I lost my dad

[Clematis]

Yeah-that definitely happened with my dad. He was not all there at the end. Even ten years before the end he had some things mixed up, but tried to not let on. I have realized this more and more while going through his stuff. When my sisters were here, I realized that we had some really different versions of things-mine from the last ten years, and theirs from earlier. For example, my dad had recently telling me that his father came to the US with his parents from England when he was 12 and started some kind of work almost immediately, even though he was still in school he had some kind of enterprise going. I had put that in his life story to have read at the Celebration of Life and my sisters both said that wasn't right. They remember hearing Daddy talking about how his dad came here at the age of three and went to school wearing Little Lord Fauntleroy outfits, and he was so badly teased that he went home and insisted that they buy him some normal clothes for the US. When they said that, the Little Lord Fauntleroy story sounded familiar. But age three? That would have been in 1902. Who sent their three-year old to school in 1903? I suspect the truth is somewhere in between...maybe he was six, and six turned into the sixth grade, which would have been about 12. My sisters were adamant, and so I just changed it to their version. In any event it was a better story!

When going through my dad's old papers I have come across quite a number of things that refute the family lore that my mother passed on to us over the years. Was she lying to make herself look better? Were her memories that distorted? Who knows...but I tend to believe the dates and events the way they were transcribed at the time-on receipts, legal docents, etc. But at this point does it really matter?

In my school psychology program I had graduate classes in Memory and Learning with a professor whose field of expertise was "fuzzy trace theory". This means that after some time, we think we have full memories with all the details, but the truth is that all we have is a fuzzy trace and we fill in the details based on what seems logical. This goes a long way to explain why people in the same family remember things differently. But I can tell you from my experience that bringing "fuzzy trace theory" into an argument about memories only gets you further shot full of holes. People are certain that their memories are 100% correct because they remember it... Sigh...

[kayc]

My mom did the fuzzy trace thing with her dementia, like when she couldn't remember what had happened to my dad she filled in the blanks and assumed they'd divorced!  I assured her they hadn't, that he'd been gone 32 years.  I learned not to argue with her about things that didn't matter but if she was hurting about something, I wanted to reassure her.

[Clematis]

Kay, it sounds like you had some good skills in dealing with your mom and her dementia. That kind of confabulation is way beyond the fuzzy trace thing where little details get filled in by what seems logical. Having someone you love totally restructure major events because they can't remember any of it-like the divorce you spoke of that was not a divorce. It's hard to not argue with that kind of thing but going with the flow certainly makes for a better flow with a person who has significant dementia. My dad never got that bad; it was more like he was having trouble managing his affairs...

[Clematis]

I miss my dad! And it is so hard gong through my stuff and his stuff and our stuff is so related because out lives became so interconnected! Sorting through things-some of this is easy because it's junk or trash. Some of it...do I really need dozens of pairs of scissors? yes because I need them constantly. "OK", say my helpers. And then there are the things that there like six of because I couldn't find it and bought another and then couldn't find either of them and bought another and lost all of them and then there were six. Well, that's embarrassing, but it's easy-I should keep one and give the others to the thrift store and take the tax deduction. 

The hard thing is that I would buy something and my dad would get one for himself because he liked mine so much. Or, he would buy two of a lot of things-one for me and one for himself. He would buy things he saw on TV, some of which were crap (that's easy), but many of them, when I see these two items side by side they are a nice little item, but they make me cry because they just remind me of him always thinking of me and that there were two of us. Two of us against the world, and now it's just me and Lena (and Mr Cello)... How do I deal with all those little pairs of things. It's a good thing I have a lot of help...

[Clematis]

I'm making some progress with the help of my friends who are helping me sort and that kind of thing. I certainly couldn't be doing it all by myself! It's an overwhelming task. I'm paying them to help me because they need the money and I desperately need the help, but sometimes I wonder if I should be doing that with my dad's money. But what else would I do? It seems like I ought to be able to work on it by myself, but I don't seem to get much done alone...just go back to moping around. And having a head injury from a car accident didn't help me any. I feel so overwhelmed. It's not really as if my dad would be able to help me with any of this work, but still I miss him every day and every night. It's hard going to bed knowing he won't be here tomorrow either, and it's hard getting up in the morning knowing I'll never see him again.

