They say the darnedest things

Over the years I've seen an endless variety of adorable pictures and stories of stuff my niblings have done or said. My closest approximation looks a little something like this:

Times three. 

Sometimes it's colorful anecdotes in the life of a Florida native who managed to spawn the man I love. For instance, my husband and a friend were out with my father-in-law earlier this year and stopped to grab lunch. It was my husband's friend's first time meeting the old guy. At the restaurant, my husband's friend grabbed a handful of napkins to bring to the table. My father-in-law looked up, saw the wad of paper and bellowed, "Did you get those for your face or to wipe your ass?" And cackled. That's the least offensive thing I can think of to use for him. 

For my mom, it's more about how far out of reality she is at the moment. And as embarrassing or funny or inappropriate the older men in my life can be, for her it's about figuring out long it's going to take to reel her in. It's a clue as to how elaborate the hallucination is. Is she accusing us of putting snakes in the bed, is the dog looking sad, is the book she started reading giving her messages? All these things are so routine for us and yet probably not the norm in most households. This kind of thing is not exactly what my siblings want to hear about when we exchange texts.

And then there's my dad. Who seems to be spinning out of his orbit at the moment. A lovely combo of aging, deteriorating filter/give-a-damn and stress. Today while I was driving him on an errand, he threw a curve ball. "So, you know how we've talked about pre-planning arrangements and all that?" I've been trying to get my older folks to make some decisions and take care of a few end of life arrangements for years. Not because I enjoy the idea of my parents dying, but because I've been through both no plans and fully planned and the latter is totally the way to go when grieving. 

"Yeah," I offered. This topic hadn't come up in a while. "What do you think about donating our bodies to medical science?"

What do I think? How about what do you think? Because I'm thinking this isn't the topic for when I'm driving.

He was kind of excited with the idea but kept pressing me to give him my thoughts. I wanted his thoughts and eventually I discovered his excitement was from the idea of how inexpensive he thought it would be. 

Instantly I thought about texting my siblings. Shouldn't they share in some of this?