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Watching Jeopardy

I had a sad task to do on Monday. It was up to me to go pick up Mark's remains from the funeral parlor. Knowing what was in store, and also knowing unexpected emotions would make this difficult, I asked my friend Dennis to accompany me.

Now that I have Mark at home on the mantel, I somehow feel better. We used to watch Jeopardy every day together, and it kind of feels like he's with me when I watch it now. I can't explain why I feel comforted having his remains close by. I just do.

 Driving over to the funeral parlor, I was anxious. How would it go, what was the proper way to deal with your loved ones ashes? Exactly how would they present them to me? When I got to the funeral parlor, I parked across the street. Dennis stayed in the car while I went in. I have to say, the staff were all so very good at what they do. They made me feel very calm. I signed for the package and a nice lady came out of the office with a blue shopping bag. Inside was a box with Mark's ashes. That's when I lost it. My eyes welled up and I started sobbing. In a fog I walked outside. I don't know how I made it across that busy street. I just remember a lot of cars whizzing by. When I got across I opened the car trunk and laid the blue shopping bag inside. It took me a minute to dry my tears before I got into the car where Dennis was waiting for me.

"Geez, I saw you trying to cross that street with that blue bag and all I could think was, for Christ's sake Alan don't get hit by a car. I don't want to see a cloud of ashes blowing away down the street."

And that, my friends, is exactly why I wanted Dennis with me. What are friends for but to tell you inappropriate jokes at appropriate times.

Mark's Ghost

 

Mark's Beloved Kitchen

Week number two of living without Mark. Sure, Mark traveled at times without me and he spent quite a bit of time in the hospital, but this time I know he's not coming back home. And in that spirit I have begun shedding the excesses that he seemed to thrive on. Three things were always kind of a peeve of mine. Too many kitchen things and gadgets. Too many cook books, over four hundred and at one time nearly one thousand. Finally, too many clothes. Unlike me, Mark needed a different pair of pants for every day of the month. He had hundreds of tee shirts, and as many dress shirts. Then there are the shoes. There are about fifty pair of shoes in the closet. I guess they're called gym shoes, or sport shoes. It's simply crazy to have that many shoes. I don't need things as much as Mark did. I have three flannel shirts I rotate during the winter, five tee shirts that are more than enough between loads of laundry, three pair of shorts and three pair of long pants. As for shoes, I have my indoor slip-ons, a pair of expensive 'stability' shoes for walking, and one pair of dress shoes.

Yesterday morning I saw this on the neighborhood web site. "I sell gently used clothing, shoes and purses on an app called Poshmark. Sales are down because of COVID and I’m having a difficult time putting money back into my tiny store to purchase more 2nd hand or new clothing to resell. We are a low income family of 5. If anyone has donations that they haven’t been able to get around to dropping off at the homeless shelter or goodwill I’d be REALLY grateful if you would allow me to come pick them up."  So I sent the young lady a message offering her Mark's old clothes. She and I will get together sometime later this week and one task will be finished. Task number two, the cook books. If anybody wants to take a couple of free cook books, drop on by. I plan to sell the whole bunch except for Joy of Cooking and America's Test Kitchen. Finally there is all that stuff in the kitchen. All the extra dishes, gadgets, pots and pans. I have moved all that to the basement and plan to have a big garage sale next spring. One interesting result of my stripping the kitchen of all the things that I will never use, there is now an echo. I was calling the dogs into the kitchen to go out last night, and I heard an echo. Probably, if I listen hard enough, I'll hear Mark cursing me for getting rid of all his prized possessions.

I'll Be Okay

 

Sometime between four in the morning and six thirty in the morning last Thursday, the man I lived with for twenty three years, passed away peacefully in his sleep. Mark had been having health problems for many years and this last year was a swift downhill slide to the end. I tried to avoid writing about Mark's illness in my blog out of respect for his wishes. The truth is that we knew he had end stage COPD for quite awhile. COPD is a terrible disease. With only ten percent of his lung capacity left, it felt to Mark as if he were being smothered. Some days were better than others, but the bad days were bad. In the end the disease affected other parts of his body. I honestly don't know how he lived as long as he did. Mark hadn't eaten more than a few morsels of food in the last four months, and nothing at all last week. If he managed to swallow half a spoonful of Jello, it came back up as fast as it went down. For the last two months Mark was totally bedridden and I did everything for him. Now he's gone and I won't have to watch him suffer anymore.

