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Need: Someone with grace and good manners and who will not suddenly burst into tears to answer the telephone and the doorbell and to make calls. this could be accomplished when the family is out casket shopping and does not require interaction with the family if the volunteer chooses to avoid them. An individual may volunteer for as long or as short a time span as he or she may prefer. Please pass the word around to people you feel have grace and good manners (that’s all of you) and whom you know want to help, as not everyone reads this page. thank you very much.

Dear Miss Manners:
I am at the age when a lot of my friends’ parents are dying. Is it proper to attend a funeral of a parent I didn’t know? My thoughts have been that I got to a funeral to honor the family members, i.e., my friend, who has lost a parent or sibling. I don’t want to be improper on such a solemn occasion. But I love my friends dearly and would appreciate if they came to comfort me and acknowledge a death in my family, even if they didn’t know my relative personally.
Gentle Reader:
Miss Manners seldom receives the question and answer in the same letter. Yours don’t leave her much to do but congratulate you on your sensitivity and commend your attitude.
Martin, Judith; Miss Manners’ Guide for the Turn – of – the – Millennium p. 671

Hutchins, Eileen F (Forge) � In Cupertino, California on October 18, 2002, at age 65 after a short bout with brain cancer. She is survived by her brother Chuck Forge, her husband Edward Hutchins, her son Paul Hutchins, her daughter Celeste Hutchins, her daughter-in-law Christine Denton and her cousin Sr. Mary Leahy. Eileen was raised in Cupertino and attended [schools]. She graduated from San Jose State University [in year] and worked for several years as a medical technologist at [hospitals]. In 1974, she married Edward Hutchins and moved to Mountain View. In 1975, she became a full time homemaker. In 1976, she moved to San Jose. Her daughter was born in 1976 and her son in 1978. She was an avid gardener of roses and belonged to the Rose Society. In [1982], she moved back to Cupertino. She was active in her community, volunteering for yard-duty at St. Simon�s School in Los Altos and she took classes at De Anza College in mathematics and piano performance. She also belonged to [charities] and donated to several non-profit groups, including establishing am athletic scholarship at Santa Clara University. [others?] She served on the board of the [something] fund-raising committee for the Fatima Convalescent Hospital in Los Gatos. In addition, she volunteered as a docent for the San Jose Historical Museum and was secretary and later president of the Volunteer Council there. [ladies of carmel]

The funeral services will be on [date and time] at St. Joseph of Cupertino Church 10110 North DeAnza Boulevard in Cupertino, California.

So I went with tiffany, Luoi and Christi to the Opera last night. Traffic was bad, we barely made it. The opera was looong. the music was repetitive and ponderous. It was like watching an elephant walk in a circle for six hours. It was so pious and slow, it felt like sitting in church for one of Father Faranna’s sermons (God rest his soul). He was the pastor at one of my elementary schools and he would never write out his sermons ahead of time, so he would start with an idea and then meander slowly back to his usual riff about a “love affair with jesus christ.” He talked baout it every week for years, hardly varrying his words, for super long. sometimes the mass lasted two hours. anyway, the opera was like that. Luoi fell asleep multiple times. The music was good, it just needed some (a lot) of editting. there was also an excellent performance by a one-wonged angel, who sung excellent and danced around so it actually looked like she was levitating when she walked. anyway, I was going to give it pretty good marks, despite a very problematic scene with a leper, when Christi told me the opera was written in 1983. There’s no exceuse for something like that to have been written in 1983. So I left the opera, whishing I’d stayed by mom’s bedsde instead, but knowing that if I’d skipped it, I would have only heard about the great reviews it got and been sorry I missed it.
And I went home, because it didn’t get out until 11:30, and planned to return to my parents house in the morning. And the phone rang and it was my dad saying my mom was dead. Did I want to come right then? when should the body be moved? I told him not to blow out the candles and that I would come down in the morning and I didn’t know about anything else. Yesterday, I had been thinking I sould go and pick out some clothes or something to dress my mom in when she died, but I had that opera to get off to. You have to leave rediculously early to get to the City at 6:30 from here.
So I’m at my parents house. My dad called to say he missed mom’s car (which i borrowed to get to the opera) and could i please return it. He’s trudging around like a zombie and throwing things away. He blew out all the candles. Margie is gone and with her has departed all of the ensure, all of the diapers, babywipes, matresspads, latex gloves and every other piece of medical equipment we owned except for the wheel chair and the walker. Maybe the wheelchair, i dunno. It’s down the hall, next to the stair master. He called some people. Other numbers were lost in his insane cleanup. My dog has no dogfood. I don’t know what to do with all these candles. I wanted to just let them burn out, but my dad wants them gone and i don’t know what to do with them. I guess we’ll burn them at my home. It’s strange to relight them after she’s dead…. Nothing is going according to his plans. All of the wills and stuff were made with the assumption that she would outlive him.

