When I wrote the blog yesterday talking about mourning I had no idea what was still to come.
As most of you know we got the call last night that Brent's mother had passed. We didn't even get a full year to process the grief of losing my mother before getting pushed right back to the start with his. It seems unfair. And it is unfair. And it's life. Or death I guess more accurately.
We were getting dinner ready when Brent's phone rang. He put it on speaker when he answered and as soon as I heard, "This is David" I was crying. Because there is no reason for David to be calling us unless his mother couldn't. I guess I could have started out optimistic that Ann was just sick, but I didn't. And she wasn't.
As best as we can tell right now she got sick on Monday or maybe Tuesday and most likely died sometime on Wednesday evening or Thursday though the official date of death will probably be Friday because that's when they found her.
She had called a friend on Tuesday and asked her to pick up groceries for her because she wasn't feeling well. On Wednesday her friend dropped them off. She said Ann was sick, was very pale, she had flu symptoms, but didn't want to go to the hospital. Just wanted to rest and get better. When she called on Thursday to check on her she didn't answer the phone. She asked the police to do a wellness check and the police told her they did one but she had given them the wrong address. Which is just crazy to me. If they did the wellness check and got there and it was the wrong house why wouldn't they call right then and say something? But they didn't. They waited for her friend to call them back and ask about the check. By Friday afternoon when Ann still wasn't answering her friend went to the house to check on her herself. She and the property manager for Ann's community were able to get a back window open, her friend crawled through and found Ann's body.
She said it looked like it was sudden. That there wasn't any sign that Ann had struggled. So I guess that's good.
I mean. At least it was as peaceful as it could be. That's the sort of thing you hold on to.
We are heading to NM on Monday to start handling things. I'm not sure how long it's going to take. We are dealing with Covid restrictions on top of being from out of state. A friend of ours who had to go through all of this with her own mother has been a great source of help, as well as internet searches for What To Do When...
When Jack died Brent helped his mother through the process but she was there to say this is where that is, this is who that is, this is what we have. I didn't have to do this when my mother and father died. My siblings handled everything. And there wasn't as much to handle. No house or car to deal with. It all just moved from Dad to Mom then from Mom to them. But still there was all of the paperwork. And we will have all of the paperwork but not sure how to get all of the forms when the city is shut down.
It's a challenge.
But there is nothing to do but put our heads down and deal with it.
It's also the undoing of all of our own social isolating, and distancing. We are flying. We are going to be in contact with multiple people. We are going to be out and about instead of tucked up safely at home. We can't keep ourselves away from others so we are going to have to be super careful to try not to spread the virus. So the Corora Chronicles are meeting the Grief Chronicles again. In the worst possible way.
I don't know if they will automatically test her for Covid or if they will just put the cause of death down as natural causes. We could ask for an autopsy but the medical examiner let us know that they are facing a large backlog and without the police pushing for one we would be looking at a long time before it was done. I don't think Brent has the stomach to wait. We will never actually know what her last moments were like no matter what happens, so I think we will go with died suddenly with no struggle.
So we've got the points of reference again. Jack (Brent's father) had a massive heart attack and died very young when we were not expecting it and it was awful. My father died after years of being sick and in ailing health and we were expecting it and it was awful. My mother died at the end of a long illness, when she decided to die, we waited for her to pass for a month expecting it every day, and it was awful. Brent's mother was fine when we talked to her just two weeks ago and now she's gone, and it's awful.
There is no way to lose a parent that isn't awful.
And again, for anyone playing along at home who has been confused all of this time about my stance on Covid only being deadly for the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions, fuck anyone who says that like it makes it not so bad. It's awful. She was in the high risk group. It looks right now like she caught the virus. It doesn't feel okay that it happened. It feels like we lost her decades before we expected to. So fuck anyone who says that.
I had no idea yesterday when I said I was mourning that I was just starting.
Brent has joined the adult orphan club and Christopher has become someone with no living grandparents and it's awful.
It's just awful.
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