Three Weeks

I had to work late last night as I do once a month.  I always groan in the morning but by the time the program comes around I always enjoy it.  I just kind of hated to be late as Owen and Ernie leave this morning for the antique show and there's always last minute pricing, etc. the night before.

As I busied myself at work I thought about last month's program and remembered telling my mother at the nursing home---or was it the hospital?----several nights ahead of time that I wouldn't be able to visit her on that Wednesday evening.  And I was so shocked that as shortly as a month ago my mother was alive.  It really brought me up short.  In some ways it seems like so very long ago now.  But in fact it's only been three weeks since she died.

Startling.  Not good, not bad....just startling.

Next week we'll try to move forward on the house.  Get some estimates on shipping furniture to Debbie, get an appraisal....schedule of day of sorting and packing and cleaning.  If you've offered to help I'm going to take you up on it so be warned!  Those practical plans help to keep me in place.

This experience of death is so different from the others.  I remember when my grandfather died.  As we stood at the cemetery in Portland, Maine my mother paused and said tearfully that it was so strange to see her whole family there....her brother, her mother and now her father.  And I guess that's what I feel as well.  This death kind of (HOPEFULLY) closes the journey of the last few years but going through the house and the family pictures and all the possessions it just stirs up so much.

WHO will take Jimmy, the rocking horse all three girls used?  My sister Debbie, a wonderfully sentimental sap, God love her.  But just by thinking of that I remember the old pictures of Debbie with Jimmy----I remember him sitting in our family room in Lisle even when I, the youngest, was too old to use him....I remember the discussions about what to do with Jimmy as my parents packed up their house in Lisle.  I remember the day my parents moved into their house in Urbana----Leo not walking yet but standing at the window and yelling when the movers brought Jimmy in....not that he ever rode him much but Owen did---with great abandon as you can imagine.  Just looking at that one possession---brings so much to the surface.  I guess you just to have all the memories swirl around you and then settle down on their own as you create a new picture of your life.  Not really a new picture, but a new time and place.

So three weeks.  Startling.