Home alone

Blake Winton — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:12:21 GMT

As Amy mentioned in the previous post, her father passed away. So she’s gone out to Saskatchewan to spend some time with her mother. This means that for the next seven days, I get to stay home and take care of the kids, making sure that they have food to eat, clothes to wear, and get to wherever they’re going when they need to be there.

The first day went pretty well, the only casualty being a slightly-charred side of a grilled bacon-tomato-cheese sandwich. And today has been going pretty well too, with a load of laundry washed and hung, the dishwasher currently running, and tonight’s meal (beef stew in the crock pot) already cooking.

A large part of why it’s all running so smoothly is my parents. They have totally stepped up, helping me by taking Delphine and Cordelia places, or just looking after them while I do the stuff that needs to be done around the house.

Delphine has been a huge help too. This morning, while I was in the shower, she got dressed, came downstairs, got out three bowls and three small spoons, some cereal, and the milk from the fridge. She then poured cereal for herself and Cordelia, and the two of them were done breakfast before I was dressed. I know she’s five and all, but sometimes she’s so grown up it astonishes me.

Anyways, they’re currently out on an adventure with Zaida, so I’ld better get to folding the laundry, because it ain’t gonna fold itself.

Dead Dads Club

Amy Brown — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:51:27 GMT

My dad died today at 4:15 am Saskatchewan time, which is 6:15 am EST. So fifteen minutes before I woke up this morning my dad was quietly dying two provinces away.

My mom called at 6:37 am to tell me. I was only half-awake, and so my first thought was "How did they know it was 4:15?" My dad wasn't on any kind of life support, so barring the unlikely event that someone was in the room with him and noticed him go, 4:15 is surely just a best guess. Which is fine, really, but my early morning pedant wanted that to be clear. 4:15? Really? Or 'around 4:15'? Which is, I'm sure, exactly what my mother needed!

Actually apparently what she thought I meant was "How did they know he is dead?" which is a valid question because lately the difference between my dad dead and my dad alive has been a subtle one. When we all went to see him in August he was largely unresponsive, and in an unguarded moment (I have a lot of them) I described him to the girls as Mostly Dead. Which he was.

So now he's Completely Dead, and it's a bit weird how that's so very different that him being only Mostly Dead at, say, 3:15 this morning, while also being so much the same. My brother and I and probably my Mum are having trouble with this state change, this passing from being Mostly Mourning to Completely Mourning.

Right now the girls are with their Baba and I suppose I should be doing grown-up things like getting a flight home, but really I just feel like baking a giant batch of cookies and sitting down with a magazine and some tea.

One last whine — our terabyte drive crashed so we don't have any music, and I don't have a single Requiem on my ipod. Not Mozart, not Faure, not even the fairly alarming Brahms we started practicing yesterday. So I'm stuck listening to some random mass, which is nice but not the same.

Blog-O! (Posts about family)

Home alone

Dead Dads Club