18 November 2013: Monday, my 57th birthday and what a glorious day it's been, a true springlike day ... but dad's winter is upon him and he's had a rough day ...

This morning he had been calling for me, he said, for an hour, from his bed where he couldn't right himself. 

Is it a gift? (I like to start posts this way but it might be appropriate on my as Jez described it, "Coming-To-The-Earth-Day"). WE are both listening to Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 54 at the same time. I just finished listening to a fellow November 18er, none other than the famous conductor Eugene Ormandy (b. 1899), longtime director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and his recording with Rudolf Serkin in the mid 50s (about the time I was born) on the radio, WRTI out of Temple University in Philly.
My father, resting, listens to the recording he thinks is the best interpretation of the work: Ivan Moravec and the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Vaclav Neumann. Here is the YouTube link:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z2Z4BAaMhg4&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dz2Z4BAaMhg4

     
Dad in the TV room listening to the broadcast on the left on YouTube,
and me, on the first floor, in the kitchen, listening to the recording on
the right as a celebration of Eugene Ormandy's 114th birthday. 

As dad snores behind me at 4:05 p.m. on my 57th birthday, I believe that I have made it over the hump of despair and am looking at these end days in a more pragmatic, less emotional light. He could not feed himself today and he's been in bed, all day, and the hospice nurse is coming this late afternoon to possibly catheterize him since he could not produce any urine, although he felt a need, into the urinal earlier. Mom had walked the corridor, scaled the steps and was on the portable oxygen while she watched. (I had told her earlier that dad was in a steep decline and perhaps it was time to begin to start saying our goodbyes and try to be with him as much as possible).

I have been home, all day, and just recently got out of my gift pajama bottoms from Liz and into my torn-kneed jeans, a steal, literally from a Doug order from L.L. Beans back in 2010 when I came in a hurry to be with dad when he fell and hurt his knee and needed medical attention and then rehab and then I stayed through his knee replacement surgery that late summer. It was a long 7 months and I was not at ease with myself. They were long days but now they go well, thanks in large part to my social media contacts through Facebook and the fact that I am now here to stay for the "duration" and I am planning ahead for the funeral and what lies ahead for my mother and myself.

I have joined the local UU Society of Mill Creek and am just in hog heaven over the wonderful choir and the people I have met on social occasions and the developing friendships with Linda Lucero and others in the congregation. This is all good but I need a job and I need to feel worth by earning a salary or doing serious, committed volunteer work.

I had a wonderful conversation with Nick today ... broken up by a call from dad and an extended period of listening/watching the wonderful YouTube tape of Benedetti ... and the door bell rang and I thought, possibly, Delaware Hospice, but it was the irrepressible Marli Stam-Schouten and her meals and her extensive bag of goodies. She is amazing. Came up and spoke with mom but we did not bother the slumbering, solidly, father. He is out cold and still is as I type this note at 5:21 p.m., Marli's cabbage casserole warming in the oven (first time I have ever used it in the decades that I have lived in this home) at 400 degrees for about one hour, according to her directions. And I follow them to the letter as she is a former cook for Tony Graziano at the Fair Hill Inn, where she was introduced to dad these many years ago.

Marli greets mom with some of the Dutch treats that she brought on my 57th birthday, Monday afternoon.

 
Some of the goodies that Marli brought on my birthday.