then Kay and I and Cindy (one of her oldest friends) come back to the house for the night.

Friday is travel day:  Kay and I will go to Lake Charles for a few hours and then head to San Augustine to the family farm.  My cousin Mike and his wife will drive down to the farm as will, bringing his mother, my dad’s sister, and they’ll get there and open up the house before we arrive.  They’ll also bring supper.  What a treat not to have to worry about that!  We just get to relax and be together and laugh and remember Dad and how many years we’ve gotten together.  We can hear more Aunt Mildred and Dad stories.

Saturday will be the funeral service and burial, followed by lunch and then it’s back to the farm with family and friends coming by.  If we’re still functional, Kay and I will come back to Egan that evening.

I know that the bustle in the house isn’t really over even then.  There’s still so much to do.  There are papers I need to locate, insurance policies to find, business to take care of.  And then there are still the closets to be emptied and books to be sorted and packed.  But that can be at a leisurely pace, certainly compared to the rather rapid pace of this week.

That, though, is when the emotional letdown will come, I think.  The rushing about and the busy pace have kept us going.  Once that pace stops, once we have time to sit and think and remember, the realities will come back into full focus.  No longer having to be social directors of sorts, we will be in our own individual and collective times, when grief will come to visit more often.

One of the great joys of my life has been teaching literature — and teaching literature has provided me with such profound consolation in difficult times — as when Mother died, or Phil died.  Teaching literature means exploring the human condition and the emotions that make us human — and one of the most profound experiences we humans share is the death of loved ones (indeed, loss in the broadest of terms as well).  Through the necessity of teaching major works of literature, I found myself so personally connected and deeply comforted.  I also found that students came to see how literature speaks to us, beyond the differences of time and culture, and touches us, speaks to us, connects to us beyond time and place.

When I taught Anne Bradstreet’s poetry, or the poetry of Edward Taylor, I found not only deeply religious Puritans expressing their faith, but humans who dealt with the loss of parents or children.  Henry David Thoreau’s masterpiece, Walden, came from his deep grief over the loss of his brother, and represented not Thoreau’s becoming a hermit, but his personal search for what Emerson had called for in “Self Reliance.” Thoreau wondered what was essential to life, and in the process of that two years, two months, and two days at Walden Pond he moved through grief to reconciliation — he moved back to town in spring, surely not accidental — but the time of renewal.  Over and over, I found human voices and human grief, working through to acceptance and reconciliation.

Particularly for me now, Bradstreet’s  poems about her father, Thomas Dudley, are pertinent.  In “To Her Father With Some Verses,” Bradstreet says:

“Most truly honoured, and as truly dear,
If worth in me or ought I do appear,
Who can of right better demand the same
Than may your worthy self from whom it came?
The principal might yield a greater sum,
Yet handled ill, amounts but to this crumb;
My stock’s so small I know not how to pay,
My bond remains in force unto this day;
Yet for part payment take this simple mite,
Where nothing’s to be had, kings loose their right.
Such is my debt I may not say forgive,
But as I can, I’ll pay it while I live;
Such is my bond, none can discharge but I,
Yet paying is not paid until I die.”
She wrote other poems in honor of her father, but this one, I find, is  simplest, most direct, and clear.  And I’ve always thought it was on target, but never more so than now that Dad is gone.  If I have learned anything, become anything, if there is anything worthy in me, I owe it to him, and to Mother.  They modeled the values, not just mouthed them.  Bradstreet says that she owes her father such a debt that she can pay and pay and never pay that debt off.  This is the way I feel too.  My debt is never paid off.  I pay it off daily, in pieces, in my own life, in how I live, and in living the principles and values, not just professing them.
Dickinson wrote about loss of many types, and about grief.  Many of my students, frankly, thought she was weird or crazy or just obsessed with death.  Yet her world was so different from ours in that illnesses often led to death, and medicine wasn’t exactly always a help.  Further, death was something that happened at home, not in some sterile hospital room.  And funerals happened at home, not in some special place.
Perhaps too there is some truth to the idea that there is a therapeutic element in writing.  Certainly if that was true for Dickinson, it in no way diminishes the power of her art .
Even with so many of her poems about death and loss and grief, Dickinson could write these lines, which I see as a counterpoint:

”

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.”

