Clematis

She is very sleepy and disinclined towards struggling around with the collar, which frustrates her. I have been carrying her around to wherever I think she'd like to go. Last night she slept with me in the bed under the covers all night, which was very sweet but she never does that. Much of the night she slept with her head on the pillow facing me so that our faces were both in the cone, breathing each others' breath. When I finally got up, she complained but got stood up herself as well but walked to the edge of the bed and stared at the floor with a meow. I placed her on the floor and she stood there with her head down staring at the rug. So I carried her to the back door, where she could doze in the sun. She hasn't moved; I served her breakfast there in a tiny bowl that fits into the cone. She was very hungry and ate it right up, and went back to sleep. It seems odd that she is sleeping SO much and she sleeps much more soundly than usual. I have read that almost every creature - except us - sleeps with "one eye open", or half of their brain awake, so they can keep alert to possible danger. This morning she was sleeping so soundly I could not hear or feel her breathing, even though her face was less than an inch from mine. Then I stroked her a little and rubbed her under the collar and her sleeping went back to normal, with audible breath sounds. I suppose cats have sleep cycles, too. I did talk to the veterinary assistant late yesterday afternoon and she said that seems fine - that it is normal for a cat to spend a few days recovering from anesthesia. I have also been in contact with my friend Paula, a retired vet. She retired early for health reasons and is now selling real estate but stays current with the veterinary field. I sent Paula a detailed text this morning, along with pictures, asking her if this was normal. Paula's answer - "Absolutely" So I guess she's ok. She is just sleeping a lot and seems to be most comfortable being very close to me. So I'll just stick by her...

We slept on our neighbor's couch, starting with her in a hissing little ball in the corner. After a few hours she got up, used the litter box my neighbor keeps for her in the garage, and I could hear her crashing through the house bumping into things, moaning and mewling. She let me pick her up and put her back on the couch with me, and we slept through the rest of the night with her lying in my arms with the cone collar pressed into my face. I have never seen her sleep so heavily. While she was still relaxed from the sleeping I brought her home. She still seems groggy and confused, but no longer delusional and terrified. That was really awful - hard to tell which of the two of us was more afraid. And my poor neighbor loves Lena, and Lena seemed to have no idea who she was. She kept trying to comfort her by petting her but Lena only looked at her like she was the devil, and I was almost as bad. I think it was good for both Lena and I to sleep so close together on the couch. So now we are at home, Lena needs a lot of help, and I feel like I don't know what to do. I figured she must be hungry, and so I poured a Fancy Feast pouch onto a tiny plate and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her inside her cone so she could eat it without a struggle, pushing the door around with my finger for her so it was easier to eat. Then she sat in the kitchen watching me wash the dishes like she was lost in space. No idea what to do so I carried her into her litter box. She just stepped out of it, so I carried her to her little hammock by the back sliding glass door and she settled in for a nap. She probably needs a lot of sleep after her ordeal. Probably me too!

Lena is home from the vet. She is fine, but very cranky about the "Elizabethan collar, the indignity of it all, and the aftereffects of the anesthesia and other medications. I never dreamed my cat would ever say the things she has said to me today. I'm not sure I understand what all of it meant, but it is easy to get the gist of it... Then now it is hours later. I took Lena next door to see my next-door-neighbor, and I guess it was way too soon. She became very frightened and aggressive - not my cat at all. Growling, snapping, snarling, scratching. After that, I couldn't get her home - I could not really get near her. And home is only in the next condo...but so far away. If she spooked, I could lose her. Finally I called my friend Paula, who is a retired vet, told her all about it and send along a photo for good measure. Paula said that she is still very much drugged and delusional. She told me to totally ignore her and not engage until she calmed down totally. She assured me that Lena would be "right as rain" by morning. Meanwhile, we are sleeping at my neighbor's house, me on the couch. Hopefully all is well in the morning and we can go home without incident...

