Friday, Feb. 6, 2015

It’s Friday, February 6, 2015 and tomorrow might be the first day in well over a week that Bill and I won’t be wearing masks, gowns and gloves for a good portion of the time.  Mom is getting better and will not be considered contagious by then.  I didn’t feel well this morning, so Bill and I just did a bit of banking and tried to find Services BC.  That was not easy.  Bill thought he had found it, put the address into the Google GPS on his iPhone and navigated while I drove.  It took us to the most dismal collection of buildings I’ve ever seen in Victoria.  We had to park and ask passers by where we were only to discover that this was in fact the location of the administration offices of the entire Services BC for the province but they did not service clients.  In fact there is no such office in Victoria; you have to drive to Duncan or do it all on line or by mail.  We still have to wait for some papers we hope are in mom and dad’s safety deposit box before we can do this work anyway so we had to leave that undone.  Meanwhile we can’t get into the safety deposit box until our Power of Attorney papers are approved by the main branch of RBC, so we were left spinning our wheels.  We did what we have been doing to keep on an even keel, went for coffee in a great little local place.  Then we visited mom for a while, went back to her apartment, where Bill is living, for lunch and then I returned to Barbara and Terry’s safe house to rest.  Bill had given me some pills that fight colds, so I took one and went to bed.  I just got up and feel better. I Face-Timed Bill to find him masked for the last time and visiting mom.  She was sitting up and sounding cheery.  She was very weepy when we visited her this morning.  She seems to have survived the RSV and pneumonia but she faces a struggle ahead, learning to live without dad after 72 years of marriage.  At her lowest point she was saying they should just let her go to join him, but at other times you can see in her eyes and the intensity of her concentration to get something right the Shirley Mary Liddle who has never let anything get past her and is not yet ready to do so.  She hates cats but she is one.  Curiosity hasn’t killed her yet and at this point it’s still what keeps her alive.

Bill in an arbutus at Sooke Potholes

The ruins of a mill (I think) by the river at Sooke Potholes

Bill at the Royal Jubilee Hospital in a Seoul subway pose

Myself elf at the Royal Jubilee

Blossoms on Yates St.  Spring comes to Victoria