Clematis

Perhaps it is true...I spent last weekend cavorting around a campground with my cello and my friends, and today was out on uneven ground flying kites with a bunch of kids for hours. Managed to do it without falling or any other problems...seems like progress!

Freya was a cat that I dearly loved, but who was a little wild-refused to live indoors. I lost her several times, once getting her back after her being gone for almost a year. So when Freya really did disappear, I really couldn't accept it and had dreams about her for almost 20 years where we would find each other again and run across a field of flowers into each other's arms. I finally would wake up scolding myself-"You have to stop having these dreams-there is no way that cat could possibly still be alive". Then there was Mitten, whom I had to give up because my allergies and asthma had become so severe. It broke my heart, not only from losing her but believing that I would never be able to have a cat again. I was still having dreams about Freya when I lost Mitten. But amazingly enough, I now have Lena and when I realized that I could tolerate living with a cat I was so ecstatic I wanted to share it-and her-with the world. That's how Lena became a therapy cat...

Stella is adorable. Pets can be such a comfort in the loss of a loved one. It is very sad that Stella passed away so shortly after you lost your mom. I don't know how I would have coped with the loss of my dad in January if it weren't for my Lena. It still has been very hard, but I seem to be moving through it. I hope you're doing ok...

Thank you, Marty and Kay! I have a pile of those skirts and wear them all the time, in the winter I keep wearing them but with tights and real shoes. Hiking, canoeing, anything...the place that sells them calls me when they get in a new shipment. One time someone there called me "our uniform girl" since I wear them every day of my life. It has been good in a time like the last 4 months. I never have to think about what to wear-just grab one, find a matching t-shirt, put a flower in my hair and go. Sometimes I even remember to comb my hair... In the first few months after my dadd died, I'd tell myself every day that if I just had a flower in my hair I'd feel better. Riding a bike with a cello on one's back is a bit of a trick. I try to keep the laws of physics in mind as I get on and off. I try to just focus on getting on or off. The cello weighs a lot less than I do, and since he is tied to me he will go where I go. I just have to really focus and not be distracted by his bumping and shifting as I get on and off. You would think that if I could ride a bike around a campground with a cello on my back, I should be able to negotiate my kitchen without falling, huh?

Marty-I thought this was a great article. I live in Sedona, which is so filled with people who think this way and no other. One is just surrounded with this magical thinking that primarily begets blame. While I can hardly say, "Oh poor me-I have to live in Sedona", it is uncomfortable being surrounded with all this blaming. My dad really made it bearable for me to live here because I could be rather minimally in the community on short trips to the grocery etc, and then either go hide in my own little cave (my condo) or spend time with my dad. I think the only way that "positive brings positive" works is internally, which is why we encourage positive self-talk. If you do a lot of positive self-talk, it leads to more positive self-talk and may make you feel more optimistic, but it is not a vaccine from bad things happening to you. Stuff happens for no good reason. I was late to work last Friday when that woman sideswiped me in the parking lot. But maybe if I had arrived earlier something worse would have happened. Who knows!

What a lovely idea! Lena and I will join you. She is still here, young and healthy, but I have lost other pets before her and it was always heartbreaking.

I am so sorry about your losing your dog Minnie. She looks very sweet. Animals are so important, and I think even more so for people who live alone with their pet. It makes a huge difference between coming home to a pet who is delighted to see you, and cowing home to an empty house. I have lost several pets over the years and it is agonizing. I hope you are getting along ok...

It's a good thing Mister Cello wasn't in the car that day...also, since the accident I'm thinking he should go back to wearing his seatbelt in the car. I used to loop the seatbelt through the backpack straps to secure him in the car, to protect him-and me! Here we are at the Flagstaff Folk Festival and at Pickin in the Pines last year. These were little mini-vacations where I wasn't working or taking care of my dad-but I didn't feel too bad about it because we were only an hour away. Pickin in the Pines is a music festival with a 4-day campout. I'd always feel a little guilty about leaving my dad to go camping with Mister Cello, but it was only an hour drive if he needed me, and he always encouraged me to go, and spend time playing music with my friends. I would get someone to take care of Lena and water my plants, but I worried about my dad. I'd call my sisters and plead with them to check in with him by phone while I was out of town, but they never would. I'd also tell his neighbors to watch out for him, but I still worried. It always bugged me that my sisters-between the two of them-could not make a few phone calls so I could have a little break from the worry, but the truth is probably that I would have worried and called him anyway even if they were also calling him. I probably would have called him even it they were calling him-after all he was my best friend and I always had things to tell him-but it would have been nice to know someone else was checking in with him.

