Daily life: A death in the family
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.
--Henri J. M. Nouwen
Topics in this post: Passing on, post-death arrangements, sorting through papers, revised summer publishing plans.
For newcomers: Background to my writing entries | Background to my mentoring entries | Background to my simplicity entries | Background to my home entries.
*** 21 July 2008. Home: Passing on.
My mother died today.
*** 23 July 2008. Home: Post-death arrangements.
My Muse delivered me 2200 words yesterday. He turns up at the oddest moments.
Other than that, and me doing some light editing of Noble while I'm eating, it's been non-stop post-death arrangements. Doug and I have had to contact Mother's family and friends, locate a crematorium, decide on the place and timing of the memorial gathering and service, pick a priest to preside over the service, contact my mother's lawyer about her will, contact the hospital about the current situation with her body (she died in the emergency room), contact her landlord about her apartment, accept sympathy calls (Doug has been doing that), prepare an obituary, and most of all, try to coordinate everything between the parties most affected, namely my brother, my father, the uncle that my mother was most in contact with, and one of my mother's closest friends.
Though my mother died of natural causes, this all reminds me of a poem by Dorothy Parker that appeared in a book my mother gave me when I was young. After listing all the disadvantages of various methods of suicide, Parker concludes, "You might as well live."
Things are going better than they could have, though. Even though the priest we wanted for the service is retired from being a rector (i.e. being in charge of a church), we were able to easily locate him, and he was pleased to be asked to do the service. He's a wonderful man, very warm-hearted. He baptized my brother and me, and my mother often mentioned him with fondness.
He approved the timing of the service, as has everyone else who is closely involved. We haven't had to worry too much about contacting people locally because, as my mother had predicted beforehand would happen after she died, the news spread around town like wildfire. (Greenbelt is technically a city, but it feels more like a small town.)
If we can just get through the icky financial bits, I'll be okay as far as practical arrangements are concerned.
As far as emotional matters are concerned, my friends and family have been very supportive. I'm especially happy that I've been able to have long talks on the phone with my brother, with whom I hadn't had a chance to speak for over a decade. (Long story.) He was the perfect antidote to my bleakness the first day, because he's got a dry wit that functions well in dark situations.
My father and stepmother are overseas at the moment, but they've been sending supportive e-mails. Jo/e looked up crematorium information for me, even though this news hit him hard as well, as it brought back his own memories of his mother's recent death. As for Doug, he's been an absolute saint, making phone call after phone call.
I just wish I could stop crying whenever I lie down to sleep. I haven't managed that yet.
Later:
This seems to be the week for bad news. I heard tonight from a fellow leather writer that Larry Townsend, who wrote the classic Leatherman's Handbook, is seriously ill. Also, two of my parents' oldest friends died recently, a fact that I never got a chance to pass on to my mother. It must be very hard for my father, receiving a series of sad news like that.
My apprentice told me tonight that his reaction to feeling ill was to "sit around and want to die."
"You're not allowed to do that," I replied, only half in jest. "I've had enough of that this week."
Later:
Remind me to thank my father sometime for picking me a godfather who's in the funeral industry.
My godfather recommended a local crematorium society. So we've got the priest and service location decided upon, we've nearly got the times for the service and memorial gathering settled, and we've selected a crematorium society. Now I can focus my attention on Mother's obituary, which I need to submit on Tuesday for the next issue of the local paper. (The paper is running a short item about her death in this week's issue, but I suspect that most Greenbelters will have heard the news by the time the paper comes out.)
Thank goodness that I've spent the summer sorting my mother's papers. I've got several boxes available of her family momentoes (or momentums, as my mother's mother always put it), and I can use those to reconstruct her life. It's taking me a while, because she lived a very full life: lots of jobs and lots of volunteer work, not to mention decades as a homemaker. She's much-loved in this community.
When I die, I want my life to have been as rich as my mother's was.
*** 24 July 2008. Home life: Planning continues.
We got the church we wanted for the service. We signed the papers for the cremation (and I identified the body, which was a dreadful experience, but I got through it). It turns out that the funeral home that's handling the cremation was founded by a gentleman whose family has been in the funeral business since 1841. My mother, who enjoyed historical anecdotes, would have liked that.
The next few days will be devoted to my going through Mother's legal and family papers (all conveniently boxed by me earlier this summer - that is, except for the ones still hidden amidst her unsorted papers), interviewing people for information for her obituary, and settling on dates for the service and memorial gathering.
The City of Greenbelt flag is at half-mast in honor of Mother. Fortunately, one of Mother's friends mentioned this to Doug, so I went and took a photograph today of the flagpole and the plaque with her name.
