What It Is in Everyday Ramblings

First Hill, Seattle. Saturday morning. It will clear later then the rain is moving back in for a good solid week, but at least it will warm up a bit.

This trip up to be with my family and to take care of practical paperwork and transitional stuff has been quite overwhelming at times. Not so much emotionally, (that will come later in many respects) but just the sheer volume of things to be done and then things being predicated on other things and if there is one small change there is a ripple effect…

We all have different skill sets that are being employed and we have made a lot of progress in terms of both doing things and gathering enough information for next steps so there won’t be too many surprises.

This is all complicated by the fact that Miss T. (my niece) and Miss E. (my great niece) have extraordinarily complicated schedules right now, with work, school, performances, dance classes and workshops and their way of coping with this profound transitional loss (the hospital chaplain described it as a three legged stool that has lost one of it’s legs) is to not slow down, to try to keep it all going so they can feel some sense of normalcy.

Miss T. did actually take two days off this last week from work to deal with some of the absolutely required bureaucracy. My sister had been retired for almost 12 years (such a gift that she was able to retire at 59 ½) and was able to and actually did organize her paperwork in a relatively coherent manner.

That made things so much easier! Kes and I are more inspired to really get our paperwork act together in the next year to help our survivors when something happens to us.

They were all living beyond their means and had plans in place to continue with that. The wonderful private school for the arts that Miss E goes to is unbelievably expensive even with a scholarship, French Camp, speech competition trips to Berkeley, dance classes and workshops and my sister with Social Security and her pension was contributing significantly towards that. The shortfall now is heart wrenching for Kes and I to witness.

They will have to move in just a few months and Miss T. has to find more income and is now profoundly decidedly a single parent. We help, but there is no way we can even come close to covering the short fall, and I am stretched thin as is with the support I have giving for medical expenses this last year.

They were not prepared. Even though my sister was pretty darn ill, more ill than they shared with us. Her fast growing tumor was more advanced than we knew.

Maybe that was a blessing in a way. It all happened very intensely and fast.

Last night the upstairs neighbor couple that has been a part of their lives since they moved in invited the three of us up for a lovely wine infused evening of fondue, blueberry crumble and social banter. It was a relief to see Miss T. relax a bit.

Miss E. went to the ballet with her girl friends.

Miss T. is hyper-aware and driven right now; she can’t sit still and the more tired she is (and she is very tired) the more difficult this is to be around. She reminds me a bit of my moms up on the unit of kids with cancer that I work with.

It is what it is.

After this trip it will get easier to leave Carlo and Diego. When I am home they follow me around everywhere I go and are interested in everything I am doing so it is a bit disconcerting to not have that going on.

I have some trepidation about what they managed to get into while I was gone.

It will be revealed tomorrow when I get home.

Miss E. is going to her first major dress up school dance tonight. The logistics involved are mind-boggling and she is doing a lot of the coordinating with her complex shifting group of friends. I find it all very confusing. And I am grateful not to be fourteen again.

Still…it is all good. Even when it is challenging, it is good.

Last updated January 31, 2015