Waiting

Wow! Hospice does not waste any time. Well, I guess you really can’t afford a “6-8 week delivery” policy in this business. I got a call at 10 AM that a truck would be out to drop off the hospital bed, walker, side table and the commode(click if you’re a total nerd like me and were wondering what the difference was between a toilet and a commode.) I hadn’t really planned ahead regarding the set-up of these items, the bed especially. We live in a tiny 2 bedroom farmhouse that does not know the meaning of the phrase “open floor plan.” Cripes, we technically only have one bedroom since Caeley’s room doesn’t even have a closet!  I forgot to ask the delivery man his name, but I’m going to go with Steve. Steve helped set up the bed. At first, I thought to myself “what a waste it must be for these companies to give these beds to people who are only using them for a few months. I fast-forwarded to the day I was going to have to call the special collection trash pick-up to haul the mattress and bed away. No sooner did I start to worry about what an eyesore(and how totally symbolic and depressing an empty hospital bed would be at the curb in front of our house) when Steve mentioned, “When you no longer have a need for the materials, we’ll pick them up in a timely manner.” I nodded and said, “Oh, that’s good.” Then it hit me–this was a used bed. A used hospice bed. So someone died in it. Then I started to wonder if it was haunted. Not like there’s anything wrong with that. The peach farmer who lives across the road from us once told us that his grandparents had died in our bedroom. We’re knee-deep in death here. Steve showed us the ins and out of all our newly-acquired booty(except the commode) and was off to deliver another metal bed of death. Caeley quickly jumped into the bed and availed herself of the various modes: guardrails up/guardrails down, head up, bottom down, head and bottom meet in middle and flatten you into a pancake, etc. She was hooked. Jamey was fairly tentative. While he did appreciate the fact that the bed could be lowered to make it easier for him to get in, I think he was confused as to why the bed was there. We did manage to get some pics of him in the bed and, yes, Caeley and I did get him to pretend to play dead.