My Father's Passing Away 5/3/01
May. 4th, 2001 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperMy head is extremely full at the moment, but I feel the need to coredump into my computer. If you've gotten to this particular entry on my webpage, bear with me. I will probably ramble. I will probably angst. But I want this written down for posterity's sake.
My father, Donald Ray Highland, died yesterday. This is to write down what has happened since then.
I had no warning whatsoever. None. I got to work and logged onto my MUSH as per usual, only to have my partner log on shortly thereafter and tell me I had to call my brother Donnie because our father was in the hospital.
I got on the phone to Donnie and actually got his wife Betsy because they were en route to the hospital at that very moment. Between them — Donnie was driving at the time so he let Betsy do most of the talking — I got the initial particulars. Dad had gone to my brother Marc's house and had collapsed and it was Marc that found him. I got their promise to tell me more as soon as they knew it, told them I'd be at work where they could reach me, and let them go ahead and hang up.
Dar wanted to know from me if she and Paul should go ahead and head to IKEA since they were going to buy some stuff for the rearranging of the front half of the living room we've had going on. I was starting to freak, kind of, but thought I was handling it so told her to go ahead and go.
I only started getting a bit more freaked out when I started spreading the word to people that this had happened and that I was really scared that I was going to have to get on a plane and head across the country. I sent mail to my team lead and the lead for our current project and a couple other co-workers to warn them that my father had collapsed and that there was a likely chance of my having to go immediately to Kentucky.
My friends who connect to my MUSH on a daily basis were offering me their good wishes since I told them what was going on pretty much immediately, and I fretted at them about how I was possibly going to be able to work that morning.
Then I posted to the Another Russell Crowe Club board on Yahoo! and to the chat room on GreatBigSea.com (the Online Kitchen Party), saying what had happened, and asking the people I'd gotten to know there to start sending wishes to whatever divine ears they held sacred. I told a couple people on AetherMUSH as well since they had started paging me just after I'd gotten off the phone... and they immediately started giving me their good wishes as well. Kimberly, one of the players with whom Mimi and I are on best terms on Aether, was magnificient. She immediately offered to start looking up plane prices for me, an offer I gratefully accepted because I wasn't prepared to cope with that at the moment and I suspected I might need the information.
Then I realized that the voice mail light was blinking on my phone, so I figured I'd better listen to the messages.
I had three, one left over from a coworker who'd wanted to go to lunch with me the previous day. The second one was incomprehensible for some reason.
The third was Marc calling me from the hospital to tell me that Dad had passed away. He gave me the number of the emergency room, which I wrote down, and I told him I was getting myself to Kentucky as soon as possible and got off the phone.
Dar had left me Paul's cell phone number so I called him and told them what had happened. Said I was going home and got off the phone with them.
I posted again to ARCC and GreatBigSea.com to amend the posts I'd made there. I posted notes to the two MUSHes I still maintain a presence on, Aether and Two Moons. I emailed the house and the Murkworks jammers list. I emailed the coworkers I'd just emailed as well. I told them all my father had died and I was going to get on a plane and go to Kentucky.
I started getting email pretty much immediately from our house's close friend and fellow jammer Kathryn, who immediately offered to look up plane prices and also to come over if I needed her. She started instant-messaging me as well and I more or less got out that yes, her coming over to the house would not suck and that I was going home and would be there shortly.
My team lead, Tim, came to my cube to see if I was okay and offered to give me a ride home. I declined, since I had our car. I emailed the entire project team to tell them I was going and I saw several mails come in before I got my stuff together and got gone.
I bolted for the elevators, crying. I passed one of my coworkers but he didn't say anything — I don't know if he'd seen my email or not.
I drove home. I had my Great Big Sea/30 Odd Foot of Grunts tape playing, but for once the music was pretty much peripheral. Mostly what I thought about was the weirdness of driving home at that hour of the morning and the urgent need to get there.
When I got home Dar and Paul weren't back yet, but Dar had left an answering machine message saying that Paul wanted to know if it would help or hurt if he came along with us to Kentucky. I really didn't think too much about that quite yet, though. I did log back on to the Murk and to Aether; Kimberly paged me, and so did one of the staffers whose real-life name I don't know but who I will call Herne here because that's the name of that person's staff identity on the game. I didn't stay long on Aether, though. I couldn't. I told Kimberly and Herne that I just couldn't be there at the moment, and told Kimberly that if she wanted to come over to the Murk she was welcome.
Kimberly had sent me mail with flight information, too, as had Gyles from the Murk. I had mail as well from Joey on the OKP, with whom I had chatted on Spinchat a couple of times and who seemed a pretty cool person. He sent me comfort — in response to my initial note. He hadn't seen my second one yet. I emailed him back to thank him and tell him my dad had in fact died and I was going to Kentucky as soon as possible.
Right about then was when I started to freak.
I got myself water, then some chocolate milk. I packed clothes into a bag and left it sitting in the middle of the bedroom. And I paced back and forth through the living room, waiting for Dar and Paul and Kathryn to show up. I couldn't make myself sit down.
Finally Dar and Paul arrived and I started sobbing again. They hugged me a lot, and I told Paul that I didn't know if it would help or hinder if he came with us but I certainly wasn't going to tell him no. Then I mumbled something about needing to sit down, and we did and I cried some more.
