Trip to Pullman, Part 2

So we drove to Elberton and my brother John and wife Sally and the dog and the well-upholstered cat and the wood stove and the cheese and crackers and pickled green beans and two kinds of bread, and visiting. On the walls are several Appalachian dulcimers and other instruments my brother has made, with beautiful cut-outs and inlays of his design.

Then we drove to Pullman and visited Mom at Glen Haven adult family home, this very stellar institution. I don't think I've ever seen an AFH west of the mountains to match it. Glen Haven is run by people in long term care who bought a large house, made it into 6 bedrooms, with paneling and wood ramps and railings, and decided to do it right.

Several days ago they had rearranged Mom's room for easier transfers, and with her memory loss she no longer recognized her room. She thought she was in the hospital. So they wheeled her back into the living room, quickly rearranged the room the way it had been, circled her around in a Politically Correct Fire Drill and brought her back into her room. "Oh, thank heavens I'm home again!"

I gave Mom a stuffed woodpecker which makes a recorded "flicker" sound, a sprig of dried elderberries and one of rose hips, and a dried leaf, and photos of Jerusalem, the Jordan river, Haifa, and Pearl and me camping at Neah Bay. Pearl sang "What A Wonderful World," and we sang the Persian birthday song: "Mubarak, mubarak, tavalud-at mubarak . . . "

My sister Carol and her husband Perry from Bend were there, also. My sister Jean and her husband Kris and their son Andrew from Bellingham arrived, also. Then we all went to make the best of a restaurant with "Grill" in the name; a salad with black beans but denuded of its chicken and cheese; and a baked potato.

During the dinner we ended up discussing end of life issues; a family in Margaret's neighborhood: the wife with Alzheimers and the husband with cancer, and their return to Japan so relatives could care for the wife on his passing. Hospice cases I have known, including one where Grampa died on Grandson's birthday, and I suggested that it was also Grampa's birthday [into the next world] and how this comforted them. We had an incredible talk.

In the morning John and Sally arrived, also, and after a group cluster f*** getting Mom into a car, went to the Hilltop Restaurant, where we met my lovely cousin Bob [in my mind, always "Bobby"] and his wife, and my also lovely aunt Ginny. I took some photos, and Margaret and Pearl, Enayat and I drove back early, leaving them to their whatever-they-ate-and-talked-about.

We had a great drive to Seattle and a great drive to Tacoma, I thawed out some soaked beans, and I made beans and rice which I ate all week at work.