Thanks, Kay! I have believed all along that if I could just get through this school year intact, that things would get easier because I would have ten weeks off work to get a lot done. I only have one more day out there of work-Wednesday-and I'll be going out with my friend Mike-almost always we work different days-for coverage-but the last day of the year we're both working and he's driving! It should be a fun day and I won't have to do that long drive!

I was starting to think that...tomorrow I'll see the chiropractor and he'll have some ideas. And now I finally got the woman's info. At least I can get things going now. I imagine some day somehow I'll get to see the police report...

Yay! My insurance agent was finally able to get the name, insurance company, and policy number of the other driver! This is good. If I had to file through my insurance company, the most it would cover is $5,000 with a $ 500 deductible and I already have an ambulance ride, an ER bill, plans for chiropractic and concussion symptoms. She is from Texas and the minimum medical on liability insurance is $30,000. So, I shouldn't have to worry about it not being adequate... On a humorous note, there was at least class of students out in the parking lot when this occurs, and word of something like the school counselor being involved in a car accident in the school parking lot travels fast. And they all know me, even if they don't see me for counseling, in some part due to my cello, who accompanies me to school almost every day (see picture of Mister Cello below, riding shotgun). The kids had only one question; "Is Mister Cello ok?" Yes, he happened to stay at home on this particular day...

Thanks, Marty and Kay, I appreciate your ideas. The problem is that if I make the claim through my own insurance company the limit on medical is $5000 and I have to pay a $500 deductible. That might be enough, but if I keep having funny things going on with my vision and balance, it might not be. Also, I'm not crazy about paying $500 if I don't have to. If I can find out the name of the other driver (who was at fault), and her insurance company, I can file a claim with them and in most places the minimum on a person's liability insurance is about $15000-and I don't have to pay a deductible. But the police seem to think that the information on the police report is confidential information. The law is that when you are in an accident, you are to exchange names and insurance information with the other driver, but the police prevented that by keeping us separated because she was harassing me and trying to get me to agree with her fabricated story. So I can't make a claim with her company. My agent, Melissa, says she can do nothing unless I file a claim with State Farm - my company, but that caps my medical at $5000 and I pay a $500 deductible. The way I see it is that the police are basically covering for the other driver, by allowing her to remain anonymous by keeping us apart and then not releasing her name and insurance information to me and my insurance agent. My agent is very good and super nice, and she is also the principal cellist in my community orchestra. Unfortunately, today is her first day back from a vacation and I'm sure she has a lot of other things to deal with than me. She called the tribal police this morning and left a message. They didn't call her back. My doctor is leaving for a two week vacation and told me that I am probably fine and that I am an anxious person. I guess he figures that sums it all up. I think he's really really ready to go on vacation... Maybe I need to wait until I have more information before making a claim, but somehow that seems like a bad idea to wait for several weeks for my Dr to return to town, for the reservation police to complete whatever their process, etc.

My brain is definitely in a fog, and it's worse since the accident. When I talked to my Dr on the phone, he told me that I should have left work and come to see him on the day of the accident so I could get back to Sedona to see him before the end of the day. When I told him about the odd visual things, he said, "Well, I guess they probably don't have an MRI out there" that I was probably fine, adding, "Well, you're an anxious person"... Well, I'm seeing a chiropractor tomorrow-maybe he will be helpful...

It is very bizarre and I can't figure out what to do. They don't seem to be able to get the name of the other driver & her insurance information either to me or to my insurance agent. I'm not sure that filing with my insurance company, which has a $5K limit on my medical and I pay a $500 deductible is the way to go since I already have an ambulance ride, an ER bill with an unknown amount, and will have a chiropractor followup. I also have something funny that is going on that I can't figure out related to my vision and balance. Sometimes it seems like what I see from my left and right eye are not altogether connected to each other, and I keep having this thing where I lean over in one direction of another and feel like I am going to fall, but then prevent it by taking a little hop to catch myself. At the reservation ER, all they could do to check this out was to do a visual acuity test-have me stand 20 feet from an eye chart and read it. It does seem bizarre that I am not allowed to know what happened in an accident that I was involved in. I am not allowed to see the police report or talk to the witnesses...

