life goes on for the living

I had a fairly normal day Wednesday but then I didn't have to talk to anyone, had three errands to run; took the recycling to the site, got a box from the post office to send all those jewels and lenses to my friend Steve in Colorado that does stained glass, and got another bucket of pecans cracked. So far I've shelled eleven and a half pounds of pecans and given away four. I'm still picking pecans up out of the yard and my neighbor's yard. So many leaves have fallen now that it takes longer shuffling through them but it'll be easier once Marc mows/mulches the leaves.

I went to SHARE Thursday and got lots of hugs and well wishes and every time I would tear up but it was good to be busy and have something to focus on. My station was a mess. Not a messy mess but nothing was in the right place and I had to rearrange everything back to the way I like it. On the other hand, yoga at Hesed House that night was particularly hard. Stephanie always starts out with quiet breathing and focusing on any aches or pains and emotions and how those emotions connect to your body and tears were just rolling down my face and I was thinking it was too soon, too soon, but once we got into actual body movements it was easier.

We had rain Thursday, nearly all day but it only amounted to 5/8”, and drizzly yesterday. The rain packed the leaves down and I picked up over two gallons worth of pecans yesterday. My little food garden is growing. The broccoli is starting to form. I don't know if you can see it in this picture (assuming I can figure out how to change the picture from MB to KB on my phone and add it in) but the very center is a tiny broccoli head. 

The cauliflower doesn't look like it's making yet but the cabbage is starting to form little heads.

Still no movement on getting the kittens fixed and moved to new homes. I feed them every night, Momcat still lets me pet her and last night I managed to stroke the two tabbies, one brown and the other gray, several times but only while they are eating. Their hunger is overcoming their fear whereas before their fear was overcoming their hunger. It still takes me several tries. The third kitten which resembles Momcat and is bigger than the other two and damn near as big as Momcat who is a small cat, still backs off and won't let me touch her.

Today I may try to get the pansies in the ground that I bought a month ago but it's still very wet and overcast out there or maybe I'll pack up the glass jewels or maybe I'll go poach pecans from the backyard of the vacant house that's for sale across the street or maybe I'll just sit and read all day and give my poor arthritic left thumb joint a break from shelling pecans.

Thursday I did something I don't think I would have done if my sister was still alive. It was almost time to lock the door and several of the volunteers were sitting around chatting when I walked up and one of them said they were planning a trip to Brookwood to shop for Christmas and have lunch and did anyone want to join them. Brookwood is a residential community for adults with disabilities and a wholesale nursery where the residents do all the work with supervision from planting the seeds to caring for the mature plants. They have a craft center where the residents make garden related items, a gift shop, a retail greenhouse, and a fabulous restaurant. It's been years since I've been out there and I had planned on suggesting a day trip to Pam before she died so I piped up, I'd like to go. Of course that night my social anxiety popped up, what have I done, but life does go on for the living even when there is a big hole you have to navigate around.

 

grief, dreams, and living

Today is grocery shop day and one of my nights to fix dinner and on top of that it's my turn to do the dishes when all I want to do is crawl back in bed. I don't feel like I've really woken up and was having weird dreams before I did, a series of weird vignettes which I suppose were connected in some way. I dreamed I was trying to wake up, was actually up and moving around but struggling to get my eyes open and when I did things were either so blurry I couldn't make anything out or it was a whiteout. I was in a room going through boxes of clothes trying to find something to wear. I wasn't at home but some other place, not a motel but maybe some sort of residence where there was some sort of gathering going on. Another scene I walked into a building or out of an elevator into a small room with only one other door. A man was in there and he gestured towards the door. I was going to a doctor appointment I think and I asked him if he knew the room number. No, he said, you'll have to call. I went through the door into a small landing with a very narrow set of stairs going down. Then I'm trying to find the number but I can't get to the calendar on my phone. Another scene I'm telling someone I'm going to my place at the table which I think is sitting on the table but when I get there I see there are two empty chairs so I sit in one. Another flash I'm struggling to walk/climb up a steep slope that others have already climbed.

