Posted by lil' jimi on June 6, 2003, at 0:41:44
In reply to Re: mom died 6/3/2002 .... dad, 6/11/2002, posted by lil' jimi on June 5, 2003, at 15:13:05
hi again friends,
into the very dark cloud of this tragedy of my parents’ deaths, given all of its brutal sudden violence, i found this very meager silver lining ..... with some minor effort and the recognition of my deliberate openess of interpretation ....
.... as my parents had gotten older they would team up for some of their tasks, in particular, when they would drive .... dad would be behind the wheel and mom would be shot gun, on look out .... because dad’s eyes were the sharper, while mom was more alert to the changes in traffic .... so she could warn dad of risks that would have scared her too bad if she were driving .... actually they had both had lens implants so they could see better than i can, but mom never readjusted to driving and even with perfect vision dad needed her alertness to be safe on the streets.
at the intensive care unit where my dad was, in st.petersburg, a police officer gave me the clothes they had cut off of dad at the accident scene ..... i went through the pockets of what was left of my father’s pants and found a crumpled receipt from wallmart for 6 ten pound bags of potting soil and eight potted plants .... mom had a garden project in mind .... i had noticed a note on their frig in dad’s writing that said just “Doctor June 3, 10:30 AM” ....
that fateful morning they had gone to their doctor (they shared the same primary care physician), which their doctor (of 20 years.... grief-stricken as she was as she told me this) said went exceptionally well (except that dad was mad at mom’s cardiologist) ... then they’d gone to wallmart for the garden stuff ... and then 5 minutes later they were taking a left into the denny’s parking lot for lunch ..... the truck was an extra large heavy-duty pickup outfitted for utility work with complete set of parts and tool bins all around ... probably out weighed my folks’ jaguar by more than a ton .... the oncoming truck never hit his brakes ....
.... it is very clear in my imagination
.... dad went to turn the jag to the left
.... mom saw the truck coming
..... she screams at dad,
“ BOB ! ! ! ! ! .....” ....personally,
i do not believe you should be being yelled at as you are passing from this world into the next
.....
and i feel that forces from the other side were deliberate in separating mom from dad ........because, similarly, one shouldn’t have someone (a loved one) angry at them while one goes to that Beyond which is within ....
.... my mom was a very religious and a very prayerful woman, and despite any of her other deficits, her devotion, i believe won her merit in high places ....
i was telling my next door neighbor, mike about the deaths of my parents and he said, ‘i wish something like that could happen to my folks!’ ..... mike’s parents are only in their early 70s and their heart and lungs are still strong, but one has alzheimer’s and one has had a stroke, one has broken a hip and the other has arthritis.... mike’s parents suffer neurological deficits which have robbed them of not only their presence of mind, but has also subverted their personalities and made them very negative and hostile ... they are trapped in a torment from which they have no escape.
our prospects, should we be blessed with old age, are frightening .... each of us has to fear possible incapacitation or dementia or both...
there are things worse than dying in an auto accident .... and it turns out this is especially so for folks in their 80s .....
my parents were only beginning to show the signs of the mental deterioration from their age .... dad had slowed mentally over the course of the last decade and where mom had been the more acute one, in the previous year she had become more negative and then she had delusions, some were hurtful ..... in any event, the best of their health was behind them and it wasn’t expected that they would be enjoying improving mental health anyway ....
i feel like my mom’s angels blessed her by taking her from this life to spare her (and her husband) the increasing suffering that would certainly threaten them .... then those angels had to get her calmed down so she could understand that this was not dad’s fault because he was being used to make their escape .... and his suffering in icu paid off some karma for him until mom was set to bring him to the other side and away from his pain ...
june 9, 2002 would have been their 59th wedding anniversary...... this year would have been their 60th
more next time
~ jim
poster:lil' jimi
thread:231433
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030604/msgs/231824.html