Condolences
Lots of love to everyone who sent their love and offered comfort during this time. For those who don't know, my son found his dad's body Saturday afternoon. While the official date will be listed as July 26, we now believe he may have died Friday morning.
I had worked Thursday night in the emergency room from 11-7. Cody and I both had eye doctor exams that morning in Memphis, so I had called him and had him meet me in Memphis. He peeked into his dad's room to let him know he was leaving, but he thought he was asleep and did not disturb him. He says Jerry looked perfectly normal to him then as far as skin color, but he did not get close enough to check for breathing, etc. However, with his emphysema, Jerry breathed very shallow anyway which was one of the reasons pneumonia set in often.
In any case, Cody is pretty sure Jerry was lying the exact same way as when he found him Saturday. Only Sat his skin was pale and he was very cold. The funeral director thinks he may have died 24 hours before we originally thought due to skin discoloration in his dependent areas (liver mortis) as well as other signs he didn't want to specify over the phone (or to a family member).
There was no odor of decomposition yet. It did appear as if he was just going into rigor mortis. With that and the timing of our discovery, the coroner went ahead a put his death as that Sat morning. With the new information, however, we now believe he was in rigor mortis for greater than 24 hours and was just coming out. He didn't have much muscle mass and wouldn't stay stiff as long as people with more mass.
As it was, Cody and I had gone to EyeMasters and gotten our glasses made, had lunch at my doctor's office (it was her birthday) and didn't get home until 4:30 pm. I had to work that night so I went straight to bed, got up 3 hours later and went back to work.
It was a shock. We did not expect it - at all! Yes, he was not a well man. After he broke his neck in 2000 and had surgery, he started losing weight, began having seizures, and lost strength. At the end of 2005 he had pneumonia, became septic and we almost lost him. Since then he's been hospitalized with hyponatremia, pneumonia x2 and GI bleed. But he seemed to be a bit stronger. He wasn't using his walker and he was eating - although not enough.
His birthday was July 10. On July 11, his cousin in Texas (who is very religious) had a premonition that she needed to come to Mississippi and see Jerry. She called one of her sisters who came with her. They stopped in Henderson and Selmer and picked up Jerry's mother and sister, respectively, and drove to Holly Springs. They called us and we met them for dinner. We also spent the next day with them. He had not seen them in almost 4 years.
Last Monday Jerry went with Cody to take Allen (my oldest grandson) home after he spent the weekend with us. Jerry visited with our daughter and ate dinner. Then Tues he was up and around and met with friends. I was working both jobs all week and don't really recall much of his activity the rest of the week. Until we found him Saturday. I vaguely remember talking to him Wednesday (July 23), but the days kind of all blurred together.
The funeral was lovely. We're Southern Baptist (for those who didn't know). Jerry was buried at my family's cemetery. I will tell you that it is very surreal to help the funeral director and church representative mark off your own burial plot. We had 7 plots reserved at the cemetery at present. So I had to choose which of the plots we would use for Jerry and myself. It will be even stranger (I'm sure) when I get the headstone in place with both Jerry's and my own name engraved. The only thing that will be left blank is my date of death.
We ended up with 4 songs at the service: Elvis singing "Amazing Grace", "Peace in the Valley", "How Great Thou Art", and LeAnn Rimes singing "Clinging to a Saving Hand".
We stayed until the grave was covered because Cody wanted to visit and see the other family interred in the cemetery. Once they covered the grave with the sprays (they sent all the fresh flowers in baskets and vases home with me), a little yellow butterfly immediately flew down and lighted on a red carnation.
Many of you know that I am a Christian. Being said, I also respect others beliefs and rarely preach unless someone invites me to do so. But I know there is a God and I know Jesus died for my sins. Jerry knew as well. I have no doubt he's in heaven with his sister and other loved ones who proceeded him in death.
That should make this less painful, and I know it will in time.
I told this to Patty and she promised me I wasn't crazy, so I'll share it here as well.
