We walked out empty-handed and laughing that we’d have to really up our punk game before rolling in there again. The record selection was about ten times more punk than I’ve ever been in my life, and Ouest had never heard of a single band in there. We were greeted by a guy straight out of central casting for a Sid Vicious look-alike, in a room the size of a walk-in closet. Ouest and I went for a walk one day and stopped in. Around the corner from us was a small record shop. I walked over and picked up a lot of incredibly delicious pizza in those two weeks. For those familiar with Portland, we were on Broadway over by Blind Onion pizza. Out for a stroll around our neighborhood. Our nephew, Curt, drove up from the University of Oregon to visit us. It now seems to snow in Portland as if it is a perfectly normal thing to do in March. Sorry to wake you, I’ll be out of here in just a minute.” When I walked back in the house Ali had gone pale. One morning I walked out there with a load and said loudly, “No, no, you don’t have to get up. For two weeks Ali turned the laundry duties over to me. Ali and the kids were staying here for a couple of days before I arrived, and they had piled just about every loose item in the house in front of both of those doors. The basement was equally murderous, as most Portland basements seem to be. The AirBnB we were staying in was nice, but for some reason they decided to give the garage an “a t least 5 people have been murdered in here” aesthetic. I loved reading the Ramona books to the kids when they were little. I put the hurt on him in bowling, then crashed into a wall in the video games.īeverly Cleary grew up around here. My brother came to town for a couple of days. A lot of miracles needed to happen in order for her to get better and for us to be able to move her and get her settled in a beautiful place that she would be happy in and well taken care of without us. Point being, we had no way to know three months ago, much less one month ago, if Grammy would be in a position that we’d feel comfortable leaving her. For now, she has good people around if she needs any help with anything, she has a small place that is easy for her to navigate, she has all her meals cooked for her, she has unlimited milkshakes available, and she has her family a few minutes away. And while she doesn’t need much assistance at the moment, because of her deteriorating eyesight, she may need more down the line. Fortunately, she is back to full strength and gets around just like she always did before, if not better. She loves her new place in Assisted Living. Grammy settled into her new place and broke down in tears. We still had no idea if there’d be any chance of us setting sail this year, but we did know that if it didn’t happen this year, it probably wouldn’t happen. Her hospice care nurse was happy to tell us that Grammy was only her second graduation. In early February everyone decided it’d be best if she moved back to Portland. One day we were lifting her out of bed with a crane to set her into a wheelchair (something she has no memory of), and the next day we were holding her arm as she walked around her room. Then, almost overnight, her brain shook off the fog, and her appetite came back with a vengeance. If she ate, but her brain didn’t wake up, she’d be a bedridden shell of her old self. If she didn’t start eating, she would die. She came home, under hospice care, and we still didn’t know what to expect. She was refusing to eat and had already pulled a feeding tube out three times. She could either be sent to a nursing home or we could take her with us. The doctors told us there was nothing more they could do (her MRI didn’t show any damage, stroke, etc.). She was basically a one-year-old child in a hospital bed with a body that was rapidly turning to skin and bones. But weeks later she still wasn’t waking up from the fog. Once we’d reached the limits of how long a person should be on a Covid ventilator we pulled it out and she immediately took over breathing on her own and her lung/oxygen numbers were better than before she went in. Grammy was deathly ill in the ICU and we were being told by the doctors almost daily to say our goodbyes. Then Grammy got sick and sailing was put back on the back burner at a very low simmer.įor the last hundred days we really had no idea what the future might hold. We’d just ordered more solar panels and I was researching a big lithium battery overhaul. Three months ago we were finally heating up to get ready to go sailing again.
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