The Shift

Get on that. Ooh! That was kind of sour. That was kind of sour.

That's what I get for practicing beforehand. Practice makes sour. Jesus, I'm very awkward here. I'm bonking into the microphone.

I hit my mouth on the microphone. Oh, Lord. Welcome to Raw Impressions. This episode will not be captured on video.

We're putting our feet down. Feet down? Yep, we are not capturing ourselves speaking. I need a break.

I don't need a break. And hey, I'm down with that break because that means I don't have to edit the video. And also I don't have to worry about how red I am right now. Because I'm Red Guy.

I'm always Red. We're around the Red Guys. You're talking to me like, God, why is that guy so fucking Red? I'm one of those guys.

Why is he so Red? Although I'll say this, you don't have what often accompanies companies? That sounds weird. Accompanies, the Red Face is often the big, kind of like, bloated nose thing.

The nose. The nose where you're like, oh, this person's. I don't have a big red nose, too. You're nose is big just because you have a big nose.

Not because of, do you know what I'm talking about when someone has really, really punished themselves usually with years and decades and decades of drinking or bad choices or whatever. And they have this almost like, it's like the nose couldn't take it anymore. And the nose becomes really red and then bloated. Did you know that the term, the name, gin blossoms, that's from?

That. From the nose. From that gin blossoms is as an alcoholic. And that's not the only reason that I'm red.

I didn't say that's why you're red. It's just that you, that's why I'm saying you're just a red person. Like your face just, it registers red. Anyway, wow.

I like looking at you this way though. I feel like I'm looking at you more. You know, I can really engage with you more directly this way without the laptops being a third. You know, it's just like this thing and I.

A third and fourth wheel. Yeah. But four wheels is good. Three wheels works.

Three wheels. Yeah. Three wheels is great. And two.

And two works as well. Well, look at us working that out real time. Oh my gosh. Did you ever see that, that video, or was it a dating show on TV?

This is before reality TV. There was one called third wheel. It's not ringing a bell, but that sounds funny. I remember almost nothing about it.

It was after love connection. It was love connection was one of the first ones where someone would go out on dates and then they would go through the whole date with Chuck Wollery. Yes. But there was one in between called the third wheel.

I really liked love connection. Oh, God, who didn't? I don't know. Maybe people who've never seen it.

They don't know. Time to learn the love connection theme song. That's what they can go on to YouTube to do is they can go watch old. Love connection.

I think it's really, that is almost the best thing to use YouTube for us to go back for and watch old TV shows. I watch old game shows on YouTube. Yeah, I do. I find it really rewarding.

It's really rewarding especially if they include the old commercials with it as well. It's almost like there are people that have the tape to everything on VCR, all their favorite shows. Yes. My Uncle Terry.

Yeah, and then they very graciously, generously put that on YouTube later on for people like me. How comforting. That's nice. And if you're one of those people, anyone is listening.

Thank you. Thank you for your work and your contributions. Thank you for your service. Yeah.

Yeah. So nice. I like the idea of right now kind of, I have this sort of like, I can almost like see it. It's like I keep doing my hands in the air as if I'm almost like bringing something in and that's sort of like what I'm feeling drawn to do right now is to bring in the things that feel true to me that I want to do.

You know, like right now I really, I love doing the podcast. The podcast really is something that's been so meaningful for me in my life. And with you as like, you know, a partner doing this together, it's been really rewarding. Three plus years.

Yeah. It's kind of incredible when I think about how long we've actually been doing this. It's true. We really hung in there.

And we really can be very depressing to consider that sometimes for me. Right. You really struggle with the amount of time because you are a, you know, like a person who's able to do some, what's the word like reward in a way validation and that, yeah, the truth is there's pretty little validation that comes from like for podcasting probably for a lot of people because there's so many podcasts. I put a tremendous amount of work into the first three seasons of this podcast.

Yeah. You're coming up with music for it and, you know, doing really important work like recreating TV commercials. And again, thank you, YouTube. Yeah.

I really recreated the Regley's. It's genius. Gum commercials. I did a whole trilogy.

Yeah. The trilogy, the trilogy. I'm a big fan of that work of yours. I really am.

Thank you so much. Thank you. The truth is I was not... Rewarded enough.