I'm not psychic or anything close to it, but I have always tended to feel some connection to those I love when they die. I've also seen ghosts of patients in the hospital. I've been at the nursing station on the Myelosuppression Unit when I've felt a presence behind me, only to look up and see a face in the window. Of course, there is no one there when I turn around. This has happened more than once when I was alone on the unit with only one or two patients (who were accounted for in their rooms).
We also had a patient who had passed away after months of treatment. That Christmas we had the large Santa and Mrs. Santa dolls that sat in a rocking chair. They were motion sensored so when someone walked by the rockers would animate and the dolls would "ho ho ho." We had a special filtration system on the unit and the hallway was enclosed in glass doors so there was no breeze or air to trigger the dolls. Yet, every so often, the dolls would start rocking and "ho ho ho" -ing of their own accord. I kept feeling a presence in the hallway and it finally occured to me that it felt like our patient who had recently died. It also happened that the one patient we had on the unit was in her room. So I moved the patient into another room and announced to Mrs. Hensley that she needed to return to her room. As long as we kept her room empty she stayed off the rest of the unit.
When I was a child I woke one night to see a light floating in the far corner of the room just hovering under the ceiling. I knew I was awake. It hovered for a few moments and disappeared. I always wondered if it was someone from my biological family who had died. I found out years later that I had a brother who had died around this time.
And finally when my mother passed away in 1995 - she had died the night before and her friend found her the next morning. Once the coroner had taken her body, we had left her trailer to return home. Since I had worked the night before the first thing I wanted to do was jump in the shower. I was now home and in the upstairs bathroom. I felt a presence coming up the stairs and somehow I knew it was my mom. I felt her enter the bathroom and a chill came across the room. I called out to her, it disappeared and I could tell she was gone.
If you stayed with me this long I'm sure you're wondering what my point is.
One of the things I was having trouble with this past week was the fact that I didn't *feel* Jerry's presence leave. Nothing felt different. The cats didn't act any differently. And how could we not know he had died? There was no odor from the room, not even the musty smell we were used to from his cigarettes which normally stayed around even when he was in the hospital for weeks. I would strip the beds and clean and there was still that mustiness because the room was closed off and the odor got into the drapes.
His door to his room had been closed since Friday. Once we stripped the dirty linen from the bed there was no odor at all. And both Methos and Raven were acting perfectly normal even when they were in the room.
Okay - with that in mind - there was a picture that someone took of Jerry, me, his sister Linda and her date Skip the night we met (in the Traveling Fox nightclub *g*). Jerry kept that picture in his wallet for 33 years (we met in 1975). His sister Linda had the same picture at home. Monday morning Jerry's cousin called me from Texas to tell me that Jerry had talked to her recently and asked her to call me if anything happened to him to let me know how much he loved me.
Later that morning his sister Linda called to say the same thing. She also brought up the picture. I had seen the picture in Jerry's wallet when I looked through it Saturday. Tuesday morning around 4am the cats were jumping and pawing at my bedroom door. I thought they were trying to get me up to feed them although I couldn't understand why they would do that at 4am. Finally at 4:30, when it became obvious they wouldn't let me sleep, I got up and fed them. Then for some reason I could not get that picture out of my mind. We had already decided to put his wallet in the casket with him because he had kept all those pictures with him through everything. He even had my wallet size graduation picture in there still.
I wanted to look at the picture one last time so I went to his room. I had kept the door open so there was no reason for it to be stuffy or have an odor. But when I walked into the room, I could clearly smell the odor of death - the smells I expected when we found him. It also felt very empty. It occured to me then that the reason it didn't feel differently before was because he hadn't left yet - he had still been there. That's why the kittens didn't feel his death.
Then I picked up his wallet and went through the pictures. The picture in question was no longer there.
This morning at 3:58 exactly I was awakened out of a sound sleep when my television suddenly came on.
I don't know what all this means exactly, but I do believe he may have died in his sleep at 3:58 am Friday morning. That would coincide with the funeral director's assessment of his body. I don't know if he's still around, but the house does feel very empty right now which it didn't at first.
