Kieron

Yuck, that sounds unbearable. The process of elimination with allergies can be time consuming, but ultimately worth it. The way food is processed these days makes that a necessity so you can protect yourself as best as you can.

I like your idea of making her part of the beach. i know from experience how fine the ashes are. They will blend very well with the more coarse grains of sand, and no one ever need know but you when and where you do it. When I took Mark's ashes north to a place we went to every July, I was dreading it the whole way there. I expected I would fall apart when it came time to do it. I expected it to be impossible. It was solemn and sad, of course, but it wasn't nearly as impossible as I feared. I will say this: the place where I spread them was around a tree that had been planted in his name. So the tree will, over time, gather up some of him and incorporate it into itself. And when I did the act, a small butterfly was darting here and there, along the ground, and paused on the spot to fan its wings, and then fluttered away. I didn't manage to get a photo of it but I looked up its markings later on. It's a common North American butterfly known as Polygonia interrogationis, or the Question Mark. 🥰

Hi Darrel! Welcome back. I remember your "one foot in front of the other" very well. I used it often in those early days.

That one year marker is most definitely significant. I wrote all kinds of stuff about it-- poems, essays, and some assorted remarks here. To me, it felt like a heavy door swinging shut on the last remaining connection to my life as I knew it.

I've been thru that. Before I replaced the furnace, our old original one kept acting up, too hot, then too cold, then nothing. The repair plan paid for 4 or 5 repair techs to come out, all men. They fixed it temporarily, each time, but the problem recurred. Finally they sent a woman tech. She discovered the real issue, and we had no further trouble. 🤣 That's when I learned some truth to the joke, "Of course I don't look as busy as the men; I did it right the first time!"

James, I have nothing much to say either because the month of March is the countdown to the 4th anniversary on the 22nd and I just have little energy to say anything right now. If a new person showed up and poured out their heart, I don't even think I would be able to summon the energy for a thoughtful response, as I usually do. We all go through these fallow, dry, quiet, etc spells, I suppose. I am sure that your sense of isolation, lack of support from your immediate surroundings, and year-long "wall" we're all hitting re: the pandemic, and the wintertime blues, and everything else going on, is "piling on" for you. But we're still listening even if we don't have the energy to respond beyond a "like" or "heart" click.

I realize this, but taken to extremes, it's virtue signalling. A photo is not going to make anyone sick or keep anyone well. Some of this annoyance in me comes from the self-absorbed "selfie nation" going on where people take endless photos of themselves for others' consumption, clicks, "likes" and so on. I'm not going to change my opinion about someone based on their use or non-use of a mask in a photo. In person, yes, otherwise it matters not a whit.

that's my worry too, Dee.

I just meant people are taking selfies/headshots of themselves all masked up and then posting that as their Twitter icon or some other account photo, such as FB or something. Makes no sense to me. That's like being asked to wear your mask for your driver's license photo and then running around with that until it's time to renew the license. Take the thing off, photo, mask up and be about your business.

Exactly. Theater of the absurd. I am seeing this more and more, on Twitter accounts, patient photos, user photos on other types of online accounts, etc. It feels like "window dressing." Bad enough we all have to do this masking around one another in real life, but masking for an online photo, where there's no harm of spreading You Know What? As I said, absurd.

🤣 You can't call them here. Too big a city. You'd be on hold forever. But no, they never got back to me, just delivered the item a day or two later. Today the digest said I could expect 5 mail items. I got two, and not one of the 2 look like the scanned images in the email digest. So I don't know... must be other factors at work delaying things.

Gwen, I can second the Informed Delivery thing, and it is free. It's a slight hassle to sign up for the account but once you do, it runs smoothly. I signed up because I suspect my mail is going astray. I get the mail for the house after me in the route so I assume my mail is going elsewhere on occasion. Just the other day, I got the "Digest" that included a scanned image of an envelope from the utility company. It was a rebate payment I had been waiting for. It didn't show up in the mailbox that day or the next, so I was annoyed. So I logged into the account to see if I could find a way to report it, and noticed that I could check each day's digest. I found the missing envelope and checked the tiny box on the lower right that says something like "I didn't receive this." I figured, well, we'll see. And the envelope showed up a day or two later in the mailbox. I wonder where it went in the meantime?

Ana, I hope my response (below) to this is taken as a re-frame of your comment, and not as anything like trivializing your feelings of pain around what you see on your social networks. I had my own 🙄experience with it this Valentine's Day. I wanted to say in response that we can be "evolved" in various ways and still have our moments of less-than-evolved feelings or thoughts. I catch myself doing it all the time. It's part of what makes us human, I think. Just the other day, I was working with someone who talks a lot about spiritual evolution and who teaches yoga and is a vegan. In short, someone we would probably assume is fairly well along in thought, word and action, right? Well! They flew into a rage over a very trivial matter, and engaged in all-too-human and very regressive behavior that I won't describe. It was not a good look. This person was then flabbergasted by their own actions once they cooled down. It was an interesting moment, one that your comment brought to mind.