Kathryn showed up. More hugging. More crying. I mumbled pleas to the room at large for arrangements to be made to make plane tickets happen, pointing at the mail session I still had open with Kathryn's information as well as Gyles's and Kimberly's.
I lay on the couch and cried and shook. I wonder if I'd gone into a little bit of shock because I remember feeling cold as well, and finally I announced I needed to go upstairs and lie down for a while, because I couldn't think of anything except the need to curl up under a warm blanket.
Dar came up to tell me that they wanted to go to the little store down the street and get some food, and she wanted to know if I was all right with them leaving. I said yes.
I curled up and thought about the distance between me and my family. Most of the time the distance is what I want. Not then.
I must have fallen asleep. I did not dream... but I went sort of blank for a while, and came back into focus later feeling clearer-headed, and a bit hot under the blanket instead of comfortingly warm. Dar came up to check on me again, and shortly after that I realized I was probably ready to get up again.
When I came downstairs food had appeared. There were cookies, and Dar made me soup. In the middle of food Cyn showed up — more hugs, more condolences, though by then I'd more or less downgraded from shellshocked to frazzled-but-functional. Mostly. I was cogent but had gone into a kind of autopilot and continued to need people to make plane tickets and other important things happen.
Calls kept coming from Kentucky with updates. Mostly from Betsy, as she was performing much the same function Kathryn was on our end — taking care of administrative sorts of things since she had a bit more distance from it all than me and my brothers. They needed to know from me whether I wanted to view Dad's body, since he had arranged to donate it to the University of Louisville Medical Center. I told Betsy no, I didn't need to see it; we talked some too about whether there would be a marker or memorial service of any kind, and I learned that a surprisingly large number of Dad's coworkers at Wal-Mart were also in shock and that there was probably going to be a service to help accommodate them, though the family was more inclined to just keep matters amongst ourselves fairly informal.
Becky called, too. My little sister and I have been bonding recently in ways that warm my heart despite the fact that there's several thousand miles between us. She has taken after me a considerable amount in the sorts of books she likes — and it touches me to ridiculous ends that we both swoon over Russell Crowe, and that she sends me random emails off Yahoo!'s news server whenever she finds news blurbs about him with pictures. Becky offered me her condolences, and said that she'd try to get to the service though she has finals on Monday.
I worried some about Marc's children, since I didn't know how Amanda and Meighan would take the news of their grandfather's death. Charlie at about one and a half isn't old enough to know what's going on, but Amanda at four is enough to have some clue. Meighan, at nine, is about in the same age range I was when Dad's father, my grandfather, died. So I was fairly sure this would have an impact on the kid. Didi told me over the phone that they had not yet told Meighan, since she was with her mother and they didn't want to leave the task of telling her to said mom.
Mimi arrived, and contributed more hugs and more energy to the ongoing efforts of People Who Were Not Freaked Out Making Things Happen. She promised to take us to the airport and to look after the cat and the birds while we were gone. I made a wan joke about my plans to have stayed up late on Saturday night watching Gladiator (on account of I wanted to celebrate it being a year since that flick had been released, along with the other chicks on ARCC) being overridden; not exactly the flick I needed to see right then. Mimi showed me Chicken Run instead, and also loaned me a suitable skirt and blouse to wear for whatever service would occur.
I got into the Need to Do Things to Keep Self occupied mode, though this time it was more constructive than my previous outburst had been, particularly with the others on hand to offer helpful reminders which would have been self-evident had I been functioning on all cylinders, but which were vitally needed right then. I did laundry, and sorted through what I'd already packed to take out stuff I was fairly sure I wouldn't need after all. I wrote all the pending receipts into the checkbooks to get them up to date, and vaguely thought about actually trying to do the latest round of checkbook balancing, though I never got that far. I packed the rest of what I would need.
I turned my own computer on, so I could shut down my window on Dar's computer, and checked in again on the Murk. Emailed Kimberly to thank her again for stopping by on the Murk, though I'd actually missed her while I was in freak-out mode. Another player with whom I am on very good terms on Aether (his character's name is Salmalin; I don't know his real-life name) logged onto the MUSH to check on me and offer hugs. Vicka logged in as well and touched me, again to ridiculously heart-warming extremes, by telling me she'd actually voluntarily watched an Elvis movie the other day, even though she'd done it mostly for the motorcycle scenes. She hung around for a while and we music-geeked and talked about her band and our jamming group, and she promised to get me a copy of a live song Great Big Sea had recorded for a local radio station.
I got into a heavy Elvis-related frame of mind, with the song "Don't Cry Daddy" running over and over through my head — what I could remember of it, at any rate, since I hadn't heard that particular song in a very long time. I finally went up to hunt through my music collection, needing to hear it, and determined I didn't actually have it on any of my CDs. It was on a very old tape, the quality of which was questionable. But it was enough to bring tears to my eyes again as I listened to it, along with "Kentucky Rain".
