life after mom, day 90

note: this is a reprint of the july, 21st post from VP forums.

well it looks like i was well-served to move out of my hell-hole of an apartment last month- someone in the building was murdered there this past week. nobody we knew, but obviously very disturbing.

this will actually work to my old roommate's advantage because his parents are willing to take him in for a time while he finds his next job. so all the soldiers have been pulled off the front. so much for west philadelphia.

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i've gotten a lot of writing done recently, and perhaps due to the nature of the material (philosophy and personal insight) it's gone a long way to alleviate my chronic depression. i'm actually quite reluctant now to begin clinical mood meds and am not sure how to handle this with the agency since my state health care is contingent upon a diagnosis. we'll see how that goes.

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i'm getting a bit annoyed that my mom's headstone is still not finished. every time i go out to visit her i look forward to having the focal point of a marker to help me commune with her, but the cemetary folks are now about three weeks overdue on that project based on original estimate.

UPDATE: it seems the original estimate was badly off. someone at the funeral home said the correct time frame is 3-6 months. *sigh*

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john is still waiting on his kidney transplant. he still gets calls and still gives the go-ahead for tissue testing to be done on the kidneys that come along but so far someone has always been ahead on the waiting list to take the desired organ. this process has got him a bit discouraged and i can certainly see why since he's always down the list when good kidneys come along or top of the list when it's a poor-quality kidney. and the length of this whole process becomes a grind.

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my dad's two brothers and their wives have been visiting the USA recently. on their way from NYC to washington they stopped by philly for a day and i was able to play spanish-speaking host and sightseeing coordinator, things which i am barely competant at. yet all went well, and as a big bonus for me one uncle brought me a brass sapo set all the way from peru. now all i need to do is to build the leather-topped cabinet and the outdoor games can commence!

here are pictures of completed sapo sets.

each player gets 10 fichas (extra-heavy coins) to toss at the frog's mouth from a distance. scoring a "boca" nets huge points and there are other scoring slots that award lesser points.

i haven't done much carpentry in my life so i'm going to have to figure out how to build the sucker. when done, this will be a lovely backyard lounging activity, perfectly suited to time spent grilling and sipping a cold one.

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speaking of cold ones, i recently cut way down on my alcohol and food consumption and have lost 20 pounds so far. i've also been doing fake kung fu and bogus yoga for relaxation and to balance my chi. as a result of these things and the personal insights made, i feel better and am calmer. that's good when one is generally an anxious person. unfortunately my energy and stamina are still weak due to CFS and i still have the systemic pseudo-arthritic syndrome... but still it's nice to halt the downward spiral from the last few years and actually regain some confidence and self-respect.

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bunny the cat is hanging in there. with mom not around anymore her coat got tremendously snarled with oil and dirt. it appears that she had stopped cleaning herself due to age and decreased mobility and mom's regular brushings had been overcoming that. i worked on her for four straight days and she still has loads of 'rhino horns' all over her body. so i'm giving her a break (she doesn't like the combings much) and will resume again in a couple days.

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there have been some small wildlife adventures recently. when the garage was re-worked the builders left some significant gaps near the roofline and it didn't take long for squirrels to move in. over the past year they've been an irritation what with their tendency to run around in the space right above the kitchen. so finally we decided to do something about the matter- the holes were filled in with concrete and i used humane traps to bag four young squirrels in the crawl spaces. the very first one i took outside to release, the mother came all the way out to the cage to see what was happening to her child even though i was right there, too. i was quite touched and impressed by the show of maternal instinct.

here is a sketchy pic of one of them.

of course as cute and as amazingly fun acrobats to watch as the squirrels have been, they'e also been a right pain in the arse in other regards. they worked out ways to get the seed out of the supposedly squirrel-proof feeders, necessitating the addition of a squirrel baffle which so far they haven't sussed yet. and this past week they also seem to have chewed off two out of the four branches on one of mom's saplings, something which had me reaching for the hypothetical buckshot shotgun.

anyway, moving on, the birdfeeder population recently withstood a hostile takeover attempt first by some cowbirds and then by a small gang of grackles. fortunately, adjusting the tension of the feeder spring pretty-much took care of that and let the smaller birds resume their routine, such as the finches, cardinals and titmouses. two new sightings were of a northern flicker (a type of woodpecker) doing some indescribable ritual bird activity on the canopy over the patio table, and of a ruby-throated hummingbird gathering nectar from the flower-bushes in front of the house. perhaps mom had this in mind when she planted those there.

the hummingbird favorites are the lavender-blues in the middle, the lavender-reds in the upper-left, and the peach-ish ones to the right. [picture]

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i'm still grilling a lot and loving it. this was lunch from the other day- brats, cherry peppers, corn, onions and eggplant. [picture]

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one little writing project i'm doing now is to do another "one time" anecdote series, prompting others to join in the fun. [link]

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regarding mom, today is the three-month anniversary of her passing and i still miss her terribly and cry over her loss every couple days, particularly when i encounter some object or project of hers or something related to family history- all clues left behind to a presence and reality that i will never fully understand.

but the form of my grief is changing, somehow. i've stopped closing my eyes and straining to undue reality, or wishing that i could have done any better for mom in her last weeks. this tends to undilute the situation and leave the pure senses of loss and love without the static of other unhelpful emotions.

regarding love, a lot of the love i had for her i didn't even realise was there until after she was gone. i felt guilty about that for awhile, beating myself up for not telling her how much i loved her while she was still alive. but with time comes perspective, and i think both the realisation and the reaction were probably normal and healthy. it's life in operation, i guess. actually what i miss most these days is not mom the mother, but mom the friend. our mother-son relationship never was very smooth but she was a tremendously fun and interesting person to be around and i don't suppose i'll ever stop missing that.

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that's all the news from lake woebegone, which is everywhere and nowhere and likes to poop in your eye when you aren't paying attention.