Today I started my day like any other. Reading the death notices. I know, I know, I'm a big weirdo. I do this for two reasons:
1) My father always told us the duty of the Irish is to visit the sick and bury the dead.
2) I can't tell you the names of the over 1,000 people who came to see each my mother and husband. But I can sure as hell tell you who wasn't there. (Not that I hold a grudge or anything)
I didn't get out to buy a paper this morning so I was reading on line.
I click on obits and to the right I see this. An add for a free casket when buying a crypt.
http://www.legacy.com/PostGazette/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonId=100457248
Here's how i see it:
This is true. I swear. I am just going to change the end when it's time to pick a funeral home. I'll put in italics what is NOT true.
As with anything in my life, it's always a story. Nothing is ever normal. Why this is, I'll never know. I guess God has his reasons. I've yet to discover them though.
January 19, 2000 started normal enough.
I went to work. Towards the end of the day, my father called to tell me they were putting my mother back in the hospital. Since they lived only a couple yards from the hospital, and having worked there most of her life, admissions told her to go home and wait instead of waiting in the ER. They would call her when her room was ready.
I left work and headed to her house to check up on her. She seemed fine, a little scared, but fine.
I had a hair appointment. I was going to cancel, but she assured me she was fine and would see me in an hour or so. I packed up a bag for her to take to the hospital.
I left and went to my appt.
While I was getting my hair cut. She died.
In the hour that I was gone. Word spread like wildfire. I guess the neighbors saw the firetrucks (first responders) and figured out what happened. So by the time I got back to my house, before my husband even made it to the front door when I walked into my house, a neighbor ran up to me and told me how sorry she was to hear of my mother's passing. I looked at her like she was crazy, Dan was trying to stop her, but it was too late.
So in what was probably the worst thing to happen to me in my life up to that point, it was told to me by a crazy neighbor......typical.
So I literally run to my parents house up the street. The street it still closed off from the firetruck, police, ect.
When I walk into my parents small house, there is my mother, lying in the middle of the floor, with the beloved crocheted throw that her friend Jean made for her covering her.
Relatives and friends were already pouring in and out of the house.
It was then that I thought, this is like a Seinfeld episode. I guess the paramedics put her in the middle of the floor while trying to revive her, and left her there.
So as everyone was filing into the house. They had to step over her.(They had a really small living room.)
So here we are, running back and fourth, answering the door, all the while stepping over her to get to the front door.
My cousin Mary Alice and I went up to her room and found the dress she wanted to be "Laid out in". She told me once a week for 15 years, she wanted to be laid out in the dress she wore to my wedding. (I know, I know)
We took it to the cleaners, came home and she was still lying in the middle of the floor.
How weird this turned out to be.
We had to wait for the Dr. to come and declare her "dead by natural causes". We didn't want her to be taken to the morgue. It took about two hours.
The whole while the policeman had to wait until the under taker came. We laugh now because he was probably thinking, "What a bunch of nuts"
So here's where the advertisement comes in
While we were waiting, could you imagine if someone said
"Lets go to Jefferson Memorial instead of Zalewski's, you get a free casket, and when you call just mention promotion code N-6."
WTF.
Happy New Year. And if, God forbid, you should need them, just spread the word to your loved ones, tell them PROMOTION CODE N-6.
Afterthought:My father and I are sitting in the funeral home basement grabbing something to eat, because we were forbidden to leave by my mother. She always said, "None of this 2-4, 7-9 stuff, If you can't sit with me for two whole days, the last days you will ever see me. I will haunt you. (Maureen, "The Madonna" left, I wasn't chancing it). While we were eating, we could hear them embalbing Sadie O'Neil (another old neighbor, who died a day after mom)in the next room. Again, that would make a great Seinfeld episode. We cracked up. I guess that wouldn't happened if we would have just went to Jefferson Memorial and mentioned promotion N-6.
Sorry such a morbid post, just one of those days. Also my family always found the humor to ease the sadness!
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