Tag: death

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goodbye 2023

It wasn’t the worst year on record, but it wasn’t the best either. It was a year of ups and downs, turn arounds and backflips.

It was the first full year without my father in this world, my first Christmas without him. There was a lot of added responsibility with taking care of my stepmother and getting her settled into a life without him.

My pupper filled a hole in me that I wasn’t even aware I had, and I love her so completely. She gets me out of the house daily, and I’ve met some cool folks because of her.

I almost lost my 16 year old kitty, but she’s feeling so much better now and was even playing a little this morning. Now if I can just get her to eat the right food and take her meds.

I spent a lot of time with family this year, including a week-long vacation in NOLA with my Mom and brother. I didn’t do a whole lot of writing, but I’m happy with the writing I did do. Wrote a poem a day in November.

I probably drank too much, and I definitely ate stuff I probably shouldn’t have. Re-watched favorite shows and started a few new ones. Lost my facebook account, ditched X/Twitter, fell in love with Threads. Played around a little with AI art using my own photography as a base. Asked AI to tell me about myself and laughed at the results (what it got right was okay, what it got wrong was a lot and hilarious).

Looking forward to the new year. Hoping for a promotion on the day job. Want to finish at least one of the WIPs. Want to travel more.

First up in that regard is a solo trip to Disneyland in January. I’ve never done it alone, so it should be interesting. I plan to spend a lot of time hanging out in Batuu. I may take a notebook and do some writing there.

Also attending my first Supernatural convention in July. It’s the first time I’ve had the money to do what I need to do to handle my agoraphobia (front row seats) at the same time as they went on sale.

And on that note, my coffee is almost gone, the cat needs meds, and I should get this last Saturday of the year on it’s feet.

Photo by Behnam Norouzi on Unsplash

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the year that was and the year that will be

Ah, New Year’s…that time of hope and good will and the best intentions. We say good riddance to the year that was and throw open our arms to embrace the year to come.

As a general rule, I do my goal setting and reminiscing about the year at Samhain, but it’s been a hell of a year.

I moved from Walnut Creek out to Stockton to be closer to my mom and brother. I went to Star Wars Celebration. I got a dog. I published three novels. I lost my father and stepped into the caretaker role for my stepmother. I got to go to Nashville to see Radio Company in their first public gig.

In April, I wrote a poem every single day. I finished writing one book and got a third of the way into the next.

I got to catch up with some family I haven’t seen in forever, and meet some family I had never met.

I generally suck at keeping up with any schedules or such when it comes to posting daily or weekly or whathaveyou…but I’d like to get back to a more regular posting schedule. When I started this blog, I committed to posting here every Mon-Weds-Fri, but life got in the way, so maybe I’ll attempt Saturdays and Wednesdays. One of those days I’ll post something about my writing process/progress and the other whatever comes to mind.

I’m also wanting to get back to writing more poetry, so you may see more of that too.

Here’s a wish for you, Readers: May 2023 bring you peace, joy, and love. May your coffee be strong, your food delicious, your sleep restful and your heart filled with kindness. Goodbye 2022, the year that was, and welcome 2023, the year that will be.

Photo by Moritz Knöringer on Unsplash

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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

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a time of remembrance

Today I am heading up to Oregon again, this time with my mother and her dog. The purpose of this trip is to bury my stepfather’s ashes in the Flory family cemetery. Bob died four years ago, though somehow that doesn’t seem possible. At the time, the family was scattered. We waited a few months to do a memorial, and his ashes, aside from what Mom had sealed in a small urn, went with one of his sons.

The intent was always to bring him to the plot to be with his family, but Covid came and plans got postponed.

So on Friday, we will gather with his increasingly smaller family to say final farewells.

As always when something like this is happening, it stirs up memories. Bob was a good man who loved my mother. My favorite memories are from when the kids were small and he just delighted in teaching them things. They weren’t always as delighted, if I recall, but he would light up.

Bob was a geologist by trade, and so as tribute, I rummaged my altar box for a stone or two to contribute to the grave site. I grabbed a large crystal point and a chunk of obsidian.

I still need to shower, load the dishwasher and pack the cooler before I load up the car, then off to gather Mom and Missy for the long drive north. I don’t really know Bob’s family well, and that has my anxiety up, but I want to be there for Mom.

On Saturday, we’re going to Crater Lake, so watch this space for photos.

And that’s all there is in the land of Natalie, at least for now. I hope your day is spectacular, Readers!

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put a little love in your heart

My faith in humanity has been sorely damaged in 2020. I try to believe that people are inherently good, that for the most part we would all do what we can to spare others pain, illness or death. Here lately though, I’m finding it hard to hold on to that belief.

For the last twenty years or so, the guiding force of my life has been kindness, unconditional love for my fellow man. I believe that it is my duty to help care for others, to at the very least not be the cause of their pain.

I look around me at the world and I can’t understand where the absolute disregard for others comes from. How do you reach adulthood without some semblance of compassion?