I am looking forward to the start of my new job. Yesterday I went and had a peek at my office. Last year I shared it with Amy, for whom I was covering while she was on maternity leave, but this year it will just be mine. I have lots of plans for it - adding to the painting collection, a microwave, a mini-fridge, and naturally lots of clocks. But today is a hard day. Lena is having surgery to have a little growth on her ear removed. It was removed four years ago when I first had her, but it grew back. Her current vet has told me that it is a cyst and not serious, but it has gotten bigger and sometimes it bothers her and she scratches it until it bleeds. Her vet thought it would be good to remove it, and we're going to have it biopsied. It is so weird to not have her here at the house and I am crossing my fingers and holding my breath - figuratively - until she gets out of surgery!

That's a good thought. I like it. I am picking through some things that I brought over, unsorted, from my dad's house in boxes. Finding more treasures. I found an old Bulova watch that was my mother's. It's probably as dead as it seems, but I'll give it another chance and take it to the clock/watchmaker for him to opine upon. I'll show the clockmaker and his wife my latest clock while I am there. She called me while I was on my trip, telling me that she was concerned about not seeing me for awhile after seeing me so frequently, dropping in for little clock chats, advice, batteries for watches I'd unearthed, etc. I thought it was very sweet of her...

Do it!

I think that's true. I certainly have enough happy memories to comprise a happy childhood, especially if you add in the ones that would be happy with just a bit of reframing. Especially the memories that centered around my sisters and I and my dad. There were years in which I dredged up awful stuff as I was dealing with it in therapy. My sisters weren't thrilled with all this stuff coming up because they lived near our parents and would rather keep all that under the carpet. Having dealt with it and having had those great years at the end with my dad, I am now combing through the past for treasures - of which there are many. When I mention any of this to my sisters they throw in something like "but you're not including the part where he..." blah blah blah. To which I say, "you know, that man had way too many brains for one person. I know it seems a little twisted, but he thought that was funny!" And I think he did think all that weird stuff he did and said was funny. He didn't have a good sense of how things come across to kids. When I was seven I remember him saying on Christmas Eve that he was going to shoot Santa with his shotgun. I knew he had one and remember trying to stay awake so that I could hear Santa when he landed on the roof and warn him. I figured I would tell him to leave the stuff outside and not come down the chimney. I sure didn't want to be the kid whose dad shot Santa. I tell people this story now and they laugh. It is funny. Not funny to a 7-year-old, but funny to a grownup. I remember my mother trying not to laugh and telling him to stop. It is so quintessentially him. When I looked back at this in therapy I focused on how his twisted nature was hard for his children to grow up around. Now I look back with love and laugh. I wish my sisters could join me, but they can't...

One-and-a-half weeks from today...

The clockworks continue...I found this little trailer in a craft store - it was raw wood and had a hole and a little post in front, made to be a little birdhouse. Nevertheless, I saw a clock in it, painted it purple, and installed the clockworks and tiny lights. Check out the video with the flickering lights inside! Purple Teardrop Trailer.m4vPurple Teardrop Trailer.m4v

You do? How cool is that! I'm glad you had those years with your mom. I know what you mean. Had I not had those ten years with my dad at the end, it wouldn't have been as wrenching and the missing him would not have been so painful, but the total loss would have been much worse because both of my parents would be gone with no chance of ever having a nice relationship with either of them. As things are, not only did I have those ten years with my dad, through him I had a different perspective on the years before with both of my parents and also those who came and passed before them. My sisters do not see eye to eye with me on any of that, and seeing them has muddied up my new vision of the past. But I think I need to let go of their negativity and maintain my own perspective. If my views on the past make me happier and more reconciled with my past and my family heritage, I think that's ok. My sisters might like to shoot holes in it and they might have valid points, but it doesn't serve me at all to listen to that. I feel more secure about my life and my future with my rosier views on the past that I gained from those ten years and then carefully picking through the things he left behind. If my picture is unrealistically rosy and fuzzy around the edges...who cares? "Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory." - Albert Schweitzer

