A week and a day

 It was a week yesterday. Went to Fellowship today and was enveloped by hugs, condolences and offers of help when needed. While I never liked to ask for help 'before sick' and still struggle to admit the need, there is also the recognition that it includes opening up and being vulnerable. For someone who puts up a lot of walls that's something I need to work on, so this is the time. 

I can't say I feel a lot different. It comes in flashes, as others have said. I'm making more references to her, things she liked or said, Beth has been very patient with the frequent stories. I wore one of her nightgowns last night, didn't realize until this morning how threadbare it is at the shoulders and around the neck, such as in holes in the fabric and significant thinning. So that gets tossed, because that's when you need to be realistic. It's going to be different for me because, as even before the pandemic, we would go weeks at a time without seeing each other. We would talk once a week, and occasionally in-between, but we led pretty separate lives. Mom was happy in her world, and I didn't need her in mine. That's sad, isn't it? 

But she was there. She was a good listener, when she made the time. She was good at giving suggestions, rarely stating an opinion, as opposed to me who tells anyone what my opinion is, whether asked or not. She was good at giving another point of view. And she understood references to people from my past, or did until a few years ago. With her dies witness to much of my personal history, and that was unique. We liked a lot of the same things: ovals, scenery, craft shows, cobalt blue glass. 

Her favorite picture of herself from where she lived is the one I printed out in multiple sizes, including on the altar in my bedroom. It's how I want to remember her, with a big smile on her face, a ready smile or laugh. Not what my last memories are, especially the last week when she was so shriveled, her eyes and cheeks so sunken, her veins and bones more and more prominent. That is not the mother, or the person, I want to remember, and my hope is that with more time & distance the last month, and even the last years, will fade from memory, and the other memories will become stronger. 

Tomorrow starts the legal stuff, hope that the funeral home already notified Social Security, but need to do that tomorrow, and go to the Register of Wills. The lawyer who wrote Mom's last will retired several years ago, so I'm going to try and do without one. Am very grateful for my savings account, because that is how the funeral home is getting paid. It makes me appreciate that, while not wealthy in any degree, at least I'm financially stable. I include that in the counting of my blessings. 

Signing off, as trying to get to bed by midnight. There are also the prosaic things, such as finding a carpenter to fix my unstable front step and the door to the crawl space that is rotted. And my yearly appointment with the pulmonary hypertension specialist at Temple on Tuesday, which will suck most of the energy for that day out of me. Beth would like to be released, and who can blame her? She's closing in on 3 weeks here with me, and she wants to be in her home.