My brothers and I decided to make a trip to South Carolina to celebrate our Mom’s 85th birthday.
The story of that road trip is part one of this story. You can read it here. It was my intention to write part two right after I posted the first part. I started writing it, but couldn’t put it together. I just felt like I didn’t have enough to make a blog post. In retrospect, the problem was that the story couldn’t be written because it wasn’t over yet. It is now. Part two is about celebrating our Mom, her 85th birthday, her life, and her death.
The Long Goodbye
Mom had Parkinson’s Disease. By the end, she had struggled with it for 30 years. The disease took her from us, bit by bit, over those years until she became a shadow of the creative, intelligent, hard-working woman who loved, cared for, and raised us. To be honest, the Mom we knew, the one we could call if we had a problem, needed advice, a recipe, or just needed to hear her voice, has been gone for almost 20 years. It started when just calling her to talk about a problem would upset her too much, so when we talked, we always said, “everything’s fine,” even if it wasn’t. And then she couldn’t remember those recipes. And sometimes didn’t know who we were. Then finally, on days when she was lucid enough to remember us, she could barely speak.
And so, as it goes in the cruel “long goodbye” of dementia, we have been mourning the gradual loss of our Mom for a long time now. When she was able to communicate it, she would say, that she didn’t want to keep going. She didn’t want us to keep planning events and things for her to look forward to, and live for. “No more carrots,” she would say. We understood. She had so little quality of life, and just getting through a day was a monumental effort that wore her out more and more. She wanted to rest. She wanted to be done. And by the end, we all wanted that for her.
Happy Birthday and Goodbye
Her 85th birthday was February 26th. We decided 2 weeks before to make the trip for a birthday party. We celebrated at my parent’s house on Saturday the 25th with a meal, and a cake, flowers and balloons. She was with us that day. She smiled, laughed, and snacked on candy. And I saw her a few times, just sitting and watching her gathered family as we made our silly jokes, and teased each other as siblings do—even when they’re old. We sang happy birthday, and posed for a family photo at the dinner table. When it was time to go, we all hugged her and told her we loved her, and, as we had each time for the last decade, we left knowing in our hearts that it could be the last goodbye. This time, it was.
March
February turned into March, and my Dad said, “Mom hasn’t eaten since the party.” A few bites here and there, but that was it. She didn’t even touch the leftover birthday cake. She was dehydrated and becoming very weak. He took her to the hospital, but they sent her home the same day saying there was nothing they could do for her.
As the last week of March began, news from my Dad was dire. Mom was winding down, and he was facing tough decisions about end-of-life care. He took her to the hospital again. We asked if we should come. He said, “not yet.” So, we waited for news at home for a few days. On Wednesday, March 29th, my brother Dave and I decided it was time to go. We started out from our Nebraska home by car at 2 p.m. and drove as far as Columbia, Missouri.
Too Late
We had waited too long. At 4:19 the next morning I got the call in the hotel room. Mom had passed away in the night sometime between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. on March 30, 2023.
What I felt in that moment, was kind of a quiet relief. Relief for Mom, that her struggle was over. Relief for Dad, his long, constant battle to keep and care for mom was finally over.
We got back in the car and kept driving toward South Carolina. We stayed until after the funeral a week later.
As that funeral week progressed, and still even now, I found myself grieving my Mom in a way that I had not expected. My Dad had given me Mom’s wedding rings. I wore them because I was afraid of losing them before I got home. Every time I looked down at them, they reminded me of her. They were a part of her for my entire life. She never took them off. I would turn them on my finger and see them on her hand. And once again, I missed that long lost Mom who was my strength and my haven until Parkinson’s disease stole her away.
Still today, I am glad for the release of the shadow of my Mom, deteriorated and punished by her disease. But I mourn anew, the person who was my Mom. I miss the artist, the poet, her dark sense of humor, her passion for animals, and her unconditional love for her husband and children. I miss her voice on the phone that somehow could make my burdens seem lighter.
But truly she is not gone. I carry so much of her with me in the person that I have become. I have her dark sense of humor and her creative nature. I have her hands. I look very much like her, and I’ve been told that I even have some of her mannerisms. She is a part of me, and I am her in so many ways. Barbara Knight, my Mom, will always live on in her children, her grandchildren, and on down the family tree.
