Sorry, grumps. I just realized I accidentally grumped in another thread not too long ago, and now I
need to grump that tune again. Reprise, if you will. "Black Dog" hitting closer to home.
Last week my sister-in-law was in the hospital, again, with "stomach problems", again. But, of course, even her closest family, neither sisters nor sons, were not allowed in to see her. It had been 2 weeks and she usually walks out, AMA, after 1 week. So another sister-in-law calls the hospital and keeps escalating until she finally gets an ICU nurse to admit that she's there, but HIPAA doesn't allow any other info. "Would you tell her that her sister wants to talk to her,
PLEASE! We've been getting stonewalled for too long.", she said. 4 hours later the nurse called her back and told her she's now on the approved next-of-kin list and that she's dying! WELL!
Many, many way
too many, more phone calls by sister-in-law and son to the
many doctors and nurses on the case later, everyone finally agrees on hospice care! Then the Marx Bros., and/or Murphy's Law kicks in such that the hospice drugs and the ambulance is
headed to the son's house, instead of her own home where the whole family is anxiously awaiting! 
Drugs return to pharmacy and ambulance returns to hospital for redirection while precious hours are wasted.
Her older son is a wreck, her younger son is a rock (but grinding his teeth to nubs). The whole family has been in such
harmonious agreement with the younger son's wishes it's scary. Is this really my wife's family? They've never agreed on anything! Even her bbdff* are in total agreement and loving on the whole family, as
never seen in past history!
TL;DR - Sister-in-law has been home on hospice since Monday evening. This morning the hospice nurse says she has "minutes to hours". Just now, as I'm typing this, my wife got the call that she has passed. Now the really tough part begins, with no will, no power of attorney, no insurance, no access to the small bank account. No funds for a funeral.
*
best
beer
drinking
friends
forever - her partisan posse; her gal pals who took her side no matter what; her unlicensed psychiatric therapists who also told her she was wrong when they thought she was wrong (though they still took her side against others!)
.
