The last couple days have been relatively calm.
Nik and Maia left Saturday morning, and Penny had a nice FaceTime conversation with a friend from our time in Providence and a visit from my sister in the evening.
Today we had lunch with our Grand Rapids kids and then enlisted Penny’s assistance while we moved several boxes of things that used to be in her Calvin office from our garage to various other places in the house. She was able to to list a few things she wanted us to locate and to explain the importance (or not) of some of the things we discovered.
We discovered several gifts that she had been given over the years, including a picture frame I had given her long ago, when the kids were quite young. The frame holds a stack of photos in a sort of drawer, and if you pull the drawer out and push it back in, the next picture in the stack is revealed. It’s basically a mechanical version of the modern digital picture frame. We rifled through the stack of photos – mostly photos of the kids from our time in Providence and the first year or two in Grand Rapids.
Other than that, since Friday afternoon, Penny has mostly been sleeping peacefully with a few short conversations now and again.
In one of those conversations, Penny said to me, “I think I’m winding down.” She’s probably right. There are no more to do lists – just rest.
Pain has been managed pretty well, she hasn’t had any nausea lately, and we have had our best 48 hours of wound management. So she can rest.
Over the years she has tolerated a lot of pain and nausea, but she always said in end, she didn’t want to deal with pain and nausea anymore when they no longer brought the prospect of recovery and improvement. She just wanted to rest. At home, if possible.
So far, it looks like we will be able to check that off her list, too.