Exactly six years ago. in A small but passable life.

December 4th, 2014. That was the start. I flew out here to check on Mom. Just to get a better picture of where she was at both physically and mentally. She was fine. I flew back home at the end of February 2015. I spent about a week or so back to sleeping in the van, maybe a night or two upstairs in Daughter’s spare bedroom. Then Daughter and her mother dropped me off out in the woods sixty miles north of the city. I stayed out for a month. Daughter’s mother came out and picked me up on Easter morning and we drove back to the city for Easter dinner at Daughter’s. Right after dinner Mom called. She had just found out that my little sister had been diagnosed with cancer and had worried herself into the hospital. I flew back out the following week. That was the second of five trips in total until the fifth one three-and-half years ago when I decided to just stay out here. (The third trip was when Sis died.)

I spent the day today cleaning out the bathroom. It is now a bachelors bathroom. The toilet seat is now UP as a resting state! I also ended up with the top two of four shelves in the medicine cabinet packed full of over-the-counter tinctures, ointments and various salves and medicines for various ailments and first aid supplies (four boxes of Band-Aids?). I should be set for the rest of this wild ride.

I also found items that I doled out to Mom’s friends. I had found about a half dozen moomoos and gave them to Dot telling her to pick one and give away the others. Mom always said that every old woman deserves a moomoo. She came back later and said her and the girls were going to have a moomoo party. I told her I didn’t need to know anything about that. Dot came back later for a pile of games, puzzles, and a stack of word find books the were packed into one cabinet. And she told me they may be going to the movie theater with the movie passes I’d found and given her, in their moomoos.

I also got Mom taken care of today. She wanted to be donated to science. Wish granted. The Willed Body Program at the Universtiy of Arizona. After that she will be cremated and sent to her oldest granddaughter who lives in Texas one hundred miles from the cemetery where she wanted to be put to rest with her parents. Just like we buried Dad with his mother at the foot of Scottsbluff in Nebraska. So they will both be back where they started sixty-five years ago before they both ended up meeting each other in Vancouver, WA in the student union at Clark Community College. Dad was playing poker with some of his wheelchair buddies. Mom was training as a key-punch operator and working as an airline stewardess. Dad was studying architecture and art and photography.

I still have a few more people to call. I’ve found two address books I’m in the process of deciphering. It is going well though.

I still haven’t fixed myself a proper meal since the evening of the 2nd.

Maybe tomorrow.

Oh, and I bought a pack of Camels. The last pack was back in March, at the beginning of the chaos. That’ll be two packs for 2020.