Going through his things is hard because he is not here. There are tons of his things here and many more questions than answers. I'll hold some little tool or item in my hand and wonder what it meant to him, what he did with it, why he saved these particular things and brought them to Arizona, but then never looked at them or used them or wore them or whatever again. What does that all mean? I think I'll never know. I think sometimes I wish I had asked him about all of these things while he was still alive, but I knew better to go down that road (I just wish I could have). He wouldn't have answered those questions even if I had asked him, and he wouldn't have wanted me "pawing through" his stuff-in his desk, his garage, all over his house-while he was alive. But now here I am, in his space with his things, and he is gone for good. I have felt closer to him here in his house, but maybe I'm not really. More like just shrouded in grief and mysteries that will never be solved.

[Clematis]

Yesterday was a good day and my trip to Hawaii with friends next week suddenly started to feel real. I am so glad to be going with my friends Bonita and her husband. rather than by myself like I did last year. We booked this trip in October and I had some concerns about being able to go, because my dad seemed to be going downhill. We still both thought he had a few years to live and never guessed that he would be gone in less than three months. So now I am going and after getting excited about it, went to sleep crying into Lena's soft fur. She said, "that's ok, but would you please slip me a few cat treats before you drift off?" ...of course...

[kayc]

Laura,

If he left the funds available, by all means use them for the help. Your sisters COULD be there helping you but are choosing to dump it all on you instead, so they can't very well complain about it, and even if they do, so what?  YOU need the help, esp. since you had the car accident!  I am so glad you are enlisting the help of your friends!

My dear Laura, I have grown rather fond of you these last months or so that you have been here, and I can only say, please take care of yourself first, if it means getting help, if it means going on vacation, if it means doctor's appts., but you're first, okay?

[Clematis]

Thank you, Kay-that is very sweet! I feel the same about you. And you are right, I do need the help. It is rather fortuitous that my two closest friends, Bonita and Greg, who also live fairly close to me geographically are in need of the work and the income, so they are helping me and I am helping them. Also, they work well together and we are all on the same page. Bonita and her husband are going with me to Hawaii, and Greg will be working while I am gone. He has been out of work for a while and his wife was pressuring him to come up with some kind of work, whatever it was, and he is reluctant to do so because if he's busy with a minimum wage job it will be harder to him to go back to his field when something comes up. So this takes some pressure to get a little income. It's also good that one of us is a man since a little extra muscle is needed here and there. Bonita just quit her job at the paper, where they were paying her peanuts and stressing her into health problems. She was supposed to be doing a little post-retirement job and not having the high-pressure full time job she ended up with. So she is happy to have some extra money as well. So, it's good for them and good for me.

I am doing everything I'm supposed to do following the accident. And it will be good for me to have a vacation, huh?

 

[kayc]

My dear Laura,

I have never been to Hawaii and probably never will, so I need you to share pictures when you come back and promise to have a really good time!  Forget everything that is pressing in on you and just relax and enjoy yourself.  I'm glad you have your friends to help, it sounds like it's a good arrangement for all of you1

[Clematis]

I hope I can find some nice flowers to paint. It would be good for me to do some moderate exercise, but nothing too strenuous at this point. They are renting a car, which is very nice. Last year I was totally on my own with no car, and sometimes it was a little difficult, because I had to schlepp my painting gear a long ways in the heat, or I got bad information about where things were and had to backtrack or go way out of my way-on foot. Also, I went to an event at the botanical gardens for an evening event and was told that the walk back to the bus to go home, through chinatown was totally fine, which was true only until the businesses closed, after which the homeless people and drug addicts and whatnot took over the neighborhood. I made it to the bus stop and ended up trying to be casual while chatting with some people that-well, I'm not sure if they really were totally terrifying or just trying to scare me, and I used to work at a prison so I'm not easily unnerved. I finally decided that I would get on the next bus, wherever it was going. And all the scary people got on with me, and there were even more scary people on the bus! I was really happy to get back to my hotel neighborhood. 

So this will be great-to have companions and a car. Traveling with another person is so much easier than doing everything alone. Even something like using the restroom in the airport. If you are alone, you have to schlepp everything along with you, but if you have a companion, you can leave your stuff with them and just go prancing off to the restroom whatever and even grab a coffee on the way back! I imagine they will help me scout out flowers in the car rather than having to do it all on foot, and I'm sure they would drop me off to paint somewhere if they wanted to be going in a different direction. And I probably won't be out floating about alone at night either. That is probably a good thing.

