Saturday, November 22, 2008

Cocooning

We're "cocooning" at home today. I'm writing this from my laptop in bed with the kids as we watch "Mary Poppins". It is storming outside...we can hear the wind and the gushing of Kalihi Stream outside.

Last night we had the Seglers, Camille, Silas, and some friends over to our house in Kalihi for dinner. Everyone ended up sleeping over after much beer, wine, and late night poker. The kids had a blast running around, playing dress up, and watching movies.

Elroy stopped in for a bit. He stayed longer than he ever has at our house. He was so happy and relaxed. Usually every time he comes over he is anxious to get home to make sure everything is OK..he rushes out worried about whether the caregivers and Peggy are OK on their own. But last night he was so relaxed. He even had a beer! He stayed and played with the kids for a while. It was so wonderful to see him like that. He deserves it.

I know how he feels. Today was the first time that I woke up and wasn't worried about what was going on at Peggy's house...I'm always thinking on the weekends about Peggy and the caregivers...and I always have this feeling like I need to cram everything in to my weekend because there is so much to do and so much to manage at Peggy's during the week. I'm so used to carrying around anxiety in the back of head about whether we have Peggy's shifts covered. Today was the first day that I actually turned my phone off. I haven't turned my phone off in 6 years. I've basically been "on call" since 2002.

I'm enjoying being unavailable, but also can't wait to be with people at Peggy's again on Monday. I have this strange mix of wanting to be alone, but feeling lonely. I miss Peggy and the weather is making me feel nostalgic and tired. I also am coming down with a case of the "shoulds" - you know, I should call people back, I should return emails, I should do some work, I should clean the house, I should do this or that...but I don't really feel like doing anything.

I know this is normal and that I should just be easy on myself...I can hear Peggy telling me to play the "grieving card" for as long as I can! She always told me to "use every card in the deck". She'd spell that saying out and we'd have a good laugh when we played the "ALS card" with telemarketers...we'd tell them she was totally paralyzed and that she would NEVER be available to come to the phone and they would just hang up! Peggy got a kick out of that.

So we're laying low today and then celebrating Silas's birthday tomorrow at the Children's Discovery Center...please join us there at 1pm if you're free. Then Monday we'll start another work week at Peggy's. Hope you can all join us for potluck lunch and our hospice meeting/room blessing at 11am. We'll be working this week on more cleaning and clearing and also getting organized for Peggy's services on December 5th.

We had fun watching the news bit last night. We saw it on the 10 o'clock news. We will make copies of that one and Eric will tape the ones from the other night too. The news stations grabbed photos from our Shutterfly page...we got a good laugh when we watched the KGMB piece since one of the photos they selected was of Karen in a penguin suit pretending to put Southern Comfort in Peggy's g-tube! Ha!

Speaking of photos, I've put up some photos from our last day with Peggy and a couple from the morning after. I especially like the ones of Indy and Jade at her bedside...I think they capture the simple grief of children that I spoke about in my previous post...they are sad and then they are not. You can see the photos here Peg's Legs on Shutterfly

And here are a couple of photos of what we've done so far with Peggy's room. We've turned it into sort of a Peggy living room and shrine. It is so nice to just sit in there. It is cozy and familiar, but different enough to ease the loss. We hung Peggy's spellboards on the wall along with the "Pool Rules" sign that Shelly brought over for Peggy's pool bath day.

Hope everyone is enjoying this snuggley day and having a relaxing and rejuvenating weekend. Hugs to all of you.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Kimi the room looks really terrific, what a great idea to turn it into a cozy lounge for everyone to hang out in. I wish I was still there in many ways, and of course I'm bummed out to miss the big party at your house!!! Thank you for continuing the blog and taking care of all things Peggy.
xo
Leslie