No, Bill. After mom died, I personally either burned them up or watched as the people picked them up to archive them in their various agencies. She asked me not to touch anything or do anything until then, and I respected her wishes. I just stayed with her until she passed on at the Fort Belvoir Army hospital. A doctor poked a hole in her stomach while he was changing the tubes and she bled to death as she was screaming at him, "What in the h___ are you trying to do, kill me?" This was shocking talk from the refined Virginia lady. She was really ticked, for sure. Her living will orders were not to be intubated in the first place but they didn't pay any attention. She had gotten pneumonia from the casein in the tubed supplementation she was getting. When one is intolerant to casomorphine (casein, the dairy protein), the body develops antibodies against the foreign protein and the lungs fill with mucus. She was in so much pain because of heart disease, that it was a blessing in disguise. The person who did the autopsy said the bottom 1/3rd of her heart had been dead a long time before her physical death and each breath must have been awful. She never complained. She entertained a Naval Intelligence friend and his wife on Sundays, and even though her doctor told her not to eat fried chicken or cheese sandwiches, she would take one piece of bread off the sandwich and say it was 'lighter' and broil the open face cheese sandwich, not knowing that she was making plastic out of the cheese when she did that, or that the chicken that her friends brought her when they came had just as much cholesterol as a steak. She was afraid of hurting their feelings or making them feel strange so that they wouldn't come, so she never suggested a different meal, because she was so bored with ordinary conversation, like what one would hear at a senior citizens' center, after being called up by secret service agents and told "Look at the headlines on tomorrow's paper!" or giving her the latest tidbit that would never be published because it was top secret! She was like my dad's father, Col. George Van Orden, who started the Solesbury ? (near New Hope) volunteer fire department near their home in Pennsylvania because he was dying of boredom after retiring!
