Clematis

Thanks, Kay! You are right - I do a good job for them and am meticulous and enthusiastic about every evaluation I do. I have this idea that everyone should "get their money's worth", even those who aren't paying for it. Having a psychoeducational evaluation done on a student is a rare and precious commodity, and I feel that everyone should get the maximum possible in the way of information. Therefore, I am the most thorough communicator I have ever heard of in the capacity of school psychologist because I want everyone to get the maximum possible from the information. I generally score tests the minute I complete them and then start sharing the information immediately. I talk to the team at the MET meeting, of course, but I also talk to the teachers for as long as they will listen, and to the students to the limit that they are capable of understanding, because they will be living with that brain for the rest of their lives. I also call the parents at home, on the weekend, any time I can find them and answer any questions they have about the testing results. I have many many times spent an hour or more on the phone with parents talking about the implications of their child's testing, even when I was doing contract work and didn't make a dime on any of those calls. I talked to the other psychologist where I work and she says that she hardly ever calls a parent. I also have very good skills in the area of listening with interest and empathy, and expressing what I have to say in a way that is sensitive of the other person/people. This comes from working as a psychotherapist. So here are three of my biggest strengths in my job - thoroughness, open and generous sharing of the information I gain, and empathic, sensitive communication with a deep desire to understand and be understood. These are the highlights of my improvement plan. It really is kind of crazy. The only really big strength he hasn't attacked is my writing. It's not like I don't have weaknesses - I surely do. But he hasn't taken the time to figure out what they are. He is impulsive and when he is angry or upset he tends to take it out on a nearby target, and he really doesn't like me. I suspect that it's like the emperor with no clothes. I don't have to say a word and he knows that I can see him for who he is. I am always polite and respectful, but he knows that I can see him... So he abuses his power to whip me. Nice. It is starting to make contract work look more attractive... That sounds like a nightmare you were in. It is terrible to be highly skilled and be abused for it.

This is so true, Kay, and I appreciate your thoughtful comments. I was so happy about getting back into a regular job because I wouldn't have to drive as far, would get a few more years into the retirement system, and have good health insurance. I had forgotten about the many snarls of backstabbing and political b.s. that go with a district. When you contract and they don't like you, they just don't renew your contract. When you are hired, they can torture you for quite some time and then not renew your contract. I am particularly distressed about this "improvement plan" because it is like watching ripples spread on a pond. It was originally written very vaguely and so it is easy for him to keep expanding it, adding new parts, and then say that it was actually part of the original plan. I am thinking about writing a response of what I think has occurred so far and asking that we have a written record from each meeting as to what he is asking me to do. When my dad was alive, I used to talk to him about this stuff and he was really great, but he said he never had any of this crazy stuff happen to him in his entire career. He learned his field, worked hard, did a good job, and was respected for it. Sometimes he was given a gargantuan amount of work, but it eventually leveled out, and things were ok. I never had problems like this in business (because people were too busy doing business and worried about the bottom line). I also never had problems like this in the prison or court system because paramilitary systems are male-driven logical hierarchies. But the schools - there are so many crazy women and a system that really doesn't work where people gain and keep control by crazy means...all the back-biting, back-stabbing, tattling, gossiping stuff that plagued me in the third grade, the fourth, grade, middle school, etc... Well, here I am back in the middle of it again! Ughh!