...jurfed off enough about that. Yeah. I really just wanted a two, three, four hand. I wanted the balls cupped.

I wanted the full workout for those. Wow. It didn't happen. Oh my God.

But you know, I'm soldering on without immediate gratification. But now, thank you for deciding not to do it in video. This is making it like I feel emancipated in a way. I love editing videos too.

I've done a lot of video editing in the last three years as well. It's also been very rewarding. Totally. I really love doing that.

But again, very little stroking for all of the work that I did. It's a lot of work. And you already have oodles of jobs as everyone knows. You know, so many bands and so many things.

You play a show or you put out an album. There's an amount, I mean, you kind of get some immediate gratification validation from that. You know, you play a show, you know, go to the merch table afterwards. Someone said, that was really nice.

And hey, I saw you some other time. And that was also really good. And hey, thank you for your music. Yeah.

Yes, this podcast, I don't think I've ever worked on anything. Anything as much as I've worked on this podcast. And had so little validation in the big... So little validation.

And three years later, I'm not partially deaf. And yeah. Yeah. Well, we're back.

Well, you know, it's... You were just reminding me of something you were saying that. And then I was going to say, oh, I know. Here's the thing too with the video and whatnot.

I really also like video a lot. I'm perfectly fine and I feel comfortable. I like being in front of the camera. That's totally fine.

It's just that right now I felt a real desire to pull the podcast back into just your ears, you know, just really making this such a rich, like textured, you know, audio experience again. And that just is really intriguing to me because it just is. And you speaking, you in the middle of someone's head, my head, very pleasurable. Thank you.

But what I wanted to say, I think... Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for your voice.

Thank you for my voice. And your honesty and your insistence that we do a podcast. Yeah. You know, you wanted me, us, to do this 13 years ago.

13 years ago. I know. God damn it, guys. If we had only started this 13 years ago, well, I think pulling back from doing the video right now and just focusing on the audio of the podcast has actually got me thinking more about like making videos with you that are sort of like more just creative expressions.

You were doing like videos for, you're doing a lot of collaborative stuff way before the podcast with like, lose music videos, for example. We do things like that. Really? We had a good, really good run of making music videos for a while.

Yeah. And so I guess I'm a little more interested in... I didn't know you had that. That's been kind of mulling up.

You've been thinking that as well. Yeah. And I've been starting to see things that I want to capture and I'm capturing more images and things like that in moments with video in mind, you know, so that's something that... So we're not, it's like, lose YouTube page is still there and we will have the audio going, you know, for the podcast here.

I did just capture the cats cleaning. And I'm just looking at each other. So I'll probably... Well, that's adorable.

I'll probably put that on a loop. We could just put a live cam on them. Yeah, just put a loop of that for this episode. So right now you might be listening to us speak and hearing Adele's mollifluis.

So in accent in the middle of your brain and watching a loop of our cats licking each other. Licking their heads. Licking their heads. Heads.

Looking at each other's heads. Yes. As opposed to eating each other's assholes. Anytime you get to see our cats, I think it's just improving your life.

So I don't think it actually. I know it. I thank them for their service. Pumpkin and Chagot.

Exactly. Right. Oh my gosh. So much service.

Honest to God. Yeah. I won't totally derail this, but I'll just quickly interject that I did have a clarity moment where I had this thought that maybe Psycho Candy was my gay husband that he was gay. I was like, oh my God, he's gay.

I don't know. I just like, he's clearly gay. And then, um, Pumpkin, I was like, he's so straight. He's very straight.

But maybe he's actually straight by curious. I don't know. I don't know. But anyway, I just had a moment.

And we could discuss that more later. If anyone's interested in the topic, we could really break it down. But as of right now, I'm just popping that in there. So yeah.

Yeah. I don't. I haven't had those same thoughts and I've been totally neutral about it. To be perfectly honest.

I have. I don't know where it came from, but again, I'm having a lot of clarity right now. So things are revealing themselves to me left and right. Yeah.

Keep me up to date on that one. Let me know if I should start back in because I don't know. I don't think that I stand up to scrutiny that well. I worry about that.

Why that's just scrutiny. That's not clarity. You're scared. You're scared by my clarity.

