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Here Come De Rain!

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Welp! Here we are: barreling toward the close of a balmy day in lovely Arizona.

Lively thunderstorms blast back and forth across the northern sky.

Shoot out the back door: water the potted plants. It’s 108 out there. Skies full of fat, dark thunderclouds. Saith Wunderground: “gusty winds will push south across the Phoenix valley and western Maricopa County through early this evening. Expect northeast wind gusts up to 30 to 35 mph.”

LOL! It’s mighty gusty out there just now, that’s for sure.

Hereabouts, Wunderground seems to be the most reliable of the weather-reporting news sources. Why that is, I dunno…its reports must be directly emitted by the Weather Service. Whatever: It’s rarely wrong. Just now, saith that worthy source,

If you are on or near Lake Pleasant, Horseshoe Lake, and Bartlett
Lake, be prepared for gusty winds and move onshore and get indoors.
Remember, lightning can strike out to 10 miles from the parent
thunderstorm. If you can hear thunder, you are close enough to be
struck by lightning. Move to safe shelter now! Do not be caught on
the water in a thunderstorm.

OOOOKAYYY… “Get the Hell inside” seems to be the gist of this communiqué.

By and large, it’s been hotter than the hubs most of the day: upwards of 108. This evening it’s supposed to cool down to a chilly 98, with a balmy 23% humidity.

Gosh…lightning can strike TEN MILES away from its thunderstorm? Who knew? 😮

She Shouldn’t Have Died. He Shouldn’t Have Had to Suffer…

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It’s a ridiculous thing to say in hindsight, of course:

My mother should not have had to die from the effects of her smoking habit.

She was in her 40s when the word came down that smoking would kill you. But…by then she’d been smoking since she was in her early 20s — maybe longer than that. She was massively addicted to nicotine.

I understate not:

The poor woman couldn’t pass an hour without a cigarette. In fact, hardly 15 conscious minutes passed that she didn’t have a goddamn cancer stick in her mouth.

The word came down…when? in the late 1950s? early 1960s? that tobacco smoking causes cancer. But by then, she just fukkin’ didn’t care.

First, I think she didn’t believe it: anything Big Brother said must have some manipulative motive, right?

But then, even if she did believe it, I seriously don’t think she cared.

By the late 1950s, early 1960s, she was so firmly addicted to nicotine that she might not have been able to shake the habit if she’d wanted to.

And she didn’t. She’d made up her mind that she liked smoking. That it was part of her daily life (ohhh literally: from before she lifted her head off the pillow until she mashed out that last cancer stick of the day, along about 10 or 11 p.m.). And she was just flat NOT GONNA quit.

And she didn’t.

Nothing would stop her habit from killing her. Least of all her effin’ doctors.

Women in this country, being women and therefore natural-born hypochondriacs, are ignored when they claim to be sick. There, there, dear…it’s all in your pretty little head. And that’s exactly what she got.

If there ever was a time between the time her cancer symptoms surfaced and the moment a quack allowed as to how she was very, very sick indeed — terminally so — it was long past by the time she encountered the first quack who bestirred himself to listen to her.

Cigarettes and other tobacco products should have been taken off the market the moment their carcinogenic effect had been proven.

Yes: then, as today, a poisonous product still would have been peddled on the black market. But my parents, like a surprising number of other humans, wouldn’t have purchased an illegal product even though they were addicted to it.

My father managed to shake that devil from his back.

My mother: not so much. The goddamn cigarettes killed her…in a spectacularly ugly way. And blighted my father’s life, when he had to care for the love of his life as she died hideously in their bedroom in Sun City.

She never saw her grandson (by then I was pregnant with him). Her addiction mattered more.

She never cared how much her husband suffered, taking care of her. Her addiction mattered more.

She never seemed to care that she was dying. Her addiction mattered more.

A tobacco-induced death is not just an ugly way to die. It’s a GAWDAWFUL way to die. And the people who get rich inducing it are not just murderers: they’re torturers.

They tortured her. And they tortured him.

Things That Shouldn’t Have Happened

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My father: Good God!

I look at his life and think of it as tragedy. Truly heart-breaking tragedy.

  • His mother going off the deep end
  • His bigotry: given that THEY WEREN’T WHITE!
  • That he dropped out of school
  • My mother, the love of his life, killing herself with tobacco
  • Me thinking that I was better than him: what a little twit!!
  • Why didn’t he go to work for Metzgers Dairy in Texas, as his brother did? The brother became an executive with that outfit.
  • Actually, he did have a delivery route for them, when he was a young pup. Why didn’t he get further?
  • Apparently, it was spending hours watching the rear ends of horses as he delivered milk around the countrified environs of Ft. Worth, then a hick town in the middle of nowhere.
  • So, it was off to join the Navy!
  • And from there, to move on to the Merchant Marine.
  • Why did he dislike queers…uhm, gay men…so much…but also enjoy the company of teenaged boys to a surprising degree? What WAS he trying to say to us? Or…to not say?