And Walt Whitman, her contemporary, wrote of death in surprisingly joyful, hopeful ways.  (He was, after all, an American Romantic).
As he noted:
“this is thy hour o soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson
done,
thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the
themes thou lovest best,
night, sleep, death and the stars.”
It has been my privilege to make a living out of my great passion for literature.  That I got paid to teach what I love has always been an amazing thing to me.
So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that lines of literature, even entire poems, pop into my thoughts at any given moment.  They spoke to me as a teacher, but more importantly, they spoke to me as a person.  I pick up literature for fun, not just for a job.
Thanks, Emily, and Walt, and Anne, and any number of other writers, for illuminating my life.  Thanks for giving a voice to my pain, for reminding me that grief has a cycle that can bring me to reconciliation, for showing me the joy that is also in life, even in the midst of grief.
As Whitman asserts in “Song of Myself,”
“All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
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Peace and Love: Journey’s End

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Cheryl L. Ware

Dad died very peacefully early this morning, at home, in his sleep.

We called in hospice on Sunday and by the time the nurse left on Sunday afternoon, after a 3-hour visit, I had lovely medicines to help Dad — morphine (given sublingually), some lorazepam gel for restlessness, and some fenegran for nausea.

The initial dosage of morphine worked well Sunday night — .25 ml.  He slept well.  On Monday, though, he felt pain — through his bath and the nurse changing the bandage on his arm. A couple of hours after the hospice aide and nurse left, I called hospice about 1 p.m. yesterday afternoon, and the nurse I talked to walked me through what she wanted me to do — step up the dosage and frequency of the morphine, pair it with the lorazepam the next time THAT could be given, and then back off the frequency if possible so that we were back on the once-every-2-hours schedule.  By 6, Dad was more comfortable, finally.  By 9, he was sleeping.

And a few hours later, my sister (napping in the recliner near his bed) woke up and found that in the 30 minutes she’d been napping, Dad had slipped away.  She woke me up immediately at 1:30 a.m.  We petted his face, kissed him, and called hospice.  The hospice nurse was there within 30 minutes.  By that time, I’d texted our neighbor Charles, who came over.  We called our friend Billie, who dressed and came over.  A few minutes after she arrived, her son Joe joined us.  So there we were, with the hospice nurse, and we visited and talked and it felt so comfortable and natural.  When the funeral home workers came a bit later, one of the two was actually one of our cousins.  Again, more visiting and talking.  By the time they were ready to leave, the second man told us his family was here, told us who he was related to, and once more we knew who he was talking about.

Then Kay and I were alone.  We sat a bit, talked, and then began gathering what we would need for 9 a.m., when we were to meet the funeral home director to make plans for the services.

Small town life is very comforting at such times. We weren’t alone much, but instead shared that time with friends of such long standing that they’re family.  Dad was with us, he left with one of our cousins (through our mother), and then Kay and I were alone to talk and plan and start the process of preparing for the next few days.

We got his suit and clothes to take with us.  We sorted through hundreds of photographs to select just under 40 to bring to the funeral home so that they could scan them and make the memorial DVD that will play.  Kay had actually already begun that process and we had such fun looking at photographs that went back to Dad’s childhood, to World War II, to his wedding to Mother, to our childhoods, to later.  We found such wonderful memories as we sorted and selected.  Happy, lovely photographs of Mother and Dad throughout their lives together; of Phil and Kay and me at various ages; of other family members; of friends.  We found it difficult to actually settle on the 30-35 selected — and fudged with nearly 40.

I completed Dad’s obituary that I had begun a couple of days earlier.  I paid some bills online.  I texted my first cousins and then my close friends.  I didn’t post on Facebook immediately, though, because Kay and I wanted to wait until she had talked to her daughter and let her know.  We didn’t want someone else to tell her or for her to read it on Facebook.

Only when that phone call was over did I sit down at the computer and write a Facebook post about Dad’s death and our tentative plans for services.

Because we’ve lived in Egan so long, we knew we wanted to have something here.  A 4-hour visitation at a local funeral home in Crowley on Thursday late afternoon/early evening would be where our many friends and Dad’s former co-workers could pay their respects.  Some of my friends and some of my sister’s friends will also be here for that service.

But then Dad wanted to be buried in his hometown, the tiny Bland Lake Community near San Augustine, Texas.  Not a problem:  we’d learned it could be done when Mother died in 1993.  Arrangements were no trouble; the funeral director here will contact the funeral home there and coordinate all the events and movements.  Such a relief not to have to work through all that on our own.

We simply gave information, talked about our wishes, and then selected a casket and a few other items.

