Cape Girardeau<\/a>, is on the Mississippi south of St Louis.\u00a0\u00a0Last Saturday I read that Cape had closed its flood gates.\u00a0 There’d been flooding along the Missouri, which feeds into the Mississippi at St. Louis.\u00a0 The gates are open now but the river remains impressively high, right up to the bottom of the flood wall.\u00a0 Score one for Arizona.<\/p>\nDad’s having a rough time sleeping.\u00a0 He’s barely eating, down to skin and bones,\u00a0always uncomfortable.\u00a0 His wake and sleep cycle is about one hour on\/one hour off.\u00a0 At night he alternates between his office, where he listens to audio books, and two beds: the regular\u00a0one in his bedroom and\u00a0a rented hospital bed in the living room.<\/p>\n
He gets around the living room, bedroom, living\u00a0room, kitchen, and bathroom with a walker and\u00a0wheelchair.\u00a0 When he uses the walker he needs to have someone close behind him in case he starts to fall.\u00a0 Standing up takes most of his strength.\u00a0 But all in all he’s still a happy man.<\/p>\n
Lois, Dad’s second wife (actually, my step-mother, though I\u00a0feel odd calling her that . . . Donna and I\u00a0married in our teens and were in our mid-30s when Dad and Lois married), dotes on Dad and has become his full-time caregiver.\u00a0 Dad loves Lois, and she him, and there’s always company in the house: friends, relatives, children,\u00a0grandchildren and great-grandchildren, children-in-law, you name it.\u00a0 When Dad’s time comes, he’ll be surrounded by family, all of whom love him.\u00a0 We should all be so fortunate.\u00a0 Not many of us are.<\/p>\n
I work with elderly veterans at the VA hospital in Tucson.\u00a0 Too many of them spend their last years alone.\u00a0 Some have outlived everyone they cared for, some are estranged from family and friends.\u00a0 Whatever Dad did, he did it right.<\/p>\n
There’ll be another big family gathering tonight, and I suppose Donna and I are on tap to cook, but we’re hankering for ribs (score one for Missouri) so we’ll probably send out.<\/p>\n
That’s the news from Cape Girardeau.\u00a0 Company’s here and My Son Paul (that would be\u00a0me) needs to make an appearance.\u00a0 More soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Donna and I are in Missouri, visiting with Dad and Lois . . .\u00a0and the rest of my family, which over the years has become an extended one, but not so extended I can’t keep track of names, and, more important, who’s related to who (with lots of help from Donna, naturally).\u00a0 When I’m in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}