Wendy Bird
As of this morning, Mom's online obituary is live at the Shoshone Funeral Services website. It's quite nice, although the way it deals with Mom's name is odd, referring to her as "W." because her legal first name was Wendy. When you see her full name on the page it makes it more clear: W. Jean "Jeanni" Rogers. But, there is a button to the left that says, "Send Flowers for W." Lots of people might look at that and think, Who the hell is "W"?
I left my own "memory" for the "Tribute Wall" on the page, and I've been waiting all morning for it to be approved by an admin, hopefully not too dark for their taste. But, it had to do with how I think I actually got my twisted sense of humor largely from Mom.
I wonder how long these online obituaries stay live on their website? I'm probably going to want to get screenshots of the obituary and memories pages for my own permanent records.
In fact, it's annoying me so much that they have not approved my post that I think I'll just share it in its entirety right here:
I have long had a fairly twisted sense of humor, and it may surprise some that it largely came from my mom. She used to talk about how horrified she would be to grow old and develop Alzheimer's, and she insisted she would never want to live that way. She would want to be "put out of her misery," she basically said—and I said I would never do that. She brought up what she considered a compromise: just keep telling her to take her pill until she overdoses! That way, in her mind, she'd still have just done it to herself. (Technically not true, but, whatever.)
Over time it became a longstanding, running joke between us. "Take your pill, Mom!" I would call out to her. I did this as far back as when I was sixteen years old. I have a video clip of myself saying that over and over: "Take your pill, Mom. Take your pill, Mom!" Once or twice as an adult I think I even left her a voice mail that said only that: "Take your pill, Mom!"
In the end, it was the strokes that got her, and not dementia—something for which she was grateful, I'm sure. She died not having any idea it was her time, which means she went without confusion or fear, for which *I* am grateful. And, I never did have to remind her for real, to take her pill, which was a relief! Now she can dream of all the fun pills she likes, for eternity.
Final side note: Mom was adopted at the age of 2, and although she was always called "Jeanni" (a variation of her middle name) she was allowed to name herself, which was why her legal first name was Wendy—because she loved Peter Pan, and "I wanted to be a Wendy Bird!", flying like Wendy Darling with pixie dust.
She's a Wendy Bird now.
What can I actually tell you about last night, then? Not a whole lot, it was pretty uneventful.
Well, except I did ride my bike to the office and back right after work, which killed an hour. And guess what? Those dipshits in Accounting did not have my next stack of receivers ready for me, which means I have to go back again after work today! I don't want to just wait until Friday and skip getting the start-of-the-week stack, as having a full week's worth on Friday will be overwhelming. Oh well; I need the exercise anyway.
I then took a while after that to make dinner. I made ravioli, this time using two of the four packets we bought at Costco instead of just one, so it wouldn't be so heavy on the pasta sauce like it was last time, especially using a larger-than-average jar of pasta sauce, also purchased at Costco. This time it balanced out pretty perfectly. I just had leftovers of it for lunch. Very tasty. I stupidly forgot to pack the rest of it into lunch containers last night, and Shobhit never thinks to do that at all, so I had to take some time to do it before getting ready for work this morning.
I made the pasta and also chai—this time having it ready by 6:30—and it was all ready barely after Shobhit got home from work. We ate while he watched news programs, and then I retired to the bedroom for a while, working mostly on transferring memory-sucking video files from my computer hard drive to my new 4TB external hard drive. I may start working on a video collection of my clips of Mom over the years soon. Then Shobhit called me back out to watch one episode of Space Force on Netflix, after which I got ready for bed.
I really zonked out last night. I've ready it's not actually a good sign if you are dead to the world the whole night, an indicator you haven't been getting enough sleep previously. That would make sense, given how wide awake the chai made me on Sunday night. But last night was different, and I got a solid seven hours of sleep. So I feel pretty good today, honestly.
[posted 12:36 pm]