5 things to start the weekend

1. I had to walk the dog one morning this week as Tom went in to work early. We walked the girls to the bus stop in the dark and continued on around the block. We stopped to chat with a neighbor who I haven't seen in a while. Don and I use to be on the homeowner's association together for years, but now he and Tom spend the weekend mornings chewing the fat while the two dogs play. Our conversation turned to ill mothers and caring for them and he told me I was too nice, and I quote, "You are way nicer than I am, kind, and you don't curse..." Uh...nice to know I have one neighbor fooled.
2. Last Sunday Maddy and I brought home the last of mom's pineapple plants. This one was the biggest one and we had to work together to carry it and one of its leaves stuck out the back of my van like a tail. When we got to my house we took the plant out and carried it across the lawn to an area in front of my bedroom window where I have two more of her pineapples. Just as we got within two steps of setting it down I tripped, in the dark, over Elliot's dog stake which was hidden under a newly planted palm tree. I stumbled one step, two steps, and thought I was going to correct my balance, but it wasn't happening and suddenly I was face down in the dirt. Literally. I landed heavily with the left side of my body and my hip immediately was the first thing that registered pain. That of course led me to think my hip was broken, because that is what happens to old people, and I sat in the dirt, covered in mulch, crying and saying over and over, "I don't want to get old. I don't want to get old." Maddy just hugged me and patted me and eventually the two of us started laughing. I had mulch inside my shirt and down my bra and all over my face. My hip hurt because I had my phone in that pocket and landed on it. The phone and hip were both fine. I stood up and dusted myself off. My left leg was bleeding a tiny bit, my right knee was bruised and needed ice, and I had a nice dent in my left ankle where I had hit the stake. I felt pretty good considering. "You didn't put out your arms to stop your fall, did you," my husband asked pulling mulch out of my hair. "It's better to just take the fall." Of course I had put out my left arm instinctively, but I wasn't too concerned as the arm wasn't bothering me. It was the next morning. I couldn't even lift the arm and the pain was all around the shoulder area, sharp at times. For two days I had to walk around with my arm dangling, driving with one arm. I pretty much decided I had torn my rotator cuff and was collecting names of orthopedic doctors when the fourth day came and I barely noticed pain and I was suddenly using the arm for things. It is still sore, but now it is a soreness like I overused the muscles. It has gone a long way toward making me feel younger as in: I can fall hard and still get up and walk away with hardly a scratch.
3. Going back to my conversation with neighbor Don...Once when a car came around the corner Elliot jumped up to chase it and I did my best Russ imitation and said, "Don't you even think about it. No!" And Elliot, who did think about it, but didn't act, sat back down. Don whistled. "Now he doesn't do that with Tom. He would have been off and running had Tom been on the other end of that leash. He listens to you." I told Don that I had tried to teach all my family members to say NO in a commanding voice, but that no one listens to me anymore than they do when I tell them the dog needs to go outside to potty. Later I was relaying the story to Tom by starting off with we walked the girls to the bus stop and then stopped to chat with a neighbor. When I was finished he said, "What neighbor? Benedict Don?" 
4. School ends next week, June 4th, but for some reason the high schools scheduled finals for the week prior to that. Which means that the students were done, finished, yesterday. I asked our assistant principal during a meeting I had with him if the girls needed to show up next week and he said, "Officially I have to tell you that it will be an un-excused absence if they aren't there." WTH? Really? To make it worse, our school is being demolished in two weeks and being rebuilt. Portables have been delivered to the campus and the teachers have informed the students not to show up next week because they will be moving into the portables and don't want to have to worry about a classroom. I told my girls they had to go to school. It is in honor of my mother.
5. The jacaranda trees that I write about each year in April did not bloom until later this year because of the colder weather we had. They are the most beautiful purple trees and I love, love them. I noticed before my mom died that some of the trees were trying to bloom. A few would have little purple blotches in small areas, but the rest of the leaves were green or missing on the branches. Suddenly May came and the trees began popping out in color and then the trees that I didn't think were even going to bloom this year began turning lavender. This is the longest I can remember the jacaranda trees lasting. Usually they bloom, hang around two weeks, and begin dropping the petals to cover yards in carpets of purple, one of the reasons why my husband will not plant one. But the trees just make me so happy and so I feel like I've been happier longer this season while driving.