Yeah. Clarity scares me. Other people's clarity. Well, what if you get clear and you're like, you, I don't know.

I, you know, what if you send me packing? No, I don't let go. I don't know if you've been over my, my history, my romantic history, my band history. I've not broken up any of my bands.

You have a history of clinging? A cling. I cling on. I'm a cling on.

You're cling on Uranus. What? You ever heard that? No.

A cling on around Uranus. What does that even mean? A piece of shit near your, maybe your butt hairs, your kitty cat. A wiggling wier or something icky.

Or, I mean, you can, you can say, your pets with your pets. I mean, pets often have clingons around their anus. Clingons. I don't even know where that came from.

Did you just make that up? I absolutely did not make that up. That feels like that. Like a medical term, you know, we go to the vet and they go, oh.

That's not a, no, it's a, it's an elephant. Yeah, but the brush, it, your cat's anus. There's a cling on. Elementary school, an elementary school, high school, it's a school.

It's, it's something that was shared among peers. Euths. Children. Just okay.

Anyone else has heard this like cling ons around Uranus? That's, if you could, if you could actually just corroborate, is that the right word? Crosarata. Yeah.

Yeah. Interesting. That this, that it did exist. It was a thing.

It was a bit of an oral, oral, A-U-R-A-L. Good God. A-U-R-A-L meme. An oral, you know, an oral meme that was passed.

Lordy. Among children. Yeah. Wow.

All right. I don't know what just happened. I just zoned out. So what is, what is this episode about?

Wow. Well, we've talked about a number of things. It's about, it's about where we're at right now and what's happening and some changes that, like I said, we're not doing a video right now. One of my cats is gay and other things, just that you may have noticed that there was a bit of a extended break here from recording and releasing things and I was in Wisconsin.

I think we did an episode in February. I cannot believe it's March right now, first off. I just want to say that. I have lived lifetimes in the last couple of weeks.

It's been so much that I haven't even honestly processed yet. You've had the most intense experience of your life. I really, truly have. And after we recorded that last episode where it was kind of like a birthday shout out thing, I got on an air.

Well, actually it started a long sort of surreal journey to be honest. Let's back up. So Lou drove me down to the Hartford Bradley airport thinking I was going to fly out on a Wednesday. Wednesday, like the, what day was that?

I have to look guys. You're going to have to just wait. Hold on. Hold your horses already.

Don't be so impatient. Okay. That was my scheduled flight Wednesday, February 18th. Okay.

So I was scheduled to fly to Minnesota and do my usual thing to go see my mom. And Lou drove me down there, dropped me off. And the weather was kind of crappy. It was sort of like crappy on the way down, right?

And then you drove back through some weather too. You were pretty certain that I was going to wreck the car on the way back. I was nervous. I don't like that.

I get scared. Thank God you didn't. And I ended up having a really long day at the airport where my flight was like delayed, and then eventually canceled. So then I, as a result, Delta puts you in a hotel for the night.

You're only an hour away. It's a hard sensation to be only an hour away from each other. But I didn't jump in the car and go pick you up and bring you back home, which I could have. You could have, but actually that wouldn't have been a good idea because for all sorts of reasons.

I mean, you were home with the kids, blah, blah, blah. It's nighttime. You're doing bedtime. And also my flight that I was going to be taking then was a 6 AM flight out of Hartford, which would mean I need to be at the airport at 4 AM.

And it was already like after 7 PM at this point. So I'm exhausted. I got to go to the hotel that they put me in, which I can't remember what it was now, but it was chunky guys. I'm not going to lie.

There's like, you know, like fist punches, like holes in the wall, you know, really musty as fuck. I think one of the best, one of the greatest things I've ever seen in a crappy hotel is just a footprint. It's like way high up on a wall. I was like, whoa.

That was an Italy. But you know, I didn't pay for it because they canceled the flight. So you just, you go where they send you, right? And so that's where I went.

Took a flight then early Thursday morning. So then I took a flight 7 AM Thursday the 19th. All right. I arrive in the Twin Cities.

I get my rental car. I text my mom and dad on my mom's cell phone. My mom at this point was starting to text me quite sporadically. It was not as consistent.

