Ash Tray To Ashes

Then she started getting better...

According to Al, Diane was actually getting better and they were looking for a way to get her home. That was going to be a chore, since she'd need to fly with a doctor and nurse in a hospital plane, which meant they had to wait for an injured solider needing to return to Oklahoma or the vicinity. Once here, arrangements had been made for Diane to move to a an extended care hospital (since she would likely spend the rest of her life on a ventilator) in OKC and then to a full, long term care facility in Tulsa. According to Al, some of Diane's coherence and sense of humor (as it was) had returned too, since, while communicating via notes, she wrote down a request for a cigarette. Knowing Diane as I did, I bet she was serious!

As Al calls with updates, he also shares little tidbits that he'd come across. Among them, while Diane told Al she'd quit smoking, he'd discovered from talking with friends around the hood that she'd simply go down the street and mooch smokes off a neighbor and smoke in their house. Something else he discovered was that Diane would often go to the casino with her yard man. Through it all, Al was still sick over the fact that all Diane's stuff had been sold while she was still alive and that her coming "home" to find that out was "going to kill her." He was also convinced Michael had just pocketed all the money. Either way, I didn't care...I was out of this deal. Though I was glad Diane was recovering, the most life she was going to recover would be to spend her remaining days in a hospital hooked to a ventilator. Ultimately, she was well enough that plans were made for her to fly in a plane to drop off an injured soldier in Arkansas, and then they would would fly Diane back here.

My concern with the whole Diane situation went straight to zero on October 3rd, when my Dad had a mini-stroke and was hospitalized. After visiting him in the hospital on Friday morning, I get home to a message from Al and a call from my Uncle Ray informing me that Diane had died. Apparently, just three days before she would return to Oklahoma, she'd developed an infection her body had no ability to fight off.