Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Tuesday, August 25, 2020 -- Mattie died 569 weeks ago today. 

Tonight's picture was taken on August 6, 2009. In a way, it was a companion photo to the one I posted last night. Last night, I posted a photo of Mattie sitting around the art table with his friend Jocelyn and her sisters. But we weren't in the photo! Where were we? We were in a separate room talking to Mattie's doctor. She shared with us Mattie's terminal diagnosis and how there was NOTHING more we medically could do for him. It was a very hard meeting, to say the least. When we came out of the meeting, you can see Mattie was studying us! He wanted to know where we were and what we were doing. Honestly you could make a comic strip out of this snapshot in time. However, there would be nothing funny about any of the captions. Kneeling in front of Mattie was Kathleen. Kathleen was an inpatient nurse of Mattie's, who he was close to. Kathleen literally came off the inpatient unit, to visit with Mattie in the outpatient clinic because the team understood the magnitude of the day for us. 

Quote of the day: Tonight's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins. 

• number of people diagnosed with the virus: 5,773,220
• number of people who died from the virus: 178,347

This is the front of my parent's home. Keep in mind that I was NOT snapping this photo from the street. Instead it is a 500 foot walk from their front door (by the roses) to the street. It is the endless driveway. Once you walk to the end of their driveway, we then have to walk down our neighbor's driveway, since the house is on a flag lot. At the end of our neighbor's driveway is a gate to the street. It is a common gate that we share with the neighbor. So understand that we can press a button to open the gate from inside the house, but so can our neighbor. Sometimes we do it at the same time, not on purpose of course, but we are both trying to access the gate to allow visitors out. When this happens, chaos unfolds. Because she presses the gate open from her house, and I press it open from my parent's house at the same time. You may think that this would be more rare occurrence, but it has already happened to me twice this week. 

The neighbor presses the button to open the gate, while I am simultaneously pressing the button for the gate to open. But instead it triggers the gate to close. Since we have NO video camera on the driveway, I have no idea what is happening out there! I had it with this gate, especially when my dad's caregivers were going down the 500 foot driveway.... I pressed the button to let them out, but instead, they were trapped by the gate and I had to walk out to resolve the issue! Not practical on a good day, but really stressful when caring for someone inside the house. 

I am going to walk you down the 500 foot driveway. So basically I was taking this photo from the front door of the house.  I walk on the path to the driveway. But check out the length of this driveway!

This part is my parent's driveway. 

That driveway, leads to our neighbor's driveway. Which we need to walk down to get to the gate. I am telling you it is crazy, balancing this gate. I have no patience for it while also managing all the caregivers who stop by each day. 

Last night, our friend who is an electrician designed this kitchy exit key pass station. Literally visitors can now drive down the drive way. Open their car window, input a security code and the gate opens. Now visitors are in control! THANK GOD! 

Our neighbor on the flag lot knew we were going to work on this system and she agreed to it (as it benefits her and her visitors too). However, when she saw the plastic flowers the electrician's wife put on this pole, she called me. She requested that I remove all the flowers as she felt it did not fit with her landscaping. I worked about a 14 hour day yesterday, and having to go back out and cut wires to dismantle the flowers wasn't top on my list. But I did it. Needless to say our caregivers used this exit system today and it worked like a charm!

The electrician's wife is a baker. She knows I love her gingerbread cookies. So she baked me two boxes full. They perk up my day! Mattie would have loved this as he was really the one who introduced me to gingerbread. He loved it. 

Meanwhile, Sunny is keeping Peter busy! Peter was in the kitchen cooking Sunny ground meat, and Sunny was keeping an eye on the process.