I saw another mail from Joey from the OKP come in, as well as a mail from someone named Anne whose name and email address I didn't recognize until I went and looked at her webpage URL in her .signature, and realized she was from the OKP as well. I opened up my browser, too, and although I didn't post again, I saw several notes on both ARCC and the OKP from people responding to what I had posted. It was all a bit much for me to take in at the time, but later on I began to be intensely touched at this example of the way the Internet can bring people together. Here are people who, for the most part, do not know me except through words I type on the web... yet with two short and fairly incoherent notes I saw a good two dozen expressions of love and concern and one person on the OKP even telling me that the people at their church were praying for my father. They, again, hadn't seen my second note, but I wasn't about to take issue with that little quibble.
Dar told me that she'd posted to exrvl-l about what had happened. We both got email in from Regis with her condolences, and Dar said that she'd gotten several other notes from others on the mailing list as well, though those notes only came to her.
Paul finally left to take Kathryn home after I assured her that she had helped a great deal by being there and being coherent.
When Paul got back, we ordered pizza as it was getting close on to time for us to leave. Mimi ordered Chinese, and both our orders got to us amazingly swiftly, so we didn't have to gulp them down and bolt right out the door.
I waffled some about whether or not to bring my computer, and what finally decided me was wondering whether Meighan was going to ask me whether I'd brought it and whether we could play Nethack on it.
By the time we got out the door I was again fairly heavily on autopilot. Mimi and Paul and Dar yakked a good deal en route to the airport while I just sat there in the back seat of the van and stared at nothing. Mimi left us at the airport with more hugs and assurances that she loved me and we headed on in.
We found out there were actually two Northwest flights departing for Detroit within 20 minutes of one another, and we weren't entirely sure which one we were on. Nor, at the gate, were we sure until the last minute — because we didn't get boarding passes until pretty much literally the last minute, for the earlier of the two flights. The three of us were scattered in various places all over the plane, but we weren't in a position to be picky.
I had to let them take my bag because it was too big to fit in the overhead bins. So after the luggage debacle of last Christmas, I was a little paranoid about getting to Kentucky and having to deal with not seeing my luggage when I got there, but I also wasn't prepared to cope with arguing with the flight attendants about it. I told one of them that my father had died, I was freaked out, and needed them to yes, please, take the luggage, check it through to Lexington, and make it happen.
My seat wound up being between two pretty large men. One of them, overhearing my babbling to the flight attendant, offered me his blanket and pillow, but I declined since I had the ones they'd left on my seat.
The plane took off, and I spent the next few hours trying fitfully to get something resembling sleep. It was difficult. The men on either side of me were large enough that although the armrests were down between our seats, they still encroached on my physical space and I had to hunker in on myself to avoid making contact with either of them. Enough that I started giving myself shoulder and neck cramps. I was only mostly okay if either:
A) I had the blanket on, in which case it was a 'shield' and I was somehow magically able to stand physical contact with the strangers. The problem with this was that if I had the blanket on too long, I got too hot. Or,
B) I slumped down enough in the seat that my arms were below their arms. The problem with this was that that was horribly uncomfortable, regardless.
I desperately wanted to be unconscious. I desperately wanted to wake up and discover I'd been dreaming and that Dad wasn't really dead.
Somehow I hung in there until we landed in Detroit. Dar looked askance at me as I got luggage-free off the plane, and said I should have taken my backpack out of my bag, at least. I pointed out I wasn't in Rational Thought Mode at the time, then Paul got off the plane and we went on over to the gate for the next connection.
Paul got us cinnamon rolls since by then it was early morning (6ish-7ish) in Detroit even though it was still 3ish-4ish by our internal clocks. Dar muttered imprecations against the Evil Yellow Orb in the sky, but other than that she and Paul were in fairly decent if loopy spirits. I mostly just sat there numbly, trying to find a comfortable position to curl up in and failing.
The gate was one of those where you have to get on a bus which then takes you to your plane. They started boarding us, then had to take us off again when the word came through that one of the crewmembers for our flight was late arriving at the airport. But fortunately the delay wasn't very long, and we finally got to the second plane.
It was louder — a prop plane, and the engine noise was pretty loud indeed.
This time at least I got to sit by a window, so I had a wall to lean against. Dar got to sit by me as well so I could also lean on her.
Lexington at last, and by then it was something on the order of 9ish. Dar realized that we'd rented the exact same car we'd had the last time we were in Kentucky, i.e., last Christmas. The National car people at the Lexington airport seem to have only about twelve total cars, so this wasn't exactly difficult to believe. I was relieved beyond measure to find that my bag was in fact waiting at the baggage claim, because I did not want to think about how not okay I would have been if I had had to deal with hassling someone about a missing bag.
I got on the phone and left a fairly incoherent voice mail with Marc and Didi, just enough to let them know that we had in fact arrived and needed to crash at our hotel room for a while and that we'd check in later.
A couple of small scares, once we finally got to our hotel. Dar warned us that she wasn't sure we could get an early check-in, since the usual check-in time was 2pm. By then I was pretty much a zombie, and couldn't find enough energy to mumble anything about how desperately I needed to lay down. We were told they could clean the room immediately, though we'd have to wait a half an hour or so. So we hung out in the lobby, till they finally told us the room was ready, then we went upstairs...
