Snuggies For Seniors

     Did you receive a Snuggie for Christmas that you aren't sure you will ever use? We did! Here's an opportunity for you to donate it, as long as it is still like new, to a woman who is collecting Snuggies to donate to Seniors living in nursing homes.


     Click on the Snuggies For Seniors gadget posting on the left side bar of this Blog. It will take you to the website where you can get all the details. Despite all the jokes that have been made about them, seems like
Snuggies are ideal for folks who are confined to wheelchairs or who must sit for long periods of time and heat is turned down or air conditioning is turned up.


     I'm not sure what we'll do with ours. The Old Curmudgeon (I'm changing his name from The Old Coot) does use a wheelchair and he often complains of feeling cold. (He doesn't have the padding that helps keep me warm.) So we might make a donation of $15 which the website will help us do, too. Check it out!


The Old Crone


     


     

Don't Miss the Boat!

Here's why the dinosaurs became extinct!

Memorials & Funerals

     In my last post, I discussed buying a graveplot in the Indiana cemetery where all my family is buried. 


     In this post I want to emphasize how important it is to make pre-arrangements for your own funeral or memorial. I have been discussing this with a storytelling friend of mine who is a "civil celebrant" in another state. He says, "It's astonishing to me how little attention we pay to the arrangements for our own funerals. It should be a part of estate planning and someone who understands ritual and story--whether a minister or civil celebrant--should say the words and as the ancients did, celebrate the songs that have been sung." 

I believe that the "songs that have been sung" is a metaphor for the life events the deceased participated in. 


My friend said he had recently attended the wake for a jazz organist, and the jazz community who was present took turns playing the organ. Then two more musicians joined, one of them playing the alto sax and the other playing the trombone, and the wake turned into a final blues melody of "I'll be seeing you."


     My friend went on to comment, "Now that's the way I want to be sent off. Make me a pillow of music and sing me to my final sleep."


     I'll certainly will be thinking about this advice and my own progress in finding the right words to express "me" and making my pre-finals.


Mimi

One Old Foot In the Grave

     The time eventually comes when we think about dying. I've been thinking about it since I turned 50, because my mother died at the age of 54 and I thought I might, too, because I have hypertension just like she did.


     Thankfully, I didn't die.

     Then my older sister, Vi, died at age 61 of cancer. So I had anxious years leading up to 61. I didn't die then, either. Thankfully.


     Then my brother died at age 69 of cancer, and my oldest sister, Velm, died at 83 of heart failure. 


     I made it past 69 and really am not obsessed with this anymore since my uncle is now 101.


     But I do know it is going to happen someday; no one gets out of it. Then our financial advisor suggested we think about making advance "arrangements" for a funeral and disposal of the body. So it has been a topic of discussion that Rocky is now willing to participate in due to his own ill health.


     He has decided he wants his body to go to a medical school. We know East TN State University does this because two of our storytelling friends decided to go this route. It is our understanding that once the body is used, then it is cremated and the ashes are returned to the next of kin.


     I don't want to do that. For a long time, I thought I wanted to be cremated, but the longer I sat with that decision the more uncomfortable I am feeling about it. Another alternative was to buried in the cemetery nearby where our group does its storytelling. That felt ghostly to me and once the amusement wore off, I didn't feel comfortable there either.


     Then it struck me. What I really wanted was to go "home." I've already joked that now when I go home, I immediately go to the cemetery because, since I'm the youngest in my biological family, that's where my parents and siblings are.


     So I telephoned the cemetery in Indiana where my family has a large plot Unfortunately, it's all used up. There was one plot open on the edge which I did not want. However, one of my sisters and husband, are buried in another newer area, so I am buying a plot near them. 


     I've sat with this decision now for over a week and it feels very comfortable. I don't like the idea of being "stuffed" in pretty clothes and warehoused underground, but being "at home" feels pretty o.k.


The Old Crone


     

The Old Coot's 80th Birthday

Rocky likes chocolate cake--the candles he says he can do without!

He likes presents too--just like any birthday boy!

One of the things that now give him the most pleasure is listening to music which this Bose music system should handle nicely!