Grief. This is something new to me. I've never really felt grief. Not when my grandmother died, well, maybe when she died but not like this, not when my aunts and uncles died or my father or mother. Real daily life is intruding and all I want to do is crawl in bed. It was easy to keep it at bay when family was here. Denise and Greg left Friday, Robin moved in to the house on Saturday keeping me distracted. But yesterday was, and today is, a little rough. I've been wearing Pam's long sleeved shirts I kept. The rest of her clothes that no one wanted are going to SHARE with m on Thursday.

I was ready to start going to yoga last night but Abby couldn't make it and I wasn't in any kind of mood to lead so class was canceled. This morning I did my home routine for the first time in over two weeks. I've been picking up and shelling pecans I get cracked. So far I've picked up 109 pounds not counting the full 1 gallon bucket's worth I picked up yesterday. So far I have almost 8 pounds of shelled nuts and have given away half of them to family and a neighbor who gives me honey from his hives and eggs from their chickens.

Well, I got the grocery shopping done and dishes washed and thank goodness I have enchiladas in the freezer from the last time I made them for dinner.

Damn. I updated my phone and now it and the desktop I'm not supposed to be using won't talk to each other anymore so I can't download pictures. I'm on my desktop to write this and publish it because using the phone is a pain in the butt. Maybe I can add a picture from my phone.

 

tech is a pain in the butt and cats

Trying to do everything on my phone is a pain in the butt. I managed to figure out how to comment on Steve’s blog as me but can only comment as anonymous on other’s if it lets me comment at all. Says I need to sign in with my google account but I already am as far as I can tell. When I click on the link it tells me no can do.

My grandgirl Robin moved into Pam’s house yesterday so now the boys have a human in residence instead of all those people in and out the last two weeks. They know Robin as she always house sat for Pam when she traveled but now they have a new resident as Robin brought her cat Noodle since she will be there for nearly a year. There’s been a little hissing but they’ll work it out.

Speaking of cats, a homeless mom cat with 3 kittens moved under Pam’s shed some months ago. She worked with the animal rescue group SPOT to catch Momcat and get her fixed and released back at Pam’s. She had been feeding them all and so I have continued. Now I’m working with SPOT to get the kittens trapped and fixed and rehomed. SPOT says they can be fixed at 3 months and we believe they are that old. They have a program called Barn Buddies for people who want barn cats to keep the vermin down.

I haven’t figured out how to reduce the size of the images before I post them here so I hope it’s not the 3MB the info says it is.

starting the new normal

I hope everyone had as good a day as I did yesterday. This house was filled with love and laughter and loudness. Myself and Marc, my niece and nephew in law, my daughter and son in law, my granddaughter Autumn and her boyfriend whom we met for the first time and I hope we didn’t overwhelm him, all gathered here bringing various assigned dishes to add to the meal. In the midst of the loss we all felt, we affirmed our love and life.

I’m composing this on my phone, first time to try this. When my sister died it was as if someone threw a bomb into the middle of my life. 

This morning my niece Denny and her husband Greg left for home in Albuquerque. Robin doesn’t move in until tomorrow. So the house is empty, all family back to their respective homes, the first normal day in 2 weeks only not normal.

And then this, it is possible my 14+ year old computer, so old it cannot be updated, is seriously compromised. In the last week or so I’ve gotten two emails, one on each of my two EarthLink accounts, from me to me citing different reasons why that email would be deactivated if I didn’t click the button to validate it. Spam, I ignored them. But then in between those two I got a another, from me to me, on my personal account claiming to have hacked me and a virus installed that gave access to every keystroke and unless I paid $600 in bitcoin he/it would release all the videos they captured of me masturbating to porn. Also spam except my password for EarthLink was included in the email. So I spent about an hour on Marc’s computer changing the password for all the email accounts, though I may have given access to the new one when I logged onto the Webmail and had to enter the new password. Anyway my tech guru nephew in law Greg said turn my computer off, don’t use it again, do everything on your phone and he’s sending me a Mac mini as soon as they get home. So now I have to spend the day changing that password on every account I used it on…on my phone.

And because shit comes in threes, my neighbor on the east side told me the other day that he’s thinking about selling his house and acre, has already shown it and got an offer but hasn’t made up his mind. He has several other houses so I expect he might go through with it.