I talked to my Uncle Dean and Aunt Donna - the first time I'd been emotionally up to doing that - and they both asked how I was doing. "Fine, as long as I keep busy," I replied.
During meal breaks, I'm doing the worst editing job of my life on Princeling.
*** 25 July 2008. Home: Sorting through papers.
Seeking to get a couple of minutes away from death matters, I opened the February 2007 issue of Smithsonian. I found myself reading an article on dying vultures. When it turned out that the next article was on dead soldiers, I set the magazine aside.
I've been going through Mother's papers this evening. Virtue is rewarded; I spent two months sorting her papers, and now most of what I need - the legal papers and the family papers - is already sorted. But that still means I have to go through a lot of boxes. Reading about her distant past is kind of fun - I found her checkbook from the year I was born - but it's hard to go through her most recent stuff, and very hard to go through her medical records.
I wrote a rough draft of her obituary today but ran out of the emotional energy needed to call up various people who might be able to fill in the gaps.
On an up note, I found her father's family tree online, compiled by one of her cousins. My mother already possessed her mother's family tree. I had one of those many moments I've been having this week of, "Hey, I should tell Mother-- Oh." It's very frustrating to keep finding interesting things when the person you most want to discuss them with is dead.
Doug tells me that he talked to City Hall and was told that the City of Greenbelt flag is usually only kept at half-mast for one or two days, when someone local dies. But the City Manager told his employees, "There's been a tremendous response to her death. Keep it down for a week."
*** 25 July 2008. Writing: Revised summer publishing plans.
So, it's time to think about how this death will affect my publishing schedule for the rest of the year.
The basic problem isn't emotional. Yet again, I've discovered that, no matter how grave the crisis, my writing is something I turn to.
The problem is time and energy. I'm getting only a tiny amount of sleep at the moment, because every time I wake up (which usually happens after about four hours) I think of Mother and can't go back to sleep again. So I can't do any sort of publishing work right now that involves concentration. And before Mother's death, I'd set up a very tight schedule for myself that required me to be working non-stop on publishing between now and the end of the year. I can't stick with that schedule; I'm going to be doing a great deal of work related to my mother's death over the next couple of months.
Clearly, I won't be able to publicly release Blood Vow or Whipster this year. That would take entirely too much work. True Tales I just don't have time and energy to deal with. The next issue is nearly finished, so I'll post it in the spring.
However, I still want to get back online most of the stories at my domain that I took offline last year. I think I can manage to do that.
I'm still planning to visit my apprentice at the end of September, but his club's run, which I was going to attend . . . I don't know about that. Nor do I feel any inclination to attend Gaylaxicon. Only four days have passed since Mother's death, though, so I shouldn't rush into decisions.
Lest this all sound as though I'm grumbling at my mother's timing, let me add that it's actually the opposite. As I told Doug, "I'm glad Mother had the courtesy to die in the summer." In the wintertime, I simply would not have had the eyesight to do the reams of paperwork that I'm having to do. July or August is the only time of the year that I can do the amount of standard-print reading that her death requires of me. Moreoever, this happened in a very brief space of time between my giving up one don't-you-dare-interrupt-me publishing plan (get a print book out by the end of the July) and my launching a second don't-you-dare-interrupt-me publishing plan (get "Blood Vow" and "Whipster" out). So I'm relieved that I won't have to feel that I'm neglecting my professional duties, though I'm sorry that I won't be able to get more new fiction out this year for my readers.
Meanwhile, the first thing I need to do, from both a personal and professional stance, is get more sleep.
*** 25 July 2008. Home and Simplicity: Figuring out what matters in life.
I just went through my earlier journal entries, with an eye toward posting them before they become too long to handle.
Both my pre-death journal entries and my private "daily tasks" list (from which I derive my "Activities Since My Last Daily Life Entry" section) make me want to scream at my obliviousness. It's like watching someone lying on a train track, blowing bubbles into the air, while a train thunders toward them.
There I am, worrying about my stories, my schedule, my exercise, my simplicity activities, and all manner of more trivial things - not to mention grumbling about how much time I'm having to spend at my mother's apartment - and I want to scream at my pre-July-21 self, "Your mother is about to die! Don't worry about all the rest! None of it matters!"
The trouble is, I'm left without any sense of what does matter. Obviously my writing must, or I wouldn't still be doing it. (Me editing a 1990s story today: "Darn it, this cremation scene is going to have to be rewritten. I got all the details wrong.") And my family and close friends matter, because I'm still talking to them. But I look at what my daily life was like before July 21, and it all seems unutterably dreary.
I really do need to get some sleep.