 

[kayc]

You're right, that is a real consideration when traveling alone, so I'm glad you won't be!  The thought of you with all those scary people is not a good thought and I'm glad that won't be your situation this year.  I know what you mean, I used to visit prisons (I was in charge of my prior church's Prison Ministry) and have encountered enough eye openers...plenty of stories.  You learn a lot through it.

[Clematis]

Yeah-I remember seeing a comment about your having visited prisons. They are bizarre places and you sure collect a lot of stories! I was fascinated with it for sometime and learned every prison song, saw every prison movie, and would chat endlessly with anyone I even met who had worked in a prison. I was racking my brain 24-7 trying to figure out why they were there (the inmates) and what was wrong with the whole place. Someone there once told me that prison was a treacherous environment, and they meant emotionally and were referring to the staff more than the inmates. I learned a lot about the staff from studying the work of Stanley Milgram  (Authority/Obedience Study) and Philip Zimbardo (Stanford Prison Experiment).

But the inmates were a puzzle. Some were obviously terrible people, and I did my giant paper at the end of my master's program on a comparison between Sociopathy/Psychopathy and Conduct Disorder/Antisocial Personality Disorder ("garden variety inmate"). The sociopaths were most easily identified because they were charming (the psych staff always said the ones you should be afraid of the ones you found yourself "wanting to like"). There were also a smallish number of "crimes of passion" sorts. But the vast majority of them were there for drug related, relatively minor things-or a string of them. I was trying to figure out why they were there because they seemed not much different from people I had known in the marginal neighborhood where I had lived before I landed that prison job and was finally able to buy a house. 

What I figured out was that most of the people we incarcerate are people who did not do well in school and had families that were not stable enough to be supportive to children with learning disabilities. That's why I decided to be a school psychologist is that I thought I could help divert young people from ending up in prison. The last two years I worked there, I was under the supervision of Chuck, a neuropsychologist who had retired from a career as a psychologist in the military. He was brilliant, experienced and very funny; we worked together on the minor's yard. I asked Chuck when I first was there if it was ok if I tested the inmates and he said, "Yeah-sure-test them all! You'll find tons of stuff-they're all special ed!" I thought that was a terrible thing to say, but it turned out to be not far from the truth. In the general population, about 10% are in Special Education (have an IEP), and in the minor's popuation-mostly 15-17 yr-olds-about 50 percent had an IEP. But from what I saw, about 90% of them should have had an IEP. 

During the five years I worked at the prison, they were really overstaffed with mental health staff. This was related to several lawsuits related to successful inmate suicides. Part of the DOC reaction was to hire more mental health people, but only for awhile. By the time I left, they were paring down. For example, when I left, I was not replaced. But for me, it was a golden opportunity because we all had a "relaxed workload". I could do all of my assigned tasks, any optional things I chose to do (running groups, being available to inmates who were not in crisis or brand-new) and still have a lot of time on my hands. I was able to do most of my schoolwork at work, and by the last two years I was finally able to do testing, I managed to get myself on the minor's yard with Chuck. I was able to test tons of inmates with a colossal battery of tests-so I did hundreds of tests on youths with real problems, while my classmates practiced on their own kids and neighbors'/friends' kids, most of whom had no significant issues. And Chuck was right- I found tons of stuff, and with very willing subjects.

Most of these young men would much rather sit in a room alone with a woman paying lots of attention to them than sit in a cell with their cellmate. I had a group that I was testing and as I learned/discovered new tests I would administer them to the same kids. Or new ones. I had kids who would come running up to me when I entered the yard, saying, "Oh Miss! Miss! Do you have any new tests?" or "How come you're giving tests to my cellmate or this guy or that guy and not me?" Me: "Ok, I'll test you too! What's your name?" WE didn't have to get consent to test because DOC essentially were their guardians. So I would administer all these tests, and Chuck & I would spread them all out on a big round table in the nurses' station after the nurses had gone home. He taught me how to follow the same thread through multiple tests, so that once in a real situation I would be able to find my results by knowing where to look and how to track it down more efficiently. Chuck was as intrigued by testing as I was, and I think it was good for the kids I tested as well because I went over the results with them. Most of them had never been tested, and they were really interested in learning what it was that had caused them so much trouble in school because no one had ever taken the time to find out. Tragic!