Fortunately, I am not a conservative jew and so those customs are not really applicable, and it's not like something that I grew up, but it just got me to thinking about how seriously they take it-like they obviously believe that you should be in serious mourning for at least a year, and I think they have a point. They expect that you are not going to have a normal life for at least a year. The hospice bereavement counselor typically sees people for 13 months after a loss. Those two things hang together, but it is really at odds with the culture at large here, where they seem to expect that we should have "gotten over it" in a much shorter period of time. I think our culture's expectations are just bizarre...I mean, here I am at work four months after losing my father, for whom I was caring. And I've been at work all along. It's not really any wonder that I've had multiple falls, car incidents, and a slew of losing stuff, making numb mistakes, etc (trouble holding things together). But I think it's what the world around me expects me to be doing- I don't think it's my imagination or some anxious paranoia that makes me feel that pressure from around me to keep on keeping on in spite of it all...

So, I was in this car accident that was caused by the other driver and apparently I have no right to any information. I am not allowed to see the police report, and the witnesses who talked to the police are not allowed to talk to me. The police prevented me from talking to the other driver-to exchange name & insurance information, and they will not tell me who she is or who her insurance company is. It's really hard to believe that you can cause a car accident which injures the other person and damages their vehicle, and remain anonymous, even if you are at fault-that the police can protect the perpetrator from the victim's learning who they are.

I'm going to learn-really learn-that song, Riptide, that I kinda learned at the campout this weekend...seems appropriate, aside from the lyric, which are irrelevant. It's just that I'm always talking about the riptide effect of grief's effects making you feel like you're in a riptide, being swept out to sea in an undercurrent while on the surface everything looks normal, Also from the campout last weekend with my musician friends, I was talking to my retired OT friend G about the riptide effect and she commented that it is a very strange thing that in a state of grief or other trauma, that we are supposed to act normal when nothing inside feels normal at all. We are ripped apart inside and yet are expected to show up fully functioning at work and everything. They "understand" and you can get away with a little slip here and there, but not much. For me, it's been only four months since I lost my father, my best friend, my safety net, the person to whom I could tell anything, the person who was always on my side, and had my back. I also seem to have lost my sisters, who seem to have been primarily interested in using me to get our father to send them money-I don't think they cared about our dad at all, and not me at all. And then I lost my aunt, to whom I was closer to than her sister-my mother. I also lost my uncle, two weeks before my dad, with whom I was not close, but worst than that I lost one of my best mucisian-mentor friends, suddenly at the age of 46. I also lost Patty, my mentor and beloved painting teacher, and along with her the entire watercolor painting program-and my artistic support-at the community college where I have been taking classes for the past five years. I have been trying to continue painting on my own and joined up with the ceramics class, which similar to Patty's former painting group in that it has a very longterm group of friendly potters who are supportive of each others. I am fortunate that they have embraced me, and a few of them I knew from before, through contra dance, painting, or another music group. But still, there I am-a water colorist hanging out with the potters, like a bird of a different species in a flock. On the other hand, as a Jewish convert, I am familiar with the grieving customs of traditional Judaism and I think I would be much worse off there. They expect a full year of grieving behaviors and then they observe the yahrzeit of the deceased loved one every year on the anniversary. The people all stand up with you at Shabbat services as you observe the yahrzeit of the loved one. That part is good and I think the full year of serious grieving and observing the yahrzeit are consistent with what people feel. But for me that would be impossible for me since I am not in a close-knit community of others. No one came over to my house to bring food, sit shiva, or do anything else with me at my house. I was here alone. Had I been prohibited from doing anything where there was any music or entertainment of any kind, I would have been even more isolated than I was. Maybe that is in some part because almost all of my friends are musicians. When I enter people in my contact list on my phone I always enter their instrument in case I get stumped. Huh-what is the name of that cool mando player I met at the ...? I just look up "mandolin" and their name pops up! If I meet someone and they don't play an instrument I'm always stymied but come up with something...potter, jeweler, etc. Anyway, I think it comes down to the reality that multiple significant losses and the isolation is really a heavy blow. Right now, I don't want to go to work, but I think I'd better go get in the car and go...

