Riding and Knitting with BunRab

Pickle Underfoot, that most excellent cat, died at the beginning of January; he had turned 22 in December. He had been failing a bit in the last couple months - though he was still spry enough to jump up on the counter, he was hit-or-miss with the litter box, and was eating and drinking a ton and having it go right through him, so there was a /lot/ of missing going on. So, I couldn't have done this whole house thing before he died; it wouldn't have been fair to such an old cat to disrupt his world like that, and his problems would have wound up ruining some of the new stuff in turn. So his passing was really the tipping point to deciding to do this. He really was an excellent cat. Many of you had seen him play "fetch" with bottle caps, as if he were a dog. He continued to be able to do that up until about the beginning of November, and then it was as much his increasing blindness, not lack of agility, that kept him from finding and retrieving the caps. Dexter is somewhat lonely without Pickle, and has been real clingy with me, though he does also get some company from Fern bun and the chinchillas. Right now the buns are Fern, Farfalle, and Domino, the chins are Chippy and Darwin, and the guinea pigs are Oreo and Theodore. Oreo and Theodore are fairly recent, acquired from the Baltimore Humane Society just a couple of days before Pickle passed - I knew I was going to have some extra time and energy, once I was no longer spending a couple of hours a day cleaning Pickle and cleaning up after Pickle, and I wanted to get guinea pigs back into my life. They came with those names; I like to think I am usually somewhat more original than naming a black and white guinea pig Oreo. (Not to mention, half the black and white Dutch rabbits in North America seem to be named Oreo, along with the belted guinea pigs...) Dexter is 8 years old now. Chippy chin is 12, Darwin chin is about 8, Fern bun is about 9!!! Fern, you'll recall, came with us from Austin, as did Chippy, and that's almost 7 years ago now itself. And Domino and Farfalle are about 6 years old - we got them in late 2006 or early 2007, I'd have to check which, but they were young adults about a year old then. They were from the Harford County Humane Society. So, Darwin and Fern are both getting on in years; they don't show any big signs of age but they are each a tad slower than they used to be, just a hair less rambunctious. At 8 pets, that's still relatively few for me,

Needless to say, I am only looking at condos that allow pets. Luckily, there are lots of them.

Tags: pets

After not visiting LJ in 9 months, I was checking my email and realized I had to come here to delete all kinds of crap comments. So I thought while I was here I'd say hi. I still don't have time to blog regularly, and I still haven't managed to read recent posts of everybody else's. Somehow, managing my day to day life seems to take up all my time. I have been reminded a lot of how very spoiled I was, to have the easy life I had while Steve was alive, to have so much free time to do whatever I wanted. Most people don't have that even if they do have a partner, do they? Usually both partners are still working, and if retired don't have the retirement income Steve did, so that there's still not the combination of time-and-money to do all the frivolous things we did. Or to get computers repaired or replaced as often as we did. I really was very spoiled.

Right now, I am using a borrowed computer, because mine got fried - pretty much literally; I came home to the smell of burning electronics one night after rehearsal a couple of weeks ago. It was the computer, and there's no telling why - everything else plugged into the same surge protector was fine and turned right back on when I reset it. So I've mailed the computer back to HP, and I have ordered a new one, and went ahead and bought the service plan for two years, too, because I seem to be the sort of person who needs a service plan, now that I don't have my live-in geek. I keep thinking that somehow, if Steve had been here, he would have done something differently and the computer wouldn't have fried itself, somehow. He had much better computer juju than I do; things just didn't go wrong as often, and he seemed to do all the right things to keep them running correctly all the time. Anyway, my new one should arrive soon.