... only to discover, when we opened the door, that they'd assigned us a smoking room by mistake. We got hit with an almost physical wall of tobacco stench rolling at us out of the room, which made that room pretty much not an option. Back downstairs to tell them we needed a non-smoking room.
More inexpressible relief when we learned that a non-smoking room just down the hall was ready and we could take it.
We collapsed.
I had vaguely thought we could get up around noonish. This did not happen. Even though I thought as we'd lain down that one of us should probably set an alarm clock, that thought made no actual connections with my mouth.
Dar finally shook me around 1:30 and told me what time it was and that we should probably find out what was going on. So I slogged up out of unconsciousness as best I could, and called Marc's again. Got Betsy on the phone, though I mistook her for Didi at first, and was informed that arrangements had been made for a "visit with the family" sort of gathering at a church near Marc's house at 12pm tomorrow, to be followed by a service at 4 for others, such as his coworkers from Wal-Mart. I told Betsy we'd get ourselves together and wander over.
The rest of today was basically spent at Marc's house. First one to greet us was Donnie, who we bumped into on his way out to take Dad's dog off to be groomed by a local service. I introduced Paul to him, the first of many introductions of Paul to everyone present — and Dar to more than a few, as relatives I hadn't seen in over fifteen years started showing up. Like my Uncle Larry, Dad's older brother, and his daughter Heather and his wife Donna.
Larry gave me an enormous hug and rhapsodized about how much I looked and sounded like my mother, which is a sentiment I've heard frequently from my relations and which always makes me a little sheepish even though I see me in my mother's face every time I look at a picture of her. He also confirmed Dad's claims that I used to make duck noises before I started to talk — and teased me about him and Dad and their brother Marion making duck-hunter-noises every time I did that, and Mom protesting loudly that "MY DAUGHTER DOES NOT MAKE DUCK NOISES!", and me promptly putting in "Ank". He then claimed Mom turned red exactly the same way I was turning red right then, as he was telling this story.
Randy and his girlfriend Donna were there as well, though they hung out a lot outside as they're among the smokers in the family and Marc doesn't let people smoke in his house.
Didi's sister is the third Donna of the family, and she was around as well. She bemoaned the fact that she had completely forgotten that she had a date with a guy named Steve tonight.
Didi wasn't there when we arrived. She'd had to go get Meighan, and take Amanda to a doctor's appointment. When they finally showed up, I could tell immediately that Meighan had gotten the word on what had happened to Grandpa because she looked as if she'd been crying, and she marched right up to me and sat in my lap. I hugged her and told her she could sit there as long as she wanted.
Later I was fairly relieved, though, to see that she seemed to bounce back fairly well. She gathered art supplies and began to make a paper heart for Dad, with "We Love You Grandpa" on it in various colors of marker. And she wanted glitter to spray on the heart, but didn't have any — so she spent a great deal of time sharpening a pencil she has with purple glitter all over it, and using the shavings off the pencil to decorate the heart instead. Very clever, is Meighan. She asked me if I wanted to draw with her, which I tried for a little while though drawing has never really been my particular mode of expression. I'm lucky if I can draw a fairly credible tree. But I sat there with her for a while, drawing branches and leaves in between talking with everyone. Amanda tried to get in on the heart-making as well, though she wasn't paying nearly as much attention to it as Meighan was.
Charlie wandered around a lot, giving us strange "Who are you people? Do I know you?" expressions, the sort you'd expect from a one-year-old who doesn't see you very often. And carrying one of his socks. His mother informs me that Charlie apparently has a sock fetish and will attempt to remove the socks from anyone who is in sock feet in his vicinity. This is the same child who attempts to eat both cat and dog food, but all around, he seems like a fairly typical one-year-old.
More jokes were made about Charlie being nicknamed "Melon" since he had such a big head — though this was more noticeable when he was six months old than it is now. Uncle Larry reminisced about me looking much the same at that age, and told me I took very much after Mom in that respect and that she was very sharp.
I showed Dar and Paul the various old pictures of us and Dad and Mom that Marc has hanging around the house. Marc's got some pretty old pictures that go back to before I was in school, and a few of Mom and Grandma Hyson, Mom's mother, that go back even farther.
Betsy chatted with us a good deal about potential arrangements that Donnie and Marc and I would have to make pertaining to Dad's possessions. They're apparently planning to go through his house and take inventory, and arrange as best as possible that decisions on who should get what would be in my and my brother's hands.
I couldn't really make any claims on anything Dad owned since for the most part I have no earthly idea of what he owned... but when Betsy told me that she had a little jade necklace that Miriam, his last wife, had given him and which he wore all the time, I asked to see it. She brought it out to me and I looked at it and decided right then and there that yes, I wanted it, and now it's mine and I'm wearing it as I type. Donnie says it looks good on me. As we drove back to the hotel tonight I just rubbed the jade and thought about the sense of physical connection it gave me to Dad. It helps make up a little for the impact of knowing that it had been several months since I last talked to him.
I've also asked for dibs on Dad's Elvis records.
I don't know yet if I'm going to stay past Sunday. Right now Dar and Paul and I are booked on an extremely early Sunday morning flight... but if my brothers need me to help go through Dad's belongings I may not leave until Monday.
