Geoff, Matt, and Kathy at family pow-wow lunch.
5-A January 2015
Wow, what a day!
My two brothers are mechanics at a big Bombardier recreational-vehicles dealership outside Denver. Geoff and Matt get Sundays and Mondays off. So, on the last Monday before our sister, Kathy, left for Spain we four arranged to meet at a restaurant near our father’s house to go over notes from the estate lawyer and to plan Dad’s celebration of life. We had a stack of Kathy’s legendary photo albums and scrapbooks to look through, share, laugh, and savor and then find a series of photos of Dad over time, showing different aspects of his life.
Geoff arrived at Dad’s house early. He had planned to snowboard at Eldora for a while before brunch, then do some laundry. However, the winds were even worse than yesterday. In fact, the power went out at 9AM, right in the middle of my washing Dad’s bedding. It came on near noon—for about three minutes, woo hoo.
Kathy lives across town, and is on a more stable (protected) power line. She still had electricity. “Downtown” Nederland uses power from both lines, so businesses tried to stay open, with limited electricity. Restaurants across town all wound up closing before lunch.
The four of us therefore gathered at Dad’s house, looking at the photo albums on the table in front of the dining area’s picture window. What a wonderful activity for a loving family! We oohed, aahed, and laughed as Dad slept through the whole thing across the room. The surprising advantage of being at the house was that Geoff had his own stack of photo albums down in the basement, with some excellent additions!
Finally, we were through with our work and had roughly planned Dad’s celebration of life. We were ravenously hungry. Neither Kathy nor I had food for all of us, and all of Nederland was shut down. We had to drive half an hour down Boulder Canyon to Boulder for lunch. Kathy and Matt had business down there, anyway. Dad’s hospice CNA, Caroline, was going to stop in and check on Dad, so I could afford a couple of hours away. (Dad can no longer get up, so I don’t worry about his falling anymore–what a relief!)