A few last things

Both my wife and I dealt with minor colds late last week. My guess is that they were a byproduct of our recent round of cool, very wet weather, along with dealing with my mom's death and funeral, plus a very heavy workload the next week.

I knew my resistance was slipping, so I tried to get more sleep (went to bed earlier at night) and took things easy when I could. I still came down with a bit of cold late last week, and my wife must have caught it from me. She has been under extra stress, too.

But we both felt better last Saturday, so we decided to go on a drive to Iron Mountain, our first trip there since the funeral. The first and most important stop was out in the country--the cemetery where she was buried two weeks ago. We got there in the early afternoon.

The headstone hasn't been updated yet, but that will come, like everything else. There is still a lot of dirt lying around from the service, and clean-up work is needed. One of the flower pots on the grave had blown over. I righted it, and within seconds the wind blew it over again.

But the sun was out, just a few clouds were in the sky, and the birds were singing. It really is a beautiful place to rest--I should have taken a picture to show you. There's a small woods on one side (the leaves are turning) and a farmer's field on another. The sky, the clouds, the woods and the birds are all around you. We talked about that: Such a pretty place to spend eternity. And my mom is with her husband and her other son now. Physically, she lies right between them, and her spirit is in the next world with them and her mom and dad. She is happy again, I'm know.

From there, we did some shopping and then went for a steak supper by ourselves. Yum! Haven't done that for a long time. But you must remember that we've been pretty busy, both with summer trips and visiting my mom. It's the same place where we often ate with my mom while she was still at home. I think we started doing that shortly after my dad died in 1994--before that, they went there together a lot.

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Recently, I wrote to my friend S about my mom's death and how I was dealing with it:

I have been wondering ... whether I should go in and talk to the pastor. She's a nice lady. Something is troubling me: I'm wondering why I feel so detached from my mom's death. I haven't had any emotional moments, not even in private. Hasn't it hit me yet? Not really. Will it? I'm not sure. My work related to her death is nearly over.


My theory is that I have been grieving over her for these last five years, as I have seen her condition get worse. When I felt sad, I wrote about it. So now, when the time came for her to pass, I was quite reconciled to the idea and ready to let her go on to her next life, whatever it is.

It's only been a little over two weeks. We had cleaned out her house a couple of years ago and sold the house last fall. We have her things from the house and from the nursing home--we have gone through the nursing home stuff already. Many boxes of stuff from home remain. It's time to go through that, too. and reclaim some of the house, which has gotten cluttered with our stuff, her stuff and my father-in-law's stuff from when that house was cleared out.

I guess it's just part of the process, one generation fading away and another (mine) becoming the elders. The all-knowing elders. But this isn't a question I'm having a easy time answering. So I may be calling in other minds for their input.

That's what I wrote to S, and this is what she wrote back:

Someone once said, "There are so many little dying's, it's hard to tell which one is really death." Perhaps that is how it worked with your mom's passing. Over time, you would observe as each small segment of who she was slipped away. Each time, as this would happen, you would grieve and say good-bye to that piece. When she finally passed over, you had already come to grips with her death and were OK with letting her go on to new and wonderful adventures.

The human response to death is very ego-based. It is about those left behind feeling bad because that person is no longer a part of our lives. It has been quite some time since your mother was a vital, active part of your life. The Divine only had pieces of Itself to create with. Each of those pieces was eternal, and we are the result of that creation and also eternal. This being the case, not only did you come to grips with her death as it was happening over time, there is also a part of you that knows that this was not 'good-bye' but, more aptly put, 'see you later.' I don't think there is anything wrong with you. I think you just understand and are willing to wait until the time comes when you can inter-relate with her once again. As is said, Waiting is ...

FWIW, I haven't visited the pastor yet.

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This week, I did some of the last work related to mom's death--the death certificates arrived in the mail late last week, and I faxed them to the company that sent her a monthly pension check (My dad was a member of the Steelworkers union.) and a insurance firm where she had cancer coverage paid from her checking account. We already received a check from an insurance firm where she had a policy. And her coverage under Medicare and Part D officially ends Oct. 1.

That's about it. I can't think of anybody else I still need to contact, outside of distributing a couple of her things to friends and relatives. That will be done gradually. My wife and I wrote out the last few thank-you cards last night, and I'll be mailing them this morning. I think I am 99% done.

That's good news for me. That's good news for you, too. It means you are 99% done reading about it.