There seem to be a lot of people who object to even the concept of thinking. I've had this sort of thing said to me throughout my life-like you say, like it is a problem to actually think about something and try to figure it out. To me, hearing that is like someone telling me mot to breathe... It's a reflex

Thank you, Marty! I'll check out Longmire... I think my insurance agent will have no trouble getting the police report once she gets back to town. I went up to play music with my friends during a week-end-long campout, but I followed my OT's directions and did not haul a bunch of heavy stuff around. I camped out at my friend G's house-she is a retired OT who, after retiring, traveling all over the northwest into Alaska in a camper, caring for her difficult mother, handling her mother's death, suffered a massive aneurism, from which she is still recovering. It was wonderful to spend the night together at her house and get to know each other better. We have known each other a long time but never had the time to really get to know each other. Anyway, she is still not allowed to drive, rite a bike, climb onto a chair, lift heavy stuff, etc. I was telling her about my struggle to find a reasonable explanation for why grief is so exhausting, and she looked at me like I had two heads and told me that there is a lot of research about the physiological and cognitive effects of significant grieving. I told her about my Riptide analogy. One of the coolest things about the camping (in my case pretending to camp) weekend was that three nine-year old girls, two of whom play the ukulele were talking about how they were learning a song called "Riptide" and wanted to play it for the group after dinner but thought they were too shy to play it for a bunch of people-mostly adults. I got my uke and we all sat down to work on this song together; they were teaching me this song I'd never heard, and I was helping them with how to keep the rhythm together. This attracted the attention of a guy who was familiar with the song. I got him to capo up his guitar like a ukulele & he joined us. After dinner we got two more guys to back us up and we played for the group, with the girls in the middle. They got more confident as they went along and at least two of the girls' dads videotaped them on their phones. The girls got a lot of kudos and were really jazzed about it. It was really cool...

I don't think I hit my head, but being hit throws your brain over to the other side of your skull-I think this inside injury is called a countrecoup. It can cause some confusion and that kind of thing. I seem to be doing ok today, woke up without an alarm at 6:15, took a shower, made brownies for a potluck, and started getting ready to go up to Flagstaff. I even painted my toenails purple. I'm going up to play music with my friends-it's an all weekend campout/potluck event that's organized by the folk music group. I will be camping at my friend's house-we'll just go over there when we get tired. It's really nice of her. The police...well it's the tribal police, and while I have always found then to be as cordial and professional as any officers I have seen anywhere (all of my contacts with them previously have been related to kids I was working with), it's the reservation. In many aspects it's like a foreign country. Think third world country... As to the car, I think that will all sort out ok. My agent will be able to get a copy of the police report, the other driver has insurance, and so do I. The only thing that concerns me is that they may decide it's a total loss, since it's 10 years old and has 282,000 miles on it. I was hoping to get another year out of that car. We'll see...

Yeah, I can take Ibuprofen, and did. I had some funny visual effects and was kind of woozy when I was at the ER, but it seemed to go away. I'll see how I am in the morning. I really wanted to go up to Flagstaff and play music with my folkie friends tomorrow, but I'll see how it looks in the morning. I think I'll be ok. The law is a weird thing out there. Sometimes State Law rules and sometimes Federal Law trumps State Law. Sometimes there is some Tribal Law that prevails, and sometimes people just don't know or care what they are doing out there and make it up as they go along. When that officer refused to give me the other driver's name, I think she was thinking of something else, like ace if I had called about someone else's accident, and she certainly was not thinking about how it's the law to exchange information and she had prevented us from doing so. she wouldn't let the other woman near me, and she wouldn't give me my own license, registration and insurance card back. But then she didn't want to back down and say she had erred, so once I gave her the option of just faxing it to my agent, she went for it. I hope she actually does it!