Besides that, I am getting the house ready to sell, an incredibly stressful process. I made the decision right after New years to do this, sort of a New Year's resolution. I love the house, but I can't keep managing 2000 square feet of house on a third of an acre of land by myself. I know there are people who can, but I am not one of them. I've given it a fair shot, I think, for a year and a half since Steve died - this doesn't count as giving up without trying, or as making a decision in a hurry. It seems to me that in the normal course of things, it takes a family to manage a single-family residence: at least two healthy people, to manage all the cleaning and the maintenance and the outside chores and the repairs; even just to manage to have someone home for repair people is easier if there's two people to choose from. And I'm not even one healthy adult. And I don't enjoy trying to remember everything that has to be done. Steve enjoyed it - he got a kick out of putting "change the furnace filter" into his PDA for every three months for 6 years ahead, and then having it give him little reminders. He didn't mind talking to 3 or 4 guys who want to clean the gutters, chatting with them and then choosing one. I don't enjoy any of that stuff. So, I want to sell the house, and find a nice condo, about half the size, where not only does someone else do the lawn mowing and snow removal and gutter cleaning and furnace maintenance, but I don't even have to go looking to hire them; it's done automatically as part of the condo agreement. I don't even have to think about it, let alone choose and hire someone to do it. And a smaller condo will be not only cheaper to heat because it's smaller, it will be cheaper per square foot just by virtue of being multi-family housing where other people's shared walls also mean better insulation for me. And most condos are newer and have gas heat, rather than oil. My latest oil bill was $551 for a tankful, and in the winter months, that happens EVERY MONTH. Because this is a huge house, and has old single-pane windows mostly, and still has leaky spots around windows and doors and whatnot, although I have been trying to find and take care of the worst drafts. I could whine for hours about house repairs, and then whine for hours more about what it takes to upgrade this house to the point where it is sellable for at least 60% of what we paid for it - because, of course, we bought it just BEFORE the 2008 economy crash, and property in the Washington DC area, which this counts as, has lost on average about 40% of its value since then. But I'll save that whine for another post.

So, once I get an offer on the house, I'm going to look for a condo in Columbia - about 8 miles from here in Catonsville. I love Catonsville, I love my particular neighborhood, I love my neighbors, but it's not worth continuing to maintain this house and pay taxes on such a large property just because I love my neighbors! Catonsville, being an older town, has pretty much nothing in the way of condos; it doesn't even have much in the way of apartments or townhouses, because it was mostly built out already before those kinds of housing started appearing in suburbs. Columbia, on the other hand, is a planned community started in the 1960's, and a huge percentage of its housing stock is townhouses and multi-family housing of the rental or condo sort. Some of you may remember when we first moved up to MD, we had an apartment whose address was Elkridge; it was actually in a corner of Elkridge abutting Columbia, and all my doctors, and our insurance agent, and our attorney, and stuff like that, have been in Columbia/Elkridge/Ellicott City (another town abutting Columbia and hard to tell where one ends and the other begins) all along anyway. So, Columbia is the logical place to look now. It will put me 10 minutes further from my friend Cindy, but there really isn't anything like what I'm looking for any closer to Cindy, and it will put me 10 minutes closer to the Montgomery Village Community Band, which I'm still playing in.

I'm also still playing in the Baltimore Symphonic Band, where I am the music librarian. I am also playing in the Browningsville Cornet Band, which isn't cornets and is in Damascus, not Browningsville. And recently I played in the pit orchestra for a community theater musical over in Montgomery County, too, and I'm on the list of people they'll call back next time. And speaking of Montgomery County, I am dating a guy who lives in Silver Spring. He's very nice, and very understanding about the fact that I still talk about Steve a lot, and still have hours when I just start crying and can't stop. He is pretty good at patting me on the back and saying soothing things and then reminding me that getting Steve back isn't one of the options and that I have to keep thinking about charting a path forward, because that's the only direction there is. I don't think he's the next great love of my life, nor does he think that I am "the one" but we are enjoying seeing each other and dating exclusively for now, and it's an awfully lucky thing to find someone this agreeable first time out in the dating pool. (Online dating site OK Cupid, if anyone's wondering. And how I got there is a separate story for another day.)