Yeah, she had really dropped off. Really, really struggling. And she could still text with her finger, but just really wasn't that much. And so I wanted to check in with them and see if I should bring food out to them.

And because my dad had been really, truly doing just endless caretaking. At that point, my mom was unable to walk. She would have to be lifted to like a bedside commode. She couldn't even go to the bathroom anymore.

And as you know, she's been on a feeding tube for a while. There was no talking anymore, just little messages on her iPad. And so they said, yes, you should get some food. And I thought, OK, I'm going to do that.

And I'm really glad I went to the grocery store. And I got a bunch of pre-made food and things. And I'm thinking, I mostly packed two pairs of sweatpants and a lot of crochet projects that I assumed I would be just sitting on the bed next to my mom, crocheting while watching TV and movies with her, which is kind of what I've done the last few visits. And as she has gotten sicker and sicker with ALS, there was less sort of like interaction with her, you know, I could tell that I could just tell that it was difficult for her to even interact, you know.

So I was prepared to just be chilling, whatever. And so I got a bunch of food, drove out there. And honestly, upon arrival at my parents' house in Wisconsin, I went into the bedroom to see my mom. And she was like just kind of moaning so much, like kind of nonstop, you know.

And I don't know, things just started to feel different in me, you know, like I was sensing the desperation in her. And I was, I guess I don't know how to articulate it, but I could just feel that there was a massive shift and that this was, she was very ill. We hadn't. She was very, very ill.

And you and I hadn't really, we didn't speak a lot in those first few days that you were there. Right. And I was really, really brief, I think, conversation. And you said, this can't go on.

Yeah. Right. And there was a tone in your voice that was I had, and you said, I feel changed. I did.

Yeah. And this, uh, well, I don't remember saying that, but yeah. I feel changed. I did.

Okay. Yeah. And your voice actually sounded different than I'd ever heard it. And that's not to say that it was like you, you sounded, it just had a different, there was a different tone to it.

There was a, and it wasn't like you had seen something or that you were upset or it was just a basic shift. And the color was just a base, a shift in the color of your voice. Wow. You just had simply, this can't go on.

Yeah. Right. And you said, I feel changed and like you sound changed. Wow.

Yeah. I, it was, it just was so clear to me that I, I was like, this is literally torture. What ALS does to a human being is the closest thing that I can think of to torturing a human whose mental capacity is like still there, you are, you are trapped in your body. You have no control over what your body is doing to you, but you can still think, you still know what's going on, but you can't really speak for yourself.

You can't move your body. You're, you're, it's just literally like being buried alive. Okay. Sorry.

That's my, it's the closest thing I can think of to literally being buried alive and you're watching it happen and you're watching the people around you have to live with that knowledge and see that happening to you. And my dad was very much, I think still in a strong denial of how dire it really was. I, I just like I said, I had this knowing I said, I, for the love of God, I just started praying so hard. And I was just constantly praying then saying, please God, please God, please let her suffering.

And this can't go on. And I knew that even if that meant she was gone then forever and I wouldn't lose her, she could not be living like this. You can't live like that. And I, I just, I spent, you know, Thursday feeling extremely unwell, just that like there was this thing that I couldn't do anything about what was right there.

And I was just so desperate. I was just looking at my mom and I was so desperate and she was just like moaning so loud, like nonstop and I, it was unbearable, you know, it was like unbearable. And the bedroom, I sleep and when I'm there is just right above their bedroom. And so I would be laying in bed just hearing her moan like at night.

And, and it's like, I just would toss and turn and pray and pray. And then Friday, then Friday came and I woke up in the morning, went into her room and she messaged me again, which she had already messaged me this exact same message. I believe it was in December and it just said, I'm suffering. I'm in hell.

And what do you do when that's from mom saying that? I just, there's just so many moments of not knowing what the fuck to do, like not knowing what to say, what to do. So then I decided to tell her the dream I had about her. Did I share that dream on the podcast?

I just, I can't remember. Well, I, so I had a dream where I woke up in the dream and I was standing on a cloud and it was kind of like almost like comical, like, you know, sort of stereotypical, like, I'm in a puffy cloud in the sky, right? And then I looked to my left and I see standing on another cloud close by is like stereotypical Jesus is like standing there, you know, almost kind of like hot Jesus. You know, I was just like, that wasn't me.