Every glance at the man’s life brings up a slew of questions. But…isn’t that so of everyone?

Possibly he and my mother shouldn’t have moved to Sun City, here in balmy Arizona. If they had stayed in Southern California (whence they came), would a competent doctor there have recognized her cancer in time to save her?

Probably not.

Smoking tobacco should never have been legal. The accursed, poisonous stuff should have been banned the minute it was proven that smoking that shit causes cancer, and that it is addictive.

Some doctor should have had the wherewithal to at least TRY to talk my mother into quitting.

My father should have insisted that she quit, at the same time he did.

Their horrific experience in the Sun City nursing home, as she lay dying, should have been actionable. We should have sued that outfit.

Why didn’t DXH, a partner in a heavy-hitting law firm, suggest that? Probably because I’d already taken up with TJK and so he didn’t give a damn about my family.

My father shouldn’t have had to transport my mother 20 miles from Sun City into North Central Phoenix to get decent nursing-home care.

DXH and I shouldn’t have blithely acquiesced to my father’s proposal that he marry the Dragon Lady, after my mother had died. We should have suggested he wait for a year. And during that year, we should have socialized with him, taken him on trips, had him meet people.

I should never have taken up with TJK. By the time my mother got sick, DXH probably didn’t want to have anything to do with any of us.

Hmmmm…. Y’know…about a third of my life shouldn’t have happened…

Home or Old Folkerie?

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Sittin’ around the house thinking….

Am I gonna be able to stay in my home until I croak over?

Or will I be forced to sell this place and lock myself up in one of those prisons for old folks?

You know whereof we speak: “life care communities.” All the rage for keeping elderly delinquents off the streets these days.

Welp, y’know… Those institutions had just come into vogue as my parents entered their dotage. My father, having gone to sea all his life, was not the slightest bit daunted at the prospect of selling their little home in Sun City and consigning himself to the care of an institution.

But…my mother would have none of it! NO WAY in hell was she going to put herself in a nursing home before she needed it!

Little did she know how soon she would need it. She died on my birthday in her 65th year.

The cancer so generously gifted to her by the world’s tobacco companies killed her….less than a month after her 65th birthday. The nursing home was rolling her, in her hospital bed, down to the Medicare ward when she passed.

She was decently cared for in the nursing home…probably because my father drove in from Sun City every day. walked in the door when they opened at 7 a.m., and sat there beside her bed, watching, until they threw him out at 11 p.m.

But…

Frankly, I think my father was right: They should have imprisoned themselves in Orangewood, the “life-care community” of my father’s choice, before she got sick. He had discovered the existence of such places about eight months or a year before she fell ill, and he’d tried to persuade her to move into one. She would have none of it.

And…

Well, I don’t blame her. Personally, I loathe institutional living. Truly, truly hated living in the dorm. And that is why I don’t want to move into one of them. Too much like living in prison…

After she died, he promptly sold the little house in Sun City and forked over most of his net worth to move into Orangewood. And I can assure you that he liked it there. Well: except that he made a key and unreconcilable mistake: he married a horrible dragon lady who, once she had him trapped with a wedding ring, made his life miserable.

No, he wouldn’t divorce her, because

a) He was afraid she would “get all my money” in divorce proceedings; and
b) He was afraid of the gossip a divorce would create among the other prison inmates.

Dragon Lady was outgoing and busy: she was extremely popular with the Orangewood natives. And he probably was right: if he did divorce her, he no doubt would want — if not need — to move out of that place. But…those “life-care communities” glom ALL YOUR CAPITAL. He probably wouldn’t have had enough money to get himself into some other place, plus all the money he had given to Orangewood was basically disappeared.

Result of that: he lived out the last few years of his life in utter misery.

***

Would my father have been better off if, instead of institutionalizing himself, he had hired people to come in and take care of him at his place in Sun City?

Putting aside the fact that he was too tight to do that…let us think about it:

* Here, Pool Dude keeps the drink pristine. My father’s Sun City palace had no pool. However, because it was so poorly built (basically uninsulated), its AC bills were far higher than mine. So one might regard SC power bills, compared to my house, as a wash…in the pool.

* Wonder-Cleaning Lady comes in every two weeks and renders the house spotless. Because there are no kids or cats here, the place stays reasonably clean between visits.

* Gerardo wrangles the landscaping — which, because it’s xeric, doesn’t demand much. It has an automatic watering system: I don’t even have to do a hose-drag to maintain the place.

* I have no problem caring for a small dog. Ruby is basically effortless, as roommates go.