OK, still self-centered as ever, because this is all about me and I haven't gone to read what any of you are doing unless you're on Facebook, too, where the one-paragraph status updates are something that I can almost keep up with on a good day. I know I have a bunch of you as FB friends; if you're on there and want to friend me, my nickname there is bunrab, too, and most of you know my real name to look for me - I've got it listed with my first initial, then the middle name I usually go by, and then last name, if you want to look that way. If you can stand all the whining. Because being a widow still sucks, and I still whine. But nonetheless I would love to hear from some of you whom I've lost touch with.

Tags: computer, house, self-absorbed, steve, whine

I tried a cooking experiment for dinner tonight that didn't work out that well - not inedible, but not anything worth ever doing again, either. So on the one hand, if it had turned out well, I would be all sad that I didn't have anyone to share it with, but I would have had very tasty leftovers for tomorrow. As it is, I am relieved that I wasn't trying to feed it to anyone else - and when I reheat the leftovers tomorrow, I'll just dump lots of chutney on top; chutney fixes almost everything.

Working backward, I have been feeling as sad the last couple of days as I was back in January. Lots of reasons for this - for one, a year ago exactly we were on our wonderful RV trip - I look at my post from May 15, 2010 and note that it was snowing in Wyoming, and that I stopped at Cowgirl Yarn. We got to Denver that evening, to stay with C&V for a visit. For another thing, it's been raining for a couple of days, and Calvin-Junior-next-door hasn't been able to mow my wet lawn, so the place looks a mess from the outside; Steve's rosebushes, the Double Knockouts, are blooming like mad but are surrounded by weeds. And for a third thing, this past week I paid the annual homeowner's insurance bill, the home warranty bill, and the last of the winter heating oil bills, all of which reminds me that I really must watch my pennies far more closely than I have been. I've been indulging myself into eating lunch out several days a week, and I really can't afford that - gotta cut back to once a week. Yesterday I dropped Cindy off at the airport for her annual visit with her nephew, and swung by the vet and finally picked up Gizmo's ashes, which are in a beautiful little box. Anyway, this combination of things has slid me a bit backward from last month, when for a bit I was feeling as if things were a bit lighter, as if I could breathe easier.

April felt better for several of its own reasons. When Gizmo died at the end of March, I went ahead and paid for a necropsy, and when the results of that came back, it showed that he had a rare and obscure infection of the liver, which couldn't have been detected in any well-rabbit vet visit when he was acting normally, and that by the time it showed symptoms, there truly was no treatment we could have used that would have reversed things. So I didn't have to feel guilty that I had somehow missed a chance to cure the Big White Bunny if only I had done *something*. Then, also in April, I went to Stitches South in Atlanta, and had a good time. I took the train there, and I enjoy train rides; I met up with Angela there and we split a hotel room; I spent several days totally involved in stuff that has never involved Steve and so didn't keep reminding me of him - and at the same time, there were several other women there who had also lost their spouses within the past year or so, so we could spend just a brief amount of time sharing our grief but also making jokes about how we weren't going to have to figure out how to hide how much yarn we were buying from our husbands. Being away from reality, and totally involved in an activity that has always been mine, made for a break in how I felt, and that left me feeling lighter as a lasting aftereffect. I was still missing Steve every day, but I began to see that I had a life without Steve, and even if it wasn't the life I had hoped for or planned on, it was a life that could still include some enjoyment.

I can still see that, sort of, but it's been fogged over these past couple days. Seeing Cindy off reminds me that I don't have any other really close friends here - people I'm close enough to to say "I'm lonely, I'm coming over to your house to hang out this afternoon so I don't have to be alone." I could probably drive up to my sister's place (2 hour drive) to hang out, and they'd be happy to see me, but it would be all noise and chaos, and everyone would be, quite rightly, more concerned with getting dinner on the table and homework done than with patting me on the head and making soothing murmurs. All my other really close friends are far away - Austin and Denver and Akron - can't exactly drop by or call and say let's meet up to split a dessert and tea at the diner. And I have lots of band acquaintances, but none of them are friends in that sense, and anyway most of them live just far enough away that by standards that aren't used to Texas, they'd think it was crazy to drive 20 miles just to hang out. In Austin, driving to Round Rock or Buda (or vice versa) for dinner and a game of Scrabble is something people would think quite reasonable to do frequently - every weekend, no problem - here, though, many people to consider that to be a distance that they'd only do for more special occasions (other than commuting to work).