We said the last goodbye on her birthday. But now, there’s no more need for goodbye, because Mom will always be right here, in our hearts. And she is coming along with us to see where our journey takes us from here.
Take Action
If you knew my Mom, or if you would like to take action against Parkinson’s disease, please consider donating to the Kirk Gibson Foundation for Parkinson’s disease Research. You can donate here in memory of Barbara Knight by clicking “Dedicate this donation.” Our family would be truly grateful for your contributions to the fight for a cure.
A few months before a tick bite made me allergic to meat we had made a bulk purchase of beef. Along with a couple of friends, we split a cow 3 ways and filled our freezer. Fast forward a few months, and I could no longer eat the beef. I couldn’t even cook it for my family without provoking an allergic reaction. So the beef sat in our freezer taking up space that I needed for stocking up on non-mammal foods.
If you’re not familiar with the Alpha-gal Syndrome meat allergy, you can find more information here.
Snow Goose Hunt
In late February of this year, my husband had planned a Snow Goose hunt with his brothers and nephews. Nebraska is in the migration path of literally millions of birds in the winter including Snow Geese, Canadian geese, Sand Hill Cranes, and more. In some parts of the state there is no limit as to how many Snow Geese you can take.
How About a Trade?
As the date approached for the Wisconsin and Michigan Tyler Clan to come to Nebraska for the hunt I started talking to my Sister-in-law about the trip. She wasn’t coming, they have younger children still in school and farm animals to care for. Among those animals is a growing flock of ducks. She mentioned having quite a few of them and needing to cull the flock. I had not been able to find duck in the grocery store since Christmas and I was getting pretty tired of the turkey-chicken-turkey-chicken meal rotation. So, I offered her a trade! How about I send home all of this beef in exchange for some of those ducks? She agreed!
The day of the hunt arrived along with the hunters! They brought me 10 ducks and headed out to hunt for snow geese.
Plucking Ducks is Hard Work
They left for the hunt early Tuesday morning and I went to work on the ducks right away. I had asked for them to remove the heads and feet, but please don’t skin them. I wanted the fat to render for cooking! Trust me, I knew how much work it was going to be! But I felt like it would be worth it. I laid the ducks out on a table in the garage and got to work. I worked all day and into the next day plucking ducks. And then dipping them in wax to help remove the down.
By the end of the day on Wednesday I had 10 beautiful, skinned ducks! Once again I laid them out on the table to admire my work!
When the guys came back from the first day of the hunt Tuesday evening, they had 63 snow geese to clean! They removed the breasts and went back out to the field the next morning.
Duck, Duck, Goose!
On Wednesday I finished plucking and waxing the ducks. Then I cleaned and removed the shot from the goose breasts from the hunt the day before. As I was cleaning the goose breasts I noticed a little tenderloin on some of them. So, I separated those out and cooked them for the guys when they came home that night–with another 87 geese. Here’s my recipe for Goose Breast tenderloins.
On day three, I cut the ducks up into breasts and leg & thigh pieces for the freezer. Then, I trimmed the fat and removed the remaining skin from the carcasses.
On day four, I rendered the fat and boiled the carcasses for stock.
I ended up with a lot of goose breasts, 20 duck breasts; 20 leg and thigh pieces; a quart plus about ¾ cup of duck fat; and 16 pints of stock.
It was a monumental amount of work and it took about a week for the arthritis in my hands to settle down from all that work. But it was totally worth it! And, I didn’t spend any money except for the original cost of the beef, which I couldn’t use anyway. My freezer is now filled with alpha-gal safe, red meat poultry! It’s a well-earned victory in the never-ending Alpha-gal Syndrome quest for safe, satisfying, and affordable meals.
Do you have a great food find or wild game story? Please let me know in the comments here, or on my Susan by a Thread facebook page!
Be sure to check back in on my blog recipes regularly or follow my Susan By A Thread Facebook page for the recipes I use to cook both the ducks and the wild geese. I’ll post them as I go. Here’s the recipe for our first Snow Goose steaks meal!
