Journal: 04/21/06

I think that this point I can stop noting when I go to work. I’ve become reliable enough that it is more worthwhile to note when I don’t go to work. Too much repetition makes these pages boring.

Otherwise, a good, but slow, day. Aside from the items below, I remain stable, awaiting the next developments.

Appointments to Cancel

I received a couple of letters from two of Joann’s doctors. They said that Joann had missed her appointments on April 17, 2006, and would she reschedule?

Yet another of those unexpected, pop-up things that is a loose end of Joann’s passing away. Joann had several doctors and as far as I know, only Dr. Stark, who was her doctor of record during her hospice, knows that she died. I called the two doctors who sent notices today and informed them of the change in her status. Joann didn’t keep a calendar of her appointments, so I don’t know who to call, all I can do is wait until they call or mail me, then I can update them on her status.

Although I should have anticipated these little prodding’s from Joann’s past, it still caught me unawares. There haven’t been any pokes from the past for a few days and I haven’t been doing any "housecleaning" either. This is still a reminder that it may be a year before everything is finally resolved for Joann.

Audio Books Arrive

In another flashback to a different era, audio books for Joann arrived in the mail today. At the beginning of March, Carol, the VNA Wellness person, signed Joann up with a program sponsored by the California State Library designed to ship audio books to the homebound. Joann was getting weaker and couldn’t comfortably hold a book, but she was quite a reader. After the books were delivered, along with a cassette player, Joann never listened to any of the books because she was too sick to have much interest in anything but television. After she died, I sent the unopened audio books and player back to the library.

I’ll send this batch of books back too, and give the library a call on Monday to let them know to stop sending the books. That reminds me that I have to give Rose the three books she got for Joann from the Harrison library in Carmel so she can return them. That’s a project for Monday as well.

Journal: 04/20/06

Yesterday’s entry was a day late because I had to dash out in the middle of the night to help my friend Rose identify where her panic attacks were coming from. It turns out that she had stopped using a particularly vicious prescription sleeping medication without weaning herself off it. I spent a couple of hours at her place and we finally had the chance to have the first face-to-face talk about Joann since Joann died. I think it was cleansing for both of us, we were able to get many things out in the open and she felt better when I left at 2:00 AM. Today she told me that she got some sleep and was feeling better, though she did take the day off from work. I, on the other hand, was a good boy and made it to work on time.

Bailing Out Joann

The deadline had passed by a day for me to pay Paul Mortuary the $400.00 I owe them. They haven’t called me and I have not called them either, though I will tomorrow. I will let them know that I need a little more time because the two donors I am working with don’t get paid for a few more days. I think they will go with the plan, especially as they have already cremated Joann and she is simply a financial hostage at the moment.

I am actually looking forward to having her home, though not as the centerpiece of my apartment. It will mean that I have finally finished that portion of my promise to her, even if I have to pay my donors back. Having Joann’s ashes back will mean some closure, as well as fine accomplishment.

Obituary?

Somehow, in my mind, my writing Joann’s obituary is associated with her ashes coming home. I hope that is the case, as I’m woefully late in crafting it. I guess it doesn’t matter when the obituary is published, so long as I get it done. When it is ready for publication, I’ll post it on this blog as well.

Journal: 04/19/06

This morning I woke up a widower. It feels like a new suit, with a stiff shirt collar and starched underwear. It’s uncomfortable, but I know that with wearing, the clothes will break themselves in. Other than that, just another normal day today. I’ve quit anticipating some intense emotional reaction on my part to Joann’s death, I’m spending too much of myself looking over my shoulder for the boogey-man to sneak up. There are two upcoming events where I might get emotional, my first day off next Monday and the return of Joann’s ashes after I finish paying the bill. I keep telling myself that my relatively low-key reaction so far is the result of Joann’s three-year progressive illness and that after such a long ordeal you get numb, but the upcoming opportunities to come apart will tell the story.