And part of it's my own fault - if I weren't so self-absorbed, I'd be paying more attention to other people's journals, and to mailing lists I'm on, and more involved virtually in other people's lives, which really can help - no, it's not the same as hanging out in person, but it IS social activity and a reminder that there's stuff outside my own thoughts, and that other people's lives are interesting and they're willing to share. I know that, but I can't seem to break my laziness and read more than a couple of minutes of my flist page, or of the NEDoD list. How does one kick oneself in the pants to do something that one knows should be done and that will make one feel better? Just telling myself to do it isn't working, obviously.

So today, I couldn't think of anything reason to get out of the house that wouldn't wind up costing money, even apart from gasoline use, and I've sat here stewing instead. I probably look a little like a stewed tomato by now, too.

I'm getting positively closed-loop, whining about my own whining, aren't I? Hey, you all whose journals I've been neglecting, tell me something interesting going on in your lives that I should go read about.

Tags: a bit of whining, family, knitting, pets, rabbits
say what?: discontent

Today I was going to have gone to see my niece Hanna in her spring play, but I woke up this morning sneezing like mad, and even if it's allergies rather than the cold I thought at first, it wouldn't be a good idea to drive 130 miles there while either sneezing or under the influence of antihistamines, (The non-drowsy antihistamines do zilch for me.) So I let them know I wasn't coming, fed the critters, and went back to bed. When I woke up again in the afternoon, Gizmo had not finished his food and was not able to move properly. It seemed as though he had had a stroke. He hasn't, and at the emergency vet's, he's doing better - staying overnight and getting IV fluids, antibiotics, etc. But right at first, when I tried to see what was wrong, I was just saying shit, shit, shit over and over again. Because today is also exactly 8 months since the ventilator was disconnected after the organ donation people were finished - technical date of Steve's death. And I was already a bit teary-eyed. But, I had been thinking about writing a post about what I feel like now, and so I think I still will.

Here's the thing. The grief isn't any less - I still wake up every day thinking how unfair it is that I'm still alive and Steve's not. I still find that something brings me to tears every day - including writing this post. But what is, finally, diminishing to a detectable extent is the panic and anxiety that goes with the grief. Although I still wonder, every day, how I'm going to manage without Steve, I also notice, every day, that I have managed to muddle through. When I'm driving, I'm no longer so greatly distracted by thinking that "last time I was on this road. Steve was driving" or "I didn't used to have to drive here; Steve always did it." By now, I've driven most places I go to by myself several times, and I so I feel like I am doing the driving, not waiting for someone else to be in control. I still hate having to do it alone, but I am recognizing that I can manage most things. Maybe not the way Steve did them, maybe not as well, but I am managing. And that lessening of anxiety and panic is, I guess, a "feeling better."

There's still stuff not getting done, but I am managing to remind myself every day that I will get to it, even if it's more slowly, and/or less often, than I should - I will get it done. When I hit obstacles, I will manage them or work around them; I've figured out several work-arounds for things that I can't possibly do myself already, and have ideas percolating on several more. I finally found a charity that would pick up the brown recliner sofa for free - Goodwill around here doesn't do free pickup any more; they contract with College Hunks Hauling Junk, who charge a discount rate but nonetheless charge. I had offered the damn loveseat on Freecycle a couple of times, and while a couple of people expressed interest, they never followed through. And nobody was interested in buying it on Craigslist. But some internet research finally found a web site that will show one who picks up donations for free, in a given ZIP code. (Yes, Salvation Army still does, but I am not in the mood to give things to that brand of religion.)