Where does the fury come from? How is this who we are as a country? As we slink closer to 300,000 people dead from a virus that we can control, why are we not doing it? Why is the outrage about measures to control it rather than about the number of American citizens are dead and dying? How many deaths will it take for us to realize that the simple steps of wearing a mask in the presence of others, keep yourself distant from others, stay home if you can are not evil machinations attempting to rob you of your civil liberty.

They are meant to save lives! If you can not wear a mask, for real or imaginary reasons, most places that require one will do no-touch curb side delivery. Just order online, drive up and get what you need put into your trunk.

There is no need to demand to enter a building of any kind without your mask. There is no need to harass store employees, or threaten them with a bad interpretation of what the ADA actually is. These are people who are working minimum wage jobs that put them in a very high risk category for catching this virus. They are there to help you.

My heart weeps. Please put a little love in your heart. Save lives.

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in numbers too big to ignore

As we barrel on toward the holiday season, the coronavirus is barreling through our country with no sign of stopping. Each day this week we have seen new records for the number of new cases. Yesterday alone we had over a hundred and eighty thousand new cases, and we sit at a total of two hundred forty nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety eight deaths in the US as of the time I am writing this.

Two deaths away from a quarter of a million deaths.

That number is unfathomable.

That is the population of Boise, Idaho. Or Winston-Salem, North Carolina. That is more than the population of Rochester, New York. More than twice the population of Vacaville, California.

And still we have people saying that this thing is a hoax, or it’s no worse than the regular seasonal flu. Still we have people demanding that we open restaurants and bars, that we send our kids back to school.

With Thanksgiving around the corner, we’ll still see people gathering. With Christmas and other winter holidays a little more than a month away, we see people shopping, handling things others have handled, and more gathering.

I get that we’re all tired of the restrictions. I get that we’re bored and we miss hugs. We miss our people. I get that we need to be working and we need to kick our economy into something that resembles functional.

But what good is any of it if our people aren’t there when this is over?

Please take care, Readers! Wash your hands, wear your mask, stay home. Save a life.

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the sanctity of samhain

This time of year, as the air begins to cool enough for mornings to need socks and the darkness seems to deepen so that the nights are black and still, a sense of peace starts to settle over me. As I shuffle tarot cards for folks who seek guidance and wisdom or light candles on my Beloved Dead altar, it seems fitting to ask them to visit with me.

I’ve never really been one who wants to share Samhain in a large group. It’s always felt like a solitary holy day, and I find the best way to honor it is alone. For me, Samhain is a time of reflection, a day to look at who I have been in the year since last Samhain, to not only celebrate the positive but to address the things I want to change.

Like planting a tulip bulb so spring will bring a beautiful flower, it is a time to plant the bulbs of intention for my future. I have employed a number of methods to do this in the past, but I think this year may involve actual bulbs in actual dirt.

Much of my Samhain rituals are private, intimate. I hold my time on Samhain as sacred. It is a time to commune with my gods and my ancestors. In these next ten days I draw into myself, disengage from the outside world (as much as is possible in this time of chaos) and prepare myself.

I am also holding space for a family member who will be crossing the veil very soon. May her transition be peaceful and her soul find rest.

On that somber note, Readers, I need to get headed to the day job. The commute gets tough right around the corner of hallway and living room, especially if there is a kitty pile up.

Cover Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

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the autumn of innocence

I was born in September. I don’t know if that has any bearing on my love for autumn, but I like to believe it does. In my Upstate New York childhood, autumn meant new school clothes and supplies (I still love new notebooks and pens and markers and folders and, and, and…), the smell of dry leaves and cider, and the excitement of Halloween. The highlight of October was the annual trip to Kelly’s Farm to pick out our pumpkins and get fresh brewed cider and old fashioned donuts.

While the innocence of that time has gone, and the world is a different place today than it was then, there is a certain wonder to the autumn months still. I sometimes miss the New York autumns, especially here in California where we basically get two seasons, Summer and Not-Summer. Sure we have leaves on the ground and the mornings and nights are cooler, and sometimes even cold, but the true fall colors don’t happen here, unless you travel up into the mountains.

We’re into the time of year here that means long pants and long sleeves in the morning, tank tops and shorts by noon and the air conditioner in the late afternoon. I go to bed with the fan blowing and not even the sheet pulled over me and wake up under blankets chilled.

Last night I refreshed my altar for my ancestors as sort of an invitation. The veil between worlds is thinning as we approach Samhain and I welcome them to visit.

Samhain, and Halloween for that matter, will be different this year, I imagine. For me it is usually a quiet holiday, being the my front door doesn’t face the street, but just the sheer number of newly dead this year…loved ones to be remembered and honored…changes the tenor of the day. This was true for me the Samhain after 9/11, and this is so much more, so many more dead, and many of them left this world bereft of human touch, without the ones they loved by their side.

On that somber note, I wish each of you a lovely week and the kindness and compassion that changes lives. I’m off for more coffee and to log into work. May this autumn be one of a better harvest.

Cover Photo by Dennis Buchner on Unsplash