And Now Starts

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Now begins the raveling

Of what has unraveled

With a bright thread removed

The tapestry will be rewoven

Refitted

Remade

Some of the design is gone

Put away forever

Or for another place where eyes see

Differently

Here we’ll go on with the practical

Clean

Fold

Put away

Fight today’s battles

She won’t see

Start another thread

Begin again

With hands numbed

By exhaustion

And eyes blinded by tears

Again

And again

As it’s been

So it shall be

Nothing to see here

Except perhaps

As ages unfold

A sparkle of the eye

A hint of a smile

A turn of the phrase

A voice that rises in perfect song

Ave Atque Vale Mater

Until we meet again

At the perfect time

In a bright shore

Where all the unraveled

Brightness

Is made whole.

57 thoughts on “And Now Starts”

  3. Nice.

    It gets easier over time. But the ache never fully goes away. I know he is in a better place. The pain is gone. But I miss daddy so much.

    On that note, we finally, after 46 years of marriage, finally got our Wills and a Revocable Trust (to avoid probate) done, earlier this summer. Neither of wanted to think about what that meant. We’ve had life insurance, since child was an infant. More for the assisted living attachment, than the money. Now instead of each other as the beneficiary, both pay out to only child. But Will? Nada.

    Liked by 3 people

    2. Advice: If you have not done so already, fill out and sign a POLST form for each of you now. And talk about preferences in situations past what is on the form.

      It is so much easier for the one having to tell hospitals what to do when the form is in hand for the big stuff and those discussions are in mind for the rest.

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        1. “See that peice of paper in his hands? Good. Now, imagine instead a sledgehammer in my hands. Choose wisely.”

          Worked. Unique circumstances.

          Liked by 1 person

  5. Lost dad Father’s day weekend a year ago, he was done with pushing through. Very quick and we weren’t ready to let him go; but, he had taken care of the details of a living trust 25 years ago, so mom and I were cared for and just had to follow the plan. Give thanks every time I do the bills for his foresight and careful organization—from accounts to passwords and everything in between—so I can take care of mom. Gets a little bit better with each day, but the missing him is ever present. God bless you and your family in the rough times and the smooth, all the days to come.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Raveling and unraveling and remaking – yes, that’s a nice image; I have a strong emotional reaction.

      My wife, having a PhD in Mathematics, actually liked doing taxes and handling bills (for some variant of ‘like’, sometimes). But there were lots of things she didn’t tell me in detail that I had to recover on my own. (There are higher priorities than money, and when you’re sick it’s hard to concentrate.)

      We had/have the trust and the will, and the POLST. She had saved passwords in a browser that let me get into some sites and change ownership and contact information – but several required 2-factor authorization, a text to HER phone. I think I have caught all of them, but I have left that line up, paying for it, and leaving her phone on the charger.

      In the weeks before she passed, we went to our local funeral home and did the pre-need stuff for both of us. So, all the decisions and all the payments for the last event, except the honoraria for the priest and the music are taken care of.

      My parents did that; when my mom passed all I had to do was talk to the Sacramento cemetery people and pick/buy a casket.

      I was on mom’s credit union account; I had been paying her bills for her for years.

      I couldn’t figure out how to pay taxes, until I found the way to pre-schedule withdrawals for both Feds and Oregon. We/I pay estimated tax, as CALPERS does not withhold non-CA state tax, and we have to guess at other amounts. (Yes, I could have sent in a check quarterly – I got the form and pre-addressed envelopes from our tax lady.)

      We/I have a bunch of bills run automatically through credit cards – I have a list of which cards have which bills. And the cards have autopay out of checking. I monitor, but seldom need to write a check or change an amount.

      We started that with college tuition payments – mostly miles so we or they could fly cheaply.

      We closed one long-standing miles-accumulating account (AT&T Mastercard) and my wife had to do it, as she was listed as account owner. Goodness, the ‘account retention’ effort was horrific! We pay our bills.

      My kids know the combination to my safe, and I have passwords and accounts documented for them, and they know where the will and trust docs are located.

      Do review all of your financial instruments, to be certain they are included in your will and have designated survivor/beneficiaries. My parents missed one, and the original will vanished, so USAA was properly reticent about giving out the money; ten years later I used a service and they took 20%, but it was worth that to us to get that finally resolved.