Thanks, Kay, and it's good to hear from you too. Yeah, having a good watchmaker is really a treasure. I had another meeting with my boss today and he pretty much beat me up verbally for an hour. We never even got to the part about Cindy. I think he was on edge and all freaked out when we started because a kid new to the district had really ripped up a classroom and part of another. They had to call the police and suspend him. The same kid, when he came into the district arrived with a partially completed evaluation, and the SpEd coordinator went through the file and gave it to me to review. It took me about a week because it was confusing, but I got it back to her. I thought the SpEd teacher was going to set up a meeting, but she said she thought I was going to do it (even though it would have been her task to do). The SpEd director was really upset about this problem (that was tossed into our lap by another district) and blames it all on me that we went out of compliance on the date. I didn't see this date at first because it was buried in the middle of about 50 pages of documentation, but the SpEd coordinator said she saw it from the beginning. And why didn't she make it apparent that this particular file review was urgent? Like when I asked her if it was urgent? I finally asked her if we could get a 30-day extension on it and she went to the SpEd director (my boss). Turns out he was still sitting on the file and had not gone over my review once it came back, and so no one could have done anything about it until he reviewed it - neither me nor the SpEd teacher. And whose fault is all that? Mine, naturally! He was also after me about a couple of the SPEd teachers who do not get me the information that they are supposed to get to me in a timely manner. If I ask them over and over and still can't get them to do it, then that is my fault. He told me about the latest one (same teacher as the one above paragraph, who is a great person, but not up on technology - she is probably near 70) - he said that I needed to go to her principal and tell the principal that my butt is in the line if this teacher doesn't snap to it. And this poor teacher is recovering from having surgery on fractures in her neck from being kicked repeatedly in the head by a violent student. And I am supposed to ruthlessly push this poor teacher??? Oh yeah, I was also in big trouble for not taking responsibility for adequately communicating with her during the time when she was out sick, during winter break, while I was out sick, the SpEd coordinator was out sick and the principal was at a conference. Why could I not get any information from any of these people while they were out sick. Huh. Go figure. I must just be lazy to not have hunted them down in their sick beds. Actually, I looked bad at a meeting because of some information this teacher did not give me before she went out on sick leave for her surgery. She said the SpEd coordinator set this thing up, but that wasn't true, the SpEd coordinator said the teacher set it up, no one followed through and it just fell between the cracks. And whose fault is that? Mine again. This guy is a terrible administrator. He says things impulsively without thinking about what the implications are, and he doesn't communicate well because he doesn't pay attention to what he says and whether it makes sense or if he left out so many pieces that it makes no sense. In my improvement plan, he had a comment that there is a woman in Phx who was writing IEP's for us and there were two of them when she was sweating bullets because I didn't get the testing results to her in a timely manner. So he has decided that I don't communicate with anyone and he wants to know the names of everyone who will be involved in every meeting I am involved with so that he can "survey" them afterwards to see if I communicated with them. My experience is that if you send 100 emails at work, about half of the people will say they didn't get it. I asked him if instead I could cc him on my emails to all of these people and show him my working files that have copies of all of the ones I have been sending for the last weeks/months. He said sure. Then he said he wanted to be cc'd and survey the people. I don't think he even thought about what they would look like. He wants to send out emails to people saying that he got a copy of an email that went to a them and even though he has a copy of the email and can see that it went to them he wants them to tell him if I communicated with them. (Or maybe I am sending out fake email in a way that even the IT team could not do). Then he wanted to know if he could take all of my working files I brought to the meeting and keep them for a few days. I was aghast and asked him, "How could I work? What would I do? Every single thing I am working on is in those files! Turning them over would mean dropping the ball on absolutely everything I am working on." He said, Oh, ok. What a maniac! I guess this is why I haven't been writing...I am just sitting in my house listening to about 70 or so clocks ticking away and hoping I get through it all somehow...

