My sweet mom Rose is still in the hospital, and has been in intensive care for a week.  What started out sounding pretty serious--five broken ribs in the back of an 81 year old woman--now seems, in retrospect, to be relatively simple to heal.  The broken ribs--eight, not the five diagnosed first--caused pain which led her to refrain from breathing deeply, which started fluid collecting in her lung, which led to the use of a mask to inflate her (for lack of a better word), which caused her stress which kept her from sleeping which wore her out so that she wouldn't eat, and somewhere in the progression there was a heart attack as well.

She's having her bad days and her worse days, and although she says she is the "crabbiest woman on the block" , the nurses say that she is sweet as they wrestle and wrangle her into doing what's good for her.  Having had the foresight to have seven children, who mostly also have children, she has visitors a-plenty, and I worry that she's not getting her rest.   Most of the time she is happy to receive her company, but some nights she's pretty tired when we drop in to enjoy being with her and to nag her to eat.

Here's a view of the North Point Water Tower, taken as I arrived to visit her last night.  It's said that parents tell their children that the Tooth Fairy lives in the tower, now used purely as a charming landmark on a bluff above the shore of Lake Michigan, across the street from the hospital.   I don't know what kind of spirits live in the stone beauty, but I hope they are watching over my Mom tonight.

Today is Back-to-Life after Spring Break Day and I am amazed and delighted to report that everyone successfully woke up when they should have. "Successfully" does not have to include enthusiastic or pleasant; it just means they made it out the door on time, and with a wind at their backs everyone should have arrived everywhere necessary on time.  I'll be leaving in a little while for work, too, and then to go visit Rose and run errands, secure for the first time in a week and a half that Parker will be supervised by someone else for a while.

Tomorrow morning his Guardian Angel Teacher and I will meet to review assessment results and to see what his school life will include for the next few years.  The teacher is telling Parker that he must be present for part of the review; as a teenager he is responsible for speaking up about what he wants out of life. 

So far his teenaged-ness has mostly consisted of loud angry music, never ending phone calls from some new friends with high giggling voices and too much time on their hands, and an at-ti-tude designed to create space between his family and himself;  I suppose that at-ti-tude is necessary to give himself room to grow up.  And growing he is; he laughs at my 5'7" 's as if I am a inferior, but quaint miniature life form.  I thank God for Eric as I do so often, for two reasons.  Eric has passed this way before and if I need to remind Parker that I am still the authority here, 6' 3" of Eric backs me up.

Today I'm going to brave Parker's lair and see what the boy has been up to behind that closed door.  If you don't hear from me again, let the Guardian Angel Teacher know I won't make it to the meeting tomorrow.

I am going to dye my hair red and start taking it out on the world.

Death seems to be all around me lately.

My mother's being in Intensive Care at the hospital, and the nearly two weeks of hospital stay has ended well, but family definitely hurried to see her for the last time; it seemed impossible that she would be able to survive the complications of her accident.  This is her first day in a nursing home, and we still hope she will be able to return to her own beloved house.

The deaths of Terri Schiavo and the Pope have dominated the news, and we watched both of them die slowly and painfully, and painful for us to watch too.  The only way to avoid The Death Show was to turn all media off, and plug your ears in public where discussions became heated on the subject.

And this afternoon there was another death, and I know it is not the significant event that the other ones were, but I am saddened by it anyway.  My rabbit chum Houdini who has been a trusted confidant and ever cheerful companion is not here, for the first time in nine years.  His life had been a good rabbit life, according to the Vet, and the assistant, and the receptionist who offered to hold him, although she was allergic to rabbits.  She took over tender cradling duties from me for a minute while I wrote a check.  We knew I wouldn't want to linger long enough to do it afterwards.

A good life.  And, with someone who cared for him a great deal, a good, kind, quick death.  I will miss my furry housemate, but I am happy that his was the kind of end I would like for myself.