Note to Steve of Shadows and Light: while I have been able to comment on other blogs on my phone, yours won’t let me. Says I need to log in but I already am.

no escape from reality

All the family has gone home with the exception of my niece, Denny, and her husband. They are staying at Pam's (the house is still hers in my mind) through Thanksgiving and leaving for Albuquerque on Friday. Saturday, my grandgirl Robin moves in to care for the house and the cats until next summer when the boys will go to Pam's grandgirl Abby in Cincinnati. And then Sunday, life will return to normal, or the new normal anyway, shy one very important person.

My sister has often been gone for two weeks at a time when she would go visit our brother or her daughter. So, two weeks, only this time she's not coming back. All her potted plants have gone to new homes, some taken by family, some taken at the memorial. I have enough of my own to care for without having to care for all hers though I am keeping a few.

There was a snafu regarding the death certificate that the funeral home was supposed to take care of. A doctor I never heard of texted me last Sunday to call him about the death certificate. He had no idea who Pam was, how, when, where, or why she died. He kept asking me questions about her health, interrupting me, not really listening to what I was saying. When I finally told him to stop interrupting me so I could tell him what happened from beginning to end (and he still tried to interrupt me twice...I'm not through, I told him), he said he was going to refuse to sign the death certificate, that the doctor at the hospital should do it. Good I said and how were you even contacted to do this. Some state agency which I forget what he said asked him to do it. Anyway, we contacted the funeral home and they took care of it. Death certificate has been signed.

Speaking of plants, my brother helped me dig up and move the plumerias and the night blooming cereus into the garage before he left. Another cold front blew in yesterday though it's just supposed to get down in the 40s. Next week I'll start moving all the small tenders into the house for the winter.

There will be eight of us for Thanksgiving and we're going to have it at my house this year instead of my daughter's. Today I made the cranberry sauce and did all the prep for the dressing...making the corn bread, chopping the veggies, cutting off the crust and cubing the bread set out yesterday to get stale; my two contributions to dinner. Tomorrow morning I'll fry the bacon, saute the vegetables, mix it all with the bread cubes and spices and chicken broth and stick it in the oven.

There is much to be thankful for and I will focus on that.

remembering my sister and holding her in our hearts

A week ago today I found my sister and just like that my life has changed irrevocably. Heartfelt thank yous to all who have expressed your love, sadness, and support. There is no way I could ever reply to each of you individually.

The first few days most of the family that gathered were still here, each of us supporting the other, while we dealt with the immediate tasks required after a death...contacting a funeral home and retrieving the body for cremation, acquiring the death certificates, reading the will, figuring out which of her bills were outstanding, getting access to her phone, etc. Her house reverts back to me and we have decided to just let everything sit for now although her kids, grandkids, me, my grandkids have tagged the things we would like to have, small things have already been taken. It's weird though to walk through the house and see little bits of blue tape with names written on it stuck on just about everything. We're going to keep the house as a furnished guest house for now since I don't have a spare room for when people visit. Her granddaughter who lives in Cincinnati wants 'the boys', Pam's two cats, but can't take them until next summer so my granddaughter Robin who lives here with her parents is going to move into the house in the interim and take care of them.

My sister was not religious and so there would not be a funeral or service or viewing but the family decided to have a life celebration for her on the following Friday at my house because it was bigger than Pam's house. While I had called everyone else to spread the word, Monday afternoon Denise and I went to Hesed House, a community resource center where my sister volunteered arranging the monthly EarthLab lectures, to tell the director, Stephanie, in person and she offered to hold it there on the back deck and pergola behind the Welcome Center which we accepted immediately since Pam was very involved with Hesed House and it is a beautiful space.

When we got there Friday afternoon they had set up tables and chairs, vases with garden flowers, tables for refreshments and one for a sort of altar with Pam's picture and flowers and bits and pieces of things that related to my sister's life. The weather was perfect. We had notified her friends that I had contact information for, the garden club of which Pam was a past president, the museum people where she worked two days a week, Stephanie sent out a notice to her mailing list and people came to honor and remember my sister. All the family that had been at the hospital returned plus her stepson from Virginia, her granddaughter from Cincinnati, and her brother from the PNW. 