Work has been trying...we had a very bad start to the school year because we were short several special education teachers - like almost all of them - and the ones we had were almost entirely brand new. The SpEd director had the SpEd coordinator working as his assistant on some legal matters rather than setting up the meetings, which is a huge part of her job. It took the two of them quite some time to decide this was a problem and delegate the task of setting meetings to the brand new teachers and the two of us school psychs. We jumped right on it, once given the go-ahead, but we were starting the semester's work six weeks into the school year. This predictably caused a logjam of getting the evaluations done, but they were all done on time and correctly. Nevertheless, there was some stress to everyone about it not all going optimally and smoothly. So now I am on a "Performance Improvement Plan". This is in some part because of the way the work was crammed together (not my fault) and part of it was telling me that I should "not demean" people at work. When my supervisor presented me with this, I asked him over and over about demeaning people. He said he had never seen anything like this from me but it came from the principal of this one school and was about the SpEd staff. The SpEd director and I are meeting weekly (twice now) to discuss my improvement. I showed up at the second meeting with a color timeline on a spreadsheet that showed every evaluation I had done, along with the dates of beginning, end, and when I did the testing. It is clear from the timelines that the late start had a devastating impact on the entire semester, and there was actually only one case when the testing was actually cone late. I also persuaded him that rather than him "surveying" every person I worked with to see if I had communicated with them after every meeting that I simply bring him my files - the folders for every evaluation I am working on - to my meetings with him. Each file has printed copies of emails and my notes about phone conversations with parents etc. But I keep worrying over this "demeaning" comment. He says I am perseverating about it, but I find it outlandish that he has put something so vague and condemning on a PIP without a single example. But now I think I have figured out what is going on. One of the new SpEd teachers there complains about me constantly - to the principal, asst. principal, SpEd director, SpEd coordinator, the other SpEd teacher, and probably all of the gen ed teachers as well. She complained to the principal after her first meeting with me (a MET meeting) that I was rigid and controlling and he came down to talk to me about it. Essentially, she had tried to take over my MET meeting and run things in another direction. She runs the IEP meetings and I run the MET meeting; this was her first MET meeting. He made a comment about Cindy being a "bull in the china shop", and in her defense said that she had run her own business for 30+ years and was press much used to being the boss and the one who knew everything. He said it was very hard for her to be a new person in a new field. I was well aware of this and through the beginning of the year I had worked hard to help her and all of the other new SpEd teachers to learn the ropes, since the people in the district office were too busy to do it. When she tried to reroute my meeting, I simply said, "We'll get to that". We had many conversations near the beginning of the year that began with my starting to say something to her, Cindy guessing what I was about to say, and jumping in with some argument against this thing she had made up. Then I would have to backtrack, point out that I actually was saying something entirely different. I found this frustrating, and she apparently was furious at being told she was wrong (about her trying to mind read me). She has also had a pattern of showing increasing levels of tension and building anger that eventually erupt in an openly aggressive rage at me. Which I have glossed over and just focused on trying to get my work done. Things are better now, partly because I seldom speak to her unless I have to (email everything), and partly because now that she has been in her job for 6 months she has some idea of what she is doing and doesn't make so many mistakes. (And she has a job that generally takes people about three years to really figure out). I had a conversation with Cindy once in which I said that I would really like things to be better between us and she agreed, "sure..." I followed this up with saying I would really like to find a way to work things out between the two of us and she said, "No!" I asked her why not and she said "Well, it's always going to end up like this." I asked her what she meant and she said basically that we were always going to have different points of view. So if she thought I might disagree with her and she might be wrong, she didn't even want to even talk to me about it. And this is actually what she has done...she tattles, reports me, gossips, and so on - anything but talk to me directly. And I am thinking that she feels so fragile inside that the prospect of being wrong, of seen as possibly inadequate in some way is intolerable to her and feels degrading, humiliating, and demeaning. This is the essence of narcissistic injury and narcissistic rage. And what am I supposed to do about this? Any ideas?

It's been more than two years now since my dad died. I still miss him every day. I went through Thanksgiving and Christmas without speaking to either of my sisters (there was a little gift exchange and a little talk with my older sister, but no conversations on the actual holidays). I used to try so hard to feel some sense of family with them around the holidays and was devastated at the last of reciprocation every holiday. This year I didn't call them and they didn't call me on Thanksgiving or Christmas. It was a relief to not hope for something I could never get. My job remains rather brutal. I had forgotten about how petty and nasty the back-biting can be immersed in a school district. Why can't we just help the kids, follow the law, work together, and try to act like grownups on the same team? Contract work was less secure, and there was a lot more driving. Also, there was no health insurance and no contribution to the retirement plan. Nevertheless, it's start to seem more appealing. I really miss my dad's support and level head as I told him about the trials and tribulations of this icky reality that is my work life. Nevertheless, I keep trudging along through things. The main spring on my dad's Omega pocket watch broke - the watch that was his father's and a gift to my father when he graduated from college. I had it repaired, along with this other watch that belonged to my father's maternal grandfather. It also had a mainspring problem, but I have fixed it as well and it has the sweetest ticktock I ever heard. It is 101 years old this year. I wear one or the other every day, as if it were a shield against the evils of the world. I also feel that all four of these men, my dad, both grandfathers, and my father's maternal grandfather, are looking out for me, like guardian angels. I sure need them. Life seems very difficult. Nothing is wrong in any catastrophic or unusual way. I am just tired. And I miss my dad every day...