Anyway, I eventually got out of prison and into the real world, where I initially thought I should hide my thoughts and ideas about prison-I was afraid they would think that's all I thought about was prison. But it didn't take long to find out that I would meet kids in schools that I would look at and have a hard time not imagining them in orange jumpsuits five or ten years down the line. I'd mention my concerns to their teachers only to find that was exactly their concern, and they were relieved to have their concern validated by a professional who had spend years working in prison and probation. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what good all my efforts have done because as I mentioned at the start, people who end up in prison are mostly people who didn't do well in school-with unstable families. Schools and all their staff cannot change the homes or the families, and the kids go back there every night.

Well, that was a long one...but Kay, I think you probably liked it-and maybe someone else will find it interesting as well.

[kayc]

I can't speak for the rest of the states, I only know Oregon, but prison does little to deter people from committing crimes or fixing what's wrong with them.  They used to have rehab, but it's been many years.  Even that was broken.  Yes there are a lot of messed up people in prison and usually you can trace it back to their childhood...the parenting used on them was extremely lacking and off kilter.  They were missing things like love, trust, empathy, looking ahead, rather important components.  Traumas from early childhood bringing on Narcissism,  Broken, broken!  

It's okay that it's long, probably everyone but me skipped over anything after the first paragraph. I found it interesting that so many of the inmates were judgmental.  One thing I observed was that they compartmentalized, like they didn't integrate everything together.  A box for their counselor, a box for their family, a box for their cellmate, etc.  It's hard to be an integrated whole person with all these separate boxes.  The prison culture is so different than out here.  Lying is survival.  Kindness is weakness.  Then they get out and life out here is different terms and they can't maneuver their way through it.  It's hard to have real authentic relationships when you lie all the time and don't show who you really are.  There is an "us" and "them" mentality inside and believe me they know and feel it!  They feel the disdain from the guards but sometimes the guards are doing things worse than what THEY are in for!  We've seen the arrests of the smugglers and embezzlers and those having affairs or taking advantage of inmates.  Yet they're supposed to respect them?  Respect is often equated to those with the biggest muscles but not always.  I think they respect the inmates that can use their brains to get through things, but those are fewer.  Too much testosterone bottled up in one vicinity. Living on adrenaline.  You've got it, most of them were from less than desirable backgrounds, but not all of them.  Of course we don't know what went on in all of the homes, the ones with rich parents that were doctors, etc.  All is not always as it seems, we can't judge what we don't know, but I would venture to say that not all is as it seems.  There is a reason why they're there, it's not all happenstance.  Some of it is an ability to make proper choices, again, that stems from background, not getting the teaching they should have had.  The teaching is not from schools, they learn from their parents, what they see demonstrated.  That's pretty tough to make up for in the schools.  It happens, but often too little too late. 

I do know some of them aren't without possibility of change...it just doesn't happen enough.  The reticence rate is way too high.  We as a society need to figure out another way to make a difference.  I used to think we could make a change one on one, but it's an uphill struggle I'm afraid, not so easy.  I made a difference to a couple and I guess that counts for something, but Lord knows I tried with many others.  

It's interesting alright.  But it's not a world I want to reenter, I have my reasons.  Most are not like us.

I knew someone that was a Police Chief here for years and he finally realized that arresting them didn't change them...he wanted to make a difference.  So he quit his job and went to work at a drug and alcohol rehab center and worked there until he died.  They made a bridge and named it after him.  James (Jim) Tharp Memorial.

[Clematis]

Yeah, I know what you mean-and it's not just Oregon. There were a handful that I really felt I helped significantly, and probably more that I helped a little. The other thing I noticed about the families was the instability-the kids lived with mom, then dad, then grandparents...who ever wasn't locked up or otherwise unavailable. One kid who really stood out was a black kid-a little goofy and endearing, even while trying to act hostile, and I had actually met him in the probation system before prison. We both progressed from probation to prison, he as an inmate and I as employee. He had lived with all kinds of relatives and had been labeled as MIMR, which I didn't believe. He did the craziest, dumbest things that were actually intended to get himself locked up and once locked up, in lockdown. In prison, when you're in lockdown, you don't go to school; you get out 3 hours per week for showers and rec (chain link pen in the sun).