I have returned from my travels. The trip went very well...all of the travel details went smoothly and people were very nice to me at the airports, flights, etc. The burial went fine and my sisters put forth a good effort and so we all got along. My younger sister D was amiable at every turn and we enjoyed being together. There have been a few times during our lives when a crack opened in her armor where she gave me a chance and seemed to actually see me for who I am. This was another time. Every time before this has happened I jumped at the chance to be friends with her and have a positive relationship, but it was always short-lived and she went back to cold hostility. This time I am hoping it will be different. Having Parkinson's seems to have humbled her. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but she now shops at Safeway and is concerned about health insurance and other normal things. She seems like a real person. This is good. My other sister seems a little better. The unprovoked icky attacks over practically nothing continued but got smaller. I had minimal responses other than to point out my observations; I did nothing that would have escalated them but didn't just accept it wordlessly either. That seemed to work. Kind of like walking across the room and having a vicious dog run up and nip me on the heel, I commented on the bite and lack of provocation, but left it there. She has a real victim thing going on, and when I respond to her attacks with anger and "bite her back" she believes that justifies her biting me first, and uses it to fortify her belief that I am extremely aggressive and she is a meek little mouse. I'm not sure what my sisters' experience is around the loss or our parents because they don't talk about it. I do know that my older sister has a good deal of anger and resentment towards me, not only related to the banjo. The reality is that we all three had lousy parenting by both parents when we were children, and then through most of our adult lives it was just pretty strange. The only positive and supportive relationship any of the three of us had from either parent was the ten years that I had with Daddy at the end. She is right that we should have all had unconditional positive regard, love and nurturing from both parents during our formative years, and we would have been better off for it. The fact that I did have all that from him a the end is something I worked on with him. The benefits were profound; I am a more secure and stable person after those ten years. I don't owe either of them an apology for my having a good relationship with him in the end. I told them over and over that our parents seemed in retrospect to have had a mutual bad influence and he was much nicer and a better person alone. I urged them to give him a chance and reach out to him, but they wouldn't. Not my fault. Anyway, it is what it is, and my sisters seem to be willing to move on from here. I thing it's about the best thing I can hope for.

Thank you, Marty! My dad always used to remark on my stubbornness, never conceding that I inherited this trait from him. He never gave up and he never let up. I recently came upon his high school senior yearbook, and the quote next to his photo was, "To argue is the delight of my life". Today I feel terrible...like I cannot breathe and can barely swallow. I should be packing to get ready to go to PA in two days and tomorrow I have someone coming to help me all day. But I feel like I am paralyzed and am unable to move. Nevertheless, I am making calls, sending documents to PA, and so on. But I feel crushed. Is this how it's supposed to be? How long will I keep going back to this crushed, paralyzed, cannot breathe, feel-like-I-cannot-function state?

Amazingly enough, my efforts finally led to a call from a woman who is an officer at the post in Wayne that my father used to belong to, and she lives in Reading, where the cemetery is (and my sister lives). She is coordinating an effort to get rides from Reading to Wayne for old friends of my father who cannot drive. She is also working on getting a firing squad from Reading for the 21 gun salute. Hopefully one of those Legionnaires plays the bugle. This is what I needed - to get someone back there to get involved in getting this all going.

Thanks, Kay. It has been really hard just dealing with the task of taking my father's ashes to be buried across the country, but it is compounded by the difficulty of arranging things from the country. And then not only are my sisters not helping, they are being very icky about it all. Every day there are more icky interactions with both of them, but the details don't matter - it's just more of the same. Getting someone across the country to do military honors has proved to be really daunting, but I think something is finally happening. I have been working on this for eight days and keep starting anew with one person after another. Today I finally talked to a bartender who had heard that I was trying to do this. She could not access the poster I emailed to the post but arranged for me to send it to someone from the Ladies Auxiliary, who posted it on their Facebook page and promised to print it and bring it in to the post. She also got me in touch with a guy who wants to see this work and is willing to help connect the dots. I sent him the poster as well and he said the post is having a meeting tomorrow and he will bring in copies and talk it up at the meeting. Cross your fingers for me...

