by Kathy Brasby | Feb 21, 2014 | Seasons, Stories
The list came together one afternoon about a week after my dad’s funeral, when my mother, sister and I gathered for tea and brainstorming.
“What do we need to do now?” I asked.
We were all missing Dad, but he had passed at 90 after a year of increasing weakness and difficulty. He had died with his family at hand after many had been able to say goodbye.
Seeing loved ones leave is never easy but his hadn’t been unexpected.
Now we needed to gather ourselves.
“The funeral home took care of some things,” Mom said. “The obituary is done and we own two burial plots now.”
It had been easier to purchase two when we bought Dad’s.
“We need to send out thank you notes,” my sister said. We spent some time compiling a list, going through the cards that had come in.
“Why don’t you do the ones you know and I’ll do the ones I know?” I suggested. “Mom, you get the rest.”
She smiled. “I guess that will work.” As it turned out, that was closer to equal for us than I had guessed.
“We need a thank you note in the paper,” my sister said.
Mom wanted the recording of Dad’s funeral digitized so she could have it on a CD.
“We need to check with Medicare and Social Security,” I added. “I don’t know what needs to be done there.”
As it turned out, the funeral home took care of that.
Mom had to change the registration on their car to her name and cancel Dad’s Medicare gap insurance. So that went on the list.
“What about the bank?” Mom asked. “Do I have enough money to live on until we get things sorted out?”
We called the bank. The beauty of a revocable trust such as my parents had is that the checking account was in the trust name. All Mom needed to do was take a copy of the death certificate in to verify Dad’s passing. She had immediate access to her funds.
“I want a memorial fund,” Mom said. “For the money that was donated. Something in Dad’s name.”
I was amazed how quickly we had moved from the must-do list – things like bank accounts an insurance – to the “in memory” list.
“How about a headstone?” my sister added. That went on the list.
Before the afternoon was over, we had about 15 things to do. Most of them were checked off quickly.
It was a good thing, too, because within five weeks of that tea party, Mom was hospitalized with a stroke.
Without the list, there would have been a lot of things overlooked.
I’m not always big on lists but I’m very glad we made that one.
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 18, 2014 | Stories
I was in full homestead mode when our youngest was young, toting him as a baby around in a backpack, cell phone on my hip and goat feed loaded in the back of the pickup.
In his first year of life, our son got to bond with the goats every day while I milked. I’d sit on the stand which elevated the goats and let him pat the doe’s shoulder while I milked.
While I sat on the milking stand, my back was to the goat’s head. Of course, my son in the backpack had full access to the goat. He patted them, laid his head on their back, tried to pull their ears.
When he was old enough to graduate from the backpack, he still had to come with me on our trips to the barn.
One day as I milked Riggy, she shifted her weight. Not a big deal with some of our goats, but Riggy never lifted a hoof. Odd but everybody twitches once in a while, right?
Then she did it again.
And so I looked over my shoulder at her head, where she had a nice box of sweet feed before her.
Sweet feed is a mixture of rolled grains. Oats. Corn. Wheat. Barley. With a molasses coating.
It sort of looks like granola.
Too much like granola, actually. For there was my young son, his head also in the feed box, chowing down the sweet feed.
He’d put his head in, Riggy would butt his head away – hence the shifting weight – and they would alternate bites.
This was the same boy who, when he was still riding along in a backpack, would lick the goat’s shoulder when he could.
I know, I know. The number of germs that boy ingested is mind-boggling.
But, to be honest, he has a great immune system with no allergies. Maybe thanks to Riggy.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 21, 2014 | Stories
I didn’t usually slice a sample of brownies as soon as they came out of the oven but I did this time. Good thing.
The brownies were for our evening Bible study and they tasted like I had drug the eggs through the gutter. I shoved the pan aside and threw together another batch.
And, if it hadn’t been for our older son, that would have been the end of the story.
We were in a hurry that evening, with the meeting plus my husband and I with the younger kids were leaving first thing in the morning for a two-day trip.
Our older son, at 17, was staying home. I didn’t have time to even clean up the bad pan of brownies.
“Don’t worry about those brownies,” I told him. “I’ll take care of it when I get home. Just ignore them.”
“Ok.”
He was trustworthy and I knew he’d be fine home alone. Except for one little problem.
The little problem wasn’t that he got sick. Or that he’d poisoned the dog with the bad brownies.
