Jon Sudar 1936-2015

Dad passed at 5:20 this morning. I had to smile as he was born at 5:25am. Symmetry. Plus, it is Earth Day, which is rather appropriate for someone who loved the outdoors as much as he did. He didn’t want any services, just donations to our local state park volunteer program, the historical mining museum, and the Friends of the library. The pictures below are from 1936 to 2014. Lots of Dad as a climber.

A visit to Dad

Yesterday, we had to go up to Pueblo for building supplies for Brandy’s dog house. we are trying to do stuff to get back into a routine. While we were up there, we stopped into the hospice and visited Dad. It was difficult. He’s non-responsive, and we have no idea if he hears us or not.

I told him that all the grandchildren, great grands, and all the ‘adopted’ family sent their love. I told him it was okay to pass, and that I loved him. Then Dan and I said our goodbyes and headed home.

In all honesty, it seems as if his soul is left. That his body has just not gotten the message that it’s time to go. The nurses are amazed that he has lasted this long, but then again, he’s always been a tough old man. I hope it isn’t long.

 

Sunday Breakfast

We drove up to Pueblo on Sunday and had breakfast at the B Street Cafe. it’s a little hole in the wall place with great food. Afterwards, I took pictures of the Pueblo Union Depot across the street. It was a lovely Spring Day.

April Showers???

Are not suppose to be white? Umm… It was cloudy and rainy yesterday morning. Around noon, it started to snow. By dinner time, we had about 3 inches.

It has warmed up today, and a lot of it is melting. We are expecting low temps tonight, and will be covering things to hopefully prevent frost damage. On average, we are not free of frost danger until around May 15th.

A Pause, A Breathe, and Waiting

We finished moving into my mom’s house. 90% of our stuff is in storage. The rest is in nooks and crannies in my mom’s house. Brandy is learning to live in the back yard, and we are getting use to living with mom. It’s a good thing that my mom is a good friend as well as my parent. As time passes, we will adjust. We are doing our best to leave a lot of the hurt behind us and work on the positive things.

One of the last things I did was dig up my garden. We brought it over to my mom’s and spent a day digging and transplanting. I shared the rest of the irises I didn’t plant with three friends.

This last week we have caught up on sleep, email, meetings and life in general. I cleaned house and did laundry. It hasn’t been easy, but we are taking those deep breaths. We are pausing and trying to smell the breeze that carries the hint of spring.

Today we went shopping in Pueblo for the first time in weeks. After we did our shopping, we ate lunch at Romero’s. Then we went to visit Dad. Over the last week or so, he declined rapidly. They moved him into hospice on Tuesday night. In some ways, it was a relief not to visit him at the mental unit. The hospice is very nice. It had a good feel to it and the staff was pleasant. A friend of our had been in hospice and that place had not been nice. It looked alright, but had an ick to it. This place did not. (phew!)

We went in to see Dad and then let Mom have time alone with him. We chatted with the nurse, and she talked about how he was doing. She said he was restless, which to them means that it won’t be long. This matches with what my mom felt. We were originally going to visit on Friday, but she had this feeling that it had to be today. I’m glad we went up. He didn’t wake when we were there, or when we talked to him. Mom has his wedding ring now. We said our goodbyes and headed home. We may go up on Friday.

Mom has made all the arrangements with the local funeral home where our cousin works. In her own way, she’s getting her ‘ducks in a row’. Dan and I are doing our best to keep things running smoothly. And it is the little things that help so much. A dear friend sent us a lovely package full of treats. 🙂 It even had twiglets in it! Others have sent good wishes, hugs and energies for an easy transition for Dad.

Where to start?

When last I was here, my aunt had just passed and my mom had returned home. Then all hell broke loose.

On Monday, Bryan came by to let me know that he’d bought the house from Stefan. He wanted to let us know that he planned to move in and that we’d have to stuff everything in storage and/or the Wendy House and live there. We tried to explain that this just wasn’t viable. We wasted our breath. Shock. Horror. Disbelief. A week later, we were told we had to totally leave the property. Leave the Wendy House…

While we were reeling from this, my Dad had a major ‘sundowners’ moment. Yelling, screaming, threatening people, etc. We called the police and the EMT’s. When all the dust settled, Dad was in hospital in Pueblo. In the mental unit. Meanwhile, we moved in with my mom, as she was very upset and didn’t want to be alone.

We have been up to see Dad. He’s been diagnosed with moderate to severe dementia and psychosis. From what the doctor and nurses said, he’s been bipolar all of his life, but could deal with it. The dementia robbed him of the control to cope. When my sister and I talked, we could see it looking back. My dad has always ‘escaped to the mountains’, and we figured he just didn’t like living in the city. Now we see it was his way of coping. Now we are working on Medicaid paperwork and other bits. It has been a crazy time.

And… in the mean time, we’ve been packing. It’s very hard to leave our home of 10 years. Hard to leave behind all the work we did on the Wendy House. We are doing our best to keep positive. It’s just tough.  Brandy isn’t doing too badly. She has a new yard to explore and we hope to build her a dog house soon.