And, while the vet bills from Gizmo's emergency today means I'll have to put it off for a couple months, I've found a company that will refinish the pink bathtub in white, reglazing it, so I don't have to buy a new one and pay a contractor to remove the old one and install a new one. The reglazing will be quicker, cheaper, and will feel more acceptable, because I really hate the thought of throwing out a perfectly good fixture where the only fault is extreme ugliness. I think with the tub white, and I can get a new white toilet installed (much less expensive to remove and replace than a bathtub), then the rest of the bathroom, including the peculiar sinks, will seem much less awful. So there's a plan for that, even if deferred a bit.

Baltimore County sent Steve a jury duty notice, so I got more copies of the death certificate last week and tomorrow I'll mail them one to explain why Steve will not be answering the notice - I'm sure they wouldn't just take my word for it. I have to get more copies of the "Letters of Administration" also - the estate execution stuff - to finish up some other stuff, and I haven't done that as fast as I should have, but at least I know I have to do it and how, so it's progress, if slow.

So. "Feeling better." No less grief, but less panic, and that does make life a teensy bit easier. I went to a grief support group run by Gilchrist for 6 weekly sessions, and that did help, too, talking to other people - I hadn't thought it would, but it did - certainly did more for my peace of mind than NOT going to one, if anybody else is wondering about whether they're worth it. The people in the group decided we'd keep meeting occasionally for lunch, to continue to talk to each other, so we're having lunch tomorrow at Panera. There are 6 of us, and 3 of the others are also in the 55-65 age range as I am, and the other two not too much older. That was a coincidence - it wasn't planned specifically to be a "young widowed persons" group or any other specific age range, so it could have been all older people my parents' age - the age where, forgive me for saying it like this, one starts *expecting* people to die. Most of the groups that are for "young" people are for up to age 50, and most of the rest tend to be seniors over 65, so it was a bit of serendipity to have a group turn out to be people in the neglected middle-age range. Anyway, as it turns out, it is a great relief to be able to talk to other people who are going through the same thing - even if it's not identical, we have more in common than not, just by the fact of losing a spouse. Some lost theirs to long, drawn-out illnesses, one other person to a sudden event like mine. There are people left worse off organizationally and financially, and people not as badly off, but we all have the struggles with those things - even the people who had a couple of years of their spouse battling cancer find out, apparently, when it's over, there's no way you can have remembered to take care of everything, and there's no predicting what details will pop up out of the woodwork that it never even occurred to you could exist. Everybody turns out to have SOMETHING in their bills, paperwork, or housekeeping that they didn't know had to be taken care of ahead of time.

There was going to be a very depressing paragraph here, about what we also have all learned about illnesses that can't be detected or prevented, about how even early treatment doesn't stave things off forever, but after writing it three times, each time was more depressing, and I decided to leave it out. Even my attempts to summarize it in a sentence are depressing. Let's just say, we all beat ourselves up about what we might have done to prevent things, or save our spouses, and we all need a long time to realize that the should have/could haves are (a) likely not true, and (b) definitely not useful.

So that's the update. I'm coping. I'm still lonely and sad and heartbroken. I would still like someone to come live in my spare room so I have some help. I'm still alive. It's still unfair - and it's still true that there is no such thing as "fair." If there's a pattern in all that, I haven't figured it out yet.

Tags: death, grief, house, rabbits, unpleasant stuff
say what?: depressed

...because for some peculiar reason Johns Hopkins has decided to sue me for money they claim I owe them from 2006 - which, since that whole debacle was their own damn fault, they were supposed to eat the costs of. I figure the fastest way to show a judge why I don't owe them for their own mistakes is to print out my journal entries, which will include names of all the doctors, etc.