Logging Activated Thu Oct 17 15:07:57 2002 PDT
Jamitch teleports in.
Christi says, “hihi”
Christi says, “albertsons..”
Jamitch says, “kio okazis?”
Christi says, “so, we went to the albertson’s last night, and
they were having a sale on candles!”
Jamitch says, “uh oh..”
Christi says, “they were only $.70 each!”
JamitchD
Jamitch 😀
Jamitch says, “how many did you get?”
Christi says, “so, we got 20 of them. and as we’re loading
them into the cart, this overweight guy with a comb over starts staring at us”
Jamitch says, “ok”
Christi says, “and comes over and says “are you girls starting
a candle factory or something?”
Jamitch says, “???”
Christi says, “and we’re like “no” and he stares at us some
more, and then says “well, then why are you buying all these candles?”
Jamitch says, “ok”
Jamitch says, “so clst kicked his ass?”
Christi says, “so celeste looks at him for a second and is
like “my mom is dying, and we’re buying candles to put by her.”
Christi says, “no no. the ass kicking comes later”
Jamitch says, “so what happened next?”
Christi says, “so, he continues to stare at us, and then is
like “you know what? those candles won’t help. only the love of jesus can
cure your mother”
Christi pokes celeste
Jamitch says, “ack”
Christi says, “hehhehe”
Jamitch says, “i think i met the guy before”
Jamitch says, “one night at that albertsons”
Jamitch says, “with jenny”
Jamitch says, “he said “hello young christians!”
Christi says, “buying diet coke and way too much toilet paper?”
Christi says, “heh”
Jamitch says, “and “praise the lord for such a beautiful
night!”
Jamitch says, “we pretended not to understand english”
Christi says, “yeah, that’s him. he started yelling prayer at
us, and telling us that he could lay hands on her and cure her”
Jamitch says, “then clst kicked his ass?”
Christi says, “so we said that would be great because she was
missing half her brain and was in a coma.”
Christi says, “but he wouldn’t commit to that, and just
promised to pray for us, and if we just read our bible hard enough we’d be
able to cure her”
Christi says, “and we said thanks, and started off with our
candles, and he starts back into the “the candles won’t work! put back the
candles! you need the bible not the candles!”
Jamitch says, “christ”
Christi says, “oh, and celeste told him that they had a non
resesitation order for her mom, so we couldn’t pray”
Christi says, “yes, so anyway, celeste told him that her mom
was scared of the dark”
Jamitch says, “fuck”
Christi says, “and he told us to get a lamp”
Jamitch says, “what a jerk”
Christi says, “it was fun”
Christi says, “he was hilarious!”
Christi says, “and he kept yelling prayers at us”
Jamitch says, “he’s lucky tiffany wasn’t there”
Jamitch says, “hehehehehehe”
Christi says, “he was praying and celeste was smirking at him,
and he told celeste that he really believed in her love of god, she was such
a good christian”
Jamitch says, “HAHAHAHA”
Christi says, “and off course wanting to know how well she
knew her bible”
Christi says, “which is pretty darn well.”