This kid (16) could not read, but I had found this program that was designed by a prison educator...low level, high interest. Specialized interventions-only a few minutes each time, three times a week. I had the officers cuff and shackle him up and bring him up to the medical unit three times a week. They had to use two staff for this because this pathetic kid was in the lockdown unit. It was hard to tell if they were more upset with him-or me, for making them do it. On the other hand, they thought he was a serious nutgall and probably needed a lot of mental health help. But they were down the hall and the doors were open so they knew I was helping him with his reading. He could not read. At all. I also talked to him about his family, why he did all this stupid stuff, and wouldn't he please please take a nonverbal IQ test for me. No. A firm no. I wanted to clear him of the MIMR label, but my real motivation was that I wanted to get him to straighten out his behavior long enough that  he could get out of lockdown and into the inmate school, where they would work individually to help him academically.

Just like I had learned from the inmates, I was working with someone on the outside-Kathy, a very sweet, smart and competent teacher in the minors' school. I wanted her to be prepared to "catch him" if I could ever get him over there. I really wanted him to stick once he got there. He did, and only had one more short stint back to lockdown before staying in the general population-and school-for good. Shortly before I left the prison to start my internship to go on and be a real school psych, I finally talked him into taking a nonverbal IQ test for me. I told him I was leaving and wanted this one thing from him. He cried and took the test, getting an 87-low average and nowhere near MIMR! He laughed when he saw how excited I was. He never knew he had been labeled MIMR-just been told that he was really dumb and he had been tested a lot and it only made him feel worse. Really sad. I kept in touch with Kathy until he was released...he was doing sixth grade level work. From Kindergarten level to sixth grade in less than two years! But if nothing else, he knew that Kathy and I cared and were really committed to him. I have no idea what ever happened to him...

[kayc]

Isn't that sad?  And poignant too.  There's a lot in prison that haven't graduated high school.  Now they make them get their GED, I don't know how they do it when they just don't have the potential.  Some of them are way below par.  Some with severe learning disabilities.  I think some of them act out because of it.  It's heartbreaking.

I can understand his not wanting tested. Sometimes they feel like they're being used/treated like mice.  I can understand their resenting that.

[Clematis]

Well, I think he was happy about it later when he heard the results. I think he trusted me and that's why he finally did it, but it was a hard-earned trust. I think he had the impression that the people who had tested him before were trying to prove his was dumb and he wasn't really trying because he didn't want to participate in that. The poor kid! I hope he's doing ok, but I will probably never know.

In Arizona, they make incarcerated minors stay in school until they can either pass the GED test or prove proficiency at the 8th grade graduation level. For adults in prison, they make them go to school until they can prove 6th grade graduation skills. I think you're right-for people with serious learning disabilities, their best bet is to stay in school and graduate because they are unlikely to ever pass the GED

[kayc]

My XH, John, sustained brain damage in birthing and his brain was not able to process written words, he had a very difficult time reading, writing, spelling.  He was plenty smart, but it was laborious for him.  He tried several times before he got his GED.  I admired him for keeping on trying.  He also had his HVAC certification, which I thought was impressive under the circumstances.  This is a man that once called me and asked how to spell "and" (he was trying to write a check).  Life was more of a struggle because of it but he kept trying.

[Clematis]

Wow- that is amazing. I'm thinking he might have been out of school by the mid 70's...which would have been before the Special Ed laws went into effect and school districts were required to evaluate children of all ages to determine if they qualified for SpEd services as a student with a disability, and then provide services with an IEP, re-evaluating them every three years. I graduated with my school psych degree (to go with the MSW) in 2005, which was fabulous timing because it was about 30 years after schools everywhere had to start hiring school psychologists to do this work. Thirty years later, there were mass retirements (and job openings) across the country. It was a great time to be a new grad. I had four interviews and three job offers. The fourth called and actually apologized to me, telling me that they really wanted to hire me but they just couldn't justify it because one of the applicants had 15 years of experience AND was bilingual, and more than half of their population was Hispanic. I was pretty stoked about that, but not sure why the response to my application was so enthusiastic. Maybe because I had an MSW as well and had worked with kids with the worst problems imaginable...I don't know...

But, I'm thinking about what you wrote about John and I wonder what they did to help him learn, and if it would be any different now...

[Clematis]

So, I am getting ready for my trip to Hawaii. I can't really pack today since I am too unfocused (post car accident) to think about it too well. Maybe tomorrow will be a more clear-headed day... Anyway, I am excited and also sad, thinking about my dad. Not that he would have wanted to go with me, but other things. Last year I went to Hawaii and had to do  quite a bit of planning ahead of time to make sure people were looking after him and would be responsive if something happened. I knew by then that I could not count on my sisters to even call on him once a day (between the two of them) for a week, so I did that. But there was a lot more to it than that-telling neighbors, getting people to check in with him, and just letting people know that I would be out of town so that they would pay extra attention to his comings and goings.

