We're leaving for Texas early Saturday morning stopping our first night in El Paso and then heading to Dallas on Sunday. I've got a conference there from Monday thru Thursday. My wife is going with me as this will be my last national event before I retire at the end of the year and I want her to meet some of the people I've worked with these past 35 years. Besides, she needs a break.
Her mother died early Monday morning, just a few minutes after midnight. We have been taking care of her for the last eight years since she had a stroke and could no longer care for herself. For the last two years we had her in a near by care home since it got to where my wife could no longer handle the day-to-day duties due to her worsening arthritis (I told her I didn't want to live with TWO invalids ;-) Anyway, the last two months have been really hard on my wife as her mother started to really fail (she was 90 in January) and was in and out of the hospital, in a nursing home for awhile but when her Medicare coverage for the nursing home ran out we moved her back to the care home about a week ago. Late last week we brought hospice in and their nurses and aids took care of her until she passed this Monday. I wasn't there at the end but my wife was so she was glad that her mother didn't die alone, although she had lost pretty much all touch with reality about a month ago, no longer recognizing me or her other daughter, who's been here from Michigan for a couple of weeks. But she did continue to know who my wife was so that was something anyway.
There's not going to be a formal funeral (she outlived her 12 siblings and most of her friends, who are all up in the state of Washington anyway) as we had her cremated and will hold a graveside service later in the year up near Yakima, where my wife's step-father and a sister is buried.
Anyway, we've decided that getting away on this trip will do her good and after the conference, we're going to drive down to Houston to our son's house and spend the long Memorial Day weekend with him and his family (our four granddaughters). On the drive to Houston we're going to stop for the day in Waco to visit some friends who recently moved from California and are now living with their son's family (they're having a casita built on the property).
We head back to SoCal on Tuesday morning, the 26th and should be home the evening of the 27th.
We're hoping that the weather won't be a big issue but this time of year, anywhere in Texas could prove to be 'exciting'.
OCU
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