I have a friend of 30 years, and although in some ways we know each other well, I can't read her mind and I find that when she tries to read mine it leads to misunderstandings. I find that it's helpful to directly say what I mean and ask for what I want, and it seems to work best when others do the same. Many times people don't know what to do or say when others are grieving. "How are you?" and "Are you ok?" sound like attempts to reach out, but maybe not knowing how to do it or what you might need. It sounds like you really needed a phone call and chance to talk things through with your friend, but she didn't know that. I hope you can find a way to work things out with her...it's hard to find 30-year friends. I can relate to this I have a 30-year friend, and she and I have had a lot of ups and downs. In fact I called her last night with some good news and she was obviously angry. After awhile she said something to the effect that she thought I was calling he to brag and "lord it over her" because she was having a bad time in the same area. So she realized that there was no way I was trying to hurt her with my good news because I couldn't possibly know what had happened to her - she hadn't told me. Last summer I had gotten so tired of her irrational responses to things that I told her that I had just had it. I told her something like, "Look - you are my only 30-year friend and I know that I am your only 30-year friend. We need to just get beyond these things that come up and move on anyway because we probably won't live long enough to get any more 30-year friends." So far so good - I think... Emails and texts are really hard because they carry no tone of voice, body language or anything else, and a message that would sound warm and caring in person or even over the phone may sound totally cold. I have learned the hard way that some things can only be made worse by more writing and I need to make the effort to work it out in person or on the phone. Good luck with your friend. It's hard for anyone when we are grieving and things seem really hard and we don't always react rationally to things. It might be worth picking up the phone and see if you can go back and try to have a "do-over". It sounds like a miscommunication both ways, and you might get your friend back...

Herman's cat, "Pussycat" is getting braver and is checking me out to see if I am ok...it's good to see her out and not hiding under the bed. I am so glad Herman has her as a companion.

I'm continuing to do my best to help Herman, my friend with dementia. His family, after some initial hesitation, has embraced me into Team Herman in their family effort to help him have what he wants, which is to live in his own home as long as possible, perhaps until his end. I have been working on coordinating services for him, as I did when I worked as a medical social worker. This is good, since the family is out of town. They really need someone in town who can be their "eyes and ears". It is easy for me to pop in to check on things, pick up little things at the store, etc. I am also trying to help Herman with his grief. He cries a lot, and that seems healthy, even though it is not always clear which part of his grief is closest to the surface at any given moment. He has had so many losses...both of his wives, recently his daughter, and all of the people that he has outlived due to his age (90 next summer). He remembers my dad clearly and he cries every time his name comes up, but his significance to Herman as he looks back changes. Sometimes he says that Charlie was one of his closest friends. Other times he talks about how he could always relate to my dad because they were so close in age (9 months apart) and had similar experiences. I think the latter is closer to the truth, but I think in some way my dad represents to Herman all of the many people he barbered over his long career. All of those people who he attended to with love and interest and enthusiasm as he snipped away... Herman has lost all of that and so much more. He has lost his ability to make a living, fly an airplane, drive a car, manage his personal life, and so much more. He cannot record new information - or not very well anyway - and he is very aware of this. He brings this up frequently, lamenting his hoss of memory and feeling badly that he cannot keep anything in his memory. I keep reminding him about how I bought him a new memory for $1.99 at Walgreens in the form of a blue composition book. Anytime someone comes over they log it in "Herman's Memory Log" and then he can look at it later and have some idea of what he has been doing that day. When his son, daughter-in-law, or I talk him through taking him through his meds over the phone, we have him log that as well. Then if any of us call him to check on him, he can pick up his $1.99 memory (the composition book) and read off what has occurred. This has seemed to give him some confidence, and he always laughs about the $1.99 memory. Nevertheless, he struggles so much. Last night, he took his meds and went to bed, but woke up later from a dream (that his daughter had died) to the realization that it was true. He called me in a panic thinking that it had only been a day or two since she had gone and he had just learned this. He said that his memory has been slapping him around. I said yeah, that was true, but his grief was also slapping him around. It seems so normal and so typical of all of us in grief that the grief comes in waves. We are distracted by other things and suddenly it comes back and slaps us alongside the head. Time seems distorted to all of us - how long has it really been and how long does it seem? We can get lost between dreams and reality and sometimes the dreamlike can seem more real than the now. This is so much my experience since my father died. Sometimes I feel like I am less in the now and more in the past - even in a time before I was born. Perhaps this is partly because I now have my father and moth of my grandfathers as "guardian angel companions". Or maybe its mostly just grief. Last night I had a dream that my cat Lena slipped away from me into a rainy night. When I awoke to a quiet house in a dark dry morning with no living parents in a land where is has not rained since August, it was hard to know what was the most and least real. After a panic I found Lena curled up and dry, but I still feel unsettled. And still in grief... Herman cries and I feel his loss...his loss of everything. I feel it too. It is probably merciful that he has memory lapses and I have my hectic job to distract us from all that is gone. And we still do have kitties, clocks, living people who care about us, good things to eat, and so on. I am not sure that Herman's experience is really much different than my own or that of any of us. I know what day and date it is, and can say the date of my father's death and can calculate that was almost two years ago. I know very well that this "season of grief" the two year anniversary is upon me like a fog and that it is two years. I can also recall many events from those two years, but it is jumbled together and not in a straight line. It seems like his death just now happened and it seems like an eternity ago. At the core, I think maybe we are all in the same place...

