Caregiver Burnout and Meme Therapy: Eulogy for Harry (3/31/14)

Sherri A. Nicholas Author

Documenting Dad's final days on FB became therapy and time capsule of memories bridging who I was with who I am after caregiver burnout.

Sometimes I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now

I've been on Facebook since 2008—back when it was just posts from friends sharing what they were eating and pictures of more food. No ads, no six-second videos.

Between 2012-2013, our lives turned upside down with accidents, medical emergencies, broken hips, unstable angina, and the death of our dog Otto. Otto was a juvenile diabetic who required insulin. He experienced blindness, cataract surgery, bladder stones and bladder stone surgery, but never wavered from greeting you enthusiastically when you walked through the door.

On September 26, 2013, my father walked into his backyard wearing a pair of ripped slippers (which we blamed for the fall)—not his staccato, wobbly walk or his decision to navigate uneven gravel in the backyard.That fall began my Facebook picture meme debut. I documented him from September 26, 2013—the day he fell and we called the fire department—all the way through March 31, 2014, the day he left this existence.

Creating these memes literally kept me entertained and focused throughout what was probably one of the most stressful times of my life.

This is when I experienced my adrenals going "on" and not shutting off until I collapsed in April 2014, just four days after my dad was buried.

I have a reference point and I understand what "being on" all the time means, and I know the false sense of well-being that adrenaline gives you.

I can't perform like I did 12 years ago. I'm the same person, but I'm not the same person.Every year on Facebook, the memories pop up—all the pictures I made into memes and the eulogy that I wrote and delivered at the funeral. I reread it to remember who he was and who I was.

As I write blogs more regularly and revisit all my Facebook posts, I decided to add both my parents' eulogies to my blog. I have always loved to write, and sometimes I write much better than I speak.

The "About" tab on websites—those beautiful pieces that tell you about the person—shows you what I want you to know about me. But I've decided to write the blogs first before really writing an extensive about myself. I will eventually have my that page completed. Until then, you could read Doodle, Teez or Blog and get to know me through my blogs, my take on energy medicine and how I understand energy and make it artfully fit into my life.

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The Eulogy of William F. Nicholas

4/4/14

The Beginning 

Fortune cookies, blood tests, x-rays, weather satellites, and horoscopes all have in common the agreed illusion to be predictors of our futures. We seek answers to the feelings of the unknown or we just live life everyday. We give the meaning to everything in our lives. So I’m here to tell you about a man with two first names William Nicholas…who you can just call “Harry”

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The Shoes & The Peanut Butter

He was born in 1932 in Shenandoah Pennsylvania, he was the oldest of five and he lost his father when he was about 11 years old. When he told those stories they were very matter of fact. He worked a lot of different jobs and I think he told me about Fr. O’Brien and a pair of new shoes in the same sentence. At 11 he was a boy who had to grow up quick. He said he stayed after school a lot and fixed the desks “he” somehow broke. The presence of the religious sisters and priest in his life I believe helped him grow up and be the responsible doer guy he was. He was a child of the depression and he scrapped every bit of peanut butter out of the jar way into the 21st century.

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Before HGTV was Cool

I’m gonna tell you what I remember and you’re gonna give your meaning to it. He married his counter part, my mom in 1957, and they proceeded to be “I believe” the very first Mr. and Mrs. THIS OLD HOUSE. They painted, wall-papered, paneled walls, planted, dug holes in the dirt and tore through and personalized every room in the houses they lived in.

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The Immaculate Tool Collection

His tools always looked new, and you could borrow them, but you had to put them back. Everything he owned had a place, “a very exact place”. He could paint the entire interior of a house “without” a drop cloth. He meticulously vacuumed the electrical outlets and polished garbage cans. He wore white 18 holed golf shirts till they were see through and taught my brother, Jeff, to watch him fix things. Something I didn’t “have to do”.

