Alarms

It dawned on me last night that I no longer have to keep the ringer in the ‘on’ position at night.  I use my phone as my alarm clock – I have for years now; I think I had a bad experience with an alarm clock not working or being knocked out in a power outage and have used my phone since then.  Mistakenly, I would turn it off from time to time.  I say “mistakenly” because it was off the morning that the hospital called to tell me my Mom had been placed in ICU because she couldn’t breathe.  I saw the call pretty quickly after I missed it – I only missed it by about 5 minutes, but it was the last time I slept with the ringer off.  Every night that she was in the hospital, after we knew there was no hope, I secretly hoped my phone would ring with the call that said she coded and we had to decide what to do.  Ironically, that’s the call I got for my Dad – not in the middle of the night…somewhere around 7:45pm, but still.  As I write this, I wonder if that was some cosmic crap that my Mom somehow pulled on us.  We wanted to get that call for her – I wanted it so that my Dad didn’t have to make the decision that he ultimately had to make with my help; I did not want that call for my Dad and  I didn’t expect it either.  He was doing okay when I left, better in fact, and then it all went to hell after we were gone.  I still wonder if somehow he knew we were gone and something inside him said “it’s okay now, you can let go”.  I think that’s what happened with my Mom, even though she fought up until the very end.

And now, I can turn the ringer off because there shouldn’t be unexpected medical emergencies in the middle of the night anymore.  There shouldn’t be any more worry that something will happen to one of them and I’ll need to bounce out of bed and run off in the middle of the night in a panic.  Those days are (hopefully) gone.  Along with both of my parents.  There are days that it just seems so unreal to be alone, without them.  As the days move on, the first signs of the impending season change are starting to pop up, I try to not think of him or her with sadness but with happiness and with smiles.  Some days it’s just so hard to do it.  I believe that he is in a better place and he is happy, but what I would give to know that he is still with us.  What I would give to still have him here!  Every time I think of all the good that he did, all of the people that he touched and all the people who he meant so much to, it just makes me sad.  An entire community mourned him two months ago and to some extent,  I hope they are still mourning – at least in a way that makes them remember him, with more joy than sadness.  Sometimes I go to the Knights of Columbus website and look at the pictures that are posted of him from years ago and they make me smile; it was there that he was happy and I hope that he is smiling that same smile, and laughing that same laugh, where ever he may be.

I Am Overly Overwhelmed

My sister and I started the process of sorting through my Dad’s finances with his advisor and I am overwhelmed. First off, the meeting was long.  Very long.  And very complicated.  On the drive home, my sister compared listening to the financial advisor to listening to the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show; at times it was like listening to a foreign language, although eventually I caught on.  There’s so much to do – so many decisions to make, so many taxes to pay, just so much.  And I am overwhelmed by it.   There isn’t a TON of money, my Dad wasn’t a millionaire by any means, but there’s enough to make it difficult and complicated and to involve a lot of decisions about what to do with it that we both have to make – some decisions are joint, some are on our own.  Some will impact her husband financially, some would impact Rob if we got married or entered into a domestic partnership (I think – that I still have to research).  So. Much. To. Do.

I have a lot on my plate right now.  A huge on-going project at work which is the complete overhaul and redesign of an existing system that is broken which, if it goes well will make me look AWESOME – and if it goes badly will basically sink me professionally.   I have on-going work with impending dead-lines, a huge upcoming meeting to coordinate and facilitated and prepare for.  Many days, if I take lunch, it’s just to go out to a drive-through and come back and do more work.  At home, I forgot about ordering my daughter’s ‘super hero’ pictures which we may have missed out on at this point, which would really suck (and man do I feel guilty about that…how many times will you get professional pictures of your adorable 3 year old posing in a cape??).  Yesterday I forgot I had already put her lunch together and scrambled frantically to make her a new lunch, all the while her originallunch sat on the shelf – thankfully because that meant today, I didn’t have to scramble.  My brother-in-law may have thyroid cancer which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t THAT bad because it’s early stage and they’ll just take out his thyroid but still.  That will hit my sister hard, especially in the realms of stress and time.  He won’t be able to work for up to 8 weeks, maybe longer depending upon his recovery, so she’ll need to take care of everything and she doesn’t get paid for days off either so financially this isn’t good for them.  And then there’s the issue of my parents’ house which is still filled to the brim with stuff that we need to sort out.  We’ve decided that we’ll probably get a table at a flea market to try to get rid of some stuff but all that means is more work – organizing things, packing them up, reserving the table, going to the bank for change, etc.  Rob and I have to decide if our daughter is playing soccer in the Fall or if she’s doing gymnastics or maybe she’ll do both – who knows.  And then it’s the money.  My Dad’s money.  There’s just so many decisions to make.  And taxes that my sister and I will have to pay.  I am praying we can stretch this money out over a number of years to minimize our taxes every year because if we can’t, I may have to start working a pole at a local gentleman’s club and really, does anyone want that?? I’m cute but I’m over 40 and I’ve had a baby. You do the math on that one.

Feeling overwhelmed is  not a feeling I enjoy at all.  I feel totally out of control of just about everything because I can’t keep on top of all of it.  I guess I should start a to do list for my life and my job – I already have a makeshift one for my job (thank God for my huge white board), but I need one for my life so I can check things off and see that I’m actually doing more than just spinning my proverbial wheels. Between the house, the kid, the school – we have to start the application process for new schools soon (shoot me), life, I am feeling lost today and I need to take some time out to find my way back, figure out priorities and just start chipping away at stuff one at a time.  I hope I can do it and not go nuts; that would be almost as much fun as working that pole at the club.