JoAnne Is Dying

Here in the hospital she was put on a morphine drip on Tuesday after being admitted on Sunday. She does NOT have tubes sticking out all over, she is instead being given Comfort Care, Kaiser’s name for Hospice. Once she went on the morphine drip she could no longer go back to Aegis, I must say I was relieved since Care here seems so much more professional. She has been only slightly conscious since Wednesday and any sign of discomfort is a sign to give her some Ativan, which soothes her right away.

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1. We went to Gaby and Steve’s house in Petaluma. The centerpiece marks the festive table.

2. Ward carved the bird with Steve’s gratitude – Steve said great you did the whole turkey right to the bones…

3. Just a corner of Rosie and you can see Joseph at 12 is already taller than anyone in his family. We are in the the farm kitchen.

We did Thanksgiving Dinner on Thursday after a visit with Jo. Yesterday, Friday after Thanksgiving we went to chop down our Christmas trees in keeping with our family tradition. Lots of folks have found our Sonoma County ranch, so parking was tricky. Dan, Phaedra, Rosie and Joseph will go to the East Coast for a week leaving on the red eye on Christmas Day, so they decided against a tree. Ward and Dee also decided no tree. For the Christmas at the Beach I got a beautiful Noble Fir.

We went to McNears Saloon for lunch, part of the Thanksgiving Friday routine, The idea of shopping for Thanksgiving I find truly disgusting.

According to the palliative care team, JoAnne does not have long, but I for one am amazed that she has survived for all these days. We were given a card as part of the info from The the Palliative Care Team and it suggests a set of short sentences for us to say, since she may be able to hear. The are:

Please forgive me. I forgive you.

Thank you. I love you.

I do that and tell her it is OK for her to let go because we are all OK.