Finding and remembering

I always found it odd that people would jump right into cleaning out belongings after a death. After my father died my mother went nuts cleaning out the house, putting things up for auction, and selling the property. There was little time to sort through keepsakes and take things we cherished. I was determined not to let that happen when she died, and fortunately circumstances have allowed us to be able to take our time, yet I feel the need to de-clutter.

I actually felt that way prior to her dying when I would go to The Condo during one of her many hospitalizations to pick up belongings, water plants, and oversee the bills. The Condo is darker since her remodeling that included deeper paint colors then the fish motif she once had, and with her hospitalized it seemed lonelier and more depressing then usual. I thought then how I would like to brighten up the place and get rid of nonsense she had strewn about and packed into various bookcases and entertainment center crannies. For someone who rid herself of a a huge Indiana house full of belongings, she sure didn't learn anything about keeping things small and simple.

Two days after she died her sister, my friend Kelly, and I swept The Condo to rid it of anything medical. The whole place just felt icky with oxygen tanks sitting in corners, medicine bottles on counter tops, and boxes of bandages and ointments lying around. This task led us into bathroom drawers and cabinets that were also full of hotel and hospital soaps and shampoos, a habit leftover from my father's traveling days and her childhood of nothing wasted, hair equipment that hadn't been used in years, and handfuls of expired ointments, oils, and lotions that grossed us all out. We rearranged furniture in the living room to make it more accessible for all the people that were coming in for the memorial service and we tossed out a desk that she had been wanting to get rid of for awhile. By the time we stopped for the day I was more motivated then ever to clean the place up.

Everyone left eventually days after her service and I was left with The Condo and the responsibility of it. What that entailed beside paying bills became clearer as phone calls started coming in from the condo association, the fire marshal, and various medical companies requesting pick-up of equipment. I needed to locate paperwork and equipment and that led me to the filing cabinet, to the bedroom closet, to the desk, and under the bed. Suddenly I understood why people had to jump into cleaning out belongings. I was having to thin out things just to locate the important things I needed immediately. As I did that, making piles for Goodwill, for Hospice, for a Food Bank, and for trash little found items would lead me to look for other things like pictures, writings, and items from my childhood. Little did I know but my mother kept more things from our house in Indiana.

It has been a sort of grieving and healing process going through her things. A favorite shirt can make me cry. A picture and note can get me intrigued. But my favorite is finding something that I remember from my childhood, from my days at 8200 in Indiana, because it reminds me of good times and my mother and father.

Whenever this little teapot came out of the cabinet it meant Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwiches for dinner with Indiana corn on the cob and Iced Sweet Tea. It is the only time I remember my mother making iced tea. And she never put enough sugar in it for us, but it was a treat nonetheless.

These glasses were in our cabinet, but we were not allowed to use them. I think my parents used them for cocktails with company, but the only memory I have of these glasses is that every year my Aunt Marilyn made our traditional Christmas Eve egg nog she put it in these glasses and passed them out. I thought we were oh, so fancy when we used them and I always felt grown up. Which I had to be since she spiked the nog with tons of dark rum.

This was one of those pieces that I dusted all the time, but never really knew what it was for. It is a box and I think it once held two decks of cards. It sat on the round, wooden table in our living room along with pieces of glass from the glass factory that my grandmother helped back financially.

This is all that is left of the Central Soya paper products that we had all over our house. I think I have a small pad in the box of stuff of my dad's, but this is all Connie had left. She kept it in a desk that the girls played in and I remember when I discovered what paper they were drawing on I was horrified. It is a collector's item! (In my mind)

This is the wooden salad bowl set from my childhood. I hated this set because it was not allowed in the dishwasher and had to be washed by hand. It is a beautiful set and we have already eaten a salad out of it. And I got to remind my girls that it had to be washed by hand!

I had no idea that my mother had these boxes (full of photos) tucked in a bin in the closet out on her porch. I had found three of these boxes in my Aunt Lorene's basement last summer and I told my cousin at my mom's memorial service that I wanted those boxes if he was going to toss them. My dad smoked these cigars his entire life and these boxes were all over our house storing odds and ends.

My dad worked in agriculture for Central Soya and the pig was one of the mascots used by the company. We had Master Mix pigs all over our house and then people started buying pig things for my dad so our house literally became a pig sty. This little gem was a napkin holder on our table for as long as I can remember. My mom had this on her computer desk holding paper so after using it as a napkin holder for a few days on my kitchen table I've moved it to my own desk.