It was kind of like, yeah, it was like you, but in Jesus form and he was wearing like, you know, kind of like robes and really cool necklace and I'm like, wow, Jesus. And so I look over and I think I say to Jesus, I say, is this heaven? And he says, or I say, like, am I in heaven? Is this heaven?

And he says, this is heaven. And I said, but I'm not even sure if I believe in heaven. And he said, it doesn't matter here now. And I said, where's my mom?

And he turned and he like moved his hand as if like to guide my vision and he moved his hand toward another cloud. And I look, and I saw my mom, she was standing at her easel painting, but it was like the 20 year old version of her. She had long hair apart, it down the middle. Her white dove, that was her pet, was on her shoulder.

She was like laughing and painting and she looked so happy. She had a paintbrush in her hand and there were musical notes floating around her head, like literal notes in the sky, like floating around her head and she was listening to music and just so free and so happy. And then I woke up. And so I was able to tell my mom that dream and it was one of the only times I've seen her in the last, I don't know, how long months, smile.

She just smiled and she nodded at me and she looked so relieved. And I said, I don't know, mom, I woke up and I felt so certain, I felt so certain for you that that's where you're going. And I felt self-conscious even saying that I still do, but she looked at me like, yes, you know, and she was just nodding and her whole like kind of face changed. It was the only sort of lightness I saw.

You didn't tell me that whole dream. Oh. You said you saw her painting in the clouds, but yeah, it was, that was the dream. So I was able to tell her that and then shortly after I told her that she messaged me on her app, I want to stop feeding, which would mean then that she would die, you know, no more feeding to.

And I saw it and I just burst into tears and then she pointed at me and then pointed at the living room because she wanted me to go tell my dad. So I went into the living room to tell my dad and I guess I don't know if I want to say too much about that, just that I did tell him it was very difficult. I think I'd rather not say what happened. Yeah.

And then that day a woman came to the house who was actually meeting with my mom and dad to discuss the possibility of my mom going to a nursing home. So the woman came and discussed those options. I, it's hard. I guess there are things I'm not really comfortable sharing.

Not that I think about it, but I'll just say that that day was very, very difficult. And then that evening. And that she did not go off the feeding team with her mom? She did not.

No. She did not. And then that evening, I think at like six o'clock, my mom like beeped this little like doorbell thing in her room that would be like a notification like, come, come help me. And I think my dad was like in the bathroom or in the kitchen, I can't remember.

And I ran to her to see what she needed. And she was choking. And she was like just gagging and choking. And what proceeded was like, honest to God, the most surreal longest two and a half hours of my life besides the next morning.

It was just for two solid hours, no breaks. My dad and I together, trying to keep my mom from choking. We're talking like the most stressful. I don't even understand what happened.

It was like, it's really hard to describe it. Like because she kept having this feeling that she was choking. So we were using like the suction machine and then like trying to wipe her mouth and then her mouth would feel dry. So she'd be begging for this like little water sponge to go in her mouth.

I mean, it was like constantly doing something and then holding her up and then she her trying to like puke into a bucket and like, you could just hear all this like gurgling on her chest. And it was like, I just kept thinking, I'm in hell. She's in hell. This is fucking hell.

This is insane. I don't know what the fuck is happening. Like, am I supposed to call 911? What is this?

I don't even know, you know? And then I like passed out that night afterward. I've never felt more exhausted. And I when I laid down to go to sleep, I remember I just looked at the ceiling and I said, please let her die now.

Please, I can't believe I'm saying this, but please God, my mom cannot do this any longer. The next morning I woke up, I was in my pajamas. I poured myself a cup of coffee. It was like six in the morning.

I walked into her room. I took one look at her and I immediately knew she was dying. I was like, oh my God, oh my God, this is it. She was choking, gaggling, like it was it was insane.

My dad was taking a shower and I literally like pretzel myself around her body to try and because she was like deadweight. She was so heavy because she just couldn't move. So I was like holding her up to try to keep her from not choking. And it was insane.

And then I immediately texted my other brother Holland who lives in the cities and I said, you have got to drive out here right now. Mom is dying. And he said, I'm on my way immediately. And then I told my other brother, Dylan, who lives with us, I said, mom's dying, like right now.