One True Love

I believe that in everyone’s life, there is that one true love, a life-love if you will (a term coined by my friend Rose), of which there will be no other. Rose and I were talking about this yesterday and she told me that my actions throughout my time with Joann and her illness, the way I performed home hospice, confirmed in her mind that Joann was my true life-love. I feel the same way, Joann radically changed my life and who I am during the three years we had together, and for that I will always love her completely. I can’t imagine any future relationship that I would want to be involved in with a person (cats are just fine). Joann and I were so simpatico that anyone else in my life would simply be a pale shadow of her, even as a memory.

Maybe its because this is Day 13 since Joann passed, but I knew long ago that I would never have another relationship like the one I had with Joann, nor do I crave or want one. The gift Joann taught me was how to be responsible for myself, not make rash decisions and above all, go with my soul. Where I had trouble living alone before, when in the past I couldn’t deal with my depression or the booze, Joann gave me some piece of her that totally changed all that. I’m not afraid to go on without her; I know she will always be with me, an inseparable part of me.

Cleaning Out My Cell Phone

If you’re like me, who keeps every, and I mean every receipt from every store or web purchase for years, then you must know what my cell phone is like. Cluttered with the numbers of dead people, deceased jobs and long dissolved businesses, it looked to be a daunting, emotional task to clean out my cell phone address book. For years, I never had a really good reason to clean it out, numbers kept accumulating as I sailed through life and I never thought to clean out numbers no longer valid. After all, I have space for hundreds of them, and I’m not that prolific about my contacts.

Once I started though, the task was relatively straightforward, if not eerie. I just didn’t dwell on it when it came to the names of dead people such as my great friend John Woodruff (died July 10, 2005), Joann’s mother Mildred (died January 11, 2006) and Joann herself (died April 6, 2006). Possibly, it didn’t affect me much to remove her name from the address book because I shut down her phone yesterday.

The phone’s out of the way, I wonder how long it will take me to clean out the address book on my laptop.

Journal: 04/18/06

I’m feeling a little disconnected, spacey maybe, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the nine beers I drank last night and the 3:30 AM bedtime. On the other hand, it could be that the unreality of the current reality is knocking at my door again. As the day at work wears on though, the feeling fades and the dull drabness of my job yanks me out of my torpor.

I made it to work today again and I keep thinking that so soon after Joann died, I should be really proud of myself for getting there. Today I restart my normal schedule behind the front desk, 1:00 PM to 10:00 PM, nine hours worth. I’m congratulating myself on the fact that I started out slow five days ago with short hours increasing every couple of days. I don’t think I could have made it if I had tried to work a full shift at the onset.

Tonight I’m going to try to get to bed earlier and drink less beer after I get home. That shouldn’t be a problem, with the longer hours comes shorter at-home time before bedtime. Less time to dwell on things.

Guilty Questions

Late at night, while I’m alone in the apartment winding down for bedtime, I replay the last three or four days before Joann died, when she was in a coma. I ask myself, "Is there anything I could have done that I didn’t?" Things like, should I have rolled her over more often, or did I give her enough wet mouth-swabs of water? Did I spend enough time with her? I know I religiously kept to the medication schedule set out by the VNA nurses because I have my handwritten log to prove it. I gave her swabs every time I remembered to do it, sometimes thinking I was giving her too many. When she developed that final-stage, characteristic fever, I kept cool washcloths on her forehead.

I know I did everything right and that Joann’s rapid decline after her stroke was irreversible, and it didn’t last long, thankfully for her, and me. But, sometimes late at night, I just wonder.

Letters to Dead People

Junk mail and missives from the medical community still keep arriving for Joann. If I need any blatant reminders that Joann isn’t here anymore, the Post Office will see to it. Yet another small detail in the transformation from married to widower that I never would have thought of before. There are many of these small things that keep cropping up in daily life and though disconcerting, I seem to be taking them in stride. As far as the mail is concerned, I expect to keep getting letters for Joann for a long time. It’s just part of the process and, in all fairness, I didn’t rush out and shout to the world that Joann is dead. I saved that for friends and family.

Shutting Off Joann’s Cell Phone

I shut down Joann’s cell phone today. Bill and I agreed that there was no real reason to keep it going, medically or otherwise. I find myself in this "unburdening" process more and more lately. Another minor detail, like Joann’s mail, that keeps cropping up with increasing frequency. All those tiny loose ends that have to be taken care of, each one driving the point home that Joann is no more than a memory. I did it without pain, just another task to do, like picking her clothes out of the dirty laundry because there isn’t any point in washing them. I haven’t got to the laundry yet though, I’ll let you know when I do.