Well, some good news at least... he sounds better today although still very de-conditioned due to sedentary lifestyle for so long. There was some concern about elevated creatinine which is a marker for kidney distress (something I got familiar with a long time ago when Mark first showed signs of illness), but now they put it together that the chest x-ray taken a few days ago for pneumonia used an injectable dye that stresses the kidneys, so now the issue is clearer. Still need to figure out the rehabilitation steps, and will be in the hospital awhile longer, I guess. But dialysis won't be required as of yet so that is a relief. So we plod on. But it's kind of interesting that I am once again a spectator in someone's chronic kidney issues. 😶

Let me add my best wishes and my thanks, as well. ☺️

Thanks, Dee. I'm an only child so it kind of falls to me but I don't mind, and besides there are many relatives nearby or willing to come, although what with You Know What, who knows whether that's possible. As of today he's still in the hospital, and has trouble breathing when he lies down, so had a chest X-ray at 10 am, still waiting for answers when they called me at 4pm today. I have some ideas as to what is unfolding. 😯 He sounded alert, but somewhat breathless at times. I feel for my poor mother... I can feel what may be coming and my heart breaks. She's been having anxiety and insomnia the longer this goes on, and she mentioned the other evening that she wishes she had "helped you out more" when Mark was deteriorating. I told her to stop that line of thinking as it's water under the bridge, and that it was the professionals who had failed us, not anyone else.

no, they definitely aren't light subjects. he's doing somewhat okay, but short of breath and lower O2 saturation on exertion during occupational therapy in hospital, so that's a little worrisome but at least he's in the right place. The past year or so of enforced sedentary lifestyle, to keep off the feet, has resulted in reduced muscle tone and balance etc. it's a no-win. I hear you, Gwen, there is a lot of emotion attached to this house of mine but nevertheless, I feel ridiculous occupying it alone. Some of the dilemma is that external factors (increase in crime, reduced public safety, the likelihood of more unrest when the cops are on trial next month) and internal (wanting to see what else there is in life, or, do I really want to stay in this exact position in life for another decade?). All complicated by the additional layer of this frickin pandemic.

thanks, Kay. No, just had been thinking of relocating closer by, but not live with. So now I don't know if this will delay my own move. Probably it will change my trajectory in some way. Ya know, I know people (friends, relatives, others) who move every 2 -5 years. I can't fathom uprooting myself like that. I've been here 20+ years. But it seems like I may have to. Thankfully I got rid of a lot of crap over the last 4 years and am down to the essentials and the nice-to-have, so I am miles ahead of where I was. But contemplating packing up and transporting it all makes me tired just to think about it. And the cat will hate it. She hates commotion and change. Just going to the vet is an ordeal for her.

I haven't had much to say lately... more potential losses on the horizon have me kind of preoccupied. Long story short, my dad who is 75 and a lifelong diabetic, has had chronic foot issues for a while now, culminating in amputation of toes on one foot 2 weeks ago, after heroic attempts to fend off this outcome. The surgery site looks good, comparatively, but now he has developed pneumonia and was admitted to the hospital for it. He was tested for You Know What, but it was negative so that rules that out. But now my mom is talking about downsizing further to a more accessible home, and there is a lot of work needing to be done --just cosmetic stuff vs structural, thankfully. So aging parents, housing, etc is now an undeniable reality for me. And it's odd because I had been downsizing, myself, and considering relocating, due to various factors, but just couldn't gather the energy or find the right place or figure out future work, etc. So it seems like Life is forcing some decisions on us all, in this regard. I just wonder how and how much all this will stir up the sediment, so to speak.

I believe that is a pretty common sensation, and you will probably notice different feelings, different intensities, and certainly some physical sensations. There were times I expected to take off my shirt and find a hole in my chest. I went about 5 - 6 months feeling the most intense ache in my hands, forearms and shoulders. A massage therapist worked on me and she said she believed people store their grief in these same areas, which makes sense. So, again, you will probably notice a wide range of things, especially after 30 years. And, really, when you stop and think, it's been barely a month for you. I'm not trying to frighten you or anyone, but it really is just the earliest steps on this strange grief journey. Be gentle with yourself and give yourself breaks, time to do some reflection, sleep if you can, and definitely hydrate, especially if you find yourself crying often. Your body needs to replenish fluid, so don't overlook this. It's definitely a strange time. I can't fathom how extraverts are handling all this. I'm an introvert and the isolation is driving me a little 'round the bend.

Horrifying. The callousness is what is (almost) the most disturbing thing.

We exist in this movie (Groundhog Day, with Bill Murray)

Gwen, I could have written that. We did our wills and health care directives (HCD) ages ago but it didn't feel real, just a sensible thing to do. But thankfully we did, since we weren't married. The HCD was all that enabled me to get control of his checking account and the money left in it. Didn't enable me to get his medical records from the final hospital stay because apparently after death, something or other reverts back to some other damned thing, by law, and only his sister could get the records. By then I was too tired to fight them.

Yes. i got call about it that was "scammy" sounding and offering me Medicare but I am too young for it, so, knowing what I know, I called 1800-MEDICARE and reported it a minute later. The rep was very diligent about taking all the info I noted, and said they would be following up. Unfortunately a lot of elders aren't tech-savvy or or don't think to record the details I noticed, so the rep said it was enormously helpful. Basically I jotted down the number, the way the caller sounded, the voices in the background (hinting at a calling group of scammers?) etc. Hopefully I helped them nab some crooks!