Thursday, July 14, 2005

The talk

Happy birthday, Dad!

Okay, with that out of the way, this evening my husband and I were having dinner and cake and presents chez Dad when he randomly brought up the topic of cemetery plots. He then pulls out *pictures* of the exact stone and color, and how the engraving will be and said "we've thought a lot about this" and my stepmom turns around and says, "yah, a lot!" and my face goes from cheerful, joyful, celebratory to pale, frightened, sick to my stomach.

I know my dad is going to die, but I wasn't ready for that conversation.

3 comments:

c said...

I understand.

If it's at all comforting, his planning ahead will make things so much easier for you. When my father-in-law died, it was sudden. When my mother-in-law went to the funeral home with my brother-in-law, she looked at him and the funeral director and said, "How am I supposed to DO this? How am I supposed to make these decisions?"

So my brother-in-law basically did it all, with her nodding absent-mindedly. She (we all) was numb. The last thing we needed to do was plan how to say good-bye.

We just needed to be sitting quietly in a room, with each other.

Renee said...

:-(

Poppy said...

Makes sense. He did emphasize that he was planning now to make it easier on me and my brother. That's kind of him, but I am prone to anxiety attacks and I almost had one. It's just not a talk I expected on his birthday...