When I booked this year's trip in October, he was going downhill and I wondered how I would pull the trip off at all-getting him in to respite care somehow? But as it turns out, that is not a worry, as he is not here at all. If he was here, he'd say something like, "Well, good for you! You should go and have fun with your friends. It's good that you don't have to worry about me". He frequently apologized for being such a burden on me, and I always told him that even though it gave me extra things to do, I didn't mind and that coaxing him out to AZ was the best thing I ever did in my life. Anyway, I feel sad about not taking care of him, in lots of different ways and times. I just went to Wal-Mart and was walking through the parking lot thinking about how I always used to do this with him. He wanted to walk about a foot behind the parked cars and I was always trying to get him to walk more in the middle. It's just not safe to walk right behind parked cars, especially if your hearing is so bad you can't hear a motor running and you can't look up to see if vehicles are occupied because you have to watch every step because you are shuffling with Parkinson's. I felt kind of weird nagging him and telling my father how to walk through a parking lot, but he never seemed to mind and liked that I was concerned about him.

It seems strange that I would miss that; it certainly makes negotiating a parking lot easier to only have to worry about myself. It seems even more weird that I would feel so sad about going to Hawaii and not having to plan around my dad. It is probably a good thing that I am going with friends, so I'll be busy about them rather than moping around Maui wishing I could call my dad. As I write this, it all seems really really dumb...

[kayc]

He was diagnosed with ADHD so they overdosed him on Ritalin and they did some testing on him through Kaiser, but he doesn't have the records, I guess his parents won a suit against them and got a bunch of money, of course he never saw it.  He's four years younger than me, so probably would have been class of 74 or 75.  He's been through all sorts of remedial reading but none of it helped with his specific problem.  He does okay with it, it just takes him way longer and it's a struggle, he'll never be able to sit down and read a book, but voice computers like GPS are of help.

[Clematis]

Has he been able to work with refrigeration or something like that? My experience is that schools still do not have any idea how to work with kids who don't fit neatly into the boxes of categories of eligibility for services. And some states have different categories, to confuse the issue. For example, AZ does not have a category of eligibility for TBI and so even if that is the issue people have to scramble to figure out how to qualify them. I worked with two boys who had head injuries that you could SEE through their short hair. One fell off a truck and the other fell off something else. They both had extremely low cognitive abilities and very low language abilities. Since the numbers worked I wanted to qualify them as MIMR because they could get more help and it would segue into services as an adult. My sociopathic boss wanted to say that they did not qualify for assistance because they were from Mexico and hence English-Language-Learners. But neither of these boys had any good language-their Spanish was no good either-oral or written. The team-for both of them-qualified them as eligible for SpEd, and my boss wanted to strangle me. How terrible to work to hard to avoid helping kids!

And that's just the issue of qualifying them-they the SpEd teachers have to figure out how to help them learn. Fortunately, there has been a lot of progress since the 60's and 70's on methods to help students with different kinds of learning problems how to learn and find a way in the world.

[kayc]

He used to, now he drives truck, it's what he always wanted to do.

[Clematis]

I miss my dad...I guess it's always hard in some ways to come back from vacation, but this was particularly hard. Here I am in my dad's house, to which he's never coming back. Well, his ashes are here in an urn and his spirit is here around me, but it's hardly the same as when he was all in one piece and breathing. He was going downhill cognitively near the end and wasn't always able to figure out his own stuff, much less mine. It was more me advising him near the end than him guiding me in any way. He really relied on me rather heavily in the way of figuring out what to do. He always talked about "us" and what "we" should do. But it was still him, talking to me, believing in me, trusting me, and taking care of me any way he could, just like I took care of him. It's like he told my sisters when he moved out west, "You each have your own families; I am going to go out to AZ and be family for Laura".