Butterfly
Jerry in happier times (with his cousins)
I worked at Marlowe's - hence the tee shirt
I had worked Thursday night in the emergency room from 11-7. Cody and I both had eye doctor exams that morning in Memphis, so I had called him and had him meet me in Memphis. He peeked into his dad's room to let him know he was leaving, but he thought he was asleep and did not disturb him. He says Jerry looked perfectly normal to him then as far as skin color, but he did not get close enough to check for breathing, etc. However, with his emphysema, Jerry breathed very shallow anyway which was one of the reasons pneumonia set in often.
In any case, Cody is pretty sure Jerry was lying the exact same way as when he found him Saturday. Only Sat his skin was pale and he was very cold. The funeral director thinks he may have died 24 hours before we originally thought due to skin discoloration in his dependent areas (liver mortis) as well as other signs he didn't want to specify over the phone (or to a family member).
There was no odor of decomposition yet. It did appear as if he was just going into rigor mortis. With that and the timing of our discovery, the coroner went ahead a put his death as that Sat morning. With the new information, however, we now believe he was in rigor mortis for greater than 24 hours and was just coming out. He didn't have much muscle mass and wouldn't stay stiff as long as people with more mass.
As it was, Cody and I had gone to EyeMasters and gotten our glasses made, had lunch at my doctor's office (it was her birthday) and didn't get home until 4:30 pm. I had to work that night so I went straight to bed, got up 3 hours later and went back to work.
It was a shock. We did not expect it - at all! Yes, he was not a well man. After he broke his neck in 2000 and had surgery, he started losing weight, began having seizures, and lost strength. At the end of 2005 he had pneumonia, became septic and we almost lost him. Since then he's been hospitalized with hyponatremia, pneumonia x2 and GI bleed. But he seemed to be a bit stronger. He wasn't using his walker and he was eating - although not enough.
His birthday was July 10. On July 11, his cousin in Texas (who is very religious) had a premonition that she needed to come to Mississippi and see Jerry. She called one of her sisters who came with her. They stopped in Henderson and Selmer and picked up Jerry's mother and sister, respectively, and drove to Holly Springs. They called us and we met them for dinner. We also spent the next day with them. He had not seen them in almost 4 years.
Last Monday Jerry went with Cody to take Allen (my oldest grandson) home after he spent the weekend with us. Jerry visited with our daughter and ate dinner. Then Tues he was up and around and met with friends. I was working both jobs all week and don't really recall much of his activity the rest of the week. Until we found him Saturday. I vaguely remember talking to him Wednesday (July 23), but the days kind of all blurred together.
The funeral was lovely. We're Southern Baptist (for those who didn't know). Jerry was buried at my family's cemetery. I will tell you that it is very surreal to help the funeral director and church representative mark off your own burial plot. We had 7 plots reserved at the cemetery at present. So I had to choose which of the plots we would use for Jerry and myself. It will be even stranger (I'm sure) when I get the headstone in place with both Jerry's and my own name engraved. The only thing that will be left blank is my date of death.
We ended up with 4 songs at the service: Elvis singing "Amazing Grace", "Peace in the Valley", "How Great Thou Art", and LeAnn Rimes singing "Clinging to a Saving Hand".
We stayed until the grave was covered because Cody wanted to visit and see the other family interred in the cemetery. Once they covered the grave with the sprays (they sent all the fresh flowers in baskets and vases home with me), a little yellow butterfly immediately flew down and lighted on a red carnation.
Many of you know that I am a Christian. Being said, I also respect others beliefs and rarely preach unless someone invites me to do so. But I know there is a God and I know Jesus died for my sins. Jerry knew as well. I have no doubt he's in heaven with his sister and other loved ones who proceeded him in death.
That should make this less painful, and I know it will in time.
I told this to Patty and she promised me I wasn't crazy, so I'll share it here as well.