Dar has just told me that it's past 11pm local time. I think that for now I've said everything I have on my mind.
More, tomorrow.
My father, Donald Ray Highland, died yesterday. This is to write down what has happened since then.
Yesterday
I had no warning whatsoever. None. I got to work and logged onto my MUSH as per usual, only to have my partner log on shortly thereafter and tell me I had to call my brother Donnie because our father was in the hospital.
I got on the phone to Donnie and actually got his wife Betsy because they were en route to the hospital at that very moment. Between them — Donnie was driving at the time so he let Betsy do most of the talking — I got the initial particulars. Dad had gone to my brother Marc's house and had collapsed and it was Marc that found him. I got their promise to tell me more as soon as they knew it, told them I'd be at work where they could reach me, and let them go ahead and hang up.
Dar wanted to know from me if she and Paul should go ahead and head to IKEA since they were going to buy some stuff for the rearranging of the front half of the living room we've had going on. I was starting to freak, kind of, but thought I was handling it so told her to go ahead and go.
I only started getting a bit more freaked out when I started spreading the word to people that this had happened and that I was really scared that I was going to have to get on a plane and head across the country. I sent mail to my team lead and the lead for our current project and a couple other co-workers to warn them that my father had collapsed and that there was a likely chance of my having to go immediately to Kentucky.
My friends who connect to my MUSH on a daily basis were offering me their good wishes since I told them what was going on pretty much immediately, and I fretted at them about how I was possibly going to be able to work that morning.
Then I posted to the Another Russell Crowe Club board on Yahoo! and to the chat room on GreatBigSea.com (the Online Kitchen Party), saying what had happened, and asking the people I'd gotten to know there to start sending wishes to whatever divine ears they held sacred. I told a couple people on AetherMUSH as well since they had started paging me just after I'd gotten off the phone... and they immediately started giving me their good wishes as well. Kimberly, one of the players with whom Mimi and I are on best terms on Aether, was magnificient. She immediately offered to start looking up plane prices for me, an offer I gratefully accepted because I wasn't prepared to cope with that at the moment and I suspected I might need the information.
Then I realized that the voice mail light was blinking on my phone, so I figured I'd better listen to the messages.
I had three, one left over from a coworker who'd wanted to go to lunch with me the previous day. The second one was incomprehensible for some reason.
The third was Marc calling me from the hospital to tell me that Dad had passed away. He gave me the number of the emergency room, which I wrote down, and I told him I was getting myself to Kentucky as soon as possible and got off the phone.
Dar had left me Paul's cell phone number so I called him and told them what had happened. Said I was going home and got off the phone with them.
I posted again to ARCC and GreatBigSea.com to amend the posts I'd made there. I posted notes to the two MUSHes I still maintain a presence on, Aether and Two Moons. I emailed the house and the Murkworks jammers list. I emailed the coworkers I'd just emailed as well. I told them all my father had died and I was going to get on a plane and go to Kentucky.
I started getting email pretty much immediately from our house's close friend and fellow jammer Kathryn, who immediately offered to look up plane prices and also to come over if I needed her. She started instant-messaging me as well and I more or less got out that yes, her coming over to the house would not suck and that I was going home and would be there shortly.
My team lead, Tim, came to my cube to see if I was okay and offered to give me a ride home. I declined, since I had our car. I emailed the entire project team to tell them I was going and I saw several mails come in before I got my stuff together and got gone.
I bolted for the elevators, crying. I passed one of my coworkers but he didn't say anything — I don't know if he'd seen my email or not.
I drove home. I had my Great Big Sea/30 Odd Foot of Grunts tape playing, but for once the music was pretty much peripheral. Mostly what I thought about was the weirdness of driving home at that hour of the morning and the urgent need to get there.
When I got home Dar and Paul weren't back yet, but Dar had left an answering machine message saying that Paul wanted to know if it would help or hurt if he came along with us to Kentucky. I really didn't think too much about that quite yet, though. I did log back on to the Murk and to Aether; Kimberly paged me, and so did one of the staffers whose real-life name I don't know but who I will call Herne here because that's the name of that person's staff identity on the game. I didn't stay long on Aether, though. I couldn't. I told Kimberly and Herne that I just couldn't be there at the moment, and told Kimberly that if she wanted to come over to the Murk she was welcome.
Kimberly had sent me mail with flight information, too, as had Gyles from the Murk. I had mail as well from Joey on the OKP, with whom I had chatted on Spinchat a couple of times and who seemed a pretty cool person. He sent me comfort — in response to my initial note. He hadn't seen my second one yet. I emailed him back to thank him and tell him my dad had in fact died and I was going to Kentucky as soon as possible.
Right about then was when I started to freak.
I got myself water, then some chocolate milk. I packed clothes into a bag and left it sitting in the middle of the bedroom. And I paced back and forth through the living room, waiting for Dar and Paul and Kathryn to show up. I couldn't make myself sit down.
Finally Dar and Paul arrived and I started sobbing again. They hugged me a lot, and I told Paul that I didn't know if it would help or hinder if he came with us but I certainly wasn't going to tell him no. Then I mumbled something about needing to sit down, and we did and I cried some more.