So, yesterday, I left Christi in the East Bay and came down to Cupertino with our only automobile (did you know that “east bay” is pig-latin for beast?). Christi convinced Tiffany and Luoi that they wanted to drive doen to Lucy’s Tea House (La Teejo de Lusi) in Mountain View for dinner. So those three, Mitch, Vince, Tammy and I had tea and some food. I asked Mitch where I could buy candles in the area and he sent me to Albertsons on El Camino, in Sunnyvale, right next to highway 85 and that big empty mall that used to be an Emporium. They had hundreds of candles. We now have candles in reserve. We meant to buy one of each, but accidentally skipped a few. Even so, we ended up with twenty two candles. There were on sale for twenty percent off. I was extremely pleased. I was returning to the aisle with a grocery cart when a guy walked up and asked if we were buying one of each. I said heck yes, there’s a lot of them and they’re on sale to boot. He asked why we were getting them and I said my mom was sick.
“Lighting a candle isn’t going to help her. Getting on your knees and praying to Jesus will help her.” he said, but not immediately. He seemed harmless at first but quickly accelerated up to preaching us the word. He told us about how his daughters had the power to lay hands and heal. I said they were welcome to lay hands on my mom if they wanted and I was sure nobody would mind. We got lots of folks praying at her bedside. The more, the merrier. He decided it would better to pray right there in the grocery store. and he held christi and my hands and asked Jesus to bless us and my mom. It was the first time I’d ever prayed in the grocery store. The stock boy thought it was a bit odd. I think they guy was a bit embarassed at some point, cuz he got really quiet when folks started staring. I think that if you’re going to proclaim the word in a grocery store, you ought to be out, loud and proud (to co-opt a queer saying), but I guess Jesus doesn’t necessarily want people to stare at you if you’re going to get thrown out of the store. But he really did not want us buying the candles, so maybe it would have been worth it to him. He asked if I thought the candles would heal her, and I said no. He said, “that’s right, only jesus will heal her!” but why was I buying them anyway? “She’s scared of the dark now, and an electric light is too much light, so these are perfect.” He suggested a kerosene lamp. But there were none in the ethnic foods aisle.
He must have told us fifty stories of people being healed by prayer. Some guy died right there in a church pew at church and the congregation prayed for him and he walked out alive. I said, “oh, but we have a do not recessitate order for my mom.” and he had oodles of stories about people praying instead of calling ambulences and being healed. Are fundamentalists more likely to die of heart attacks because of delaying treatment? There’s a study and some graduate degrees waiting there.
Despite Jesus’ amazing power to heal, this guy’s cart was full of diet foods and he combed over his bald spot. He didn’t say anything about praying instead of going to the barber. If jesus can cure his daughter’s tumor, can’t He grow hair on the top of this guy’s head? What about the Jesus diet? Pray five times a day to cure obesity. One man, he said, had his asthma cured by prayer, but refused to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. “And do you know where he is now?” “burning in hell!” I said. Hallelujia! (apparently it was a rhetorical question.) Anyway, it was getting late, so I said goodbye to him. At first he just seemed very lonely, but then I realized I did a bad thing by encouraging him.
The checkout woman said, “did you get one of every candle?” Had almost the same conversation again, except she said, “I guess she needs a lot of praying.” and let it go. I don’t understand why millitant atheists vince and Tammy want to stay in the south bay. People are praying all over the place.
Anyway, Margie is off at Albertsons right now, because she’s very keen on candles and likes to buy them on sale. It seems she and her sister regularly burn twenty two of them in a week.
I came back to my parents house and refilled the distilled water on her oxygen generator and set my watch alarm to go off every two hours and tried to sleep. Mom’s breathing was very rough and uneven. Its the sort of thing that makes me think she won’t make it to morning, but she’s as strong as a horse, so I wasn’t sure. I turned up her oxygen, elevated her head, have her more morhpine, but none of these things helped. The hospice nurse arrived this morning while I was in the shower and discovered that I had cross-threaded the bubbler part when I refilled it with water, so my mom had gotten no oxygen during the night. Her breathing is fine now. Ooops. I feel bad about it. Mom is still going. Her kidneys are still going. She’s part camel.
I’m going to see the Saint Francis opera in San Francisco tonight, unless something dramatic happens. My dad is encouraging me to stay in Berkeley tonight. He sarted that encouragement after I threatened to slug him if he said anything more about Jimmy Carter.

Apparently, there was a misunderstanding and my Dad has not cut the amount of meds going to my mom. Or that’s what he says when I talked to him about it. And now there are six fewer candles burning than yesterday. I’m thinking mabe they should be replaced with scented candles. As dying people’s systems break down, they stop being able to deal with toxins in their bodies and start to smell kind of toxic. I’ve been picking a lot of roses, but Cathy, the weekend attendant is allergic to roses, so i’ll have to switch to something else by friday evening. anyway, if mom can’t see the flowers, at least maybe she can smell them. Her sense of taste came back some a while ago. She lost it during radiation, but Sarah K gave me a book on remedies for cancer symptoms and it said that radiation aimed at the head or neck can make taste buds quit working. The remedy for that is zinc. So I gave my mom zinc every day as long as she ate food and she seemed to be able to taste more and more. Who knows what’s going on with her now.