      And there is an order of operations to the financial wind-up. Don’t turn off the cell phone plan, that 2-factor authorization thing will get you. Don’t turn off the email I’ve had for decades now, as that account is the primary contact to my bills. Don’t turn off the TV and internet plan. Don’t turn off the power to the house, as you need that for the computers and network and internet.

      Feel mortal. Plan for your exit, as much as you can.

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      2. I have a password app both on my phone and on the computer. The computer has everything. Phone only what we need to travel, and that does NOT include any credit card or banking information. Need to document current double authentication on the computer program in notes, and print it out to put with the “I’m/We’re Dead. It’s your problem now.” Copies (legal original stuff is in envelope folder) binder.

        I remember having to help mom deal with their stuff when dad died. Grrrrrrrr. Some were easier than others. A lot easier 16 years ago, and it was a PIA then. I’m on the list of “yes, you can talk to her”, or for banking, on the actual account, for all of mom’s stuff now. Bad enough on our stuff with the “who is the primary on the account?” Answer: “Hell if I know. We’ve been joined at the hip now for over 45 years.” (Gets a laugh usually.) I try to deal with them on chat and pretend to be hubby. I pay the bills. Hubby deals with the investment accounts (I know how he handles them, just do not want to).

        Mom cheated with her parents and gave it all to the lawyer. Reason for that was because grandparents were so far in debt the courts had to get involved. Amazing on how utilities (power), etc., are less of a PIA, when a lawyer and judge tell them “you’ll be lucky to get paid anything”.

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      3. gratitude for the love that dad had to share for mom and I in taking care of the hard stuff; he knew it would be a challenge for us to carry on with it all without him…

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  6. The Brazilians call it saudade. Do the Portuguese have this word?

    Google Translate says it means longing, but it connotes so much more. Your post reminded me of that.

    May you find rest and know you are blessed in this season of grief.

    Liked by 1 person

        1. Been doing that the last 16 months. Only 2 more rooms and 2 closets to go. Each one faster than the last, although I’ve been going from hardest/biggest to easiest. And can only do so much before either the waterworks comes out to much to see or get into the “nuke it all and not deal with it” starts. Both stopping points.

          And getting old is just sucky, can’t do the 16 hour days anymore. 12 hours after getting up, that’s it. Body is done, and head is checked out, and I miss my spouse.

          Liked by 1 person

  14. my parents died, 3 months apart, in 2012/13. My life splits cleanly in two there. They say, who ever they are, that this too shall pass. It won’t. It will ease from pain to an ache to an emptiness I said a prayer for her and for you at Mass yesterday and my Portagee pastor will remember her in the petitions.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I have a very strong feeling dad won’t last much more than that. It’s 76 years of marriage and more than that of his being in love with her.
      I’m trying to figure out how to go there next month, though G-d knows last thing I want to do is go to Europe now.
      It is what it is.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Go, if you can.

        My daughter is coming to see me next week. My wife went to see her dad about a month before he passed.

        Potential ‘last times’ are really important.

        If it helps, I’ll throw some $$ in the pot for your airfare.

        Liked by 2 people

  15. I lost my parents 9 years ago. My baby brother died unexpectedly 5 years ago. It does ease and life continues but they are always close. My wifes father died 18 years ago. Still with us. He was a good man and had good advice on the practical. Missed but each lives on …and our children knew them well and talk of them with fondness and laughter.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Losing my parents was a great blow, even though I knew it would happen sooner or later. When I got the call from Florida that my mother had been found murdered, I was absolutely numb for quite a while. It didn’t hit me for several days.

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    1. Hugs. One of my closer cousins lost her daughter, son-in-law and unborn grandchild to a surprised burglar. I was at work when our son brought the news and it was like being punched in the face.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. When my cousin (a few months older than my son), a pedestrian, killed by a hit and run driver in front of her home. When I got the call, all I could say was “No.” On repeat. Not helpful. At. All.

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  17. My mom died this month last year. She’d been suffering from dementia. She was physically present. But I had already spent years missing the mind of the person that I’d known for my whole life.

    On the one hand, the pain was dragged out over a long period of time. On the other, I don’t think there was any specific moment of it that was as painful as it could have been.

    Liked by 2 people

  20. The people who leave us never really do, they live on in the pieces we carry of them inside us, the ones we share with those others left behind. They continue to live on through what they have touched and those they have changed. I prefer to think of them as fighting evil in another dimension.

