Dad's obituary & memorial

Dad's obituary was in the paper today. I'm including a link to the obit in this blog for anyone interested. We did not include a picture but it's a nice write-up.

Also, for anyone interested, we'll be having dad's memorial service at Wilmington Cremation and Burial on 41st Street in Wilmington, on Sunday October 17 at 1 pm. We wanted to give friends and family from out of town a chance to come if they can. It will be very small and intimate per dad's wishes. He always said he wanted to be cremated and so that's what we've done.

For my local buddies, I'll be calling up willing troops soon to help me clean out my parents' house. Hopefully we'll have mom placed in a home soon and we can put the house on the market. For now, Bonnie continues to take good care of mom, but Geoff and I cannot afford round the clock care for too much longer. She should qualify for medicaid and that will hopefully pay fully for her care. Ugghhh. I never knew how hard it is to get financial help for elderly folks with alzheimers until this started -- someone needs to get medicare on board to start taking care of all these people. It's not fair that, if she had cancer or something, medicare would cover a nursing home stay for her. With alzheimers, however, there is no coverage unless you are dirt poor and qualify for medicaid. The income limit for medicaid is about $1100 a month. Seriously?????

The plan is to get her placed, pay for it for a few weeks, and have medicaid come in and pick up the tab. They'll probably take her meager social security and my dad's pension, but that beats trying to come up with about $5300 a month to pay for her care. What a racket!

Anyone, things should start to normalize again soon. Geoff and I are planning a much needed grown-up weekend away in a couple of weeks. Ahhhh. And Wendy and I are headed back to California in early December to either Napa or Mendocino. AHHHHH! Sure, I should be saving that money. But sometimes, you've got to pamper yourself, right? :)

Love,
Sofie

P.S. TGIF!