Thieved Newspaper

I have to start going to bed at 1:00 AM instead of 3:00 AM or later, so I can get up earlier and get my newspaper. Living in a motel leaves the paper a target for any early or normal-rising guest, and some are simply opportunistic thieves. If the paper-person doesn’t toss the paper close enough to my door, I run a chance of losing my daily briefing of local events. As was her habit, Joann usually got up at 5:00 AM, she was an early riser, and picked up the paper soon after it was tossed. Because of my work schedule though, from 1:00 PM to 10:00 PM, I tend to sleep until 11:00 AM or so. This is not a good thing because it leaves the paper in plain view and occasionally I find it missing, as I did today.

Even though I can get all of the world, national and state news I want off several websites, I still like the feel of crisp paper in the morning and the local news with my coffee. The web still hasn’t mastered the local news scene the way it has with world and national.

The morning newspaper thing is just one of a myriad little adjustments I find myself making now that Joann is not here. I make the morning coffee now if I remember to, Bill has to boil eggs for my lunch, and I’ll have to adjust to fetching the morning paper. It’s tough fending for myself again.

Widower?

I was simply writing about Joann still getting mail, a normal enough event, when suddenly the word "widower" popped out. I have no idea why, maybe it was just the moment in time and my brain is trying to tell me something. I certainly have not once thought of myself in that light since Joann’s passing.

Widower? Widower? WIDOWER? WIDOWER? I’M A WIDOWER?

Talk about driving home the point. I guess something inside of me decided that it was time to move on to the next step, whatever that may be. I have never in my life thought of myself in that term, and no one else in the last twelve days thought to illuminate me. To everyone else I’m just plain old Scot. To ME I’m just plain old Scot, or I was until a few minutes ago.

I’m sure I will be testing this out as I blog along, so bear with me.

Widower. I’m a widower.

Journal: 04/17/06

I made it through Easter, though not without sorrow. Posting yesterdays blog entry helped me work through it. I made it to work today and that goes well. Joann’s son, David, called this afternoon and is planning to come down in a week or so to pick up some keepsakes. There are pictures here that are of Joann and her father Joe that really would mean more to David than to me. Other items might strike his fancy as well; he is certainly welcome to look around. There are enough things of hers left over, especially from the three years Joann and I were together, that I’m not concerned about "cleaning" her out of the apartment. I want to keep Joann’s essence with me as long as I can. After all, I’ll have her ashes for some time before I can complete that part of her last wishes. More information on that in the next section.

Last Wishes

I made several "last wish" commitments to Joann that I will work to keep. The main ones are as follows:

She wanted to be cremated and I managed that, though I haven’t paid the balance of the bill yet. So, donate if you can. I will get the bill paid, one way or another and bring her home. This was a two-part wish.

Joann and I discussed what to do with her ashes at some length. At different times, she wanted different things done, like being spread in the warm waters off Hawaii, or being spread over her parent’s graves in Modesto. She hated Modesto with a passion that kept her on the Monterey Peninsula for thirty years and I explained that it could be years before I ever set foot in Hawaii. In the end, she decided she wanted to be spread with me, our ashes mingling, because cremation is my wish also. She knows that I was planning on a long career of book writing or some such nonsense, and wasn’t planning to die for several decades. She wanted to wait, so I have a beautiful, hand-blown vase that she loved where she will reside until I join her. I’m not planning to have another relationship of any kind with anyone except some future cat; I would always be comparing other women to Joann. Anyway, the interest just isn’t there. I will keep this wish for her, as I’ll be too busy keeping her other wishes, as outlined next.

"Finish the damn book!" was the first on her list. I have been working to finish a book for several years and my life with Joann centered on publishing one. Not that I didn’t try, I won National Novel Writing Month four years in a row. For some reason though, after having started three books in a series, I never finished one. Joann knew that being a novelist was my passion. Too many years as a software engineer (35 to be exact) burned me out and this was my career move. Writing a novel was a concept she could understand and stood behind me with words of encouragement when I was blocked. It was her first wish that after her death, I get a book published. I will honor that wish.