As for me, I miss him so much more than I thought I would. Occasionally I think I hear him calling for me, but I know he's not there. He did that often. He would call me into the bedroom for water, for help with his personal hygiene, and even when he wanted the channel changed on the television. I don't have that duty anymore and my time as a nurse is now over. So I will be okay. I'm not some fragile little flower. I can deal with the grief and sadness. For one thing, I have already started de-cluttering the house. I had refused to touch anything as long as Mark was still alive. I thought it would be disrespectful. The de-cluttering gives me something to do and really kind of gives me some joy. It helps me keep the sadness at bay. My only problem is speaking to family, friends, and others about Mark. Really, other than the sudden sobbing in the middle of a conversation, I am fine. So as long as I don't talk to anybody about Mark, I'm okay.

Rain, Shine, Sleet, Snow. Sure, Now Pull My Finger.

In 2006 Congress passed a bill that required the post office to fund their pension plan for seventy five years into the future at a cost of nearly eighty billion dollars. No other agency or private company has that mandate. So that was the first part of the plan to screw over the constitutionally required department so that private shipping companies could profit when USPS service degraded for lack of money. Fourteen years later we have a crazy person who puts in a new postmaster general, and that guy proceeds to kneecap the post office. 

So  that's where we are, and that's why my mail that used to come every day, has stopped arriving. We have a regular letter carrier who does a very good job when she is working on our street. However, if she goes on vacation or has a day off, or if she is reassigned for a week to another route, we get no mail. That happened last week. No mail on Monday, or Tuesday. No mail on Thursday, Friday or Saturday. And I checked, none of our neighbors got mail either. Don't try to pull the wool over a retired guy's eyes. I'm home all day and I can see if there's a mailman on our street. Now, did you notice? I didn't mention Wednesday. That's because we did get mail last Wednesday. The only problem is that we got somebody else's mail. And the guy next door got somebody else's mail, and the people on the other side got my mail. And so on, and so on, and so on. The entire block on our side of the street got mail one house off from where it was supposed to go. I went out and corrected four of the deliveries. But hell, it's not my job. My job as an old retired fart, is to call the post office on Monday and bitch at the person who answers the phone. Seriously, I wanted to unload. But I couldn't. The lady who answered the phone couldn't have been nicer, and so concerned when I told her about the Wednesday delivery.

"Oh, really? Every house? That carrier should be fired."

"No don't do that. Just make sure she can read and count."

"Well I'll do that. Now what is your address and name? I want to be sure we take care of you."

I hesitated. Would there be reprisals for snitching I wondered? But she was too nice to do that, so I told her. The nice lady then assured me that there would be mail. She also assured me that the outgoing mail I had waiting would be picked up. That included a letter to Mom. So I sure hope some angry person at the post office doesn't spit on it, fold it, and/or mutilate it. You know, just to get back at me for being a whiney bitch.

Mom One Year Later

 

It was about a year ago this month that we moved Mom out of her house and into a small apartment at a very nice 'retirement' facility. It really is nice. Not like one of those places that smell like urine the minute you walk through the front door. I used to go into those places to fix the med machines and I could always tell which were nice, and which were shit holes just by the aroma. Anyway, Mom was not happy about the move. She did not want to leave the home she and Dad had built nearly thirty years ago. I can understand that. On the very first evening that Mom was in her new apartment I got a call. It was Mom. 

"Alan, do you know what they did to me?" 

"Um.... "

"They kidnapped me and put me in this place. I don't even know where I am."

So I had to explain to Mom that I was one of the 'they' she was talking about, and I had to tell her just why she was there. I also had to give her explicit details on exactly where she was in relation to her old home. That might have been a mistake, because she probably started planning her escape that very evening. Luckily they have people watching the doors and Mom wasn't going anywhere soon. For weeks and months I continued to visit her every Wednesday for lunch, just as I did when she lived in her own house. I got to meet her 103 year old table mate and a few of the other characters there. Funny thing, it's a lot like a high school. There are cliques. I'm sure one of those cliques is comprised of mean girls who made it to old age, because they always gave us a sort of sneering stare when Mom and I passed by their table. For many months Mom was pissed about being "dumped" there. No matter that she was getting more visitors than any other resident, she felt abandoned. Then right around the beginning of March when she seemed to be settling in, the goddamned covid19 thing happened and the place was quarantined. Nobody in or out except for employees. We've been able to do 'facetime' on the computer with her. We've also had a couple of supervised outdoor visits where Mom was kept at least eight feet away from her visitors. At eight feet it's hard to determine her moods. But now a funny thing has happened. Mom seems to be happy there. I call her on her new high fidelity phone and she seems happy. I assume that because she hasn't asked me to help her escape in months.