And he was in denial, you know, he was just like, I don't know. I'm like, no, this is fucking it right now. And my dad was like, do we call an ambulance? I said, no, no, no, no, no, we call hospice.

You call the hospice people. We call hospice and they said, no, you don't send an ambulance for this. We come out. The nurse comes out.

So the nurse came out and sure enough, they were like, there's no point. You're sending someone. Why would you even do that? You know, but Mike and this is just, you don't know.

You don't know what's the right thing to do, right? But it's like, you don't send an ambulance out for someone who's already on hospice. She's on hospice care, you know, what they do is they give you morphine in your mouth and then you die. And that's it.

It was the hospice nurse that they sent out was a literal angel. I mean, she came to the house within like a half an hour and I mean, I have to say the kid was already in the house. When you were on hospice, the kid's already there. It's kind of like a death kit.

Yes. It has all the medication in it there, which is wild, right? Because they say things like, you know, there's no assisted suicide. This isn't a assisted suicide, I guess, because she had to literally be tortured and literally gagging.

And then they're like, okay, I guess we'll give you a drop of morphine in your mouth and then to help you die with less pain. You know, whereas assisted suicide, you can choose your date, right? Then it's administered. It's a different thing.

But this is like fucking, I mean, it was the most brutal couple hours until she died. I was just like, this is. And you're holding her the whole time. We're just holding her.

My brothers and I like were. Did you move at all from that? I never left the bedroom. When you went in the morning and you see you pretzeled yourself around her.

I had like my half drank cup of coffee still sitting there when she died. I mean, it was just like I'd never. I didn't move from that. Yeah, I was just there.

I didn't want to leave her because I knew that, you know, the hospice nurse said she's very, very close. I mean, when she came, I have to say it was very validating for me. I finally felt fucking validated. It's like, this is happening.

This is fucking on guys. Like snap into it. You know, these are your last moments with mom and she looked at my dad and she's like, no, we're here to just like, you're just here to hold her hand and you say the last things you want to say because she could even tell by the way her jaw was moving that there's a particular thing people do. Like when they are taking their last breaths, just even, I mean, she was extremely knowledgeable on what someone looks like in their last hours of death, you know.

And even when, yeah, she was getting very close. She was like, she's extremely close. You need to call a pastor if you want to have one here. And we did, and sure enough, Pastor Tim came.

He, I guess, what is it? He read her rights. Is that her last rights? I don't know.

And, you know, did the sign of the cross and her forehead? I mean, and then 15 minutes later, she died. And it was like, I was there with her head, like right by me. You know, just massaging her, touching her, looking at her, watching her.

Looking into her eyes. Yeah. Her eyes were open. Her eyes are kind of when you're in that state, they're sort of rolled back, you know?

So it's kind of intense. You're sort of looking at someone like who's their eyes are kind of like rolled back. They're not really looking at you. But the hospice nurse also realized that like my mom had had some sort of like rupture in her chest at this point and was gurgling like blood.

So her chest was like filled and filling with blood. So that's what she was like joking onto. That her body had stopped using any of the feed. Who knows how long ago she immediately identified this, this hospice nurse.

And she was like, Oh, she's not using any of this food. So when that happens, that means that ALS is just rejecting it. You know, it's saying like we're done. We're shutting down.

So you're trying to feed something that the body is actively, do you know what I mean? Like going, no, but yeah. So it's like, it's kind of confusing though, you know, because you're, we're not doctors, right? We don't fucking know these things.

And even though technically she's on hospice care, you just have employees who like come and they kind of like check on you a little bit. But no one said, Hey, stop feeding her. God knows I wish they had sooner because maybe she wouldn't have been choking so much. But that's something you either like have to put her in a nursing home with someone who also knows ALS and understands what's happening with their body or you hire a private, you have to pay like you have to pay for private nursing, you know?

Anyway, it was, it was just like, I don't, I just don't even know how to describe the moment. But like I, so my mom passed away right there with me. I was holding her. And of course I was telling her things like, I love you.

Thank you for everything. You know, I will do what I can to live honoring you. Yada, yada, all this stuff, you know, but I'm like, did it matter? Did she hear me at one point?