Thanks, Marty. You are right, and it is why I ended out here in the first place. My dad thought for years that I came across the country to get away from him. Not so - it was to get away from my mother and sisters. He believed me when I set him straight, and he never looked back after moving here. He never really talked about it, but when the mother of my best friend asked him if he missed his other two daughters and grandchildren, he said simply "No". No details and end of story. My sisters are just as dysfunctional as they ever were and it is disturbing how much they are getting to be like my mother. My dad and I had a great decade together. I miss him SO much. It has been getting increasingly hard to function and get things done. I feel crushed and paralyzed in some way. Maybe that is to be expected. I have no idea...

My older sister S and I have been playing music and singing on my mother's grave since she died in 2005. Not at the funeral/burial, but ever since whenever I am PA we go out there and do that. My younger sister D sometimes brings flowers to the grave. I live in Arizona, close to Mexico where they have Dia de Los Muertos, and people go out to the cemetery and party on the graves on the dead, have a big parade, eat the favorite foods of the loved ones who have passed, etc. I think it's pretty cool even though that is not my tradition. They go and hang out with the people who have died. I am never in PA for Dia de los Muertos but I do what I can. My mother wanted to be buried in Reading PA because my sisters both lived there and she thought that if she was buried where her parents were or someplace else, no one would visit her grave and she would be neglected. She wanted people to go out to the cemetery and pay attention to her. Makes sense to me - it's what she wanted when she was alive. Why not when she was dead? So, to me it seems like the most obvious thing in the world to go out there and play music on the grave that they will share, and play/sing songs that my father taught us and that we all used to sing as a family. S and I have made this our tradition during the last 12 years, and why not include my father, who would really appreciate it? I have been trying very hard to plan this event of burying our father's ashes and arranging for the military honors with no help from either of my sisters, even though one of them (S) still lives in the same town as the cemetery and I am flying across the country. S agreed to play some songs and agreed to contribute some suggestions as long as she could choose the key. D's only participation was to veto one of my suggestions and refuse to discuss it. S has not contributed any songs and the event is next Saturday. She has not talked to me on the phone and when I called her sent a text saying "Can I call you later?" but never did. That is so typical. D has not talked to me at all about this. I want to have the list of songs so that I can work on them some and not just play whatever occurs to S at the time. I finally came up with six songs and sent a list of them to both sisters, along with the keys. I added a remark that if they wanted to add or substitute a song, they should send the words and chords to the other two. I offered to bring several copies of the words and chords with me. I thought that was very reasonable. But I got a return text from D saying, "I think it would be fun to have a sing along while you're here but I don't want to do it at the grave site." This is so typical of my family's craziness - both of them want to sit back and do nothing, and then play victim because no one read their minds or solicitously sought them out enough. D doesn't like the songs. S doesn't like the keys. D doesn't like the whole idea of singing at the graveside. I bet at least one of them is going to have a problem with the military honors. I am doing the work and they want to have veto power but not contribute anything. Like actually speak to me, make the effort to talk to me, to work on arranging anything, etc. But I'm sure they will both have plenty of complaints and comments afterwards, during, or immediately beforehand when it is too late to do anything but upset me and mess up what I have planned. I figure that their amount of criticism should exactly equal the amount of contribution that they made in planning, which is exactly zero. Am I wrong?

Thank you Marty. I have arranged with Ben at the funeral home in AZ to work with Michael at the cemetery in PA. Michael will find out who the guys are who come to the cemetery in PA to do military honors, so when Ben calls, he can give him the contact info. Then Ben will arrange to have the guys go to the cemetery. Ben will help me get the ashes ready for travel and give me the veteran flag to accompany the urn on the trip. When my sisters and I get to the cemetery, we'll meet the military guys and Michael and drive to the grave site. They will do the 21-gun salute, play taps on the bugle, unfold and refold the flag, present me with the flag, and leave my sisters and I to do whatever we do. At some point the cemetery staff puts his ashes in the grave. All but that last part seems pretty good. I have been afraid that once my father's ashes were in the grave, he would stop talking to me. But no one seems to believe that...I guess it seems unlikely that he will stick to the ashes after hanging with me all this time talking to me.