Kathryn showed up. More hugging. More crying. I mumbled pleas to the room at large for arrangements to be made to make plane tickets happen, pointing at the mail session I still had open with Kathryn's information as well as Gyles's and Kimberly's.
I lay on the couch and cried and shook. I wonder if I'd gone into a little bit of shock because I remember feeling cold as well, and finally I announced I needed to go upstairs and lie down for a while, because I couldn't think of anything except the need to curl up under a warm blanket.
Dar came up to tell me that they wanted to go to the little store down the street and get some food, and she wanted to know if I was all right with them leaving. I said yes.
I curled up and thought about the distance between me and my family. Most of the time the distance is what I want. Not then.
I must have fallen asleep. I did not dream... but I went sort of blank for a while, and came back into focus later feeling clearer-headed, and a bit hot under the blanket instead of comfortingly warm. Dar came up to check on me again, and shortly after that I realized I was probably ready to get up again.
When I came downstairs food had appeared. There were cookies, and Dar made me soup. In the middle of food Cyn showed up — more hugs, more condolences, though by then I'd more or less downgraded from shellshocked to frazzled-but-functional. Mostly. I was cogent but had gone into a kind of autopilot and continued to need people to make plane tickets and other important things happen.
Calls kept coming from Kentucky with updates. Mostly from Betsy, as she was performing much the same function Kathryn was on our end — taking care of administrative sorts of things since she had a bit more distance from it all than me and my brothers. They needed to know from me whether I wanted to view Dad's body, since he had arranged to donate it to the University of Louisville Medical Center. I told Betsy no, I didn't need to see it; we talked some too about whether there would be a marker or memorial service of any kind, and I learned that a surprisingly large number of Dad's coworkers at Wal-Mart were also in shock and that there was probably going to be a service to help accommodate them, though the family was more inclined to just keep matters amongst ourselves fairly informal.
Becky called, too. My little sister and I have been bonding recently in ways that warm my heart despite the fact that there's several thousand miles between us. She has taken after me a considerable amount in the sorts of books she likes — and it touches me to ridiculous ends that we both swoon over Russell Crowe, and that she sends me random emails off Yahoo!'s news server whenever she finds news blurbs about him with pictures. Becky offered me her condolences, and said that she'd try to get to the service though she has finals on Monday.
I worried some about Marc's children, since I didn't know how Amanda and Meighan would take the news of their grandfather's death. Charlie at about one and a half isn't old enough to know what's going on, but Amanda at four is enough to have some clue. Meighan, at nine, is about in the same age range I was when Dad's father, my grandfather, died. So I was fairly sure this would have an impact on the kid. Didi told me over the phone that they had not yet told Meighan, since she was with her mother and they didn't want to leave the task of telling her to said mom.
Mimi arrived, and contributed more hugs and more energy to the ongoing efforts of People Who Were Not Freaked Out Making Things Happen. She promised to take us to the airport and to look after the cat and the birds while we were gone. I made a wan joke about my plans to have stayed up late on Saturday night watching Gladiator (on account of I wanted to celebrate it being a year since that flick had been released, along with the other chicks on ARCC) being overridden; not exactly the flick I needed to see right then. Mimi showed me Chicken Run instead, and also loaned me a suitable skirt and blouse to wear for whatever service would occur.
I got into the Need to Do Things to Keep Self occupied mode, though this time it was more constructive than my previous outburst had been, particularly with the others on hand to offer helpful reminders which would have been self-evident had I been functioning on all cylinders, but which were vitally needed right then. I did laundry, and sorted through what I'd already packed to take out stuff I was fairly sure I wouldn't need after all. I wrote all the pending receipts into the checkbooks to get them up to date, and vaguely thought about actually trying to do the latest round of checkbook balancing, though I never got that far. I packed the rest of what I would need.
I turned my own computer on, so I could shut down my window on Dar's computer, and checked in again on the Murk. Emailed Kimberly to thank her again for stopping by on the Murk, though I'd actually missed her while I was in freak-out mode. Another player with whom I am on very good terms on Aether (his character's name is Salmalin; I don't know his real-life name) logged onto the MUSH to check on me and offer hugs. Vicka logged in as well and touched me, again to ridiculously heart-warming extremes, by telling me she'd actually voluntarily watched an Elvis movie the other day, even though she'd done it mostly for the motorcycle scenes. She hung around for a while and we music-geeked and talked about her band and our jamming group, and she promised to get me a copy of a live song Great Big Sea had recorded for a local radio station.
I got into a heavy Elvis-related frame of mind, with the song "Don't Cry Daddy" running over and over through my head — what I could remember of it, at any rate, since I hadn't heard that particular song in a very long time. I finally went up to hunt through my music collection, needing to hear it, and determined I didn't actually have it on any of my CDs. It was on a very old tape, the quality of which was questionable. But it was enough to bring tears to my eyes again as I listened to it, along with "Kentucky Rain".
