0I’ve been for the most part just vegetating around the house, thinking about things that are and things that can be. After my last video I Was heading to Florida for the annual Mom visit. I Have always treated it as a chore that had to be completed, but really it is fun and always let me see some of Florida and my brothers family. This year was different. I Got to my campsite and checked in and went to visit Mom, She had seen a dermatologist for a little patch of skin on her head that had been removed once before by another dermatologist and confirmed to be skin cancer, not a serious type of cancer, just a surface collection of cells that itches occasionally so she picked at it of course. Well this doctor, I Believe a relatively new doctor to her said he would take it off so it didn’t bother her. HE was the son of one of her neighbors in the independent living facility she was living in. I Don’t know if she picked him or if he was recommended by his mother? But he took a fairly large chuck of flesh off her scalp and placed some suave on it and a ‘bandaid’ and sent her home. Well, my niece, Melissa, who lived with me when I First came to NC was there visiting and while they were visiting Melissa said, “Grandma, your bleeding”, as blood ran down her face. so Melissa and her husband Ryan tried to bandage it up so it would not bleed, but head cuts bleed like nothing else and she had recently starting taking elequist blood thinner. So they got some absorbent pads and tapes and fixed her up. And when they left she decided to go to bed, but worried that the bandage would come off, she decided to put on a wool ski cap to hold it all in place. Well in the middle of the night she woke up and found she was sleeping in a pool of blood. The bandage was inside the cap on the pillow next to her and her scalp was free flowing blood like a garden hose. So she called 911 and took an ambulance to her favorite hospital Where after an hour in the ER a resident sewed up her scalp and stopped the bleeding. Melissa and Ryan (her Hubby) returned that next day to her apt. to check on her and found what looked like a bloody slaughter house. Melissa immediately figured out what must have happened and went to cleaning it up and re-making the bed. I got there the next day and spent most of the time hearing all about this an how mom was so impressed by how Melissa did such a super job cleaning all the blankets and sheets and how she was never taking that evil blood thinner again. Then it was my turn to load her up into Akela’s car and run her around to show her favorite internist her head and buy some baby asprin instead on that nasty blood thinner she was taking. But she was fine, her stitch job on her head looked like an old fashioned darning job on a sock. But so I Hung out with her for a week running to thrift stores and walmarts, going out to lunch with my brother and his wife and enjoyed seeing her and she talked about how old people die easy, that at 93 years old she probably should have gone back to sleep and bleed to death instead of calling 911. She was a little depressed, but I Think a little lonely, she lost her partner and boy friend during COVID when he had a UTI and they placed him in isolation. He was a great guy and perfect gentlemen. She thought she had found something sent from heaven with him. but she was a very social person but blamed turning into a hermit due to her poorly adjusted hearing aids resulting in not wanting to eat with friends because she couldn’t understand what they were saying and she took too long to eat. So she always went down to the dinning hall and grabbed a plate of food and brought it back to her room. While I Was there we ate in the dinner room once and sat with a new couple who had just moved into her “tower”, and were pretty interesting and we enjoyed the meal and the company.

Well then it was time for me to leave and go back home. It usually takes me 2 days to get down and 2 back where she lives in Bradenton just south of tampa bay. When I Got home,my brother who lives in Florida about 2 hours away from her, called me and said someone found her on the floor and helped her up and sit in a chair,then called the facility nurse to comecheck on her. She had a huge “Smash” mark on the side of her face and the nurse thinks she fell and struck her head on her coffee table. HE called an ambulance and they took her to the hospital where they did a head scan and found she had a major brain bleed of some kind(They didn’t tell us the specific details), but they said it was beyond any kind of repair and that they suggested Hospice. So that’s what my brother agreed to, SO Akela and I hopped back in the car and drove non-stopback to the Bradenton Tidewell hospice where she was comfortably lying in a coma. We hung around for another week and she died as we were griving out of the state. MY Mother being 93, had seen many of her friends pass on to the neither world. She wasn’t a particularly religious person having decided she liked the Unitarians while in college. She and my father had discussed many times their wishes for their bodies after they died, they originally wanted to be donated to the medical school to help education, my father went first and so that was followed as per his wishes, my mother on the other hand being more a “Green Hippie” was considering being “Composted”. Where they roll you in a organic blanket and set you in the ground. And continue to add dirt on top as you slowly rot away. However as a family, we decided that a regular cremation and internment would be better, Discussing all the options with the funeral director that the Hospice had recommended to take care of the body, they asked if either of our parents were veterans, and of course my father had enlisted during WWII when his older brother was shot and wounded at the battle of the bulge. So he ended up in Korea just as that war ended. But he did get an honorable discharge and so was entitled to a military funeral with a free plot in any of our national veterans cemeteries with full military honers. So we choose that and will be doing that sometime in june this summer in the Sartoga national cemetery. so they will be with many revolutionary war solders and apparently a ton of Vietnam solders. this particular cemetery has 4 other people buried there with the same last name as ours, despite it being a fairly rare last name.

Anyway, the evens of the last few weeks have got me slightly depressed and frozen in front of my computer and set me to being totally vegetative in my YouTube creativity. I have started a few video ideas and will get back on it this month. But right now emotionally I am pretty drained and find it very hard to focus on next week. The schedule of things to do after a person dies is complicating everything except this type of computer work. So I am trying to write up a video plan to follow and a route to head back out west. I am also going to go to the Florida RV super show in January since that is the week we are having the memorial service “Celebration of life” with all the family and all her friends in Bradenton and all her other friends and neighbors. I’m hoping seeing other YouTubers and NEW RV’s will bring me out of this funk and squeeze out some videos. IF your there, I’ll be the Youtuber with the box of tissues. I have wanted to do a follow up on my video: “Don’t buy an Aliner before watching this video” which is my most popular video every month. since I Created it 5 years ago. I Doubt I can match that kind of success, but maybe I Can get some kind of impact. So I will end this downer of a blog post and try to make a video to go along with it for those that have given up on my once a month blog.