Out of the mouths of my babes

Madison, Darcy and I are all lying on the bed talking.  Madison sneezes and then blows her nose which sounds quite full.

Me:  "Maddy has a nose full of nickels.  She thought it was candy, but it's snot."

Darcy: (laughs)

Me:  "Thank you for laughing, Darcy.  That's something my dad use to say to us.  We would blow our nose and he would say we had a nose full of nickels.  And then when we would tell him that made no sense and that we didn't have nickels in our nose he would say, "You thought it was candy, but it's snot."  And we would laugh and laugh like that was the funniest thing in the world."

Darcy:  "It is funny."

Me:  "It is.  He was funny.  But really...what an odd thing to say.  No one has candy in their nose."

Darcy:  "Kelly does!"

Next in line

When my mother died I felt relief. Relief that her suffering and pain was over.  Relief that my responsibilities to her and her health were over. Then guilt for feeling that way. It is hard to explain what the two of us went through these last five years, but for me it was never more clear then when I exited my house several days after she died and saw an ambulance and a fire truck. I vomited in the bushes. Then I went to my neighbor's house and patted his hand as he told me that taking care of his significant other was just too much for him to continue to do. I understood.

Then there are the days where I feel other emotions; loneliness, sadness, and recently despair. I feel twinges in my chest and worry I'm having a heart attack. I think about how easy it is to be killed driving a vehicle. I can hardly read the newspaper with all of its death and destruction because any day now that will be me. I've always been a worrier, but suddenly I feel my mortality. I tried to analyze the feelings one day this week as I drove the familiar route to The Condo to meet with an electrician, and after I got all the thoughts unscrambled in my brain, it hit me. I was scared because I was next in line.

We always think there is a map to the way things work. We are born. We go to school. We go to college. We find jobs and spouses and have families. Then comes the growing older part which eventually leads to our death and the path ends. We aren't suppose to die before our parents. Our children aren't suppose to die before us. There is a path and each step leads us down that road, and although we know deep down that life isn't that way we still want to believe it is and that that map is the way things work. I've lost my father and now my mother and that leaves...me.

Later in the day while I was going through files and shredding old paperwork, I came across a folder with some of my mother's writing. She had started a blog a year or so after mine and the few entries she had written were printed out and in the folder. The one I chose to read was her first entry on her blog. I cried.

Tuesday, February 8, 2003 - written by Connie Mason on her blog Wise Words

"Light a cigarette for me and put it between my fingers," rasped the emaciated form in the nursing home bed.

"But mother, you know you can't smoke," I countered in surprise.

"Honey, when I see that cigarette burning, I know I'm still alive," she croaked wryly.

I did as she asked and watched as the hand holding the cigarette fell across her deformed chest. She studied the curling smoke for a moment, smiled almost contentedly, and closed her eyes. I rescued the cigarette from her slackened grip and extinguished it in the bedside ashtray. Barely two hours later she was dead. She was 53 years old.

My mother never knew Larry Bird, who was growing up in a town 20 miles west. She never knew Mohammed Ali who was Cassius Clay to her in a city 25 miles southeast. She never knew her only grandson, nor her second granddaughter. Most precious to her were the seventeen months she spent with her first granddaughter. My mother died of cancer when I was thirty-two.

As I turned from her bedside to the rest of my life, I knew we had just played a serious game of Tag and I was IT.

The bug man and my mother....who knew?

After a death, people have to be notified.  I've written countless notes to doctors and nurses and administrators informing them of my mother's death and thanking those I felt went above and beyond the job. I've alerted credit card companies and insurance agencies. I've talked to strangers in estate departments of varies companies. Inevitably I've forgotten someone.

This past week as I worked at my mother's condo, I've taken to referring to it as The Condo as if it is a separate entity placed in a town solely for my own purpose, whatever that may be, the bug man was just learning of her death from the president of the condo board. It had crossed my mind the week before that I should inform the bug man of my mother's death. He has known my mother for over ten years, first while he was with  Terminix, and then when he branched out and formed his own company. My mother was the first customer to go with him to his new company, she the champion of free enterprise, and he never forgot that. Recently, she had helped him score a big contract with her condo association for a major termite infestation and then to a contract to provide monthly service to all 19 condos. He also services my home, and he is forever telling me how wonderful my mother is for helping him out through the years. Thus I did think of alerting him to her death, but calling him went to the back of my mind.