I saw another mail from Joey from the OKP come in, as well as a mail from someone named Anne whose name and email address I didn't recognize until I went and looked at her webpage URL in her .signature, and realized she was from the OKP as well. I opened up my browser, too, and although I didn't post again, I saw several notes on both ARCC and the OKP from people responding to what I had posted. It was all a bit much for me to take in at the time, but later on I began to be intensely touched at this example of the way the Internet can bring people together. Here are people who, for the most part, do not know me except through words I type on the web... yet with two short and fairly incoherent notes I saw a good two dozen expressions of love and concern and one person on the OKP even telling me that the people at their church were praying for my father. They, again, hadn't seen my second note, but I wasn't about to take issue with that little quibble.
Dar told me that she'd posted to exrvl-l about what had happened. We both got email in from Regis with her condolences, and Dar said that she'd gotten several other notes from others on the mailing list as well, though those notes only came to her.
Paul finally left to take Kathryn home after I assured her that she had helped a great deal by being there and being coherent.
When Paul got back, we ordered pizza as it was getting close on to time for us to leave. Mimi ordered Chinese, and both our orders got to us amazingly swiftly, so we didn't have to gulp them down and bolt right out the door.
I waffled some about whether or not to bring my computer, and what finally decided me was wondering whether Meighan was going to ask me whether I'd brought it and whether we could play Nethack on it.
By the time we got out the door I was again fairly heavily on autopilot. Mimi and Paul and Dar yakked a good deal en route to the airport while I just sat there in the back seat of the van and stared at nothing. Mimi left us at the airport with more hugs and assurances that she loved me and we headed on in.
We found out there were actually two Northwest flights departing for Detroit within 20 minutes of one another, and we weren't entirely sure which one we were on. Nor, at the gate, were we sure until the last minute — because we didn't get boarding passes until pretty much literally the last minute, for the earlier of the two flights. The three of us were scattered in various places all over the plane, but we weren't in a position to be picky.
I had to let them take my bag because it was too big to fit in the overhead bins. So after the luggage debacle of last Christmas, I was a little paranoid about getting to Kentucky and having to deal with not seeing my luggage when I got there, but I also wasn't prepared to cope with arguing with the flight attendants about it. I told one of them that my father had died, I was freaked out, and needed them to yes, please, take the luggage, check it through to Lexington, and make it happen.
My seat wound up being between two pretty large men. One of them, overhearing my babbling to the flight attendant, offered me his blanket and pillow, but I declined since I had the ones they'd left on my seat.
The plane took off, and I spent the next few hours trying fitfully to get something resembling sleep. It was difficult. The men on either side of me were large enough that although the armrests were down between our seats, they still encroached on my physical space and I had to hunker in on myself to avoid making contact with either of them. Enough that I started giving myself shoulder and neck cramps. I was only mostly okay if either:
A) I had the blanket on, in which case it was a 'shield' and I was somehow magically able to stand physical contact with the strangers. The problem with this was that if I had the blanket on too long, I got too hot. Or,
B) I slumped down enough in the seat that my arms were below their arms. The problem with this was that that was horribly uncomfortable, regardless.
I desperately wanted to be unconscious. I desperately wanted to wake up and discover I'd been dreaming and that Dad wasn't really dead.
Somehow I hung in there until we landed in Detroit. Dar looked askance at me as I got luggage-free off the plane, and said I should have taken my backpack out of my bag, at least. I pointed out I wasn't in Rational Thought Mode at the time, then Paul got off the plane and we went on over to the gate for the next connection.
Paul got us cinnamon rolls since by then it was early morning (6ish-7ish) in Detroit even though it was still 3ish-4ish by our internal clocks. Dar muttered imprecations against the Evil Yellow Orb in the sky, but other than that she and Paul were in fairly decent if loopy spirits. I mostly just sat there numbly, trying to find a comfortable position to curl up in and failing.
The gate was one of those where you have to get on a bus which then takes you to your plane. They started boarding us, then had to take us off again when the word came through that one of the crewmembers for our flight was late arriving at the airport. But fortunately the delay wasn't very long, and we finally got to the second plane.
It was louder — a prop plane, and the engine noise was pretty loud indeed.
This time at least I got to sit by a window, so I had a wall to lean against. Dar got to sit by me as well so I could also lean on her.
Lexington at last, and by then it was something on the order of 9ish. Dar realized that we'd rented the exact same car we'd had the last time we were in Kentucky, i.e., last Christmas. The National car people at the Lexington airport seem to have only about twelve total cars, so this wasn't exactly difficult to believe. I was relieved beyond measure to find that my bag was in fact waiting at the baggage claim, because I did not want to think about how not okay I would have been if I had had to deal with hassling someone about a missing bag.
I got on the phone and left a fairly incoherent voice mail with Marc and Didi, just enough to let them know that we had in fact arrived and needed to crash at our hotel room for a while and that we'd check in later.
A couple of small scares, once we finally got to our hotel. Dar warned us that she wasn't sure we could get an early check-in, since the usual check-in time was 2pm. By then I was pretty much a zombie, and couldn't find enough energy to mumble anything about how desperately I needed to lay down. We were told they could clean the room immediately, though we'd have to wait a half an hour or so. So we hung out in the lobby, till they finally told us the room was ready, then we went upstairs...
... only to discover, when we opened the door, that they'd assigned us a smoking room by mistake. We got hit with an almost physical wall of tobacco stench rolling at us out of the room, which made that room pretty much not an option. Back downstairs to tell them we needed a non-smoking room.