My dad used to talk about this a lot - how hard it is for a boy to have an older sister. I always thought that was odd because he was an only child until he suddenly had a baby brother at the age of 12. I believe now he came to this insight and awareness by his father, who had four older sisters.

Things are better with Herman. His son has decided that my help is a good thing and we are working as a team to help Herman...me, the son, Gloria, people from the church, meals on wheels, etc. I suggested and provided a composition book to use as a "Memory Log" for Herman since he can't remember what he did. Everyone who goes to the house is writing in who they were, when they came by, and anything that happened, such as meals, meds, or anything of interest. Then Herman can refer back to it, and can also answer questions about what he did in a day and who came to see him. We had some talk about his daughter's recent death...his son didn't want to keep telling him because he would cry so much when he faced this information again. Nevertheless, the knowledge has filtered into his knowingness and he seems to be grieving in a normal way. And his son decided it was ok to just be with him where he is at any moment. If he says "she died, didn't she?" we say yes and be with him in his grief. If he doesn't talk about her or seems to have forgotten, we don't bring it up. It seems like a good way to help him grieve. Mostly I am being a friend to Herman. Today I went by his house three times and he seemed to be doing ok. In the morning, I brought a ukulele with me and sang some of the songs that were popular when he and my dad were young...I grew up singing and listening to those songs. It was fun.

That sounds really hard, Kay, having one sister out of commission, having to depend on another who is not dependable, and having to cope with the other sister's emotionality. Where are they trying to get Donna to move? In with another caregiver?

Thanks, Kay! I think his family thinks I am a nuisance. I have offered information about services for the elderly in the community and offered to help coordinate services and be "eyes and ears" for them since the son who is handling things lives 3-1/2 hours away. For me, having worked as a medical social worker, this is kind of like being an off-duty life guard on the shore watching someone get dragged toward a riptide but refusing help while I'm trying to throw them a lifeline. Meanwhile Herman is right in the middle of it, getting more confused all the time and knowing that bad things are going on that he doesn't understand.

Herman's family members have arrived on the scene and I'd say things have been uglified considerably by family drama. It's painful to watch. They figured they could just pack him up and take him to another part of the state, drugging him if they have to to get him into the car. As far as I know, that is considered kidnapping as long as he is a competent adult, and his doctor, on a home visit on Thanksgiving, made it clear that in spite of the fact that his judgment is questionable, Herman is very well able to state his desires, which is to stay in his home. I don't think his sons know the difference between having a power of attorney and a guardianship. They are reluctantly working on a plan to have him stay at home. One of the worst things about this is that the son who is the obvious person to handle things has decided to tell Herman that his daughter is not dead but visiting relatives. When Gloria was there she kept telling him over and over that the daughter was dead. Now he is being told that she is not dead and I think it is compounding his grief and confusion to lie to him. I think it also is probably making him more fearful and suspicious of his son's intentions.

He does! And he's strong and healthy...I told him when I left last night that he and I are now friends. We weren't before - we barely knew each other - but now we are... When I left last night he told me he really didn't understand why I was there and I told him, "I'm here for you." I hope I can help him in some way to have some of what he wants. I don't know what is possible for him at this point, but really - do any of us ever really know what is possible?

