Daniella:

Well said!!!!! I too am so sorry for what people have said to you. It's hard hearing these things.

My mom passed away 12 years ago. She and my dad were both put in a nursing home rehabilition kind of place. My mom, for her emphasema (she had 28 packs of cigs in her purse when I went to visit and she was telling me to go and buy her some). When I opened her purse to show her the 28 packs of cigs, she looked at me and said "OH". I immediately went to the resident psychiatrist on call and inquired "why does my mother keep asking me to go and buy her cigarettes when she has 28 packs (I counted them) in her purse"? He just nodded sadly and said "it really doesn't matter anymore, the nicotine has gone to her brain, it's too late". I had no idea about the nicotine going to her brain. I knew she was there for emphasema because she had been smoking all her life. She was 79 at the time at looked way past 90. Actually, she was pretty nice to me during her last days because I had lost weight when I came to visit her and although I was a large person, I didn't stick out like a sore thumb.

And because all the residents of Ritchie Manor Nursing Home were in wheel chairs and some of them were grandma dumped (that means dumped at the curb and the families just drove off....yes I know, never heard of that either back then), I took it upon myself to take my makeup, and give all the ladies there make-overs. You should have seen these 85 year olds in the wheelchairs with a little eye shadow and rouge and lipstick. They were like new women. I had gone down there with my Sudden Beauty lifting serum. I left it there. They seemed to enjoy the 5 days I was there. I would stay at the motel at night (I was not invited to stay at a nearby aunt's because they never accepted my weight. So I was kind of a left-wheel back then. Didn't matter. I just took a cab every morning to the nursing home to visit my mom and my dad. They put them in one room, and that was not the norm in those days. But they didn't want to break up a family. My father had congestive heart failure and he was on hospice.

Well, I will never forget what happened. My father could not stand my mother's mouth any more (Just to give you an example, when I was sixteen, I bought my mother a house dress for mother's day. She opened the box, took out the dress, looked at the stitching on the waistline and started screaming at me "don't you look at the work they do, this is shabby". I then proceeded to pick up my 5 foot tall mother and put her on top of the refrigerator. And yes, I really did that. She was so amazed that I actually had the audacity to do such a thing, that she couldn't talk for 5 minutes. (a record for her). My father walked in the door, she started screaming and the first words out of my father's mouth was to my mother. He said: "what did you say to her this time"???

So now we are back at the nursing home many years later. I was 48 years old and my mom and dad are in the same room. He is on hospice and was given 9 months to live. He told them "I can't take her anymore, put her someplace else". They put my mother in someplace called "The Sunshine Nursing Home". I was home with sciatica at that time and could not fly down again. Well, they lost my mother. I would call them up every day (my phone bill was $300 a month back then. When the guy from the Sunshine nursing home told me "we can't find your mother", I just phoned every nursing home in Port Richey and finally found my mother. It seemed she ****** off someone in the van and they dumped her some place else. Well, all hell broke loose and they had to return her to my father's room.

And this is exactly what happened. She died in January of 1995. He went off hospice because he actually got better. They made him the mailman of the nursing home and he would run around in his little scooter thing and give out everybody's mail. He was a darling man who had 11 more months of peace. He actually lived 18 months more than he was supposed to live. He died in December 23 of 1995. 1995 was some year for me. Lost both parents, I got Bells Palsy, and my 14 year old went through a glass window and got 75 stitches over his eye. Boy, what a year.

But my father had a good death. The kind of death we should all have. He ate some peach pie, I spoke to him on the phone, I said I love you dad, he went on his scooter into his room at the nursing home. He got off, sat in a chair and died. Then the nurse called me and said (after breaking the news), she said "melody, we had a bit of excitement, because when a person dies, we have to call the paramedics to officate and pronounce the person as deceased". Well, when the paramedic took my father's pulse, it seems he still had one. But no heartbeat. Everybody was freaking out, until some bright person said "oh, this guy has a pacemaker". That was why he had the pulse.

So Daniella, I know full well how cutting some words can be and how people can influence other people. I have learned how to respond to inappropriate remarks. I stood in front of my mirror and practiced what I would say if someone said something stupid, for example "don't you know that you are fat, or don't you know that you are skinny (yeah, I get that too, since I lost weight, now how stupid is that remark?) or even better, when some mean neighbor, who knows full well, that my son has not been home in 5 years and that I do not speak of him to anyone, well, when that neighbor is being a gossip and comes over to me and said "you know, I dreamt of your son last night, why hasn't he come home".? Now really, am I supposed to really believe that she dreamt of my son?

So when anyone says an inappropriate remark (for any reason), I look at them square in the face and I say: "Now why on earth would you say something like that?". Stops them dead in their tracks. And watch the expression on their face. See people (some people) like to say stuff just to be mean. They never expect you to call them on it.

be well hon!!

Melody

P.S. The visiting nurse just came for Alan's IVIG and we have begun to speak french. I love it!!!!!

Au revoir