"Take good care of yourself," was her second priority. She saw how I would get stressed-out by the crummy jobs, the hand-to-mouth existence, the long hours and pay only in return for rent. She knew how the stress hurt my body and saw the toll it took during rough patches. Joann took care of me by being there and understood that when I was alone I might falter. "Keep centered on the book, that’s your passion," she told me, and that is what I will do.

"Take care of Bill and Rose," was her third concern. Bill’s health isn’t the best and Rose tends to go off on tangents. They were both her great friends who helped her, and she wanted them to stay safe. Well, you can lead a horse to water, but I’ll do the best I can to keep a roof over Bill’s head, and Rose’s head out of the toilet.

"Take care of David," was always on Joann’s mind. She worried that when she passed away, her son David might get a little lost. David, as I have come to know over the last few weeks, is a stronger person than she might have given him credit for. It was a mother’s concern for her child though, and I can understand that. In the meantime, David and I have become friends, and I won’t let anything get in the way of that.

The "Book"

I don’t know what I’m going to do about the book yet. It seems to have morphed, yet again, into a different story. All the time I’ve been writing on one version of the book or another, I’ve never known the end of the story. I think now I do, and that changes things. Soon, once the wound starts to scab over a bit, I’ll start looking at all the chapters I’ve written across all three versions. I have some new ideas, and the story may have a different point of view, but it will still be the same story, Joann’s and my story.

Waiting for the Breakdown

I keep thinking that there is going to be some sort of massive emotional breakdown in the offing, but I’m having other ideas now. I haven’t felt the need to rend my clothes, throw myself on some alter, or any of those extreme grief things. I think it’s because I lived with Joann’s illness for three years and took her through home hospice. I remember when my mother died after a yearlong illness. My father, who is retired, spent every waking hour at the hospital by my mother’s side. After she passed, he seemed to say that her death was anti-climatic. It was expected and a long time in coming. Shortly after my mother died, Dad picked up his life and moved on, much to his credit.

I can see myself in much the same situation. It wasn’t just the last two months of Joann’s life that figures into this, it is the entire three years. Sure, I spend a fair amount of time being weepy, but I don’t think I’m going to be committable. I miss Joann terribly, but I knew this would be the outcome and Joann would not respect me for putting myself into a pity-party. All of her wishes for me centered on life, not depression and darkness. I just notice all the little differences, shed a tear, write about them and move on. After all, I have several wishes from her to complete.

Six Were There, Three Are Gone

In the picture below, you see the group wedding shot taken when Joann and I were married on October 27, 2004. From left to right are Bill Walker, Bill’s friend Jeanne, myself, Joann’s mother Mildred Mahan, Joann herself and Joann’s son David.

Looking at it the other day, I realized that this picture represents the "good old days," the time when we were all together, if not geographically, then at least in spirit. Joann would call her mother every night and talk for an hour or more, and Jeanne lived nearby and spent a lot of time with Bill.

Now, there are only three in that picture, the three men. Joann’s mother passed away on January 11, 2006, Joann passed away on April 6, 2006 and in January 2006; Jeanne became ill and moved in with relatives in Redding, Ca. David lives in Sacramento, Ca. but I still count him in the picture; he doesn’t have major medical problems like those that caused Jeanne to leave the Monterey Peninsula. Bill still calls Jeanne nightly though and stays in touch.

In four months, Snug Harbor reduced to two.

Journal: 04/16/06

It’s Easter Sunday today, and ten days down the road now since Joann has died and I need to take a snapshot of where I’m at, or not. It’s been a rough time for me and I’m sure the worst hasn’t even stuck its snotty nose over the horizon yet. On the inside of the "grief container" as I am though, I don’t have a yardstick to compare things with, so I’ll just have to keep on writing and working things out. At the end of this post is a "Plea for Money," with all the appropriate reasons. I’m really, really broke.

Wellness Check

At the moment though, I appear to be functioning in real-time, getting up in the morning and going to work, coming home at night and eating or playing cards with Bill. Last night I even managed to get out a 2200-word post on the eight-day hole in this blog. Nevertheless, I seem to have been "automatized," merely going through the motions day to day. The good thing is that I’m getting the beer back under control.

