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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, Catsynth, Keith, and Sandee at Comedy Plus.
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Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts to encourage us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.
This month, Sean Jeating is providing the prompts which will appear on River's blog.
This week's words/prompts are:
1.countenance
2.favourite
3.once
4.pillow
5.regret
and/or:
1.bags
2.faces
3.machos
4.steps
5.swear
6.boarding
use either list or both, or mix and match, just have fun.
Charlotte's colour of the month is Smoky Rose
These last several weeks, while Grandma was in hospice care, have been difficult. Not ONCE did we REGRET getting them involved, especially as our FAVOURITE aide and nurse were both so wonderful, but I could tell by Grandpa's COUNTENANCE he was sad to see so much being done for her by others.
On the way back from making final arrangements at the funeral home on Sunday, Grandpa told Uncle J, "I really miss her." Just four words to encapsulate 64+ years together. I know when i was there Saturday, he kept walking into her room looking like a forlorn puppy. Grandpa has never been one to share emotions, not that he's one of those MACHOS, but he's just not the touchy-feely type, so you can tell this isn't easy for him.
Saturday was cleaning the house day as usual and picking the outfit she'd be buried in, but after Ms. S Monday morning, i went back so Uncle J and i could begin to tackle sorting her belongings.
The drug store which brings all the hospice supplies had picked up the bed, oxygen machine, and etc. Only the mattress was left, since Grandma had purchased one several months ago which was more comfortable and actually fit the hospital style bed she'd been in. It was sitting on the floor by itself, almost giving the impression of a derelict BOARDING house room, since so much of the other furniture had also been moved out of the room as more equipment had come in.
We went through dresser drawers and found treasures and trinkets, BAGS of things, some trash, some things we've kept as mementos and some we've set aside for the grandchildren to go through. All of her paintings, the landscapes, the odd FACES, the abstracts, are waiting to be claimed. We've taken STEPS to assure each of us will pick one favorite, then go around again, so you might not get all the ones you wanted, but you will certainly get some.
I chose a scene with beautiful purple mountains in the distance and a desert in the foreground, the ground turning Smoky Rose as it comes toward you.
The books are boxed, the grandchildren can look through them, and we've found many things for Grandpa to keep, including her first stethoscope and blood pressure cuff, awarded when she got her nursing degree.
Grandpa is getting a lot of things as we go through them. One thing i've made Uncle J, my brother, SWEAR is we will always love each other and put people before things when dividing stuff when our parents are gone. We're being carefully respectful to do so.
It's going to take stamina, I figure it will take a while to go through her stuff, then through the rest of the house. One thing at a time, though, and it will get done.
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Today is:
Apple Day -- U.K. (to inspire local orchard revival and celebrate local varieties)
Antillean Day -- Bonaire; Curacao; Saba; St. Eustatius
Armed Forces Day -- Honduras (Dia de las Fuerzas Armadas; traditional date, now usually celebrated earlier in the month as part of Morazanica Week)
Babbling Day -- an internet generated day for Blatherskites
Caramel Apple Day -- US (leave it to the US to add sugar to a delicious, nutritious snack!)
Count Your Buttons Day -- whoever came up with this one needs to count his marbles maybe?
Egyptian Naval Day -- Egypt
Garbanzo Bean Day
Global Iodine Deficiency Disorder Prevention Day
Hagfish Day -- a day to celebrate the uniqueness and necessity of even the ugliest of sea creatures, like the hagfish
Hurricane Bebe Day -- Funafuti, Tuvalu (commemoration of the destruction by this hurricane in 1972)
Independence Day -- Marshall Islands(1986)
International Day of the Nacho -- Mexico; U.S.
Jailhouse Rock Day -- Elvis' song hit #1 today in 1957
National Nurses Day -- Thailand
National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day
National Support Your Local Chamber of Commerce Day -- US
Overseas Chinese Day -- Taiwan (Republic of China)
President Ndadaye Day -- Burundi
Reptile Awareness Day -- hooray for snakes and turtles! and lizards, don't forget lizards, and gators, and...
St. John of Bridlington's Day (Patron against complications in childbirth)
St. Ursula's Day (Patron of educators/teachers, holy death, schoolchildren, students; British Virgin Islands; Catholic education, especially of girls; Cologne, Germany; University of Paris)
Trafalgar Day -- British Empire (noted, but no longer an officially holiday)
Anniversaries Today:
Juan Peron marries actress Evita (MarÃa Eva Duarte), 1945
Birthdays Today:
Jeremy Miller, 1976
Ken Watanabe, 1959
Carrie Fisher, 1956
Benjamin Netanyahu, 1949
Elvin Bishop, 1942
Judge Judy Sheindlin, 1942
Frances Fitzgerald, 1940
Ursula K. LeGuin, 1929
Edward Charles "Whitey" Ford, 1928
Celia Cruz, 1925
Joyce Randolph, 1925
Dizzy Gillespie, 1917
Georg Solti, 1912
Edwin Myers "Ted" Shawn, 1891
Will Carleton, 1845
Alfred Nobel, 1833
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772
Debuting/Premiering Today:
"Butterflies are Free"(Play), 1969
"Orphee aux enfer/Orpheus in the Underworld"(Offenbach operetta), 1858
Today in History:
Sultan Kilidj Arslan of Nicea defeats 1st Crusaders, 1096
Martin Luther joins the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg., 1512
Ferdinand Magellen arrives at Tierra Del Fuego (Pacific Ocean), 1520
Sea battle at Dunes, Lt Admiral Maarten Tromp defeats Spanish Armada under De Oquendo, 1639
First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts and which was in defiance of British rule in Colonial America, 1774
US Navy frigate Constitution, Old Ironsides, launched in Boston, 1797
Battle of Trafalgar, Adm Nelson defeats French & Spanish fleet & dies, 1805
The Penang Free School is founded in George Town, Penang, Malaysia, by the Rev Hutchings. It is the oldest English-language school in Southeast Asia, 1816
Joseph Aspdin patents Portland cement (Yorkshire England), 1824
Thomas Edison perfects carbonized cotton filament light bulb, 1879
First transatlantic radiotelephone message, Arlington, Va to Paris, 1915
Women are allowed to vote in France for the first time, 1945
Comet Ikeya-Seki approaches perihelion, passing 450,000 kilometers from the sun, 1965
The European Patent Institute is founded, 1977
The metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second, 1983
Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in its discovery by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz, 2003
The European Parliament awards Cuban Dissident Guillermo Farinas the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, 2010
Kateri Tekakwitha is canonized as the first Native American saint by Pope Benedict XVI, 2012
The Parliament of Canada confers Honorary Canadian citizenship on women's rights and education activist Malala Yousafzai, 2013
Oscar Pistorius is sentenced to five years in prison for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, 2014
The Spanish government suspends Catalonia's autonomy in the face of a deepening political crisis over the region's push for independence, 2017
Excavations at an 8,000-year-old site at Marawah Island, near Abu Dhabi, UAE, uncover the world's oldest natural pearl, 2019
In what is later dubbed the "Great Cheese Robbery," thieves steal about 22 metric tons of a rare English Cheddar from Neal's Yard Dairy in London, 2024
Japan's parliament elects conservative Liberal Democrat Party leader Sanae Takaichi (64) as Prime Minister, the first female to hold the office, 2025
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