It has been a rough two months.

On June 5th, my wife Donna, who I have been married to for the last fifty-one years, died. On June 1st, after playing the organ for two church services at our local church, Donna came home to fix lunch. I was at the other end of the house, working on my computer. She let the dog out, and while she was standing there watching him, she got dizzy and fell backwards into the kitchen. She hit the floor, smacked the back of her head on the linoleum, and passed out. I didn't hear her fall. Instead, when she came to, I heard her calling to me and ran to the kitchen. She said she was okay, so I helped her to a chair and she rested for the rest of the day. At seven AM, Monday, she woke me up and said that she couldn't move and was having trouble breathing. I called an ambulance and followed it to the hospital. They did x-rays, where they found that she had fractured four of the vertebrae just above her pelvis, and when her shoulders had hit the floor she had broken (or fractured) four or five of her ribs. She'd also given herself a mild concussion. Her breathing worsened during the day and Tuesday the doctors tried adding a c-pap type mask to add low pressure air to help her breathing. When her chest had filled halfway, another rib broke and she went into convulsions. They could not intubate her because that would have broken the remaining intact ribs. They put her in a room on the Pallative Care Floor and on Wednesday night she died of respiratory failure. The next morning the doctors found that one of the ribs she had broken on Sunday had cut the outer lining of her stomach and she had been bleeding into her chest cavity, which had caused her to lose the ability to breathe.

Donna had been handling all out finances (due to my dementia) and for the last two months I have been sorting out all the billing and payment of bills.

It's been a mess.

charlie.