Well into detoxing, my body is starting to respond to food. During the time Joann was in Home Hospice, I didn’t eat regularly, if at all, and paid the price for it. While I lost some weight in that two-month period, much of my weight was maintained by the calories in cheap beer.

I’ve also noticed that, while I’m going to work for limited periods now (seven hours today, up from four hours a day for the last couple of days), I haven’t done anymore "housecleaning" of Joann’s things. Maybe I can only do a couple things a day right now? That has the ring of truth to it.

One Big Gaping Hole

I knew before how much I thought Joann was a part of my life. I know differently now—she was more in my life than I was, almost. She was there when I got up in the morning, there when I came home at night. She made the morning coffee and got up at 6:00 AM to get our morning paper. She was the third hand at the card table when Joann, Bill and I played gin rummy. It was her things from her storage locker that helped make Snug Harbor a home. She made the apartment, old and new, a home working with what she had and a good sense of family. Her decorations graced three years of Christmas trees, and her homemade oatmeal cookies were the gifts we gave the motel maids and our friends at Christmastime. She was the last person I saw at night when I went to bed and the first one I saw in the morning.

Now, there is this big gaping hole in my life. My life-companion, the one whom I could always talk to, share dreams with, support when she was having a bad day, as she would for me, is irretrievably gone, never to grace my life again in any other form than a sweet memory. There is no one else in my life that is all those things Joann was to me, all at one time, and there probably never will be. It’s the learning to live with that wound, never to completely heal.

Today is Easter and this is the first holiday Joann has missed, and been missed. No egg coloring, as she loved to do, no marshmallow chicks and bunnies, no Easter ham from Bill and no Easter cards swapped between the three of us. Only work to keep me distracted and an empty apartment at the end of the day.

I don’t know how much further I want to go with this, so I think I’ll stop here for this entry and continue later on this subject. I expect I will be revisiting it a lot in the next few months.

Plea for Money

Thankfully, the VNA, via Medicare and Medi-Cal, supplied everything I needed to take care of Joann through the two months of her home hospice. It’s the quitting of my job for a month and the mortuary fees that are killing me. I work in exchange for rent and no money changes hands. Joann and I lived off her monthly Social Security check, hand-to-mouth, and were always short a week before the end of the month. We did not have any savings, as we lived way below the poverty line. At the moment, I am $1000.00 in the hole with no hope of paying off the debts. So, this is a beg for donations, and as soon as possible, please. The mortuary isn’t going to wait and I really want her ashes back. Donate $50.00 or more and Bill Walker will contact you to select a piece of his art. All donations will be posted on this blog, unless the donor wishes to remain anonymous. Thank you. Use the PayPal button at the bottom.

Say an Easter prayer for Joann.

Journal: 04/10/06 to 04/14/06

Lots of stuff to tell in this post, but first:

Sorry I Missed the Last Week!!

So much stuff went on after Joann died that I stayed overwhelmed for a week. Yesterday, April 14, I went back to work for four hours yet slept the rest of the day. I felt like I had been beaten with hardwood bats, I was so sore all over. This whole adrenaline run for the last two months or longer made me both a physical and emotional wreck.

I have been trying to put together a blog entry for the last several days, but every time I approach the subject, I get out only a few sentences and then become so distracted that I can’t continue. Its not that I’ve been neglecting my readers, dear constant ones, just that I’ve either been busy or in heart-soul pain on a level I’ve never experienced before. To get things rolling though, let me start at the beginning—when Joann passed away—and offer up this outline of events to catch everyone up. This is a long entry, but stay with it.

Joann’s Cremation Fecalith

Everything went no detours, free hand-basket included, straight to hell hours after Joann passed away, beginning with the mortuary.

Time-Line after Joann Passes Away

04/06/06 3:45 AM—Joann passes away. I call the VNA for the next step. I also call Bill, Rose and Joann’s son David.
 

04/06/06 5:30 AM—Paul’s Mortuary comes to collect the body. VNA nurse dumps all narcotics prescribed by the VNA in the toilet. This phase is now over.
 