When I got home, the brownies pan was still setting on the stove. Empty.
“What happened to the brownies?”
He shuffled a little. “I tasted one.”
“Yuck. Those were bad.”
“They were,” he said. “But after the third piece, I got used to the aftertaste.”
“You ate them all?”
He shrugged.
I guess a cast-iron stomach wasn’t too big a problem.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 8, 2014 | Stories
It was because of the many westerns we watched on TV that my brothers and I clamored for the whiskey challenge.
Our father loved the western genre. Bonanza. Gunsmoke. Annie Oakley. Bat Masterson. Maverick.
You get the idea.
I was 13 when we moved to the farm where my parents would make their home for nearly the rest of their lives. Our neighbors gave my folks a bottle of whisky as a going-away gift.
My parents didn’t drink whiskey. For more years than I’d like to admit to, I wondered why on earth the neighbors did that.
I did finally figure it out. Welcome to gag gifts.
But as a 13-year-old, I saw that bottle as an opportunity.
“We want to try it,” I told Mom. My brothers at 11 and 8 both agreed. We’d seen the saloon settings in the westerns. We wanted in on the excitement.
Mom finally agreed.
She pulled out three Dixie paper cups, the ones with the yellow flowers on the outside that you’d usually use to rinse your teeth after brushing.
Mom set those three cups on the counter just like the bartenders in the westerns did.
I wanted to compliment her on her bartending skills but something held me back. Probably the anticipation of this exciting re-enactment.
Mom poured the dark liquid into each cup.
“There you go,” she said.
There we were. We’d seen how to drink whiskey. The cowboys swirled the drink in their shot glass and then tossed it into their throat like ice water to a parched throat.
We knew how to do that.
We swirled our drinks, opened our mouths and tossed that whiskey in.
Cowboys in our westerns didn’t gag on whiskey. They didn’t cough and pant, trying to get the foul taste out of their mouths. They didn’t run for the faucet and guzzle cold water until the burn faded.
Cowboys didn’t but we sure did.
I never checked my mom’s response that day but I’ll bet she was smirking.
Now that I’ve figured out about gag gifts.
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by Kathy Brasby | Nov 22, 2013 | Seasons, Stories
Today begins a new series on my blog, one that will share stories and poignant moments about that special time of life: when our parents reach elderly.
I will continue my short stories on Tuesdays but plan to publish a “Seasons” story each Friday.
Names will be changed and, in some cases, stories may be blended to protect identities.
Don’t expect the aches and pains reports but stories of victory, stories of endurance, stories of humor.
Check back next Friday for the first Seasons story.
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by Kathy Brasby | Oct 22, 2013 | Stories
Great ideas and I do this dance which sometimes is as smooth as a three-step waltz and sometimes as clunky as mashing your partner’s toes with barn boots.
The problem of how to light the candles may have sparked a clunky dance but see what you think.
I was a small-town newspaper editor in need of a special photo for our Christmas issue. This was way before you could buy photos online and way before I had a budget to buy stock photos.
I found some elegant Christmas candles and placed them in a classic formation with a draped fabric behind. Then I set up my camera on a tripod and worked out all the angles.
Everything was going great until it was time to light the candles for the shoot.
I was at the office at 8 pm in a town where all the stores closed at 6 pm. And I didn’t want to drive clear across town to my house to get some matches.
There had to be another solution.
My car was parked 10 steps from my office door. And it had a cigarette lighter in it. I had plenty of paper in a newspaper office.
Time for a great idea.
I settled myself in the front seat of the car, pushed in the lighter, and started rolling a sheet of newspaper into a long tube which ought to ignite when the lighter was glowing red. I mean, that lit cigarettes, didn’t it?
With the tube burning, I could light the extra candle in my pocket, take it back inside, and we were ready to do this Christmas spread.
See what I mean about great ideas?
I had never used the lighter before and I had no idea how long to wait for it to pop out. It did pop out, right?
I leaned down closer to be sure things were cooking around the lighter. At that moment, the plug didn’t just pooch out of its socket, it flew into the back seat.
It zinged past my ear and bounced off the upholstery. For a crazy second, I wondered if I could just light the candle from the little fire that might ignite in the back seat.
But by the time I found the lighter, the red tip had cooled to black.
I held the lighter in one hand, my rolled piece of paper in the other, studying the situation and waiting for another great idea.
It came.
I drove home to get some matches.
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