Yes, I’m back and it was not a flounce. Are you all still here? I am, barely.
What can I blame the silence on? Work. Oh, yeah, lots of work. Lots and lots of work. I over-filled my e-mail box and was receiving daily warnings: Your mailbox is too full. Delivered by e-mail. How exactly was that supposed to help the too-full thing???
I fixed my house. For a few years, I had a hole in my house. Not a door or a window, but a hole in a wall. Clean your gutters! By failing to clean my gutters, they filled up (the closest tree is 100 yards away). Then the joins rusted. Then the water started hitting the wall of my house (in 1994). Somehow, stupidly, I grew attached to the first hole. I covered it with paper and my son, with great disgust, called it “the most ghetto thing I have ever seen in my life.”
Well, give me a challenge!
The second hole was over the window and it was scarier. We have these little storms down here, called hurricanes. Luckily we haven’t had one for a few years, but this year, we might. A hurricane 1 is not too bad for most people here—awful if you like your trees or live near power lines or have a lightweight house. I was worried that having a hole in my house would invite more rain than usual into the house during a hurricane.
I finally fixed it. The construction crew was impressed by the dead tree in my front yard that is feeding a large colony of . . . termites. The pier that holds up the west wall of the house had been eaten by termites. But that was long ago. Strangely, when I bought the house and had it tented and had termite people coming to inspect, no one noticed that damage . . . So I had that pier replaced and while they were working on that, they met the live termites eating my house in another spot.
That’s when I found out that my husband had failed to keep our termite contract up . . .
After being married all these years, we tend to not argue about stuff like that. Because he could bring up the tax letters I ignored for a while. . . Live and let live.
The termites will die. I promise you that.
In between all this and that, my poor mother died. She has been in a home in a locked ward for a few years because her alzheimers/senility/dementia had gotten worse and she had entered the paranoid stage. She believed that all the bad guys she had seen on tv were coming to get her. And that she was witnessing terrible things. With a heavy dose of anti-psychotics, she could remain calm.
At one point, the dosage was reduced and my sister, who was visiting her and taking care of the practical side of life for her, could have a conversation with her again. But my mother began to be agitated and violent again, so her medication was restored to calm her. For my sister, that was losing her again.
My father was living alone in their house and feeding himself. As my mother had gradually lost her daily routine, he had developed a number of theories about food and nutrition and was feeding himself according to them. The cans of spinach the man has downed in the last five years is awesome. Popeye must be running low.
My mother died of a bad cold or the flu. She was having trouble breathing and nothing was making her better, only more comfortable. The doctors told my sister to call the hospice workers. My sister called me. Eventually, she resorted to sending me an e-mail at work. Like I said, I had lots of work.
I spent a day arranging things like airfare and had a call that night from my sister. My mother was sinking fast and I could talk to her on the phone. My sister would hold the phone by her ear. We don’t know how much she heard or understood. My sister asked me if she should call me whenever Mom went, and we decided that I needed to sleep before the trip. I was barely able to pack as it was.
Around nine o’clock I felt like someone had come in the room. It was no one. In the morning, my sister called and we had both felt something, someone.
Bye, Mom. At the funeral, my father stood up to say to the assembled crowd, "How do you stay married for 64 years?" He answered, "Live and let live."
It’s been several weeks. I keep busy. There is always work.
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