Yeah, it's really awful. I spent this evening at Herman's house with him and Gloria. Herman repeats himself a lot and has some confusion, but in some ways he is as clear as could be. We began the evening with my asking him how he was and him shaking and crying in my arms over the loss of his daughter. Then we had dinner, talked about clocks and birds and my dad and the army and how to sharpen a blade on a strop and everything else under the sun; he was chatty and engaged. Then it suddenly came back out of left field and slapped him that his daughter was gone, and he was contorted in the agony. In between we talked in bits here and there about his situation - he is adamant that he won't leave his home and the consensus is that he is not able to stay there alone due to his memory loss. His doctor actually plans to visit the family for a "family meeting" on Thursday. I feel for him...it sounds ominous... Being with Herman, caring, being present without judging, and bearing witness to his grief is something I can do. But watching the struggle of him trying desperately to hong onto his life at home while the family tries to assure his safety by getting him out of there is awful. He is begging to be rescued from their attempt to rescue him from the potential dangers of living alone. There is a lot of fear all around and uncertainty in every direction. No one knows what would happen if he were to live alone. Maybe with enough support he could be ok for awhile. Who knows? I wish I could get him what he wants - or help him anyway to stay at home. But I can't save him. I couldn't save my dad and I can't save Herman either

I hope you get some good time in with them, and have a good holiday. My friend Gloria may not be joining me for Thanksgiving...she is in the middle of an awful situation. She has an old friend, Herman, whom my dad used to know as well. I knew him a little, but never well. He was a really great guy. Herman has dementia from Alzheimer's disease and his daughter was living with him and taking care of him. But suddenly the daughter lost control of her car and had an accident...as it turned out when she went to the hospital the thing that was wrong with her was that she had liver cancer and then she was dead two days later. Herman also has two sons but they live in different parts of the state-each about two hours away. One son just had some medical problem of his own - with his foot I think, and the other has horses and he has to go home every night and take care of the horses. They all want Herman to go live in a facility near his son with the horses but he is adamant about not leaving his home. Gloria has been staying with Herman for the last two days and they are trying to figure out what to do. I have to go to work today but I'm going to see what I can do to help out. What an awful situation, and right before a holiday makes it a lot worse. My dad was totally calling apart two years ago between Christmas and New Year's, and I felt like I was in total free fall. I couldn't get anyone to do anything. People kept promising to do this and that but it all fell through due to the holidays. I don't know what I can do to help but maybe I can at least help assess the situation and be there. I used to work as a social worker for a home health agency...maybe I can help Gloria and this family figure out what to do. They have made a start and I may be able to figure out what other options are around...

oh...well, I hope they come up with something soon.

Thanks Kay, for your kind thoughts. I will definitely share my paintings; I am trying to focus on that now. What kind of flowers to get, what else to include, where are my painting supplies, do I need anything I don't have, etc. Waiting to hear about holiday plans?

It's a hard season, the holiday season. For me this is also the season of the end - not just the anniversary of his death but all that led up to it. I did't know it was leading up to his death but looking at it afterwards that is clear. For two months he was really going downhill but I thought it would be like all of the other times when he went had ups and downs and came up close to where he was before. He had a series of falls in December that he never got over, but the beginning of the end was in November. I keep going over and over all of the painful details of what turned out to be the final decline. I also keep ruminating over all of the ten years before that when things were good, how I've lost my sisters, and all of that. My sisters and I speak now but there is really very little that is good about it. It is clear that they are pinning a lot of blame on me. Blame for what I don't know, but they just aren't in my life. Maybe they weren't before either - maybe they were just using me so I would assist them in getting him to help them financially. That all feels rather icky. Sometimes it seems like I've come a long ways - as have we all. But sometimes it feels like I am just sinking into an abyss. Again. Still. Eternally it seems...

I think it is a season of grief...or at least for me it is. Tomorrow is my dad's birthday, then it will be Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas, New Year's, and the anniversary of his death. The winter he died was so cold and it seemed to go on and on forever. It's a good thing I have a job that keeps me really really busy. During Thanksgiving I am using my timeshare to get a place here in Sedona. Last year I did this in December and got a lot of painting done. This year I am going to "timeshare" the unit with my new friend Gloria. She lives in a very small space with her daughter and granddaughter, and will enjoy having a resort space with some peace and quiet. She'll stay there at night and I can paint flowers in the daytime - I have five days off from work. I don't really want to stay there at night and be away from Lena. In the evenings we can enjoy the Jacuzzi and heated pool. She is in the Elks club and we are both delivering meals on Thanksgiving during the day. It's nice to have a new friend. I just met another woman - an artist - that I hope might be a friend as well. We all three have some commonality...in grief. They are further out on theirs, but know the path well. It's nice to be getting some companionship finally, but it's hard. Maybe this year is not as hard as last - it's hard to tell. At least I'm not suffering from a TBI, and I suppose it's good to not have to cope with two houses - my dad's and my own. But I miss his house. I miss him. I miss all of those who are gone and my whole past, including my sisters, even though they still love and breathe. I keep finding myself with that sinking feeling like I can't breathe and can't swallow. I guess it's the season...