I am coping. I am managing. I hate being alone. I am still hoping to talk a niece or nephew - or even a friend - into coming and living with me. There are heavier chores of housekeeping that I can't manage - vacuuming, mopping, taking out the recycling - and it would be nice to have someone do them. I keep telling my nieces and nephews, if you're considering grad school, look at ones in Maryland - within a 25 minute drive from me, there are some 30 universities, and half a dozen of them are less than 10 minutes away. Free room and some board, in exchange for what would be, for a young healthy person, extremely easy housekeeping. I can manage all of the kitchen cleaning other than the floors, and likewise the bathrooms, and I've never given a damn about dusting the knick-knacks or the bookshelves. So surely there's someone out there who would like a largish bedroom with two closets, furnished, including a desk; access to my FiOS TV and internet, the serving of my home cooking a few times a week? So far, though, I haven't had any takers on that. Can any of you think of what else I should be saying/offering to lure someone in? I do NOT want to take in a total stranger as a boarder, putting out ads or notices at the colleges or something - that's just too dangerous. It's got to be at least as close as a "friend of a friend" - in other words, someone that somebody I know, knows well.

Besides that, what can I say? Every day is still accompanied by a chant in the back of my head that goes "But Steve's not here." The new car is nice - but Steve's not here. The weather is improving a little - but Steve's not here. I've figured out how to use the roof rake - but that was supposed to be for Steve. I make a cup of tea - and Steve was with me when I bought that particular tea. Every day, it's the first time I've had this particular day of the year without Steve, and it hurts.

There was an article in the WaPo a couple weeks ago, that I hated - the writer was saying that grief counseling and grief support groups don't really do any good and aren't necessary, and that oh, hey, any normal person is pretty much ready to get over it and move on by six months. I wanted to find that writer and slap him silly. Just what we need - someone to make us feel guilty or abnormal if we're not ready to "move on" in only a few months after losing the largest part of our life???

Yeah, after 6 months I am not crying in public quite as often - I sometimes get through the supermarket without even sniveling as I pass the slivered almonds that Steve always bought for his cereal - and I've figured out how to do most of the daily chores that Steve did, though I am not doing them as well as he did, or as often. But that's not "getting past it." That's just managing to stay alive.

I did start attending a grief support group just recently, and that will give me a chance to talk more, as I want to, without worrying about being too depressing for people who haven't had the same blow. I know that all y'all say, oh, Kelly, of course you can keep talking to us about it - but even though you say it's OK, I start feeling guilty about being such a downer all the time. With the grief support group, hey, everybody's already down, we can all snivel together harmoniously without worrying that we are ruining someone else's good mood.

Luckily, Steve and I never made a really big fuss about Valentine's Day - yeah, we'd find funny cards for each other, and a couple of times Steve bought me new charms from James Avery for my charm bracelet - but we never did a whole big expensive romantic dinner or elaborate diamond jewelry or all that crap - so Monday will not be as difficult to get through as December and New Year's were. And the Tuba-Euphonium Conference a couple weeks ago, which was both difficult and very good to go to at the same time. V-day will be easier than that.

And how are YOU?

Tags: grief
Current Location: mid-winter
say what?: discontent

I've lost a parent. It didn't hurt like this, nothing even faintly in the same range. I've never had a child, so I have no idea what it might be like to lose a child - perhaps that pain is greater, I don't know; I don't mean to make light of other people's grief by ignoring that possibility, but I just can't speak to it. But I can tell you what it feels like to lose a spouse.

It feels like having your arm cut off, suddenly, without anesthetic.

Oh, the bleeding can be stopped, and the wound sewn up. But you'll never be the same. And you will always be missing a part of yourself. You might go through some physical rehab, and get a prosthetic, and learn to eat with utensils, and get dressed, and drive - but it's not the same as before, it's far more work, and you are always aware that it's not the same. There might be 2 or 3 people in the world who go on to become famous one-handed piano players - but most people won't, especially if they weren't famous piano players before then. Most of us won't have that opportunity of somehow publicly "redeeming" ourselves from having let this terrible accident happen. You just keep on living with the knowledge that not only are you not what you once were, now you will never be what you once might have had the opportunity to be - because you've lost a part of yourself, part of what made you who you are and gave you the life you had and the potentials that life held.

