Good news: Got the songs picked out for the funeral. Damon and Cylin are taking charge of placing the obits.
Bad news: I play too much FreeCell.
I dreamed about Mike last night, holding him and kissing him. Boy, I will miss that. I used to tell him I loved him so much, it was silly. Now, we weren't like that every hour of every day of every year, but there were more minutes out of every day of feeling that way of late. It was so much fun. I still feel I can love him that much. I just I can't hold him and kiss him when I tell him so.
My terms for his recovery, which was going to be long and difficult had he survived, were: he had to let me love him, he couldn't abuse me when he got frustrated, and he still had to think I was funny. Reasonably demands I felt.
I had slept well, enjoying lying in bed. I didn't want to get up; I hit the snooze button when the alarm went off at 6 am. Then I said to myself, "Oh, grow up!" and got myself out of bed, walked the dog and drank my two cups of water, got myself dressed and went off to Bikram. I didn't know how I would do; my back had been limiting me. However, the class went very well. The Bikram dialogue is "lock your knees." Actually, what you have to do is contract your thighs. Some people overextend their knees instead and put them in jeopardy. I have been very careful not to do that. Is still have a good set of knees; I want to keep it that way. For the first time, I was able to keep my upper thighs contracted for an extended period of time. Just when I think I'm going to do poorly, there is an important step forward.
I headed to Target to pick up a belated birthday card for my grandnephew who just turned two, more Salon Pas for the back, and, of course, Hersey Milk Chocolate with whole almonds. But, Target doesn't seem to be carrying the latter anymore. Bummer.
Then I stopped off at Kaiser to pick up some prescriptions. They had my steroid cream for these rashes I've been suffering from; it seems to help. These started some time last year, I think. I have no idea why I have this problem. They didn't have my prescription for my Lexapro, which I took for my husband's anxiety. That is really why I did take it. Whenever I became a little hyper, he'd have trouble. His mom was like that. She got very loud and over the top. My behavior reminded him of her. Not an endearing quality.
While in Honolulu, I discovered high blood pressure when I used Jean's blood pressure monitor during her first visit. I asked my doctor for blood pressure pills, and friends recommended that I get medication for my anxiety. I had been taking half a pill a day of Lexapro; I upped it to a whole pill. When I tried to renew my prescription, it didn't go through. When I stopped by today, they explained that it couldn't be renewed until the 18th. Duh! Of course, I'm going to run out of medication if I take more than the prescribed amount. I had emailed my doctor to get a new prescription at the higher amount. I guess she didn't get it. The pharmacy contacted her, and I can pick up the pills tomorrow. I'd like to say that all this medication is helping my blood pressure, but the monitor seems to be stuck around 155/ 90. I can get it down with repeated tries to as low as 135/85, but not down to 126/75, which I was running shortly before all the excitement started.
The librarian at the New Orleans seminary returned my phone call. I told him who I was. He sounded blah. I can imagine how he would feel being stuck with another 3,000 books to sort through, knowing most would be unusable. I told him John Coughlin's find, a system for scanning books into a program that categorizes them by their ISBN number. I told him he could select books from the list. With this he sounded a little more enthusiastic. Then I told him I would pay for the shipping. Now, we had a change of tone. I wouldn't call it down right enthusiastic but pretty darn close.
I had sent Damon and Cylin the shortened versions of the obits I had formulated, but I hadn't heard back from them. I got through to Cylin who said that she thought she and Damon were taking care of placing them in the newspapers. I thought I just asked them to take care of the NY Times. Cylin said Damon had decided he didn't want to do that. The announcement would only be 4 lines long, cost $250 and no one would see it. Gee, I was thinking of the nice long articles I read in the last section of my Kindle editions of the NY Times. I don't know, but I think Mike deserves a place with the greats. Oh, well. Guess not.
Cylin passed on the articles to a friend of hers who is a professional editor. There is one whopper of an error that I didn't catch. Jean modified some of the article. She wound up writing the following: "Deacon Mike is the proud parent of his beloved son Damon Ross, whom he cooperatively co-parented with his wife Betty David Ross, Damon's first wife and birth mother, Jean Ross, and Jean's husband, John Womack." Anyone see the problem? I didn't. Jean is Mike's first wife and Damon's mother. No, this is not some perverse Freudian slip. She is continually mixing up names between Mike, her second husband, John, and her son Damon. It's somewhat of a random shuffle. No telling which name will come to the surface at any time. Since it was clear to me what she meant, that's what I read.
Sandor, the man who helped me scan all the photographs to send to Damon so he could make the photo panels in time for the funeral, called. When they were here that night, his wife suggested an urn in the Hawaiian tradition, a wooden box. It took me a while to process the information, but I decided I liked the idea. I called Sandor and told him I wanted to take up Mealiinani's suggestion. He sent me three pictures of boxes. I decided on the one made of Koa wood. That is an absolutely beautiful Hawaiian wood from --- the Koa tree. I asked him how much it would cost. He said nothing. His father-in-law, Mealiinani's father, is a carpenter, had been a member of St. Michael's Church all his life, and is currently an usher. Sometimes I feel that I am being struck by bolts of goodness and generosity. They are small shocks; it almost hurts it is so wonderful. Beautiful wood, crafted into a hand-made box by someone who knows Mike and honors him. It leaves me speechless. (Well, almost speechless.)
On the other hand, Sandor told me that one of Mealiinani's first cousins, a 45-year-old man with five children, was killed in some sort of altercation. Besides being entirely out of character, he was just struck in just the absolutely wrong way. Besides being struck by goodness, I am being hit over and over again with stories of the sudden onset of serious illnesses and death. It's enough that I need to make a list.
Judy and Paulette came over later in the afternoon to go over the music selections for the funeral. Judy knows a lot to start out with and did some additional thinking and research. How could I ever have done this myself? Apparently, there is a funeral committee that takes care of some of these matters. I suppose there are some standard formulas. I also suppose we are not that far off from the usual formula, but the choices are all made from the heart. There is so much love for Mike and me. Mike has put all this support in place for me. I imagine after the funeral, there will be a letdown. Then normal life will start again. We'll see what happens. Will I be reduced to a FreeCell playing slug or will I become more productive? I won't have Mike to kick me in the butt.
Sandor also said that he wanted to help me convert my journal into a blog. He feels that what I had to write would be helpful to others. That would be wonderful. Judy also encourages me to do something with what I have written. She says my writing has become even better, more interesting since Mike's death. I have to hang on to writing this for myself for the sheer pleasure of it.
The usual nighttime routine: walk Elsa, eat dinner, watch an English murder mystery, go to bed.