The police does have a report with her name and insurance information on it, but the officer who was at the accident and wrote the report told me that she could not release that information to me. My agent is out of town, and so I talked to her assistant and got the impression that I would be screwed if I filed with my own insurance co. Then I called the officer back and very sweetly suggested that generally at the scene of an accident people are supposed to exchange insurance information. However, this very officer had prevented me from doing so. I had this happen once before, where a woman backed into me in a parking lot (as I was driving slowly by) and became hostile and belligerent with me, accusing me of damaging her car. The officer pointed out that we were supposed to do this exchange ourselves, but similarly, since the woman was being such a problem, he facilitated the exchange of information. That was about ten years ago and in Tucson. That woman continued to be accusatory and ugly as we worked through the insurance process. Then the adjustor came out to see my car, dented on the side. having already having seen the damage to her rear bumper. He started out basically convinced that I was at fault and the woman was right. But he took one look at my car and said, "Where should we send the check?" I think this will go similarly once I get the information. The damage to the vehicles and the ending position of the vehicles could not possibly be a result of her story, and there were also a bunch of eyewitnesses-three in the school bus behind me and more in the parking lot. She thought if she could badger be into agreeing with her that I had been in the left turn lane signaling left, she could then use that with the officers to say I admitted fault. When she first said that I was in the left turn lane signaling left, I said "I don't think that's true". She took that as a weak statement-that I didn't know what happened. But it makes no sense. I have driven down this hill and turned right into this parking lot on the way to work for four years. Why would I be on the other side of the road? But it amazed me how quickly she fabricated this crazy story and tried to shove it down my throat. She was sitting in her car trying to figure out where she was and how to get there, and then just turned into traffic without looking. I can understand how a confused and lost person who had been driving too long might pull out into traffic without thinking or looking but the facility at lying is amazing, It was very fortunate that all those people were around and that the police were there immediately.

Not my fault, but not good either - a car accident! And the reservations are like a foreign country... So I was driving out to the school on the reservation and went down the hill to turn right into the school parking lot at the bottom of the hill. As it turned out, the special ed bus was coming along behind me and so the driver, the special ed teacher and an aide were all in the bus and witnessed what happened. There was a woman sitting in her car near the school on the right-hand side of the road I was on – northbound. Apparently, she was lost and consulting with her map/gps function on her cell phone. According to the witnesses, at some point she just pulled out onto the road without looking, and sideswiped th my car which was right in front of her as I was making my right hand turn into the school parking lot. She hit me so hard that she was unable to open her driver’s door and she pushed my car sideways from one lane of the drive to the other. My car has damage to at least 5 panels, including both doors, but it drives ok. She chased me around, yelling at me and accusing me of being in the left turn lane with my left turn indicator on, adding that I had turned into the parking lot by cutting across the northbound lane of the road. It's a one lane road going in each direction, but northbound as we were going, there is a left lane-so that you can turn onto a road that is across the street from Second Mesa day school. I have no idea how she spun this bizarre story so quickly. Had it been true, she would have T-boned me, possibly rolling my car on impact, rather than side swiping me. In any event, we would have been out in the middle of the road and not in the drive to the school. The officers separated us several times because she kept chasing me around trying to convince me of her bizarre story, and I didn't really know what happened-I never saw her until she hit me. They took me by ambulance to the ER and they didn't give me my drivers license registration and insurance card back. Eventually I discovered that they turned them in at the school. But I was not able to find out wher name or that of her insurance company is. You know – normally, you exchange this information at the scene of an accident. But the police actually prevented me from finding out who she was by keeping her away from me. I called my insurance company and they told me that if I filed it through my company I would have to pay the deductible although I might be able to get it back. I would also have only $5K coverage for medical-and I already have an E.R. and ambulance bill. She would be required to carry at least $15K of medical on liability. Unfortunately I obviously can't file a claim against her insurance company if I don't know who she is or who her insurance company is. I called the Hopi tribal police and they told me that they could not give me a copy of the accident report, which would of course have her name and insurance information on it. The Hopi tribal police told me that they would send the accident report to both insurance companies. The insurance company told me if they did that it would basically be like sending it to space because there will be no claim to attach it to. That leaves me with only the possibility of filing a claim with my own insurance company, which is a bad deal. Then I called the tribal police back and explained to them how they had prevented me from collecting information that I had a right to –the woman's name and insurance company information. She eventually agreed to fax the accident report to my insurance agent instead of the claims department. I sure hope she does it! I seem to be ok-a little stiff; I imagine I’ll be seeing a chiropractor soon. I think they are the best at figuring out and fixing that sort of thing.

I suspect it's some food spill...something slippery.

Thanks! The spot is suspiciously located in between the refrigerator, the dining room table, and spot where the cat eats. I've contacted the housekeeper (my dad told me to-she was his housekeeper). She is great and does a lot better job of it than I do, pushing a paper towel around the floor with my foot. She will actually clean the floor...