So Monday as I was coming back through the parking lot after dropping off a load of keepsakes to my car there was the bug man, CB. He was shaking his head and his expression was all droopy, and I immediately felt as guilty as I felt after the grocery cashier asked how my mother was and I said, "Well, she died two days ago," and the woman promptly started crying. I felt terrible.

CB:  "I just heard about Connie."

Me:  "Yes, I'm sorry. You're on my list of people to tell."

CB:  "I can't believe it. I can't believe she is gone." More sad shaking of the head. "I'm so sorry."

Me:  "Thank you."

CB:  "I just can't believe it. Ah.  I just... Oh. She was great. I'm just so sad."

This went on in this vein with him not being able to spit out his sorrow, and me not knowing what to say to him and wishing that I had called his secretary on the phone. He is a nice guy and all, and I know he really enjoyed my mom, but I'm uncomfortable with everyone telling me how sorry they are that she is gone. I feel the need to comfort them when they are trying to comfort me and it just makes me well, uncomfortable. Finally he stopped speaking and we stood in silence for a few seconds and then he looked at me.

CB:  "She had a picture..."

At the start of this, I felt a bit of joy. I have asked different people if they want something from my mother's belongings, and other than a few little minor items, most people have turned me down. It has made me sort of sad as if passing on her things would bring joy and remembrance, and I had just expressed this feeling to my aunt on the phone right before coming downstairs to load my car. When CB began with, "She had a picture..." and stopped I immediately felt joy and then thought of all of the pictures on her walls, wondering which one he could possibly want.

Me:  "I hope I haven't tossed it out!"

CB:  "She had a picture....well...I'm not sure why I would even want this, but...it was a picture of your mom swinging, I think an imaginary golf club, under a sprinkler...and she's naked."

And then he looked at me and smiled and said something about how that picture was so Connie and how he just loved it. I'm really not sure how much of what he told me got through to me because seriously, I was so taken back that this guy wanted a naked picture of my mother that I was trying desperately to keep my mouth closed, and I was very grateful for my sunglasses over my bulging eyes.

I did know the picture he was talking about, vaguely. Back in the 90's she had visited her sister in her log cabin in the woods of California where the community swims in the river sans clothing unless visitors are uncomfortable. As I remember the story, the group was discussing this outside my aunt's house and they convinced my mother that it was no big deal to be naked. She stripped down and ran through a sprinkler. I remembered the picture of her as one where she was standing naked, her arms help aloft, as the sprinkler coated her with water. I vaguely remembered another picture of her doing a golf swing. She loved that she had done this, this what-she-would-have-once-described-as-shocking thing, and so she set the picture out in plain view, first on her entertainment center, then on a bookshelf, and then on her desk.

CB:  "I just love that picture. It was so free, and she was so free. It was so your mom, swinging that club under a sprinkle."

Me:  "Well, I can honestly say that I haven't seen that picture in awhile and the only naked picture I've found so far is one of my nephew as a kid that I'm holding on to for blackmail."

CB:  "Well, it was a great picture. I just loved it."

I had no response to that, and thankfully my mother's neighbor came out just then to yell down at the bug man. He thanked him for something CB had done and then he turned to me and asked me if I needed some help, and since I did I waved at CB and practically ran toward the neighbor.  CB headed back to his truck and the neighbor and I went about lugging down bags of trash and bags of give a way items, and I promptly forgot the conversation.

Until I got home that evening and was lying in bed thinking back over the day. Suddenly the whole conversation came back to me and I couldn't stop laughing.  The bug man, a man who is younger then me, wanted a naked photo of my dead mother as a keepsake to remember her by. How hilarious is that?

My brother was horrified, and apparently has never seen the photo. My youngest thought it "weird". My oldest giggled. My friend, Kelly, wondered aloud if the bug man had taken any of my mom's panties as souvenirs during his in-home spraying. My husband was thankful the bug man doesn't enter our home. My mother's cleaning lady, who I called about the location of the picture, declared him a "pervert". I still laugh at the whole thing because I know that my mom would have LOVED it. I can picture her expression and everything. She would have been thrilled that he had asked for that.