She did. She like grabbed my hand and I could tell, you know, that that she heard me and she understood. But then, you know, she's dead. And then all of a sudden I'm looking at this like half cup of coffee and it's 10, 30 in the morning.

So the time I got up, she died at 10, 10, 35 was her last breath, 10, 35 a.m. So here I was in my pajamas with a half a cup of coffee. No breakfast. You know, I literally just like took two steps of that coffee, set it down in her room and then never left her bed.

It was just chaos, you know, just trying to be there for her. And then I did look out the window and I was just looking at this coffee and like thinking when I started this cup of coffee, my mom was alive. No, it's, I don't know. And then you're just kind of like there in the house with your family member who's dead.

And you know, the hospice nurse was very nice. He was in fucking angel, but like, you know, yeah, at some point, they're like, well, okay, we should call the undertaker who's going to come take the body. Are we ready to do that? I'm going to go clean her up, you know, and you're like, I mean, then she goes in the other room.

She like, I guess cleaned up my mom. I went in and then I like looked at my mom. It was like absolutely the most surreal thing I can't even describe it. I was like, this is my mom dead.

She's dead right here. And then the undertaker comes, very nice guy again, comes in, literally brings like a gurney, puts her in a bag, zips it up and wheels are out the door trying to like get her around the corner in the hallway and get her out the door, you know, and you're like, oh my God, oh my fucking God, I'm just watching my mom in a body bag, like being wheeled out of the house in the winter time, like. So yes, my mom died. And now.

And the next day I'm in a funeral home with my dad and my brothers and we're trying to figure out her funeral plans. And then three days later, you and Izzy are flying to the Twin Cities and you're joining me. And then on Friday, less than seven days after she died, we bury her in the ground and I was beautiful. That was a really big thing.

It's, so this is Northern Wisconsin. It's winters there are stark, to say the least. But that day it got up to like almost 50 degrees. Yes.

And the most perfect day of the whole week. I mean, one thing that was happening, I mean, we had visited in December as a family that was the visit before this last one. But it was so gray, like the gray, it was like sub zero the whole time. They live out on this point in a lake.

So it's just it, the sense of desolation is like really pronounced and it's beautiful in a way. Our last visit there was so, you know, as a family, it was very quiet, you know, and we spent a lot of time just with your mom and in that strange period where you don't know what to say. You don't, she was definitely like conscious enough to, you know, to be annoyed if she was annoyed or you kind of trying to read the room, read her and it's a very strange. It's like a very, it's a purgatory really.

You don't know how, you don't know what to do. What is the right thing, you know? But anyway, the gray lifted on this day that she was buried in, she was buried in this graveyard that I mean her, her ancestors had come to the Wisconsin prairie from Eastern Europe in the 1800s and gone to like one room schoolhouses and literally walked four miles in this know and tattered clothes. And so this she's being buried in this sort of her homeland.

And the everything that everyone said was beautiful, your father did an absolutely beautiful when you gathered around him, you and your brothers gathered around him and it was, and your brother Holland gave up, you know, was able to speak. Yeah. And you were not, which I told you understood. I was like, oh my God.

But it was, the sun was out. The sun shone on her. It literally, it was, it was, it was beautiful, you know, and then that afternoon you and me and Izzy went and walked on the lake, you know, they're their lake that they lived on, you know, and it was just sunny and warm and we saw a beautiful bald eagle fly above us. Right above us.

Izzy was like sort of swimming on top of the ice. Yeah, it was so strange. It was just like thriving on the lake, but it's, I don't know, the whole ice fishing thing is like happening all around us and the breeze almost felt, it was like a warm breeze, you know. Yeah.

It was a, that was beautiful. And I was, yeah. You know, we, we, yeah, I was, yeah. And we're home now and I'm going to be actually still going back out there quite a bit to do the other work now, right?

Which is the kind of dismantling of things and going through things and figuring out what to do with things and also being there for like my dad and my brothers and. But yes, so that's, so sorry for your store orders that were delayed. My apologies. I've been out of town.

But yeah, we're back and I'm just trying to figure out who I am right now and what I need to do. And I have friends bringing me a meal train, which is so incredibly kind and yeah, we're just taking it one day at a time right now.