I'm not psychic or anything close to it, but I have always tended to feel some connection to those I love when they die. I've also seen ghosts of patients in the hospital. I've been at the nursing station on the Myelosuppression Unit when I've felt a presence behind me, only to look up and see a face in the window. Of course, there is no one there when I turn around. This has happened more than once when I was alone on the unit with only one or two patients (who were accounted for in their rooms).
We also had a patient who had passed away after months of treatment. That Christmas we had the large Santa and Mrs. Santa dolls that sat in a rocking chair. They were motion sensored so when someone walked by the rockers would animate and the dolls would "ho ho ho." We had a special filtration system on the unit and the hallway was enclosed in glass doors so there was no breeze or air to trigger the dolls. Yet, every so often, the dolls would start rocking and "ho ho ho" -ing of their own accord. I kept feeling a presence in the hallway and it finally occured to me that it felt like our patient who had recently died. It also happened that the one patient we had on the unit was in her room. So I moved the patient into another room and announced to Mrs. Hensley that she needed to return to her room. As long as we kept her room empty she stayed off the rest of the unit.
When I was a child I woke one night to see a light floating in the far corner of the room just hovering under the ceiling. I knew I was awake. It hovered for a few moments and disappeared. I always wondered if it was someone from my biological family who had died. I found out years later that I had a brother who had died around this time.
And finally when my mother passed away in 1995 - she had died the night before and her friend found her the next morning. Once the coroner had taken her body, we had left her trailer to return home. Since I had worked the night before the first thing I wanted to do was jump in the shower. I was now home and in the upstairs bathroom. I felt a presence coming up the stairs and somehow I knew it was my mom. I felt her enter the bathroom and a chill came across the room. I called out to her, it disappeared and I could tell she was gone.
If you stayed with me this long I'm sure you're wondering what my point is.
One of the things I was having trouble with this past week was the fact that I didn't *feel* Jerry's presence leave. Nothing felt different. The cats didn't act any differently. And how could we not know he had died? There was no odor from the room, not even the musty smell we were used to from his cigarettes which normally stayed around even when he was in the hospital for weeks. I would strip the beds and clean and there was still that mustiness because the room was closed off and the odor got into the drapes.
His door to his room had been closed since Friday. Once we stripped the dirty linen from the bed there was no odor at all. And both Methos and Raven were acting perfectly normal even when they were in the room.
Okay - with that in mind - there was a picture that someone took of Jerry, me, his sister Linda and her date Skip the night we met (in the Traveling Fox nightclub *g*). Jerry kept that picture in his wallet for 33 years (we met in 1975). His sister Linda had the same picture at home. Monday morning Jerry's cousin called me from Texas to tell me that Jerry had talked to her recently and asked her to call me if anything happened to him to let me know how much he loved me.
Later that morning his sister Linda called to say the same thing. She also brought up the picture. I had seen the picture in Jerry's wallet when I looked through it Saturday. Tuesday morning around 4am the cats were jumping and pawing at my bedroom door. I thought they were trying to get me up to feed them although I couldn't understand why they would do that at 4am. Finally at 4:30, when it became obvious they wouldn't let me sleep, I got up and fed them. Then for some reason I could not get that picture out of my mind. We had already decided to put his wallet in the casket with him because he had kept all those pictures with him through everything. He even had my wallet size graduation picture in there still.
I wanted to look at the picture one last time so I went to his room. I had kept the door open so there was no reason for it to be stuffy or have an odor. But when I walked into the room, I could clearly smell the odor of death - the smells I expected when we found him. It also felt very empty. It occured to me then that the reason it didn't feel differently before was because he hadn't left yet - he had still been there. That's why the kittens didn't feel his death.
Then I picked up his wallet and went through the pictures. The picture in question was no longer there.
This morning at 3:58 exactly I was awakened out of a sound sleep when my television suddenly came on.
I don't know what all this means exactly, but I do believe he may have died in his sleep at 3:58 am Friday morning. That would coincide with the funeral director's assessment of his body. I don't know if he's still around, but the house does feel very empty right now which it didn't at first.
Butterfly
Jerry in happier times (with his cousins)
I worked at Marlowe's - hence the tee shirt