My daughter created and printed out a beautiful eulogy and remembrance. 

Stephanie arranged for us to plant a tree in Pam's honor there on the grounds of Hesed House during the celebration. She gave the eulogy, she read what I had written out for me because there was no way I was going to be coherent, other people got up and spoke. We had a memory book for people to write in, something I've not had the courage to read yet.

It was beautiful and the hardest fucking day of my life.

Afterwards we all went out to dinner to celebrate her granddaughter Abby's birthday which was that day.

Seeing all the family together, still missing ten people, my brother and I marveled at how big the family has grown from the days when we could count us all on two hands and didn't need all the fingers.

who will help me bury the bodies now?

I am bereft. I am bereaved. The last person who has known me my whole life is gone. My sister, the person who knew all my secrets, the person who suffered and endured the same upbringing as me, the person who showed me how to wear a menstrual pad, who showed me how to hook stockings onto a garter belt, the person who never shamed me no matter what I had done, who became a second mother and grandmother to my kids and grandkids, the person who would help me bury the body, my best friend is gone.

Last Sunday in the early morning my sister suffered an ischemic stroke in a large vessel in her brain accompanied by bleeding. I didn't find her til 6 PM when I went to check on her after her granddaughter alerted us that she had not been able to get hold of her. Her car was in the carport and her house was dark. I found her laying on her back on the floor by her bed breathing raggedly but unresponsive. I called 911, I called my husband, get over here now. I called my daughter. It's bad, I said, really bad. I'm on my way she said. I called her oldest daughter who lives in Albuquerque. It's bad, I said, really bad. I'm on my way, she said. Calls started going out.

Marc was there, the police arrived almost immediately, the EMTS shortly after. Then my daughter arrived. The EMTs bundled up my sister and life flighted her to Memorial Hermann in the Medical Center in Houston, Sarah and I followed in her car. When we got there, the doctor met with us immediately, showed us the picture of her brain half full of blood, swelling and putting pressure on the unaffected half and brain stem, discussed surgical options to relieve that pressure but prognosis would be the same with or without surgery...if, and that was a big if, she survived the event, she would be an invalid with little motor function, perhaps some language ability, and a feeding tube. The doctor assured me that it wouldn't have mattered when I found her, even if it had been 10 minutes later. When they let us back to be with her in the ER, she was in a self induced coma and had been intubated.

Family started trickling in to the hospital, my son from the city, her daughter and husband from Goliad, my granddaughters from San Antonio, my granddaughter from Wharton, her granddaughter from Dallas, her granddaughter, great grandson and husband from San Antonio, her grandson from San Antonio, her granddaughter en route from Cincinnati, our brother en route from the PNW but these last two would not arrive until the next day; during the night all these people converged on the hospital.

They moved her to the neurological ICU and when my daughter and son and I and her daughter and husband got to that wing the waiting room was closed and locked so we just camped out on the floor in the hall outside the ICU while we waited for the nurse to come get us. The nurses broke all the rules and let more than the allowed two visitors at a time to be in the room, never mind that visiting hours had ended long ago but they knew their charge was dying and the family was there. So there was a steady stream of people leaning close and saying their last words, expressing their love and sorrow. When one of the nurses finally noticed the 15 or so people camped out in the hall she got the key and opened the waiting room. I stayed in the room with my sister.

Denise finally arrived at the hospital about 2:30 in the morning. Her arrival was the only thing I was waiting for. The floor doctor had already confirmed that my sister had only one autonomic reaction left and when that went she would be clinically brain dead, however long it took the heart to follow varied. I had medical power of attorney so it was my responsibility and order, my sister had a DNR and I knew her mind so I knew what to do but I wanted both daughters' confirmation which they gave. So when Denise was ready and since everyone was already there and there was no point in letting it go on another minute I told the floor doctor to remove the ventilator and allow nature to take its course. They let the closest family members, about 10 of us, be in the room while they removed the breathing tube and then we waited. They must have known that death was imminent to allow us all in there at one time and so it was. I say it took 10 minutes maybe for blood pressure and heart rate to zero out but really I didn't have much concept of time then. So sometime between 3 and 4 Monday morning, my sister's severely damaged earthly shell stopped functioning.