04/06/06 8:30 AM—I call my friend Rose and am shortly over at her house shedding stress with a few drinks. During this time, the Paul Mortuary calls and we set up an appointment for later in the afternoon so a representative can get the paperwork together and I can figure out how to make payments for Joann’s cremation. AdvantaCare®, the service used by Medicare and VNA for all of Joann’s medical appliance needs also calls and we set up an appointment for the next day to have everything picked up. At this point, everything looks okay, except that I’m feeling lost and not sure where to take the next step. I’m back home by noon.
 

04/06/06 Early Afternoon—The Paul Mortuary representative and I meet and she collects all the pertinent information. I’m not having a good time, but Bill is on site to lend moral support and nudges when I freeze up. My brain does stick a couple of times, I forget the name of Joann’s father, a tidbit of information I knew well (Joe Mahan), the place where she was born (Phoenix, Arizona), and her grandparent’s name, that I never knew but I’m sure the relatives did.

Then I ask about payment arrangements. Now, I’m thinking that I’m just like everybody else, when a spouse dies, you get to make payments if you are, understandably, a little short. Well no, not in this case. You get to make payments if you are still alive, making payments on yourself, or your spouse is still alive, and you are making final arrangements. It appears that in this day and age, dead is dead and too many people are dropping corpses off and just walking away thinking they are done with their job. This attitude makes it tough for those of us who really need some slack cut so the County doesn’t get involved.

Understandably, I’m a bit depressed and yet again, overwhelmed, knowing that Joann is going to lay in mortuary limbo, equivalent to lying on the bank of the River Styx, until someone pays the Ferryman to cross.

I went back to Rose’s place for a couple of hours to mull all this over. I had until Wednesday, April 12, to come up with $1500.00 to complete Joann’s wishes, and not an iota of an idea or what to do about it if I had one. Additional input was necessary. Rose made some phone calls, but that didn’t make things any better. In the end, she remembered that when her brother-in-law died her sister had to use her credit card to have him cremated. No payments there.
 

04/06/06 Early Evening—I’m back home again and not doing well. Freaking out seems to be the order of life today and I haven’t had time to be sorrowful yet, though I know I need that desperately. It becomes an empty night calling my family and letting people know what happened, drinking beer, and hoping tomorrow will be better. It wasn’t.
 

04/07/06 (Friday)—AdvantaCare® comes over to pick up Joann’s hospital bed, SAT monitor, wheelchair, oxygen tanks and oxygen compressor that she has had for two years. I try to start cleaning out the stuff left behind by two months of VNA Home Hospice care, especially the things from the last week. The VNA came over to give Joann baths in the last week because of her stroke and left many things that needed to be tossed out. This would be the mantra of the rest of the week ("tossed out"). In the beginning, I thought I would make a sweep through the apartment and get all the obvious items in a garbage bag. Five minutes later, I decided to take it a little bit at a time. I simply couldn’t deal with the reality of cleaning house yet. Too much of Joann was here, and I didn’t want to make her go "there." Rose did come over and pick up a couple of Joann’s things she wanted and I was glad there was a use for some of Joann’s stuff.
 

04/08/06 (Saturday)—By Saturday April 8, I’m just a walking sore. Disconnected from everything except the task of raising money to cremate Joann. I go over to Rose’s place to get away for a while and talk to someone other than Bill. Yes, Bill is a great friend, but you have to talk to more than just one person who knew Joann. I’ve been dealing with her son David and giving him reassurance, now its time for me. Bill probably needed the break as well. Rose was going to barbeque a couple of steaks but I found I couldn’t stay long enough to make that happen. In the mid-afternoon, I took my leave and went home with one of the raw steaks thinking I would make it up at home. The steak still sits in the freezer.

Bill Walker, consummate roommate, artist and friend told me that he was opening up his entire collection of art as gifts for donators to Joann’s cremation. Paralyzed as I was about Joann’s cremation, and at a complete loss for any way out, this gives me hope. There are many unanswered questions, such as how we are actually going to do this in such a short time frame, but at least I can sleep tonight.
 