Last night, my dad came home with a pomegranite, so I ate a little bit of it. Then, I went to Esperanto class. Class got out early and then dinner was quicker than usual, so I was in bed early for a Tuesday night. The class was on the correlatives. I thought I knew all of them, but as I sat in class, I couldn’t think of a one, except for kio, which is easy. We had pizza afterwards at Pizaa My Heart. It wasn’t very good. Sarah D came to class, which I’m happy about. I kept telling her that it was a language for the proletariat. I think she’ll find it useful for international organizing.
At some point this morning, Christi realized that Tiffany was in our living room. she came up and said goodmorning, then disappeared again. She’s taking over cat-sitting duties. It was nice to see er, even if only for a few minutes. I slept till about noon and then spent an hour running around the house, recollecting things, like the toiletries bag which was returned to the bathroom and anyway, I’m prolly runnign slow. I feel much revived though.
And now I’m back here and my mom is still here, although five of her candles have burned out since yesterday. One of them is St. Martin of Tours, patron saint against leprosy. and the red spot on her back that went away has returned. Cooincidence?
Apparently my dad has been cutting back the amount of medication my mom has been receiving. He wants to only give her stuff every six hours instead of every four. And maybe she doesn’t need lorazepam, maybe we should try torepositin her instead, so she’s more comfortable. It’s this sort of thinking that leads to the return of red spots. And once again, by the time he realizes he was wrong, it will be too late for him.

Oh my lord, I am tired. I understand it’s pomegranite season. I would enjoy a pomegranite after an uninterrupted night’s sleep. woke up many times. Held my mom’s hand from 4:00 to 8:00 because she was scared. I worked out a way to prop up my arm and sleep at the same time to arrange this. I accidentally gave her some meds every 2 hours instead of every four, but it doesn’t matter, because the dosage was less than half of the maximum. Except this afternoon I inadvertantly went .3ml over the max, but not all at once. anyway, she still looks pained.
the hospice nurse came by today and doubled the amount of lorazepam I could give mom after I complained that the previous maximum dose was not stop her from shaking sometimes. So maybe this other medication actually has a higher maximum dose also. Anyway, the new max dose of lorazepam is still not enough to stop her from twitching. Margie says all dying people twitch and nothing you give them will stop it. I think she’s right on this.
Everyone comes over and marvels how tough my mom is. She’s one tough woman. things I didn’t know about my mom: hidden, inner toughness. I think I should have suspected. Don’t know her as well as I should.
I’m thinking about going to esperanto class, except i get angsty when i’m away for too long, cuz what if something hapened or something? Sheesh. I am foolish. The hospice nurse had to call my mom’s doctor to report that my mom has high blood pressure. Yeah, let’s start her on high blood pressure medication right wawy! Otherwise, she might have a stroke or something! anyway, the doctor made a note of it and told us not to do anything. My mom has always had high blood pressure, especially when she’s stressed. I imagine she must be stressed right now.
after more than a day of not reacting to anything, she nodded in responce to a couple of questions today. One of which had to do with drinking water. She’s in favor of it. She’s gotten so thirsty, she bites the glycerin sawbs we use on her mouth. So i gave her water and fruit juice 0.1 mililiter at a time. She hasn’t had very much. I’ve brewed some mint tea for next time. I think the fruit juice might be hard on her stomach, even though she only had 4 mililiters of it or so. anyway, she liked the juice. She squeezed brother robert’s hand when he said hello. she’s tough.
I’m not tough. Christi wants to sleep at home tonight. Me too. But who will spring to the rescue if mom starts wet respirating again? Prolly not me. I had to make christi wear my watch because the watch alarm no longer wakes me up. My dad wanted to give me a louder alarm clock. I said, “but I don’t want to wake up mom.” he said, ‘there’s not much danger of that.” but then she did wake up today a little bit, sort of, so you never know.
I talked to him about euthanasia. he says that because it might be a mistake one in a hundred times, it should never be done. I said, “do you think mom is going to wake up again?” no, this wouldn’t be one of those times that it would be a mistake. but if you’re going to have rules, you need to follow them all the time. I asked if this is like Socrates refusing to escape from prison, because it was important to always respect the law, even if it was wrong in this case. He says yes. My dad is definitely not a post-modernist. no situational ethics for him. The rules are rules and they’re right or they wouldn’t be rules. He votes libretarian, but he’s a republican at heart. He says that people say that we’re nicer to cats because we put them to sleep when they’re suffering and dying, but we can also sell cats for vivesection, so uh… I didn’t quite follow his logic. Some of the ways we treat pets differently than people are worse than how we treat people, so every way we treat cats differently than people must be worse? I don’t know. He ran out of the house to work before he could clarify himself. By the time he might suspect that he’s wrong, it will be too late… I’d respect his wishes anyway.