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The Dropcloth-less Wonder

He came to NJ looking for job in the 60’s and continued to send money to his mother and support his siblings like an older brother/father would. So he raised his siblings and they only ever had “good things” to say about him. He had “his own way” of doing things, but was known by a very small circle of people who knew him to lend a hand if you asked to fix anything and everything. He respected boundaries but spoke his mind pretty susyncally and sometimes “loudly”. Do you all know I live across the street from my parents, about 20 years now? Did you ever hear me tell about the time when my father asked me “when I was going to cut my grass”, just about the week we moved “across the street”…..wanna know how much a landscaper charges to cut grass a foot high….He never asked again. But he would cut his grass and sometimes wander into my yard and mow mine. He did his details (grass, garbage, vacuum, car stuff)…. more recently when he could no longer do “his details” I realized what “doing” really meant to him, doing for himself and having the option of doing for others. He piled leaves “neatly” and shoveled “promptly”.

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YouTube: Pineapple Jelly-Give Meaning to Everything

The Garage Door & Thermometers

He called his “neighbors” when they would forget to close their garage door around midnight. He could find anything in the dark and Justin came home once when he was 6-7 years old and asked why I “did not” have a thermometer in every window of our house. I said because thermometers didn’t mean that much to me, but they meant something to your grandpa. My father wrote the temperature every morning and afternoon and saved “all” the calendars, year after year. We can wall paper this church and cover all the walls with all the calendar pages.

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Combed His Hair

My dad accidentally cut his finger off in 1986 fixing something in the car…afterwards he washed up, changed his clothes, combed his hair, drove to the hospital himself and was surprised he was gonna have to stay after he gave them the tip of his finger on ice.

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Herb Alpert and Crumb Cake

I remember Herb Alpert Playing on Sundays all day and a story of him drawing a smiling faces on his socks when I was two to amuse me while he snoozed. He whistled and yelled, he drank coffee and Pepsi, he loved crumb cake and lemon merguine pie and oh yea Pizza Hut. I never remember him being sick. He didn’t like doctors and didn’t go. He navigated close to 80 years without anything major ongoing illness. He complied few years ago and let me get every orifice of his checked. He read my trigger point books cause I think it felt like a version of popular mechanics and he fixed whatever hurt him. In so many ways he was my best patient

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Life is Like Pineapple Jelly

Here’s what I’ll remember:

You grow up fast when its time - whenever that time is You keep your things neat cause it may be all you have

You lend a hand, but you don’t necessarily tell the world 

You take regular coffee breaks and you have a stash of goodies 

You snack in moderation and take a Nap in the afternoon 

You take a shower everyday and you clean the shower after you get out 

Like what you like and do what you do, cause life is like pineapple jelly 

Everybody doesn’t know it exists, but it does and it’s good with peanut butter 

Everyone in the world isn’t going to get to know exactly who you are. But, some people will.

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Garbage Day is Monday

This past Sunday he asked if the garbage was out, “don’t forget to take out the garbage its Monday”. He went to church every Sunday up until recently. He received Holy Communion  this past Monday morning and died 28 minutes later. My uncle Frankie, my father’s youngest brother visited him this past Saturday and told to me he felt peace from his brother then and had good some imagines and their ma and pop float into his head and then said “that’s life”…

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 The Happy Song

My Dad died at 9:48 am on March 31st the exact date of Ann’s father 44 years earlier. His last poke to his coffee drinking, peanut butter and lemon tart eating, lottery ticket-buying buddy. My dad and her dad poking at us both by playing with the date 3/31. We both took a breath and turned the radio just a few minutes after he took his “last breath”. 

The last 20 seconds of this song left a message to us all –THE HAPPY SONG 

🎶DON’T HOLD IT BACK 

I SHOULD PROBABLY WARN YA 

I’LL BE JUST FINE NO OFFENSE TO YOU 

DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME 

HERES WHY CAN’T NOTHING BRING ME DOWN 

MY LEVELS TOO HIGH TO BRING ME DOWN 

CAN’T NOTHING BRING ME DOWN 

I SAID IM SO HAPPY🎶

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Give Meaning to Everything 

There’s a time to live and a time to die
Someone’s going to leave and someone is going to stay
We’re staying for now
So give meaning to everything in your life, every situation, every moment, every event, and every person that enters because our lives were given to us to do just that.
Live and give meaning
Thanks dad for giving meaning to my life through yours


Yesterday March 30,2025 on my way to work, on a random radio station "Happy" by William Pharrell came on. I haven't heard that song playing on the radio in months, if not years. 

I took a screenshot, to remind me everything has meaning.

Trauma Healing and Twists in the Road: Eulogy for Phyllis Nicholas (1/25/19)

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