[3/15: 3.1 miles; 3/18: 5.8 miles; 3/20: 5.4 miles; 3/22: 5.4 miles]
I’m in central Iowa. I was last here in February to take a spell with the helpers.
I was on my way last Sunday, this time driving instead of flying, when I heard that Dad had passed away peacefully. So the week that I was kind of apprehensive about, that I didn’t know how I might make any difference, became a different kind of week.
There were a lot of people on hand; it had been predicted that he couldn’t last much longer. And it took awhile to get the official memorial service stuff organized and arranged. So some who were here had to leave and some others are coming. But for the first few days there were a lot of people.
I think it all evolved pretty well, there was enough visual confusion to help absorb the emotional confusion of being focused on having someone always covering, being with and caring for.. and then that intense need suddenly no longer being necessary.
By about midweek things started to make more sense (thanks Laura!). Now, a week later, I feel like people are adjusting to the new situation.
My son flies in on Monday and I’ll go pick him up at the airport. Then there is a visitation Monday evening. And the funeral itself on Tuesday in the late morning.
I have been remembering older things about Dad as the tension and chaos have dissipated.
Sometime in the early 1990’s my lovely wife had this strange idea to buy her father-in-law a pet bird. (I think around this time we had already bought her parents a Dachshund that the kids named Elijah. So maybe we were in a pet-buying stage.)
Growing up we didn’t have animals in the house… mostly. We had dogs outdoors. We had fish indoors. And we had a cat which I think was mostly outdoors but remember he was also indoors. My mother was a farm girl and animals were for the barn. But there were some exceptions. Even earlier in the 1990’s we were moving from the Chicago suburbs back to Iowa and we lived with them in their house for a little while, and we had a retired greyhound. That dog was in the house for a little bit. Maybe that is what broke the ice.
Anyway, my wife got this idea and she bought my Dad a bird. It wasn’t a parrot. I think it may have been a cockatiel. They named him Sonny.
By this time we were in our own Des Moines house.
I remember visiting them. We were talking at the dining table and Dad called for Sonny. And the bird, I think he came from the back bedroom but that may be my imagination, he came from somewhere else and he used his beak and legs to climb up my Dad’s pant leg and shirt and stand on his shoulder.
In a house were I had rarely seen a non-human animal, this was extraordinary.
I don’t think Mom was very excited about the situation but that could be my imagination. After a period of time, maybe a year? they found another home for Sonny and he went on his way.
[That actually wasn’t the first bird. The other one was a pigeon named Crump (?) who lived in the breezeway between the house and the garage. He was an outdoor bird.]