Bared Souls

[maarts]

My condoleances too, RocDoc- may she rest in peace.

[phil]

My thoughts are with you Doc

Life goes on ...

[RocDoc]

my deepest thanks to the friends and acquaintances who chose to express something supportive as they drifted through here...i definitely appreciate it.

[JACkory]

I'm sorry for your loss, doc.

[wayved]

I too am sorry for your loss. My thoughts are with you man.

[RocDoc]

thanks glen and thanks jac.

finished it all up yesterday, pretty much.

and the planning that had to go into it!
it was like taking the year, year and a ½ that most/many people take to plan their weddings and compressing it down into 3 days.

ADDED stress, much?

my wife told me that if it had been just a 'regular party', it was an unqualified success all the way around...saw who our friends were, we did.

i loved so many who knew us, also had some great (and many funny) memories of my mom.
one in particular was of her chasing me home down an alley wielding a swinging electrical cord after she caught me at a buddy's house watching the 3 stooges (which was forbidden for us at home)....and do NOT condemn this please, this WAS the times.

when i got smacked i knew it was coming...and i deserved it.
my 5 foot tall mom did what she could.
and no (for those who tend to fly off the handle over simply misunderstanding context and social milieu), i'm not perpetuating that behavior.

but....thanks to you guys here as well.

[wayved]

Roc Doc--it seems you handled everything very well. And it is true--you take a long time planning a wedding, a graduation, preparing for a new addition to a family. When someone passes on, Here you have three days to get the funeral arrangements settled. Life is strange isnt it? my hat is off to you.

[Ayinger]

Doc: how are you & family getting along?

[RocDoc]

fair to middlin'....my sis went to her planned vacation to southeast michigan somewhere's last week and sorta left me to get my 96yo dad in for doctors' visits last week ('routine' and non-routine - right leg swollen n'shit, blood in his urineblablablah)...which i wasn't too wild about, but SHE needed to decompress too.

urologist and a doppler study of his legs have to be done this week (which we still haven't moved on), but now my son's down with a fucking virus right before his birthday party (for 20 kids at our house - ai!) on friday morning.

all sorts of small stuff is mushrooming into more stress, but hey, that's life....we'll get through it.

and i still have to get off thank yous, to my friends and patients who either showed up at my ma's wake or sent flowers.

or basically just told me to hang in there, sorta like you did brother don...and glen and the resta ya's here.

thanks, really.

[maarts]

There's always two trains of thoughts- either all those supplemental tasks you face after a loved one dies keep you busy enough to get over the initial shock or it seems that every task sucks every bit of energy out of you and doesn't give you the time to grieve yourself....

I haven't lost a parent yet but I know how lame our family felt when my grandmother died. It came down to my parents to arrange the funeral as by grandparents lived in our village and the other son lived in the south. I remember that the whole of the arranging was done in 2 days- my folks had been prepared in a way to go through this hell (my dad had lost his real father earlier in life, my grandmother was sick for a long time)...they made the conscious decision that they were going to finalise all arrangements within 2 days- that means, the funeral, notes to the family, the bills, even the thank yous. We wrote the cards and such pretty quick.
It paid dividends in the end- after the funeral we all collapsed.

[RocDoc]

like you said, maarts, 2 trains of thought...but i haven't had the luxury to collapse while running my own (supposedly) self-sufficient business.

there's no place to hide because everything eventually chases me down.

though generally i'm pretty good at saying 'fuck it' if getting that next 2000+ dollar payment ('all papers for sure in by 'x' date'...yeah, fuck. you.) from some ASShole insurance company is creating more stress than it's worth when other (ie family) stuff is collapsing on me.

priorities.
AND as harry callahan said:

'a man's GOT to know his limitations...'

[maarts]

Callahan had a gun. A big BIG gun.
Not giving you ideas or anything....

there's no place to hide because everything eventually chases me down.


Peace will come. Hang in there!

[JACkory]

We have not been happy with the house we've lived in over the past 3 & 1/2 months. The main thing is that it's just too small. Not even close to the amount of closet space that we need. Bryan's room is too small. It's basically not a very good house.

Obviously we've been hoping to find a better one (not easy in a small town like the one we live in). Something that would meet our needs and yet still be in the same price range as the one we are currently at. We didn't expect to find one too quick so we weren't in any rush where we had to take whatever came along first.

So this afternoon Stacie goes through the town newspaper to see if there's anything on the market. There were 4 or 5 rental houses on the market. We wrote down addresses and phone numbers, then went on our way to look at them. The first few we saw didn't look like the kinds of places we would want to live in.

There was only one more ad we had yet to check out, and the address of the house was not listed. Stacie called the number and spoke to the landlord, asking for the rent amount and the address. She arranged for us to meet at the house. She told her that there was no bath tub, only a walk-in shower, that it was one of two houses she had for rent on the old highway.

My dad lived on the old highway. I grew up in a house on the old highway. No way. It couldn't be.

Then it hit me what she said about the lack of a bathtub in lieu of a walk-in shower...my dad's wife had a lot of problems with her knees and couldn't get around very easily. She was a hypochondriac and was always complaining about not being able to get in and out of the bath tub. So, to please her, Dad bought and installed one of those physician recommended shower seats.

We're driving down the old highway and I'm thinking, "No. That would be too good to be true. Surely it's not the same house...but how could it not be?"

It was.

That's right, almost ten years after Dad passed away, my family will be living in the house he built for 30 years. We took the tour, although I knew exactly where everything was. Nothing had changed, just new carpet and a fresh coat of paint. It's a really nice house, and I don't say that because I used to live there.

Three bedrooms. just as we need them (our room, Bryan's room and an office/den). At least twice as much closet space as we have here. Plenty of storage space. A bath and a half.

And to think, my son will be spending the rest of his years with us in that house he visited so often when he was a kid.

The rent is only $25 more a month than what we're paying for this place. It will be a REEEEEEEEAAAAAALLLLLLL drag moving shit again, but I think it will be an easier task than it was last time.

But we're in. Luck been a Lady tonight. If nothing unforeseen happens between now and then we will be settled not too long after the first of August. And I vow not to break this lease for as long as I live...okay, maybe I'd do it if the situation called for it...but I am not planning to move from there any time soon. I haven't been this excited since I found my seat at the KC Sigur Ros concert.

There are some other cool things that come with being in the new house. Things that have to do with retribution and justice prevailing over the long run. And other things about the myriad events that took place there that I will never forget. So many memories, such a story, the place has a history and save a decade, I was there to witness it all. I don't have nearly enough time to describe it all...

If I weren't so lazy I'd get up, get dressed and go to the casino.

[Ayinger]

w0w....that's about some kind of fate my man!

I'm hearing you on the memories too. In 2 days I'm moving from my apartment back into the house I lived in three years ago. Same one I shared with Carol for almost a year....this time without her in the picture though. I'll have memories but no ghosts --- hope to make it MY home.

[strat-0]

That's quite a quirk indeed, Jac. Looks like luck is smiling on both of you guys this summer. I'm glad of it!