I was lost in a stream today of thoughts about my dad...things we did together, things we planned in the future to do together, things I assumed we would be able to do again, even little things. But it's all gone and I'm alone in this giant mess of stuff, and leaking quite a bit around the eyes... Greg went to LA for 10 days to shoot a movie and it seems like forever before he'll be back to help me. I have had a couple of other people offer to help me-a woman who lives down the street who took care of Lena while I was gone-a few years younger than my dad and very nice, and also a school psychologist that I work with who is a really really nice guy who lives up in Flagstaff - actually very close to Greg. But I wonder if I'm too confused and befuddled to figure out what to ask them to do or how to ask them. 

I am feeling rather frightened and despairing about whether I'll be able to get enough done to move back in my own house before school starts. I wonder constantly if I'm doing the right thing, if I'm spending too much money regardless how careful I'm trying to be, if my sisters are going to try to throttle me somehow, if I'm going to be able to get through this and and wind up back in my own house. Even if I get it painted and the carpet down, how will I move my dad's furniture over there. Some of it is really big and heavy- like the couch with a hide-a-bed, the Tempurpedic bed or even the little day bed with a trundle bed that I've been sleeping in. These are really big pieces of furniture. I can't move them in my Corolla...  I sure wish my dad was here...even it he wasn't able to really do anything to help me, it would still be really great to be able to talk to him...

[kayc]

Rent a U-Haul and offer to splurge for pizza & beer for any friends that will show up!  I'm not half as worried about how much of your sisters' windfall is getting eaten up, after all, they should be there helping you!...as I am you just getting through this.  I'm sure this isn't your idea of how to spend your summer off, but you're doing it and it's hard work because not only the physical doing it, but mostly, the emotional aspect of it, everything you go through, see, read, touch, it's all connected to your dad.  but along with it, you are grieving, your sisters probably aren't doing their grief work and it's shoved aside and not dealt with...that tends to haunt people as unfinished business.

[Clematis]

Thanks, Kay! I just now saw this...I'm not sure why I didn't see it earlier. But I appreciate your encouragement. You are right-I am grieving and my sisters are not. When my mother died, it was very different. None of us was very connected to her because she was so hateful to us, and my father didn't protect us and inflicted some wounds of his own. Nevertheless, I spent years crying in therapy about the losses of the ideal parents I would never have, particularly my mother. Then I spent a few years ranting at my father, and I have a wonderful letter that I treasure in which he apologized for ever hurting me. Then I spent more years working at building a friendship with him from across the country. When my mother died, I was relieved more than anything because I believed that there would be a chance for healthier relationships between the ones of us that remained. I think my sisters were more involved in drinking wine and acquiring what they could of the family goods as my father pared down to move from the big house he had shared with my mother for 30 years to move to AZ to be family for me. By that time I was ready to give him a clean slate and a fresh start, putting the past behind us as we began a life together as friends. My sisters were very happy to see him go. I really won the giant prize then, in reclaiming my father and earning his love and trust in a new relationship.

I guess it's really not my business to worry about what my sisters are doing or not doing in the way of grief. They weren't bonded to him. They never did the hard work of therapy to work through all of the issues from our childhoods. It's not like I have no issues, but I emerged as the strongest one around, and hence the one to attack. I envy my three cousins, the children of my mother's sister-our beloved aunt Nancy that all six of us lost in March. We loved her to pieces-she was so kind and loving to all of us. As one of their children said to me after her service, Nancy's kids were "totally a team" and they are working through it together. They had a mother who taught them to hang together and be there for each other, while her sister-our mother-pitted us against each other and taught us to compete for everything. My sisters are not able to get beyond that, and so the fact that I would like to move past that and be there for each other means nothing. Or nothing I can do anything about.

I keep trying to plough through my summer's work because I know the fall will be difficult enough and I have to be settled back in my house before then. You're right, Kay. Everything I see, read, go through, and touch is connected to my dad and a reminder of my grief and loss. I have really lost two fathers-the guy I adored as a child who could do the most amazing things, taught me tons of stuff, inspired me to negotiate the world, but could be a jerk sometimes-especially when he was drinking. But I also lost the dad I had for the last ten years, when he was my best friend and constant companion. Also, through his loss, I really lost my mother again, because the best parts of her lived on in him and his love for her and his loving memories of her. It's been really hard. It's a good thing that I have a lot of help, because when I am alone I feel paralyzed and tend to cry a lot and get almost nothing done, except to feel more scared and guilty about not doing more.

Thanks again Kay for your support. Encouragement from my friends-online and the ones here in town-is critically helpful in getting through this. I'm not sure how well I'm doing at it, but I'm doing the best I can...