I am realizing that whatever occurs at the gravesite in PA will be up to me. I have to figure that out. The guy at the mortuary who cremated my father in 2016 told me that if I brought him my father's discharge papers, commenting that if he was a veteran, "he ought to have a flag". I am not sure what happens with this flag. Does anyone know?

Thank you so much Anne. I think you are right. I should choose the music I want to play for him - and my mother - and ask my sisters to join me. If they have something they would like to add to the list that is ok too. I'll play anything. The other thing that occurred to me this afternoon while driving Lena to visit the retirement homes is that while they are busy attacking and criticizing me from every angle as my mother used to do, I am the strong one, the smart one, and the competent one. Also, the fact that they keep saying that I am not nice to them, I am the one who has spent my life in service to others while they have been in service to themselves and their children. I shouldn't let them make me feel badly about myself... I appreciate your thoughtful message, Anne. It's nice to feel the love and support.

I am very worried about going "into the lion's den" of being on my sisters' turf. My neighbor encouraged me to keep in mind that I am doing this for my father and to try not to engage in my sisters' craziness. I am finding that to be very difficult. We had a Celebration of Life for him in March of 2016, the planning of which was entirely by me. it came off very well...had two bands and a classical guitarist, a potluck, a slideshow, and a contradance. We really sent him off in style. I knew my sister S would very much like to be involved in the music and spent almost two months trying to get her to give me some names of tunes she would like to play, while she was evasive. Sister D refused repeated invitations to be involved in the music, only to complain afterwards about not being involved in the music. So now I am going back there with his ashes, to meet at the gravesite that he and my mother will now share. My sisters and I agreed that we would keep this simple and just have the three of us meet there. S was supposed to have worked things out with the cemetery, which is in her town, but she didn't and my sisters figured I would do it anyway, and I did. S and I have played music together on my mother's grave every time I have been there since her death in 2005, with her singing and playing the ukulele while I played rhythm on the cello. We talked on speaker-phone yesterday; they were together for S' birthday. I suggested that for this we plan ahead on the music a little, so that I could play melody on cello a little with S' rhythm as well as her singing. S said ok, and I suggested a Presley ballad. D said, "No!" and then escaped out the door to walk the door before it could be discussed. S was annoyed at all of this and did not want to discuss. She did tell me that I could play anything I wanted, but alone. I have the idea that D is eager to veto stuff and S doesn't want to commit to or suggest anything. Typical. Leaves me in the familiar role of going out on a limb (where I am an easy target for criticism) and doing it all. I scarcely want to just drop his urn in the hole the cemetery staff dug and walk away. I have no idea what to do. And the more I think about it, the more worried I get... Please help me

Your son is lucky to have such a wise and supportive mother.

Thanks, George. I appreciate that. I am sorry to hear about your sister. It is really painful when family members get crazy and feel entitled to take it out on us - whatever "it" is. My sisters and I were all damaged by my mother's treatment of us, but my sisters stayed close by and handled things with alcohol and destructive marriages. I moved far away, did many years of psychotherapy, and developed a professional career by which I could support myself. I also spent two decades - the first long distance and the second as close neighbors - developing a friendship with my father. By doing this, I gained his unconditional love and support, which my sisters unfortunately never had from either parent. I think they are angry and resentful that I have also been able to "write my own ticket" by developing a professional career, but I don't think that's anything to apologize or make amends for. After their marriages fell apart, my older sister went to graduate school in art, with which she cannot support herself, and my younger sister set about finding a man who would support her in the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. She loves him, but has no money of her own. I struggled through two graduate programs and a career path that has not been easy by any definition while my sisters did what they wanted and drank a considerable amount of wine. Nevertheless, they have chosen their paths, as have I, and engaging in their crazy stuff will only make me as miserable as it did with my mother. I have fought long and hard to get clear of all that emotional slime. For the most part I have done this by staying clear - far away from them. But then I miss having a family and wish we could be closer. Can't do that alone, though. I wish I could make myself stop trying.