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  22. We’re going through that too. Sorting what to keep, what to discard, what to donate. Going through papers that piled up as Dad was having trouble with energy levels in those final months, making sure that anything Important is taken care of ASAP, deciding what needs to simply be disposed of (lots of junk mail), and what we might want to save for a while and decide later whether to keep or toss.

    At least the house is staying in the family (Dad had it set up so that the real estate would go into a trust), so we don’t have the pressure we had to deal with when we lost Grandma, and had to get her house cleaned out and returned to the landlord by the end of the month. So we have time, instead of having to make snap decisions we’ll come to regret (a bunch of Grandma’s vintage books and games got disposed of because it was easier than getting them packed and transported — some of them would be worth serious money on eBay now, especially the WWII Monopoly game with the wooden game tokens, but in the mid-90’s they seemed like deadweight when the clock was ticking).

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    1. It’s hard. Do not throw out or pack anything without having gone through it. Learned that lesson when inlaws moved MIL’s dad in with them when the step-mother passed. He was 93. Apparently they had cash money (serious money back then) stashed everywhere. My grandparents had a few bills here and there. But they didn’t have serious money to stash. Did find non monetary sentimental treasures that were passed onto family members.

      Tell you this. Didn’t after inlaws stories, primarily because we, being newlyweds, didn’t have anything to go through yet. But after we helped with cleaning out paternal grandmother’s house, then with maternal grandparents house, each time we went home and went through our stuff (we still have too much stuff). Did the same after FIL died, but that was as much to make room for all the FIL tools that got passed to the boys (MIL put house on market way too fast, which caused it’s own problems).

      The other thing I’ve done, after I retired, is purge the financial stack. Taxes are to the minimum required. Vehicles we no longer have, old paid off loans, all paperwork files are purged. Etc.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Gosh, yes.

        Done that 3 times.

        Please purge your documents, because those left behind will have to look at every stinking piece of paper to decide if it might be important.

        Some surprises. I recall my parents struggling to make the payment on a little upright piano for my sister. We found the bill – $14/month. Post-passing guilt for me, I never knew things were ever that close. Loosened up after dad retired.

        Saddest for me is pictures from my parents. Unless relatives, I have no idea who these folks are/were. They were important once, now mostly landfill.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Yeah, write names on back or bottom of your pictures, folks. Your kids will probably care eventually. I have annotated some of the photos on my phone.

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            1. Mom was big on photos. And she had some odd ones. While garage sale hunting, she found a just-pre-WW1 photo of a cheerful US Infantryman, eating from a messkit in the field while sitting on the ground. Correct WW1 era uniform and gear, etc.

              Other than “no glasses”, it looks -just- like 22 year old me. It was displayed in a place of honor in her living room until she moved in with my sister, where it wound up in the “family hallway” there.

              Someone grabbed it when Sis died. Apparently it was valuable. But the “Time Twin” thing was decidedly eerie for me.

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          2. I digitalized the one picture we have of paternal grandfather who died when I was 2.

            The family professional Christmas photo we done a couple of times before maternal grandparents died have the names on them. Everyone knows who everyone in the pictures.

            Also label the year. There is a picture that is in Skookum by Shannon Applegate has a copy of the picture that hangs in the Charles Applegate house in Yoncolla, Oregon. The “experts” state it was taken 1955. The “experts” are wrong. Why? It is 1956. Two of the women on the upper balcony are pregnant. The only time that happened at the same time in August is 1956. One is very pregnant heading into the 8th month. I mean, my cousin and I could have been lied to and are a year older. Plus the pictures of uncles, known as the “little boys” can be aged to their school pictures, age 5 and 7.

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        2. When my mother passed 15 years ago, it fell to me to deal with her estate, such as it was. Financial stack? She had boxes in the storage shed containing over 30 YEARS of bank statements – from at least five different banks. In their original envelopes. I felt compelled to check them all before shredding them.

          I did take home the stack of paperwork I found in her file cabinet, and after a brief glance, just stashed it in a corner of my living room. Thank goodness, because when I finally sold her house, months later, they needed to know if the loan had been paid off. It was a manufactured home and so had been registered with the DMV? Which had no records.

          I had to dig down thru a bunch of boxes to find that stack, and finally I located the paid-off document. She and my father had taken out a loan, made payments for about a year while waiting for their CDs to mature, then cashed those in and paid off the house. They lived there another 30 years and another four banks. ;-)

          At least my son will just have to deal with the 100 or so boxes of wood in the garage, all of which are sorted and labelled by species. ;-)

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        3. The family gatherings about my father’s funeral involved a lot of photos. My sister was talking with a cousin about sending the cousin’s daughter — a new Eagle Scout — all the ones of Scouting regardless of whether we could identify the people.