And even the process of learning to get back to normal is slow. It takes a LONG time to learn to use a prosthetic arm. Months, a year. Grief seems to be the same. Every single thing you do, you are learning to do alone after you've grown used to doing it with someone - and the sheer number of things we all do in the course of a year, or two, means that the relearning process - and the realization that here's yet another thing to relearn - keeps coming back, and back, and back.

Little things: I am an OK driver, safety conscious, reasonably careful, not inclined to break laws. But right now, I find I have to be super careful, because as I'm driving the car, I'm not seeing the road that's in front of me - I'm seeing the road as I was sitting in the car with Steve, the last time we were on it. Or hearing his comments on a particular building or piece of scenery or a sign. It takes every bit of effort I have to remember that I have to look at the road for myself, and drive it as it is right now, and not get distracted by Steve. I don't dare ride the bike right now - this level of distraction would be unforgivably dangerous on a bike. (Think of trying to learn to ride a motorcycle with a prosthetic arm. How long before you could really trust your control well enough to do that?)

So that's what it feels like.

What can I tell other people so that if something like this happens to you, maybe it's just slightly less painful than what I'm going through? Well, nag your spouse about medical check ups more often. I didn't nag Steve about that - I figured he's a grown-up, he knows what he's supposed to do, he's intelligent, he'll do it sooner or later. So when our family doctor stopped taking Steve's insurance, I would remind him once a year to find a new doctor, or just go ahead and pay cash for an annual checkup. I didn't push it. Maybe if I had, he wouldn't have waited until our doctor started taking his insurance again - a few weeks before the heart attack occurred - to make an appointment. If he had seen a doctor during those two years, maybe this could have been averted. I don't know. What I do know is, if the idea of paying cash for the doctor strikes you as something you can't afford "right now" ask yourself, "Can I afford to have my arm chopped off right now, either?" I'll tell you, the doctor's appointment is a lot less expensive than a heart attack and a hospital bill and a funeral. And it also takes a lot less time than those things. So the answer to "I don't have the time" or "I can't afford it" is, "I can't afford what happens if you don't."

And the paperwork - same thing. Haven't made out wills, don't have a folder with all your important paperwork - copies of birth certificates and social security cards and powers of attorney and deed to the house and title to the car and copies of your insurance policy? The way you should think about it is not, "I don't have time for this right now, or we don't have money for an lawyer right now" - the question is, "Would I rather spend the time and money NOW, or would I rather have to do all this alone, later on, while also planning a funeral?" Because unless you are lucky enough to die simultaneously in a nice fiery car crash or something like that, one of you IS going to die before the other, and that other person IS going to have to do all this stuff. And it won't necessarily be the one you expect, either. We made most of our financial plans based on the assumption that, since I'm the one with congestive heart failure, and Steve's grandfathers lived into their 90's and his father lived into his 90's, that I'd die before Steve. Based on the information we had at the time, that seemed reasonable. But now the unexpected has happened, and I am going to have some interesting times. I'm lucky there's no mortgage on the house, and there's enough in savings to pay the taxes and insurance on it just out of savings for another 30 years, were I to live that long - so I won't be without a roof over my head. But in retrospect, we should have left a little more room for doubt in our planning, not been so convinced we knew how the future was going to play out - because, obviously, it didn't play out that way. And I can guess that for some of you, it's the same - you are absolutely SURE that X won't happen before Y. But guess what? It can, and it does, and it did. Your arm can get chopped off at any time, no matter what other plans you made.

I hope that none of this happens to you - I hope none of the other women on my flist get to see their healthy spouses suddenly have a heart attack on the sofa sitting next to them, and then spend 4 days sitting in a chair in the Coronary Care Unit watching the brain waves on the monitor go flat. Or men watching something happen to their spouses either - that's part of the point; it can happen either way. No matter what you think, we cannot stop death forever, and we can't even predict it very well. And for the one(s) left behind, it hurts like nothing else you've ever known, and you don't get over it rapidly, and you'll never "get over it" completely.

Tags: death, unhappiness, unpleasant stuff
say what?: distressed