Category: family

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my heart is held together with duct tape

Grief is a curious thing. We each manage it differently and it affects us all in unique to us ways. All my life, in trauma situations, my reaction is to push all emotion aside and deal with what needs to get done. I think it comes from a combination of places, including learning at a very young age that if something needs doing you do it, because no one else will do it for you.

But it’s also a part of my “Virgo-ness” and my intense need to help others.

I’m not saying I haven’t had my emotional moments since Dad’s passing. When I first heard, I broke down in a way I seldom have. There were sobs and for a while, I couldn’t breathe. My knees hit the floor once I’d called my brother to tell him. I teared up at the memorial, talking about him. There have been a few things that remind me of him that had me welling up.

But by and large, I haven’t really “let it all out” and I’m not sure when or if I will. There is still so much to do and I worry about never finding my way back to an even keel if I let go.

My focus these days is on taking care of my stepmother. I can apply logic and thinking to the problems presented by taking care of an Alzheimer’s patient from afar and dealing with her finances, her day-to-day needs, and all of that.

I know I need to open up to the emotion of it all, I just don’t know if I can. At least not while I have stuff to do. I’m at an age where the generation before me is starting to go. I’ve already lost a few family and friends in that generation and I know that there will be more to come.

Right now my heart is held together with duct tape so that the grief doesn’t come flooding out and fill my body. The problem with that is I’m running in constant fight or flight mode whenever I’m not just disassociating and pretending not to exist.

It’s exhausting. I’m headed to Nashville on Sunday though, taking myself on a journey to joy and my happy place: live music.

Maybe it will help. I guess we’ll see.

Remember Kindness this holiday season, Readers. You never know what private grief is hidden behind that stranger’s face. And if you haven’t yet, pick up The Blood Witch Saga. Leave a review. That’d be a great holiday gift to this author.

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leaving on a jet plane

I’m headed back to Tucson in just over an hour. I’ll be gone for four days, coming home Thursday evening. On the agenda is a couple of doctor’s appointments with my step mother, getting her set up with in home care and dealing with some paperwork.

I’m also working three of those days, so that could be interesting.

In other news, I’ve seen the cover for the third Blood Witch book, and it is stunning like the first two! Still waiting on edits, but should have those soon enough. I’ve even managed a bit of writing this week!

I also got around to processing the pics I took when I was in Tucson last, at the procession for the Day of the Dead. You can find the whole set here.

My heart hurts to hear the news out of Colorado Springs this morning. I can not comprehend the level of hate required to walk into a crowded nightclub and open fire on a crowd of people just because they are not like you (I’m assuming here that early reports about it being a hate crime are true).

This will be the first Thanksgiving I’m not with my brother and family. Not entirely sure how I feel about that, if I’m honest. But it’s also the first holiday my step mother won’t have my father and it just feels right that I spend at least some of it with her.

On that note, I should finish my coffee, take out the trash, pack up the work computer and get dressed. Should probably eat something too. Long day will be long.

Be kind, Readers. Love with all of your heart.

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finding the new normal

Wow, I didn’t mean to go AWOL on y’all. The last few weeks have been crazy busy and filled with the kind of things no one wants to have to deal with. From my father’s death on the 17th of October through his Celebration of Life and on into figuring out what comes next, my mind has been occupied with all the steps I needed to take to help my stepmother and sort out the things my father left behind.

It’s strange, how much work it takes to wrap up a life, even one who was as meticulous about things as my father was. He set up a living trust, had reams of paperwork on his estate planning, yet there were a lot of weird things we need to sort.

One of those is their credit cards. Every single one is in both of their names, but only his SSN is associated, thus as soon as we report his death, my stepmother ends up without them and has to apply for her own, but because she really doesn’t have a large credit history, that ends up being less easy than it should be.

He left no *will* that spells out what to do with the little things, even though the living trust has room for that, and his only life insurance policy that we could find was for $1000.

Complicating matters is the fact that they live in Tucson, and I’m in California, as well as my stepmother’s advancing dementia. She recently got very, very lost, to the tune of 3 hours away from home, and I’m not sure what would have happened if I hadn’t called her while she was trying to get home.