More inexpressible relief when we learned that a non-smoking room just down the hall was ready and we could take it.
We collapsed.
Today
I had vaguely thought we could get up around noonish. This did not happen. Even though I thought as we'd lain down that one of us should probably set an alarm clock, that thought made no actual connections with my mouth.
Dar finally shook me around 1:30 and told me what time it was and that we should probably find out what was going on. So I slogged up out of unconsciousness as best I could, and called Marc's again. Got Betsy on the phone, though I mistook her for Didi at first, and was informed that arrangements had been made for a "visit with the family" sort of gathering at a church near Marc's house at 12pm tomorrow, to be followed by a service at 4 for others, such as his coworkers from Wal-Mart. I told Betsy we'd get ourselves together and wander over.
The rest of today was basically spent at Marc's house. First one to greet us was Donnie, who we bumped into on his way out to take Dad's dog off to be groomed by a local service. I introduced Paul to him, the first of many introductions of Paul to everyone present — and Dar to more than a few, as relatives I hadn't seen in over fifteen years started showing up. Like my Uncle Larry, Dad's older brother, and his daughter Heather and his wife Donna.
Larry gave me an enormous hug and rhapsodized about how much I looked and sounded like my mother, which is a sentiment I've heard frequently from my relations and which always makes me a little sheepish even though I see me in my mother's face every time I look at a picture of her. He also confirmed Dad's claims that I used to make duck noises before I started to talk — and teased me about him and Dad and their brother Marion making duck-hunter-noises every time I did that, and Mom protesting loudly that "MY DAUGHTER DOES NOT MAKE DUCK NOISES!", and me promptly putting in "Ank". He then claimed Mom turned red exactly the same way I was turning red right then, as he was telling this story.
Randy and his girlfriend Donna were there as well, though they hung out a lot outside as they're among the smokers in the family and Marc doesn't let people smoke in his house.
Didi's sister is the third Donna of the family, and she was around as well. She bemoaned the fact that she had completely forgotten that she had a date with a guy named Steve tonight.
Didi wasn't there when we arrived. She'd had to go get Meighan, and take Amanda to a doctor's appointment. When they finally showed up, I could tell immediately that Meighan had gotten the word on what had happened to Grandpa because she looked as if she'd been crying, and she marched right up to me and sat in my lap. I hugged her and told her she could sit there as long as she wanted.
Later I was fairly relieved, though, to see that she seemed to bounce back fairly well. She gathered art supplies and began to make a paper heart for Dad, with "We Love You Grandpa" on it in various colors of marker. And she wanted glitter to spray on the heart, but didn't have any — so she spent a great deal of time sharpening a pencil she has with purple glitter all over it, and using the shavings off the pencil to decorate the heart instead. Very clever, is Meighan. She asked me if I wanted to draw with her, which I tried for a little while though drawing has never really been my particular mode of expression. I'm lucky if I can draw a fairly credible tree. But I sat there with her for a while, drawing branches and leaves in between talking with everyone. Amanda tried to get in on the heart-making as well, though she wasn't paying nearly as much attention to it as Meighan was.
Charlie wandered around a lot, giving us strange "Who are you people? Do I know you?" expressions, the sort you'd expect from a one-year-old who doesn't see you very often. And carrying one of his socks. His mother informs me that Charlie apparently has a sock fetish and will attempt to remove the socks from anyone who is in sock feet in his vicinity. This is the same child who attempts to eat both cat and dog food, but all around, he seems like a fairly typical one-year-old.
More jokes were made about Charlie being nicknamed "Melon" since he had such a big head — though this was more noticeable when he was six months old than it is now. Uncle Larry reminisced about me looking much the same at that age, and told me I took very much after Mom in that respect and that she was very sharp.
I showed Dar and Paul the various old pictures of us and Dad and Mom that Marc has hanging around the house. Marc's got some pretty old pictures that go back to before I was in school, and a few of Mom and Grandma Hyson, Mom's mother, that go back even farther.
Betsy chatted with us a good deal about potential arrangements that Donnie and Marc and I would have to make pertaining to Dad's possessions. They're apparently planning to go through his house and take inventory, and arrange as best as possible that decisions on who should get what would be in my and my brother's hands.
I couldn't really make any claims on anything Dad owned since for the most part I have no earthly idea of what he owned... but when Betsy told me that she had a little jade necklace that Miriam, his last wife, had given him and which he wore all the time, I asked to see it. She brought it out to me and I looked at it and decided right then and there that yes, I wanted it, and now it's mine and I'm wearing it as I type. Donnie says it looks good on me. As we drove back to the hotel tonight I just rubbed the jade and thought about the sense of physical connection it gave me to Dad. It helps make up a little for the impact of knowing that it had been several months since I last talked to him.
I've also asked for dibs on Dad's Elvis records.
I don't know yet if I'm going to stay past Sunday. Right now Dar and Paul and I are booked on an extremely early Sunday morning flight... but if my brothers need me to help go through Dad's belongings I may not leave until Monday.
Dar has just told me that it's past 11pm local time. I think that for now I've said everything I have on my mind.
More, tomorrow.