Bug Out Bag - success

[2ndAmendican]

Originally Posted by TRX

Thanks guys, I appreciate it.

The entire family was with him when he went, and it was probably about as peaceful as it gets.

Fortunately he'd made his wishes about not being kept on life support known, and there were no problems with moving him from the hospital to hospice. However, I'm going to make that trip to a lawyer that I've been putting off for years, to get something official drafted up for my wife and I. And I'm leaving a "medical power of attorney" with a friend, in case my wife and I both wind up flatlined by a car wreck or something. We'll be holding theirs, too.

Just about the exact same here with my Dad 2 years ago Thanksgiving. I definitely know how you feel, and I am very sorry for your loss TRX. The misses and I will be thinking/praying about/for you and your family. Glad your bag helped.

Back before my ex wife's financial crap forced me to sell my Harley Softail, I used to carry an aluminum plate like you, but I made it to the shape and curvature of my back jeans pocket. Fit perfect. You never even knew it was there.

[j427x]

my dad passed away a year and 4 months ago. very similar things--multiple ilnesses and all of um very bad news,

my thoughts are with you!

[sjohnson]

My sympathies. While my mom is in great health, dad is failing. Both in their 80's.

It's tough losing your parents, prayers sent.

[buckmeister]

Condolences offered. My dad passed some 5 years ago. I was thankful he was mobile and lucid until the end, when cancer overtook him. It is good you were there... good for him and you.

We carry the lives, of those gone on, within us. We are their eyes and ears, their words and acts. We are their honor. Let who they were, what they taught and believed, shine from within. Some are lucky to practice those teachings while they lived. If not, we are afforded, anew, the opportunity... each day.

We are their living epitaph.

Your B.O.B. now contains him. (Probably already did)

buckmeister

[wrench1957]

Sad news but it sounds like he went the way he wanted to. At home with family seems to be the best way. My condolences to you and your family.

Remember it's all part of the deal...

[TRX]

Dad's affairs were easy to clean up - he had no investments, credit cards or accounts anywhere, a hefty bank balance, and the Insurance of the Gods; no deductible, no co-pay. We're keeping his checking account open in case anything shows up from the second hospital stay.

His filing wasn't as tidy as we thought, but it didn't take too long to go through things. We found half a dozen life insurance policies, some of them from the 1950s. Some of them were downright strange - one policy had its name and "of San Francisco" on it, but no street address or phone number. I remember reading of insurance scams back in the 1940s and 1950s; this might be one. I see quality search engine time ahead... another policy had a decreasing payout over time, with a 50% reduction at age 69. I don't understand the business model behind that; surely your payout would be less for young people, who haven't paid in as much? I guess there are reasons I'm not an investment banker.

After my Mom died 20-odd years ago Dad got a flood of bills and invoices in from places he'd never heard of. I reminded my brother (the executor) of this; there are scumbags who will watch the obituaries and start bombing the family with likely-looking dunning notices, hoping they'll just write a check without seeing if it's a real bill.

The will was very simple, and this isn't a mandatory-probate state. Dad covered that pretty good after Mom died; that was just as ugly as such things often get, with estranged relatives swooping in like vultures. When one of them unplugged the television and started to drag it off while Dad was watching it, the cluebat struck... he never did find most of the stuff that vanished from the house while he was distracted, and none of the spawn would own up to stealing anything.


I'd never been around anyone who was very sick before, much less someone with brain damage from a stroke. The first one Dad had wasn't the kind that paralyzes one side, it was the kind where it's like someone works your head over with a baseball bat. Once he started to make a recovery, he was mostly living in the 1950s, talking a blue streak to people who weren't there, and hallucinating while the connections in his brain re-routed. One day they had him strapped upright in a chair for a while to keep him from getting bedsores. He suddenly reared up, focused, pointed at the bed, and said, "LOOK AT THAT!" Not a panicked voice, more like the kind where you just saw a yeti standing in the doorway and wanted everyone else to see before it vanished.

"What's that, Dad?"

"It's a SNAKE!"

[quick thinking] [parental authority voice] "That's a garden snake. You leave it alone."

"Garden snake? Okay."

It was a semi-private room, and there were people visiting the guy in the other bed. They're all staring at us in shock. What, I'm going to argue with Dad? The snake was absolutely real to him, and I doubt he realized there were other people in the room. A couple of times he alerted me to running water on the floor; I told him that the janitor was bringing a mop. People kept giving me strange looks, though.

[BBill]

Condolences to you. My dad was the same-ate up with cancer but wanted to go home. We stripped a bedroom and had a hospital bed put in. Hospice helped. He died at home with us around him!

[TRX]

The others were discussing how to rearrange his bedroom when the medical equipment guy got there. I moved Dad's chair to a spare room and had them set the bed up in the living room, where his chair had been. I figured it was his chosen place in his own house, that was "home." Anyone in the living room, dining room, or kitchen could keep an eye on him, there was plenty of seating, whoever was with him at night could sleep in a recliner or on the couch, and nobody had to sit off in a bedroom and do death watch by themselves.


Back to the BOB - after an incident in 1991, I keep a bag of quarters handy to throw in for road trips or hospital visits. Sometimes you're stuck in a place for lengthy periods, and (around here, anyway) vending machines don't take debit cards.