04/09/06 (Sunday)—The day before I had been called by the managers of the motel and asked if I would work for three hours. I thought that I probably needed to get away from the apartment for a bit and have some semblance of normalcy, so I agreed. Today I worked three and a half hours and it was liberating. I didn’t have the beer breakfast I had been used to for weeks, and I was able to deal with people without my pain getting in the way. Aside from the exhaustion after my shift, I wasn’t too depressed. Bill and I had dinner and a short game of cards. After some television, I was ready for bedtime. I was still on my adrenaline run and stressed about getting the money for Joann’s cremation, but I felt a smidgen better.
 

04/10/06 (Monday)—This is the first day of hunting for donations. I really didn’t have a clue what I was going to do. Whom do I call? Where do I go? Bill and I spent the day strategizing, thinking that people would be eager to get a piece of art in return for a donation of some kind. In the end, the economy is tight, all I know are motel people and the motels are doing poorly this winter, and we were out of time. Bill’s offer would have made sense if it had come a month earlier, but who was to know? There simply wasn’t time to put art pieces on EBay, make flyers to paper the city with cries for donations, there wasn’t even time to put pictures of his art out to my website and attach a link to this blog. I was sitting on the train tracks waiting for the juggernaut to hit. Late at night, I decided to grovel and do a little direct donation hunting from my past employer. Sleep would have been slow in coming, if not for the sleeping pills I’ve been taking lately.
 

04/11/06 (Tuesday)—Groveling is part of my way of life. I had to fight my current bosses for the time to stay at home and take care of Joann. I groveled to keep my job. This day I went groveling to my former bosses for a donation I was sure they would have a hard time making. By the end of the day though, I had a commitment for $400.00 for Joann’s cremation, with the proviso that I would pay it back in a month. By this time, I was willing to take any conditions. Then I tackled my current bosses for more. They gave me $100.00 that I didn’t have to pay back; I just needed to get to work again. The theory was that if I had some money, I could back off Paul Mortuary a little longer. I would be able to pick up the $400.00 tomorrow, deadline day.
 

04/12/06 (Wednesday)—This morning started with a call from Paul Mortuary saying that they would make a new contract with me. The total price was now $900.00 instead of $1500.00, and they would accept the $500.00 in donations I had raised, giving me another week to pay off the remaining $400.00. After a wait until I could get in touch with my $400.00 donator, I picked up the check at their offices, called the Paul Mortuary representative, and the transaction was completed by evening. Joann would be cremated on the ‘morrow. I felt as though a great weight had been lifted, I could finally complete Joann’s final wish, at least the part about cremation.
 

04/13/06 (Thursday)—I had been scheduled to go back to work on Wednesday, but I put that off for a day to deal with the mortuary. However, a different problem surfaced this day and I had to move my work back another day, and the boss gods were not happy, but it was necessary. In the afternoon, Bill and I ran out of time on the outside storage we were using in front of my apartment. Most of the stuff was Joann’s clothing; she had a lot of clothes and shoes. In our society, it seems to be okay if live women resell their stuff in "recycle" stores, but nobody wants to wear dead women’s clothing. I had spent all week trying to give Joann’s things away, but no one wanted them, and Bill and I were out of time. I also cleaned the closet in the apartment of her clothes as well believing that no one would want those either. It was a traumatic time, having all her things go to the Marina City dump, but I didn’t know what else to do. I still have some of her things in the apartment awaiting her son David’s picking over, but the bulk of Joann’s physical life is gone now. Her memory and presence remains as strong as ever.
 

04/14/06 (Friday)—Went back to work today, without the beer breakfast. The deal with the bosses was that I start at four hours for the first two days, six hours for the next two days, and then back to the usual nine-hour daily grind. I figured that I needed to work back into this gradually. Truth was that I knew I needed to start sleeping a lot. Sleep repairs the body and mind, and in my case helps me detox from all the beer I’ve been drinking to get through this. I need the job, people have to go on and I’m not into being homeless. Work went fine; I was exhausted at the end of my four-hour shift and took a good three-hour nap when I came home.

So ends a rough eight days. Sorry it took me so long to get back on-line, but death-in-the-family is harder than I thought it would be. I hope that at this point, I can get back on a regular posting schedule.

Thanks for staying with me through this.