So how was your day?

Yesterday I was standing in a rest home. Not just any rest room, but the one my parents share a room in.

Someone once told me a rest home is where you try to cram a lifetime into 2 drawers in a dresser you don't even own.

I listened to the voices of people calling from rooms, people I didn't know. They called for a nurse, help or maybe some just for one person to say that they mattered.
At some point these people were us.

They stood in their corner of the world and added a brick here or a solution there. People once like us and soon the people we will be.

I often say I keep my motorcycle to make sure that doesn't happen.

I bring my parents tokens of their past so they smile, the same smile they give to the endless rotating folks who work in their new home.
Each visit prompts questions about returning to their home and explanations of rational requirements to have them housed in these warehouses for the old.
In ancient societies we allowed for the wonder we learned from our elders. We kept them close and thanks the Gods for the knowledge they shared.
But then drug companies did not keep them alive at all costs (or till coverage ran out).

So yesterday while I signed the paperwork that allowed the rest home to let my parents die with whatever dignity they had, the vet called to say I could pick up the ashes of our beautiful puppy who had passed from cancer.
We let her go in her home with the sun painting the waters of the Georgia Straits. A vet came to our home and it tore us to pieces while she passed away in "mom's" arms.

So when I drove Kiara home for her last ride, I'm not sure who the tears were for....