Given that my father’s house was paid for, to have stayed in Sun City and hired a yard guy and a cleaning lady wouldn’t have cost him anything LIKE what Orangewood cost. Not even if he hired someone to come into the house daily, check on him, take him to the grocery store, maybe prepare a week’s worth of meals for him.

Zillow estimates my house’s current value at $484,100. Borrowing against that would buy a WHOLE lot of service from Pool Dude, Lawn Dude, and the Cleaning Lady from Heaven. Years’ worth.

And again, let’s remember, he didn’t need either a pool dude or a lawn dude…

Now, what did my father get at the honored old-folkerie?

At Orangewood: a two-bedroom apt.  They refuse to tell you the cost on their website…which ought to tellya something….  As I recall, it took the entire proceeds of the sale of his house to get him into that place. The apartment was tiny: I would describe it as an elaborate studio apt. It didn’t have a real kitchen — just a counter with a minimal stove and a sink. The living room, dining area (if you could call it that), and kitchen occupied one (count it: 1) room.

Median monthly cost of “independent living” in Arizona is $2,738.

He couldn’t have afforded that. ONE YEAR would consume almost a third of his life savings. That’s $32,856/year, bare minimum. Without maintaining your car, without going anywhere, without even buying clothes. Basically what was happening was that he was forking over ALL of his Social Security, plus a substantial chunk of his savings.

It certainly would not cost $35,000+ a year to hire someone to come in and take care of my house. The total cost of everything — maintenance, car, groceries, utilities, pool care, and general living expenses — may come to something like that. Or not…. just now I’m not drawing anything like that out of savings, but I get a decent amount of SS. Not enough to live in middle-class grandeur, but certainly not so little that I would starve.

What that suggests, IMHO, is that moving into one of those places would cost as much as — or more than! — I would have to spend to stay here and hire people to come in and help me. The money I take out of savings, in most years, is recovered because the remainder stays in professionally managed investments.

I would be better off — and my son would be better off — if I can manage to stay in this place until I die, or at least until a few months before that happens. Proceeds from the sale of this house would nicely plump up his retirement savings. Or he could sell his place, invest any profit from that, then move into this place and invest the monthly amount he’s been forking over to his mortgage company.

Speaking of the value of a shack, my parents’ house in Sun City last sold for $255,000: two and a half times the amount of my father’s life savings. Lest you think that was bargain, the place was about the size of the first apartment DXH and I moved into. I think they paid about $8,000 for that house.

Indeed, that first apartment may have been bigger than the SC house…it certainly was no smaller.

Our apartment:

dining area
living room
2 bedrooms
kitchen
Walk-in storage closet in kitchen
2 bathrooms????? Can’t recall…maybe not, though

SC house

dining area
living room
2 bedrooms
kitchen
2 bathrooms
Don’t recall a storage closet, but think there was space behind carport
Lots of wasted space in hallway

The SC house last sold for $255,000!!!!!  2 1/2 times the total nest egg that my father saved for his retirement!

Arizona Magnificence

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Oh, my. How is it possible for the sky to be so magnificent? For the air to be so charged? For beauty to be so beautiful?

Yep. this is one of those incredible, awe-inspiring, can’t-possibly-be-real monsoon afternoons.

A great wind blows through, laughing and celebrating. Vast, miles-high piles of white and pearl-gray clouds loom upward, ever upward, then scud ahead of the fierce winds. The palm trees bend before the wind. The ringy-dingies clang and chatter with each gust that blasts under the eaves.

Ruby loafs on the bed in front of the open drapes, not impressed. The human dares not scarf down another glass of wine, lest she and the dawg need to flee.

What an afternoon!

And yes, it is magnificence. That’s really the only word you can assign to an Arizona monsoon: magnificence.

Why on earth would anyone else want to live anywhere else…on earth?

No Title?? How about…”How they came, how they went”…

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How he must have suffered.

That’s what I think, when I recall my mother’s dying…in their marital bed, in the bedroom of their beloved little house in Sun City.

My mother smoked herself to death.

Yes.

She knew: she knew smoking would kill her, and she did it anyway. She smoked. And she smoked. And she smoked. Every conscious moment, she had a goddamned cigarette in her mouth.

Did she care that it would kill her?

Apparently not.

But more likely, she thought the whole “fatal smoking habit” thing was some kind of scam. A fraud perpetrated by Big Brother, whose motive was to control our behavior.

She told me she started smoking when she was just 16. And she was 60-something when the habit brought her to her bed. So…really…it was reasonable (in its way) to believe the whole “Smoking Causes Cancer” Thing was Big Brother trying to tell you what to do. And what not to do.

Far as I’m concerned, she was murdered. Killed by greedy thieves who wanted nothing other than to get her to trade her cash for their filthy weed. They got their way. And she died.

Horribly.

He was amazing. He cared for her, lovingly and kindly, through hour after hour and day after day and week after week of horrific suffering. Suffering that was inflicted as much on him as on her.