--Henri J. M. Nouwen
Topics in this post: Passing on, post-death arrangements, sorting through papers, revised summer publishing plans.
For newcomers: Background to my writing entries | Background to my mentoring entries | Background to my simplicity entries | Background to my home entries.
*** 21 July 2008. Home: Passing on.
My mother died today.
*** 23 July 2008. Home: Post-death arrangements.
My Muse delivered me 2200 words yesterday. He turns up at the oddest moments.
Other than that, and me doing some light editing of Noble while I'm eating, it's been non-stop post-death arrangements. Doug and I have had to contact Mother's family and friends, locate a crematorium, decide on the place and timing of the memorial gathering and service, pick a priest to preside over the service, contact my mother's lawyer about her will, contact the hospital about the current situation with her body (she died in the emergency room), contact her landlord about her apartment, accept sympathy calls (Doug has been doing that), prepare an obituary, and most of all, try to coordinate everything between the parties most affected, namely my brother, my father, the uncle that my mother was most in contact with, and one of my mother's closest friends.
Though my mother died of natural causes, this all reminds me of a poem by Dorothy Parker that appeared in a book my mother gave me when I was young. After listing all the disadvantages of various methods of suicide, Parker concludes, "You might as well live."
Things are going better than they could have, though. Even though the priest we wanted for the service is retired from being a rector (i.e. being in charge of a church), we were able to easily locate him, and he was pleased to be asked to do the service. He's a wonderful man, very warm-hearted. He baptized my brother and me, and my mother often mentioned him with fondness.
He approved the timing of the service, as has everyone else who is closely involved. We haven't had to worry too much about contacting people locally because, as my mother had predicted beforehand would happen after she died, the news spread around town like wildfire. (Greenbelt is technically a city, but it feels more like a small town.)
If we can just get through the icky financial bits, I'll be okay as far as practical arrangements are concerned.
As far as emotional matters are concerned, my friends and family have been very supportive. I'm especially happy that I've been able to have long talks on the phone with my brother, with whom I hadn't had a chance to speak for over a decade. (Long story.) He was the perfect antidote to my bleakness the first day, because he's got a dry wit that functions well in dark situations.
My father and stepmother are overseas at the moment, but they've been sending supportive e-mails. Jo/e looked up crematorium information for me, even though this news hit him hard as well, as it brought back his own memories of his mother's recent death. As for Doug, he's been an absolute saint, making phone call after phone call.
I just wish I could stop crying whenever I lie down to sleep. I haven't managed that yet.
Later:
This seems to be the week for bad news. I heard tonight from a fellow leather writer that Larry Townsend, who wrote the classic Leatherman's Handbook, is seriously ill. Also, two of my parents' oldest friends died recently, a fact that I never got a chance to pass on to my mother. It must be very hard for my father, receiving a series of sad news like that.
My apprentice told me tonight that his reaction to feeling ill was to "sit around and want to die."
"You're not allowed to do that," I replied, only half in jest. "I've had enough of that this week."
Later:
Remind me to thank my father sometime for picking me a godfather who's in the funeral industry.
My godfather recommended a local crematorium society. So we've got the priest and service location decided upon, we've nearly got the times for the service and memorial gathering settled, and we've selected a crematorium society. Now I can focus my attention on Mother's obituary, which I need to submit on Tuesday for the next issue of the local paper. (The paper is running a short item about her death in this week's issue, but I suspect that most Greenbelters will have heard the news by the time the paper comes out.)
Thank goodness that I've spent the summer sorting my mother's papers. I've got several boxes available of her family momentoes (or momentums, as my mother's mother always put it), and I can use those to reconstruct her life. It's taking me a while, because she lived a very full life: lots of jobs and lots of volunteer work, not to mention decades as a homemaker. She's much-loved in this community.
When I die, I want my life to have been as rich as my mother's was.
*** 24 July 2008. Home life: Planning continues.
We got the church we wanted for the service. We signed the papers for the cremation (and I identified the body, which was a dreadful experience, but I got through it). It turns out that the funeral home that's handling the cremation was founded by a gentleman whose family has been in the funeral business since 1841. My mother, who enjoyed historical anecdotes, would have liked that.
The next few days will be devoted to my going through Mother's legal and family papers (all conveniently boxed by me earlier this summer - that is, except for the ones still hidden amidst her unsorted papers), interviewing people for information for her obituary, and settling on dates for the service and memorial gathering.
The City of Greenbelt flag is at half-mast in honor of Mother. Fortunately, one of Mother's friends mentioned this to Doug, so I went and took a photograph today of the flagpole and the plaque with her name.
