The Great Lake State is melting. The Planet Ann Arbor melted quite a while ago (it was 84 today) and is pretty much all dried out. Back in the woods of the Great White North, snow persists.

April 10, 2011 was a Sunday and we were driving south from the yooperland after a weekend of visiting The Commander and a woods hike in deep snow. It was unseasonably warm although here in the Great Lake State we have weird weather ALL THE TIME. Re-reading that blahg entry, I apparently remember less about that day than I thought I did (click here if you want to read it). Apparently when we left the yooperland that morning it was in the 30s but at some point we had to turn on the Ninja’s A/C and the temperature read 81 degrees. Not unheard of in April but neither is 10 degrees.

Alas, the ensuing week turned out to be hellacious. We did not call The Commander for a few days. We BOUGHT A CAR the day after we returned (a Monday). It was the Mean Green Frog Hoppin’ Musheen. Bad thing. Not the new vee-hickle, that was fine. It was not calling my mom EVERY day. By the time I did call her, she was sorta slurring words. Turned out to be a minor stroke and I drove north to deal with everything that ensued.

She easily recovered from that and we were optimistic that she would live a few more good years (she was 90). Alas, that event marked the beginning of the last year of her life. I won’t go into the details of my guilt for maybe not helping her make the right decisions but this stuff is always SO hard. Assisted living? Yooperland (where she had friends) or Planet Ann Arbor. I didn’t think she wanted to move to The Planet. She said she didn’t want to move down here but who knows if that was true or if she didn’t want to burden me.

Not to get into this too much. These are the questions all of us ask ourselves when a parent dies and we wonder if we did enough to support them. But I started this entry thinking of the GG and our friend Joan hiking in the northern lower peninsula where Michigan IS MELTING!

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