It has already been a full week since I saw this little guy enjoying the farmer’s market in Yellow Springs, OH. No one needs to tell me that the older I get the faster time goes…but YIKES! Seriously – where DID seven days go?
Unlike a few weeks in my recent past spent lazily reclined on my couch reading book after book (I do miss them!), this week was punctuated with progress. There was a nagging little post-it note buried on the Mrs.’ bulletin board that now has more things marked OFF than visible.
As morbid as it may seem, one of the things she really wanted to take care of while “I still have my wits about me”, as she put it, was pre-planning and pre-paying funeral arrangements. After all, she really liked everything about how things were done for Billy’s, so why not just “ditto” them. We sat there flipping through the book of memorial folders and thank you notes and she quickly and effortlessly settled on appropriate themes – she decided that Alfred Lord Tennyson‘s poem “Crossing The Bar” didn’t work since she had not been a sailor. I had to agree.
Later in the day we were talking about the experience and she said that it had been so easy – so free of emotion. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like making those simple decisions so fraught with grief. We siblings had done the arranging of things for Billy and she fully trusted us with the task. The kinds of situations funeral directors must face on a daily basis is astounding. I’ll take my job, thank you very much.
This week was momentous too because there is great hope. An expert who spends his working hours in cobwebby, dank flooded basements – uttered the words I dared to believe possible – “Fixable. Definitely fixable.” It was like a mega dose of Super-Complex vitamin B for me…let’s hope that the high lasts long enough to do what needs to be done to get us to the day they actually show up with all the gear on site.
Are those two things off the list what made this week different? Or had it been the road trip on an unseasonably warm weekend – just getting in my car and driving for 5 hours? Just two nights away from all the familar things that nag nag nag their way into my brain night after night. Is stepping away the key to getting things done?
I felt a little like Lucky Chihuahua inside a shopping cart getting to see and go places I don’t normally roam and a tad pampered at that. Dinner out, breakfast out, long conversations…that’s all it took. What a lucky dog I am.
1eyedmonkee 