Caveat: The Last Day

It’s Friday, about 4 AM in darkness, in Far North Queensland. I drive down the hill and fly back to Alaska today (well today, and tomorrow, and an extra in-between day that I will experience due to crossing the international dateline but isn’t actually a real day).

I did the paperwork to finalize Ann’s admission to Carinya Home (nursing / care facility) in Atherton, hopefully everything that needs to be done. Whatever remains can be done via emails and PDF’s, presumeably. We were given an actual move-in date for the permanent room (as opposed to the “respite” room she’s in right now).

It all has gone very fast, and I worry my urgency to get something done while here may have caused to make a poorly thought-out decision, or that I’ll regret, later on. I know Ann remains deeply ambivalent, to the extent she has any clear cogent awareness of what’s going on.

Here’s a sample, old-school passive aggressive mom-son interaction, turned up to 11.

Jared: I’m going to leave tomorrow.

Ann: I have mixed feelings.

Jared: *trying to stay positive as possible* That’s nice.

Ann: *classic gillidette nasty look* You stinker.

But she definitely yo-yos between despondency and a kind of forced social cheerfulness. She’s still skilled at being pleasant and friendly with others – the nursing and caretaking staff, and her close friends who managed to visit today: Gwen, Tash, Erika, Kirsten and Emma.

I convinced her to let me take her picture, so I’ll post that as a conclusion to this saga. Updates will follow as relevant, but for now and forward, she’s at the care home. She no longer navigates email, but you can try to call her (but which will be complicated because you’ll have to go through the human-operated switchboard, meaning Australian business hours, etc., etc.) or write her snail-mail letters. Reach out to me or Samara directly for her phone number or address.

I’m dreading the flight back. I feel some sense of accomplishment but no actual satisfaction or joy – it’s all been a mess that’s been navigated in ways that are disappointing to all parties. More regrets to add to the pile.

And as a brief coda, over these past two weeks, I’ve been happy to provide these posts to a broader audience by manually cross-posting to facebook each day. But! Remember that all these posts are “blog first” and my blog (now over 20 years old and continuously running) is the reliable place to find me. I despise facebook (more than ever given some recent events and developments) so I’ll go silent again on facebook soon enough. To those who feel “trapped” in the blue-bannered dystopia, remember: there are alternatives! The internet is bigger, wider and freer than the tech-overlords want you to believe.

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