They did a good job. I sent this picture to my sisters… Once said “looks very nice”. The other one said “ditto”. It's very strangeTo be looking at thispicture and know that our parents’ ashes and bones lie below.

I am at a conference in Phoenix for two days. Yesterday I had two of my coworkers from my district there with me today I'll be there by myself. During one of the bricks yesterday, the guy from the cemetery in Pennsylvania to tell me that they've finished carving is it dates and everything on my dad's stone. He sent me a picture of it. At the time carving the dates and everything on my dad's stone. He sent me a picture of it. At the time, I didn't think too much about it other then I was surprised to suddenly get a call. I guess I thought it was done a long time ago but now in my hotel room and don't want to go back to the conference and I'm thinking maybe there's a connection between the news and my reluctance. But I guess I better get out of here go over there because they have breakfast at the conference and I'm hungry. If I stall too long I'll be hungry and really unhappy.

that's OK too. If they do talk about it, I let them take the lead. But I've been trained to do that and have over 20 years of experience in It used to bug me before my dad died when I heard people say "I'm sorry for your loss". It started really bugging me when I heard my niece, a teenage princess, quip this out with a satisfied tone like she knew exactly what to say and she was proud of her self for having said it. When my dad died one of my first thoughts was I just knew people were going to say exactly those words to me and I wouldn't know what to do. I was so devastated by his loss I was really beyond being irritated and the thing that came out of my mouth over and over when people said this was to just kind of mumbled "yeah, me too". Now it's getting close to two years and people still say that and I've gotten used to that. I think it's just automatic when we hear somebody mention that someone close to them died. Sometimes I mention my dad having died and it's just the intro to what the actual story is which is something related to that but it wouldn't make any sense if they didn't know that he had died. The thing that really bugs me is when people go beyond a simple expression of sympathy and start telling me how I should feel or what's going on with him or me. I had a neighbor tell me repeatedly, " he's in a better place now". How could she possibly have any idea where he is or really what it was like for him before? I asked her if she had his address at this "better place", and then I thought maybe I shouldn't be so snappish. But people say stupid things and it can be pretty irritating. I have actually had the experience of hearing my dad talking to me on a regular basis since he died and it's a wondrous and mysterious thing. Usually he's give me practical advice about things, sometimes his comforting, and sometimes I think it's kind of weird that he's better at communicating now than he was when he was alive in someways. I treasure these little moments with his spirit that seems to be having around me and most of the times I've shared this with people has been a good thing. But sometimes people want to tell me all about that – like it's not real or that I need to let go of him because I'm keeping him from his journey or whatever it is that they think. And I really don't want to hear it. I think talking about death and people who have died is really difficult for a lot of people and they have no idea how to do it and so they rely on things that are really helpful to the person who is grieving. Since I work as a psychotherapist I may have better responses what other people are in the position of the griever. Basically I just try to make it apparent that I am willing to listen and I don't really say anything. Like I say oh I'm sorry or oh that's sad or that's hard or something very short, and then I say nothing. If they want to talk about it they do. And if they don't, that's OK too. If they do talk about it, I let them take the lead. But I've been trained to do that and have over 20 years of doing a professionally – listening to people talk about things that are hard to talk about. Most people are not really able to do that, and even though they may be doing their best you can still be pretty irritating. The other thing I realized is that - well, I'm a middle-aged person and I've lost both of my parents. Most of the people who are in my age group or beyond have lost one or both parents, possibly a spouse, siblings and lots of other people. Sometimes people who expressed sympathy are looking to talk about their own grief. Sometimes that's OK and sometimes that's not what I'm able to do at the moment. Hang in there!

Well, they sure should have been proud of the stellar human you turned out to be! And it's quite possible that didn't really have the ability to express pride in any open kind of way. Also I think it's quite possible that your narcissistic mother compared you with herself and felt lacking by the comparison. I think that was the impression with mine.She was very competitive with her daughters and seemed to feel threatened because she was impressed. In a healthier person that perception of being impressed would feel like pride due to the close familial relationship, but with our mothers, what started out as feeling impressed squirted out sideways and not looking like pride, but more like hostility.

I just love that you posted this video...