Breakfast Memories by Kate Hanley

Author:Kate Hanley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Green Writers Press
Published: 2019-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Three days later, I arrived at the home where Mom and Dad had raised us, their home of 45 years. My sister and Hersh, my best childhood friend (better known among us all as Mom’s eighth child), along with the movers, loaded the moving truck with my dad’s collections and treasures: my parents’ first-ever purchase, their walnut dresser; their original 59-year-old bed; the love seat from their engagement; two of Dad’s treasured nautical ships; clothes; and a box of things that Dad had labeled “Bernadette Come Live With Me.”

It was a torturous two-hour ride to their new temporary living arrangements, and I prayed that God would let me see through the fountains of tears that were pouring from my eyes as I drove. It was just the three of us—Mom and Dad and me. Mom was in the back of my SUV resting her head on a pillow that was protecting the twelve stitches that had been sewn into the back of her head after a fall five days before. Unbeknownst to me, Dad had called an ambulance after she had tripped on a rug in the living room. Typical of his protective behavior, he demanded that, after the physician finished the stitches, they both return home. He would care for her stitches. Of course. That was his plan.

Dad, in the meantime, was in the front passenger seat with a back support brace around his middle to ease the inconsolable pain from a fall he had taken in the bathroom two weeks earlier while trying to pick up a towel. Again, his pattern of care: a call to 911, the hospital, then a refusal to stay and his insistence to return to their home. The back support ran around the middle of his stomach, a stomach that now measured 56 inches, up from a slim 38 inches from a year ago—the weight gain due to massive water retention and over all bad health.

They moved into assisted living two hours later, a half mile from my home, on the same Friday I had picked them up. My best friend Kimmie, Marshal, Manny, and Mike were there to meet us and help get them settled into their new temporary home. Kimmie had organized the apartment with new low mattresses, filled the refrigerator, put Mom’s favorite soups in the cabinets, and made sure that Mom’s marmalade and bagels were set and ready for her Saturday morning wake-up.

But then the third, unexpected plan surfaced, and it was brutal. An insurmountable challenge reared its head, triggering a cascade of events that threw us all out of control.

Plan Number Three: God’s plan.

That Friday evening would be the one, and only night my dad stayed in their new apartment.

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