So I searched today and found the photo hidden between two books on a bookshelf.
(I've hidden the nudity since it is better left to the bug man)

My Discover discovery

There is a lot to do after someone dies.  Sometimes it can be cleansing; throwing away the expired food items from 2010 that she insisted were fine.  Sometimes it is magical; discovering hidden gems from my childhood.  Sometimes it is sad; pictures.  Mostly it is overwhelming, and at times frustrating.  When my mother first decided she was finished fighting and asked for hospice to be called I immediately did a web search on what to do after someone dies.  I suppose that seems cold and calculating, but with my mother that was regarded as a smart move.  We had talked throughout her last few years off and on about her death and what would be expected.  We had googled this information previously many times.  I suppose, sitting in the hospital, it gave me something to do.

After she died I went back to those sites that I had searched that day and made a list.  That list went with the list from the cremation society and both those lists were added to the list from the lawyer.  Trying to keep tabs on all of the lists, as well as on the mounds of paperwork, has been a chore.  I now carrying a briefcase and a bag and have since purchased a plastic container and a file box.  Each day I try to mark an item off of the list.

One of the items on the list was to call the credit card companies and alert them to the death.  One of the cards was used to pay several monthly bills that made it easier for her to deal with while in and out of hospitals and rehab and nursing facilities.  Our lawyer suggested that we contact the bank of this card, Chase, and explain to them the situation in the hope that we could add our names to the card to keep the status quo.  She figured that it wouldn't be a problem since we would be taking on the responsibility of paying off the current debt.  She could not have been more wrong.

I went into a Chase bank, and while their waiting area is welcoming with baskets of lollipops and an array of coffees, their employees were not.  We saw only three of them; one of them on the phone, one behind the teller counter, and one who sighed as we entered and told us someone would be right with us.  He disappeared for a moment into a door and must have drawn the short straw because he reappeared and asked us into his cubicle.  We should have read the stale lollipops and empty coffee urns as a sign and hightailed it to another branch, but it was raining and we were tired from the entire week, and so we sat down with the gentleman.  Who somewhat angrily told us that my request was absurd, adding a scenario about a dead brother with good credit and another deadbeat brother who had no credit, but was trying to piggyback off his dead brother.  I cut him off in the middle of that tale and explained that I understood what he was saying, that this situation was different, but he wanted no part of it.  He didn't believe me.  In his eyes, without asking if I had a Chase account of my own (I do), or asking me to write a check for the debt right then and there, I was scheming to get a credit card.

He picked up the phone and called corporate for advice.  Corporate moved him to the estate department who asked to speak to me, and suddenly I went from one unkind Chase employee to another.  The woman on the other end of the phone offered her condolences on the loss of my mother, and then immediately went into a dissertation on how she was closing the account, type, type, type, and how Chase would be coming after the estate for payment.  Those were her words, "We will be coming after the estate for payment of this credit card" as if she hadn't heard a word I had been saying about making the payment.  When I tried to explain my situation and that I just wanted to remain in the current situation, paying off the balance each month, she treated me as if I were a thief, despite the legal paperwork I had sitting before the Chase employee who was now tapping his fingers on his desk and staring into space.  By the time the phone conversation was finished I was a criminal in her eyes and she was the law and thank god she was on the job.  "Again," she said, "sorry about your loss.  Have a nice day."

We left the Chase bank and drove less than a mile down the street to Bank of America to tackle my mother's bank account, and by the time we were seated there the Chase phone lady had alerted the bank to the death and a freeze was placed on the account.  My experience at that bank was only slightly better and will make for another blog entry, but I ended up breaking down into tears there.  It was not a good day.

Fast forward to yesterday, a little over a week since the Chase experience.  I was emptying out my mother's purse and wallet and realized after coming across her Discover card that I had never alerted them to her death.  Taking a deep breath, I dialed the number and got Tim.  Tim apologized for my mother's death as if he had something to do with it and transferred me to the estate department and Able, who also was very sorry for my loss. He could not have been more different then the Chase employee.  First he explained to me that my mother was the only name on the card holder and thus the only one responsible for payment.  He said that Discover would not expect payment from the estate for such a small amount.  He went over the last statement with me and again reiterated that I was not responsible for paying the bill.  He was kind and helpful and made me want to send a check to Discover right then and there.  He was exactly what someone who has lost a family member needs when dealing with problems.  When I hung up I wanted to shout from the rooftops, "EVERYONE GO OUT AND GET A DISCOVER CARD BECAUSE THEY CARE!" Guess which bill I'm going to be paying?