I talked to my Uncle Dean and Aunt Donna - the first time I'd been emotionally up to doing that - and they both asked how I was doing. "Fine, as long as I keep busy," I replied.
During meal breaks, I'm doing the worst editing job of my life on Princeling.
*** 25 July 2008. Home: Sorting through papers.
Seeking to get a couple of minutes away from death matters, I opened the February 2007 issue of Smithsonian. I found myself reading an article on dying vultures. When it turned out that the next article was on dead soldiers, I set the magazine aside.
I've been going through Mother's papers this evening. Virtue is rewarded; I spent two months sorting her papers, and now most of what I need - the legal papers and the family papers - is already sorted. But that still means I have to go through a lot of boxes. Reading about her distant past is kind of fun - I found her checkbook from the year I was born - but it's hard to go through her most recent stuff, and very hard to go through her medical records.
I wrote a rough draft of her obituary today but ran out of the emotional energy needed to call up various people who might be able to fill in the gaps.
On an up note, I found her father's family tree online, compiled by one of her cousins. My mother already possessed her mother's family tree. I had one of those many moments I've been having this week of, "Hey, I should tell Mother-- Oh." It's very frustrating to keep finding interesting things when the person you most want to discuss them with is dead.
Doug tells me that he talked to City Hall and was told that the City of Greenbelt flag is usually only kept at half-mast for one or two days, when someone local dies. But the City Manager told his employees, "There's been a tremendous response to her death. Keep it down for a week."
*** 25 July 2008. Writing: Revised summer publishing plans.
So, it's time to think about how this death will affect my publishing schedule for the rest of the year.
The basic problem isn't emotional. Yet again, I've discovered that, no matter how grave the crisis, my writing is something I turn to.
The problem is time and energy. I'm getting only a tiny amount of sleep at the moment, because every time I wake up (which usually happens after about four hours) I think of Mother and can't go back to sleep again. So I can't do any sort of publishing work right now that involves concentration. And before Mother's death, I'd set up a very tight schedule for myself that required me to be working non-stop on publishing between now and the end of the year. I can't stick with that schedule; I'm going to be doing a great deal of work related to my mother's death over the next couple of months.
Clearly, I won't be able to publicly release Blood Vow or Whipster this year. That would take entirely too much work. True Tales I just don't have time and energy to deal with. The next issue is nearly finished, so I'll post it in the spring.
However, I still want to get back online most of the stories at my domain that I took offline last year. I think I can manage to do that.
I'm still planning to visit my apprentice at the end of September, but his club's run, which I was going to attend . . . I don't know about that. Nor do I feel any inclination to attend Gaylaxicon. Only four days have passed since Mother's death, though, so I shouldn't rush into decisions.
Lest this all sound as though I'm grumbling at my mother's timing, let me add that it's actually the opposite. As I told Doug, "I'm glad Mother had the courtesy to die in the summer." In the wintertime, I simply would not have had the eyesight to do the reams of paperwork that I'm having to do. July or August is the only time of the year that I can do the amount of standard-print reading that her death requires of me. Moreoever, this happened in a very brief space of time between my giving up one don't-you-dare-interrupt-me publishing plan (get a print book out by the end of the July) and my launching a second don't-you-dare-interrupt-me publishing plan (get "Blood Vow" and "Whipster" out). So I'm relieved that I won't have to feel that I'm neglecting my professional duties, though I'm sorry that I won't be able to get more new fiction out this year for my readers.
Meanwhile, the first thing I need to do, from both a personal and professional stance, is get more sleep.
*** 25 July 2008. Home and Simplicity: Figuring out what matters in life.
I just went through my earlier journal entries, with an eye toward posting them before they become too long to handle.
Both my pre-death journal entries and my private "daily tasks" list (from which I derive my "Activities Since My Last Daily Life Entry" section) make me want to scream at my obliviousness. It's like watching someone lying on a train track, blowing bubbles into the air, while a train thunders toward them.
There I am, worrying about my stories, my schedule, my exercise, my simplicity activities, and all manner of more trivial things - not to mention grumbling about how much time I'm having to spend at my mother's apartment - and I want to scream at my pre-July-21 self, "Your mother is about to die! Don't worry about all the rest! None of it matters!"
The trouble is, I'm left without any sense of what does matter. Obviously my writing must, or I wouldn't still be doing it. (Me editing a 1990s story today: "Darn it, this cremation scene is going to have to be rewritten. I got all the details wrong.") And my family and close friends matter, because I'm still talking to them. But I look at what my daily life was like before July 21, and it all seems unutterably dreary.
I really do need to get some sleep.
Re: My condolences