A few more minutes and we were gone, headed to one of the Crowley flower shops to select flowers.  There was no discussion necessary, either — red roses, Dad’s favorite flower.

Then a few hours in Lake Charles allowed us to relax a bit.  We stopped at the Starbucks near the university, then picked up one of my friends (her car was being serviced), and had a Lady Day — our shorthand for a manicure/pedicure.  It was such a treat to relax and get pampered and then walk out with neat nails and hands and feet.  And nicely painted coral toenails, too!

After a coffee break, another errand, and a brief stop at my house downtown, we were back on the road to Egan, back to the tasks we have to get through by Thursday and Friday.

A few more phone calls, and the funeral plans were done.  A few more, and I’d talked to cousins and I’d related the tentative plans and time schedule.

At 9, Kay and I were eating homemade vegetable beef soup.

Now I’m writing this blog, and then I’ll turn off the lights and get some sleep.

More phone calls to make — but not necessary to make them right now.  My eyes are so tired they hurt and I’m finding it hard to focus.

There’s a beautiful song by Nanci Griffith, a Texas singer-songwriter I’ve long enjoyed –“It’s a Hard Life.”  The song has been looping in my head for a few days, but one line in particular: “Now I am the backseat driver from America, / I am not at the wheel of control.”   That lyric and another one of hers from “Gulf Coast Highway” :

“And when we die we say we’ll catch some blackbird’s wing/ Then we will fly away to heaven come some sweet bluebonnet spring.”

Peace and love today, with rest already here, and journey’s end almost done.

I am not at the wheel of control, and it’s a sweet bluebonnet spring.

 

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New Week, New Directions

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Cheryl L. Ware

Today Dad has been home for two weeks, and his third week begins.  Yesterday after the difficulties with his dialysis shunt bleeding, we decided to stop dialysis and call in hospice.  At some point, I asked Dad what he thought about dialysis — he said he was tired of it and didn’t want to go back.  Decision clinched.

The home health nurse came; we initiated the shift to hospice.  She did her usual visit as well as make the appropriate phone calls.

Kay went to Natchitoches for the day by midmorning — she needed to do some paperwork and make sure a file was ready at her office.  By 6 p.m. or so, she was back here in Egan.

Just after 1 p.m., the hospice nurse came for the evaluation.  She was here for over three hours, and she and I had much to talk about.  BY the time she left, I had a much shorter medication list.  I also had Ativan gel, morphine to give under the tongue, and medicine for nausea should that be needed.  I had signed who knows how many pieces of paper.  I had a new folder, with new papers and a new pamphlet to read. I had a new medicine schedule and new things to watch for.  Hospice is about palliative care, and medicine is a tool to achieve that.

Dad rested well last night with the morphine.  Kay and I were less rested — we kept popping in to check on him.  I slept a few hours.

This morning was busy — I called Dad’s primary physician, the dialysis clinic social worker, and the ambulance company regarding the changes, and then I went to Crowley to run a couple of errands.  When I got back, the house was filled with lots of new hospice people — a social worker, an aide, a nurse, and the volunteer coordinator.

Dad had more trouble with pain and with restlessness.  After his bath and the dressing change, everyone left.  Kay and our friend Billie left to go to Lake Charles to take care of some errands.  I stayed here.  Within an hour and a half, it was clear that the pain wasn’t diminishing, that the meds weren’t working.  I called hospice and within minutes had a new routine:  more morphine, more often, then more morphine at a slightly longer interval, then that same larger dose of morphine with the Ativan gel.  Moving the morphine to every 30 minutes and then every hour, then adding the Ativan gel with one dose of the morphine — that was the routine.  One dose of morphine after the combined dose and finally he was resting well.  Now I’m shifting to two hours between morphine, with the Ativan added at 4 hour intervals.  Fingers crossed that this works tonight.

Tomorrow is another day, as Scarlett O’Hara reminds me every time I think of one of Mother’s favorite films.

Now he is resting.  I’ve made a few necessary phone calls, talking to family.  More to come.   Business to take care of tomorrow.  Photos to select and scan.  Arrangements to make — though we’ve talked through and know what we’re going to do.

Tonight, after I finish my grilled cheese sandwich and milk (thank you, little sister), I will shower and pull on new pajamas and crawl into bed.

Shakespeare’s right in Hamlet: sleep does knit the raveled sleeve of care — and so I hope to find soon, that my raveled sleeve of care is eased with some quiet time, some reading, and some sleep.

 

 

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