          My father was an Eagle Scout. Uncle Peter was an Eagle Scout. Uncle Albert set a tent on fire and was told to never come back.

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          1. I feel like all the Uncle Alberts of the world need a toast here – skoal!

            Not that I approve of setting tents on fire, but every family needs its Outlier.

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        4. “Saddest for me is pictures from my parents. Unless relatives, I have no idea who these folks are/were. They were important once, now mostly landfill.”

          OMG Yes. The old reel to reel home movies? Maternal grandparents had boxes of them. Sister has digitalized a few.

          Our tapes are bad enough. Ours were at least the smaller ones from late ’80s through ’90s. That is one benefit when I was off Aug ’02 – Jan ’04 and looking for work after the company bankruptcy. I digitized all 18 two hour tapes, and cut them to CD’s (not DVD’s); FYI five hours per tape. They are now all copied to external hard drives. Did all of ours, then did one of my sisters tapes (they didn’t have near as many). Gave the equipment to the other sister and BIL to do their own tapes (as tech savvy as I was, they could do their own). Also ripped all the music CD’s to mp3.

          A few years ago, after retirement, we went through all the print and slides we hadn’t digitized yet (most). I’d done the “special” trips, like 2001 National Jamboree and 2003 Philmont (2005 we were digital). But hubby started with the SLR camera pictures back in ’79. Not counting all the point and shoot I and later the kid took (we have boxes of them). Not all pictures were converted (expensive enough being selective. Had Costco photo do them. Finished just before Costco shutdown their in store photo processing.) Selective for number of reasons. A lot of duplicates. Landscapes don’t transfer well. Some aged really poorly despite everything being kept in a dry, cool, anti-acid, dark, location. We have newer digital ones taken of the same topic (revisited national parks, etc). Unfortunately some of the poor aging ones were May 18, 1980 taken from Columbia Heights Longview Washington. Nothing compared to the professional ones aired and used in documentaries but hubby taken them. (St. Helens blowing up; JIC). Kid gets to deal with all this. Actual photos and digital photos and movies.

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  25. My most sincere condolences to you, Sarah, and to all who have lost their loved ones, recently or not so recently – missing them has no statute of limitations.

    Please take the time you need for yourself and your family. We can hold the line here with however much, or little, you are able to post without increasing your stress, while recognizing (as you said on another thread) that writing is your solace, and our privilege to share.

    I cannot add much to the messages of love and encouragement that so many commenters have extended since we learned the sad news of your mother’s passing, and also Uncle Lar’s, who have over the years become as familiar as if they were our own friends.

    Thank you to all those who have expressed so well the feelings that I share.

    Many thanks also to those who have shared their excellent advice for dealing with the mundane, practical matters of picking up the temporal pieces. Some things we have already done, some we are working on (boxes and boxes and boxes….), some I had not thought of or even known about.

    This year my two siblings and I had to deal with my older sister’s slide into dementia, since slightly slowed by getting her back on her medications and vitamins –take your B12, everyone! She is single, no husband or kids, so we are her only “back up,” although a few close friends are helping with local matters.

    We persuaded her to let my brother have access to her financial & medical records and accounts (having a retired banker in the family is useful at last!), so he monitors those almost daily, with help from our younger sister who is monitoring her email. I also have a POA if necessary, but they are now conversant with the providers, passwords, on-line portals, etc. that are needed.

    If you have relatives in a similar situation, please don’t wait until they are too far “gone” to authorize you to handle their affairs.

    Hmm.

    I need to run another audit of AesopSpouse’s Amazon and PayPal books…

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  26. This has been hitting home to me.

    I have not spoken to my parents since January, though we have exchanged texts. I’m just afraid that unless a miracle occurs, the last memory I have of my parents will be my mother screaming at me. I have seen enough weird things to not dismiss the idea of a miracle, but they are not to be called upon at will.

    We were trying to tell my parents that if they didn’t reach out to our son, their grandson, they would lose him. I don’t know what they heard.

    This has been building for a long time (years), but we were always hoping that if we could say the right things, we could get though to them.

    I’m only posting this here because I don’t think that they, or any of their friends, read this blog. Especially this far down the comments.

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