TheRuths.net

My Dad’s service has come and gone. It was in the middle of a blizzard, as he planned it to be. Some of my father’s ashes lay above his parents grave in Amesbury, the rest of him now back to Mother Earth as he always wished. The music was beautiful and the eulogies simply perfect!
As for Grams, Aunt Sandy and Uncle Ron, they are safely back in PA. Aunt Sandy and Uncle Ron spent most of their trip up here with mom learning her daily routine. Afterall in about three weeks she will be making the tranisition down to their house to live with them for 3-6 months.
Mom has been doing well. As always she has her good days and bad. She has been thinking about Dad alot and often misses him. Tuesday was an especially good day - mom put on both her shoes and tied them herself:) Today she traveled to Mass General to have a ‘permanent cath.’ put in. She is doing fine.
Overall the Riley Family is pulling through with the love and support of our wonderful family and friends. As always keep the email and mail coming to mom, it seems as if it’s almost like magic potion…. appluading the tiniest victories and hugging the biggest hurts!

Yay for Mom, she has finally graduated to ‘regular food’ !!! Meaning she can now have things like toast, nuts, and raw vegetables. She also gets her meat or chicken as a whole and is required to cut it on her own. Mom continues to be in high spirits about her recovery but like everyone, has some down days. She is mostly concerned with her eye sight and frustrated that they aren’t healing as fast as she would like. Her therapists continue to work her hard and even on the tired days her goal to achieve independence gets her through that one last session.
This holiday season has come so quickly and soon enough the hospital will need it’s own mailroom for my mother. She has recieved so many wonderful letters and emails from people! As for Shane, Grams and I, we will be spending Christmas day with mom at the hospital. Although Christmas may be a little difficult this year…. we still have each other, and that’s what the holiday season is truly about!..
The new year is right around the corner and that means Dad’s service will be here before we know it. For those who do not yet know or would like a quick reminder, the service is January 8, 2005 at the First Church in Ipswich at 2:00 pm. There will be desserts provided after the service at the church.
My apologies for the delays in updates but life is quite busy for us all. I hope everyone enjoys the holidays! Merry Christmas!!

**** If anyone is interested in brinigng a baked good for after the service feel free to do so. If anyone has any more questions about the service you can email me at MusicianSR@Hotmail.com .

Article in the Ipswich Chronicle

Two days before Christmas and it certainly going to be a different Christmas for most of us. We are certainly going to miss Steve. Linda and Steve often came to PA for a few days and Sandy and I have talked about some of the funny stories that Steve related about his senior friends at work. Linda went out of the hospital for the first time today. She was accompanied by two therapists and another patient on a trip to a pizza parlor. She didn’t want to go but did because she felt she had to go to make everybody happy. She did ultimately have a good time. We didn’t want her to have her first outing to be the memorial on the 8th. Currently she feels that she is not making progress at the pace she did earlier. She is concerned that they are pushing her to get her out by Feb. 1. They told her that they would not push her out if she wasn’t ready. This was comforting to her but she still feels that she needs to be further down the road. We have been told that we will be trained over a period of 4 days in January on those things that we need to know in order to bring Linda to Thorndale. To say the least we are looking forward to Linda coming but we are scared. We are looking for a wheel chair van so we can go places with Linda. If anyone knows of one available let me know. The rehab. is ordering all the medical equipment and having it sent here so we can figure out what we need to do to accomodate Linda. Sandy and I will be having a quiet Christmas with Kevin and Jess, Eric and Jill. We wish you a wonderful Christmas and a safe New Year.

So Mom, Shane and I have finally set up a date for Dad’s memorial service. It will be Saturday the 8 of January, 2005 at 2:00 pm at The First Church in Ipswich, 1 Meeting House Green, Ipswich, MA, 01938.
As for today, mom was up and about working as hard as usual. Today is her second day eating ’soft’ foods, such as pancakes, french toast, eggs and meatloaf…. which of course she is enjoying VERY much! She loves the visitors and mail she is getting, very happy to have a visit from the minister that married her and Steve. She’s maintaining a positive attitude and although times can be hard for her she continues to keep on fighting.

Tiny steps will get you there just as surely as big ones. It may take some time but you will get there. In that light, Linda has managed to open her right eye with the help of some strategically placed adhesive tape. She said that her vision is quite clear our of her right eye which is the better of the two under normal circumstances. Linda is really enjoying the cards, letters and emails that she is recieving. Ruth will be in Boston until next Tuesday and then she will be returning to Hellertown to Muffin who is missing her very much. Seems Muffin is spending a lot of time alone lately. Conversly, Jingles is loving the attention she is getting with Ruth being at the house.
I was working outside today and suddenly I heard a voice inside my head telling me to paaak the caaa in Baaston yaaadd. I truly will miss Steve. I am glad we had a chance to visit in September. Sandy and I have some really neat memories. Sorry, I can’t see what I’m writing anymore. Check in again soon.

Hey everyone, thanks to Eric I can now add daily updates to The Riley site.

Another good day for mom…. she had a chat with her doctor today about how far she has come in the past week and a half and the possibility of her going home to attend the memorial service for my father (which we have no exact plans and dates for yet). She had no visitors during the day but enjoyed the time to herself to take a nice nap and rest up between her therapies. She washed her hair by herself today and is really looking forward to seeing her mom tomorrow. She is so excited for her to see how incredibley far she has come in such a short amount of time!
My mother, brother and I are working on arrangements for my fathers service so as soon as we have definites we will be sure to let you know.
We would also like to say thank you to everyone of you for your love and support throughout these difficult times. We especially thank Aunt Sandy, Uncle Ron, Grams and Aunt Pat for doing so much!
Keep the email and mail coming because it sure does bring a smile to my moms face at the end of a long, hard day.

This post was moved from the home page to here:

Fund set up for Riley family

Obituary

For all of the latest and greatest updates on Aunt Linda’s condition, and/or information about the Riley family, please check out The Riley Page. I set up the page with all of the updates that I wrote up until November 11 in the left column. In the right column is a blog. The (we)blog is set up on blogger.com, which is accessible by anyone on the Internet. If you would like to be able to post to this blog, please just send me your email address. I haven’t talked with Shane and/or Stacey recently, but I’m hoping to get them posting pretty soon. As you can see on the page, my mother should also be posting updates.

As of Friday afternoon, they were going to wean her off of the breathing tube. If they were able to wean her off of the tube, they would most likely move her early this week. As of 10pm, she had pulled it out. She was dreaming about doing paperwork, or something like that, and pulled out the breathing tube. Good news - she is breathing well on her own. This means that they are looking at early this week to move her. Her right side seems to be getting a little bit better. She is starting to think a lot about her future, and the therapy/rehab that she is going to need to go through. She is a bit confused — she doesn’t remember anything about the accident, but does think that Uncle Steve was driving (which he was when they left where they were visiting, but had switched before the accident). She’s also hoping that another car caused the accident. Mom was mentioning something called ICU psychosis — a slight psychosis experienced by patients that are under the constant bubble that is the ICU — essentially, what happens to the mind after 2 1/2 weeks of sleep depravation.