It has been 17 months since my father - my best friend - died. Since I work in the schools, it has seemed like summer is the best time to fulfill his desire to have his ashes placed in the same grave site as my mother, who died in 2005, in PA. Last summer my sisters were not speaking to me and I was trying to consolidate my stuff and my dad's into one condo while suffering from a head injury. I decided to wait until this summer and now I will be traveling to meet with my sisters. I am filled with feeling I did not anticipate and cannot explain exactly. I called my older sister for her birthday today and learned that she has traveled to the house of my other sister, where they will be getting together with my cousin. The family get-togethers have excluded me for decades, starting with my mother's scapegoating of me. After my mother died and my father moved to live near me in AZ the dynamics seemed to change. My sisters did not want me to visit them because it seemed likely to them that I would bring him with me, but they were civil to me. It did seem like they were being nice to me because maybe I would intervene on their behalf with my father and they would be the beneficiary of some funds from him due to my advocating for them. And I did get him to help them because I was worried about them. But now that he has died, I don't have a lot of usefulness to them and they are back to being cold and icky to me. I feel like my having been angry with them over continuing my mother's exclusion of me has probably made them avoid me more, but I'm not sure how a person is to stop feeling angry about something that keeps happening. So every conversation we have is strained and awkward. Old things come up, but with new, fabricated details added that vilify me in some way. For example, there was a conversation we had many years with our mother - the three of us agreed to confront her about how she picked at me constantly but one sister said very little and the other said not a word in my defense in spite of her promise. And now she says, "Well, you just went off on her". I reminded her that we had agreed beforehand to have this confrontation, and she said "Oh yeah" and dropped it. But clearly, the story has changed to make my sisters innocent and me an unstable crank - to be avoided. So I am going back there, into what seems like a mess of icky stuff designed to malign and exclude me, and it is to bury my father's ashes. I feel worried about a lot of things, and I really really feel his loss. My sisters seem more and more like my narcissistic mother was. I don't know why I can't seem to let go of a hope that they will be any source of friendship or support to me. I fear losing my father again as I take his ashes across the country. Will his spirit abandon me and stay with his ashes, leaving me even more alone than I am? I had been feeling rather good about things in my life. I have landed my "dream job", which gets me back into the state retirement system and really health insurance. My cat is being filmed in a movie, which has been lots of fun. I have a new neighbor, who has turned out to be a great friend. I have finally recovered from the car accident that I was in a year ago. My dad's house sold, and while it is another loss, it is good to have one house to care for and not two of them. I am playing music and making clocks. Nevertheless, I feel sad and empty, with a sense of impending doom. I don't feel like working on my projects and am listlessly hanging about and doing very little. What does this mean? Will it go away and I go back to how I did a week or so ago?

Thanks! It is really wonderful. The first thing that came to my mind this morning when I woke up was..."I have a job!" Then Lena came running in for a snuggle & a treat, and it was a happy start to the day. We went into the kitchen together with me chattering to her about how we have 100% employment in the family. It is such a relief. I have lived in a state of dread for a decade - fear of losing my job, losing my job, and struggling to make any money I could to survive, which meant playing gigs on the guitar, home health as a social worker, and selling cards of my paintings. I even tried the nursing program at the local community college, doing all the prerequisites and two semesters before deciding nursing wasn't for me. My dad carried me through it financially and we learned to rely on each other. Then I began doing contract work, which was great but entailed very long drives and being away from my father as he declined. Then he died and I was in that car accident. My sisters stopped talking to me as I struggled to deal with his estate and property. Then I lost the contract work that I had on the reservation. But things have turned around, and this is a great outcome after going through all of that. It's hard to believe that I could just live my life without the dread and worry of impending disaster, having one job - a real job - that allows me to use my skills and training to help my community. Just go to work, do a good job, go home, and enjoy my cat. Paint a little. Mess around with clocks. Play the cello...

I got the job... Lena had her first day on the movie set... I am exhausted... Life is good