So, I am headed back to Tucson in a week, hopefully to get her set up with some in-home health care, some meal delivery, and start the conversation about a more permanent solution. With any luck, that gets us safely through the end of the year, and we can start considering what comes next.

Whatever normal is, this isn’t it.

Hopefully, I’m on the right road to find it. Happy Monday, Readers! Be kind, be gracious and love one another (and while you’re at it make a will, add beneficiaries to your accounts, let your wishes be known).

Photo by Perfectus Photography & Design Co. on Unsplash

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when the veil is thin

Samhain seems a fitting time to be closing out a life, remembering a man who was strong and vibrant and saying goodbye. My relationship with my father was not always an easy one. We are both headstrong and opinionated, and when those opinions differed, things could get heated.

I had a period in my life where I blamed him for everything. I went years not spending time with him. Ultimately though, I grew up and realized that most of what I blamed him for wasn’t his fault at all.

I have spent a good chunk of the time between his passing and now looking at his life through music and pictures. There are a lot of memories tied up in music for me, and the images of his life remind me of how much I loved to see him laugh and smile.

I’m also reminded what a handsome fella he was back in the day.

My belief about what comes after this mortal life is a bit in flux, whether we come back to try again, or take our rest among those who came before…or whether we fade to black. I guess I’m more invested in what we do with this life than I am in some ethereal eternity. But I do hope that whatever it is, my old man is at peace.

I hope I can make him proud as we move through the Celebration of Life this weekend, and find our way out to the “new normal”…the one without him on the other end of a phone call.

Tomorrow morning I get on a plane and head back to Tucson to say goodbye. I anticipate a lot of tears and hugs and warm words from people I didn’t know, but my dad did. He was a gregarious guy and he made friends everywhere he went.

I’m going to miss him. A lot.

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to say goodbye

When last I wrote, I was on my way to Tucson to spend some time with my father and family. What was meant to be a relaxing weekend catching up with people I haven’t seen in decades became sometime much more profound.

It became obvious part way through the long weekend, that my Dad was not doing well. He was weak and fragile, could hardly walk. He took a pretty hard fall on Friday night, but refused to seek treatment. The next day he was slurring his words, listing to the side and overall not doing well.

On Sunday, we talked him into getting some in-home health care, and I headed out, knowing I’d likely be back within a week to get that health care set up for him. Several hours after I left, I got a call from family that things had gotten worse, they’d called EMTs and he had refused to allow them to take him to the hospital.

I got on the phone with him, hoping to convince him to go be seen, but all he wanted was another cigarette. I screamed at him. A lot.

But, you can’t force a grown man to do what’s right for himself, and when I stopped for the night on the drive home, I had a gut feeling in my stomach that he wouldn’t wake up in the morning.

At around 6:30 am, I got the phone call that confirmed my gut feeling. My father was dead.

I had to finish the drive home, wracked with grief and guilt, only to turn around and fly back with my brother to help my step-mother get stuff handled.

It’s one of those things that you will never understand until you have to…how much work there is in wrapping up a life. So many little things, so much work to manage…and such a waiting game.

So far, I think we’ve managed a lot. We have a celebration of life scheduled for the 5th of November. I leave Tucson on Tuesday, and fly back on the 3rd. Hopefully we’ll have the death certificate by then so we can go about the business of handling the SS, the bank accounts, etc. I’ll be taking my father’s 2020 Hyundai Santa Fe, so we’ll need to deal with the title on that too.

So many details…so much paperwork. And yet, it’s an odd thing to boil down 75 years of living into a stack of papers and the stuff he accumulated.

Today I hope to tackle getting my step mother set up so that her bills are paid automatically, and then help her clear out the thousands of slips of paper that are only lending to her confusion.

For now though, I’m sipping on some coffee and waiting for my brother to wake up so we can head back over there. Happy Saturday, Readers.

E. Bryan Case Obituary

Photo by Storiès on Unsplash