I spent the morning making phone calls and organizing paperwork, so I could do all the faxing at once. I had to send out a signed application to the insurance company in Ohio,
the death certificate to the main branch of the insurance company, TIAA Cref, and New Jersey Pension and Benefits. The next move is theirs. I’ve done what I’m supposed to do.
When I got home, I got to work to do some of the house cleaning, which was postponed due to Mike’s illness and my long stay in Honolulu. I washed the kitchen floor and vacuumed the lanai. The kitchen floor looks so much better when clean. I have a white tile floor that has to be maintained, or it looks like a mud patch. I have a Rainbow vacuum. It allows me to dump water on the floor and then vacuum it up. I don’t know if one needs a high-end Rainbow to do the job or if any wet/dry vac will do. However, I do know this is the only way I will ever wash floors again. It allows me to suck the water up off the floor. Otherwise, I am just distributing the dirt evenly and maybe getting some of it up. With this method, even the grout comes out clean. What a joy!
Ah, I found a missing vacuum cleaner attachment under the sofa. I swear I looked there when I first misplaced it shortly before Mike and I started our ‘vacation’ in Honolulu. It was hiding, but now it has taken mercy on me and manifested.
I worked on Tuesday’s entry, showered, and tried on the shorts I bought at Costco yesterday. I thought I picked up one medium and one large, but no, both are large. My friend Carolyn taught me to just grab stuff, try it on at home and then return what I don’t want. So much less stressful.
I did a quick hula practice on my own. My big problem is my balance. When did I become so uncertain on my feet? Hmm! Am I getting old? Let me see, I’m 78.
Judy Shibley showed up to do hula practice with me. What a generous gift. She says, “Call, and I will come.” She has been learning the hula for some 18 years. What a difference it makes to have her doing the dance right in front of me. I don’t know why, but I feel more stable, keeping my eyes on her. Her strength passes on to me. She told me that we will all do one hula together, and then the rest of the group will do another one without me. I’m concerned about having enough time for the eulogies. Fr. Lio could make the trains run on time in Italy. He wants the mass to start promptly at 10 am.
I played some FreeCell. I’m unclear how much of it is a waste of time and how much is much-needed rest. I wrote more of Tuesday’s entry, and then put all the items I want to return to Safeway in the car. I also packed up the material we got from the dialysis center to return it to them. I have no use for them now and hope to never have a use for them again. I am a little nervous about going there. I complained about the nurse’s reaction to Mike’s illness.
That nurse told me to just take him home the night he had his attack. He said he had spoken to Mike’s kidney doctor in Honolulu, and he said it was probably just a GI problem. He told me that I should just take him home. I wanted to call an ambulance. I can appreciate that the nurse might have thought it was a simple GI problem, but he didn’t go into the bathroom. Besides having stuff coming out at both ends simultaneously, the smell was something else. I had never smelled anything like that before. It was that smell as much as how bad his GI upset was that signaled to me this was something else than a simple GI problem. I assumed the nurse’s version of what the Honolulu doctor said was accurate, and I was angry at him for telling the nurse to just send him home. When I was in Honolulu, I actually spoke to the doctor. He didn’t tell the nurse to just send him home. He did say it sounded like a simple GI problem, but if in doubt, have him go to the emergency room. That sounds like a more likely thing for a doctor to advise over a phone when he doesn’t have a chance to exam a patient. To boot, I feel comfortable saying the nurse didn’t see Mike once he went into the bathroom. If he had, he would have known how it was something unusual. The nurse actually said something about how expensive the ambulance service is. I believe he was afraid the center would be charged with the fee if he called, and he would have been in trouble. What I don’t understand is why he wasn’t supportive when I proposed driving him there myself. Thank God I did. Getting him to the emergency room earlier would not have saved Mike’s life, but it would have shortened the time he was in excruciating pain. Getting him to the emergency room assured that they had him on enough pain killers to knock the poor man out cold. For those who don’t know, pancreatitis is considered one of the most painful experiences possible.
I walked Elsa. Dinner was just a butter piece of whole-grain bread and about 5 tablespoons of soup. I find that my appetite is lagging. I noticed how poor my appetite was yesterday in Costco. One of my pleasures at Costco is eating from the sample food carts. I didn’t even want to do that. I don’t know if this is my real appetite, the one I always had, which was obscured by Mike’s influence on me, or this is a reaction to my circumstances. It could be either.
When alive, Mike did all the cooking; his idea of a simple meal was enough to feed the Russian army. I ate more because he served and ate more, and the food he cooked was good. For the most part, I eat to live rather than live to eat. I’m not a foody. I was actually able to maintain my adult weight of 128 lbs., most of my adult life. My radical 20 lb. weight gain at the age of 56 wasn’t Mike’s fault. It was my mother’s. My sister had gained a lot of weight in the previous year. She told me that she gained that weight because she ate a muffin a day. I started eating one muffin a week and one big serving of French fries. That did it for me. I gained weight because I didn’t want to be in a position where my mother could use me and my relatively slender body to bully my sister. Couldn’t stand being used that way. Oh, well. I’ve lost 10 of those pounds, but I’m still not down to where I was.
The only thing that Mike criticized me for was my belly. Yep, I had acquired a belly. Mike had a belly the day I met him and had one the day he died. I pointed out to him that I accepted his belly, he should just be quiet and accept mine. “But,” he said, “ you didn’t use to have one. You used to be an ad for world hunger.” For some reason, he thought that was a compliment. Really, the woman who didn’t have a belly at 30, 40 and even 50 has one at 60, 70. What a surprise! Now, that is not to say he didn’t find me attractive as is. He told me I was beautiful every day of our life together.
I’m slowly, slowly cleaning up evidence of Mike’s presence from areas here and there. I came across a bag containing things Mike would have taken to dialysis. I found an open bottle of water Mike had used right before he got sick. I opened the bottle and drew in a deep breath. One change for me will be in my biomass. I will be missing all his contributions to what I am physically. In the most subtle and profound ways, I will become a different person. I am sensitive to these changes. With each move, from Brooklyn to Princeton to Columbus, OH, and finally to Kailua, Kona, Hawaii, I am aware of the chemical changes from my one environment to the other. It takes months to make the adjustments to become the new me.
I did more writing and vacuumed and washed the hallway. I then had to call Apple because I was not able to access the voicemail on my cell phone, Mike’s physical cell phone with my sim card and my data. Mike’s phone used to just list the voicemails without a password. Now I need one. Apple informed me that I had to contact T-Mobile to get that problem fixed. I did. They assigned me a new password. Voila!
While I was in Honolulu, three new books arrived from Amazon for Mike. I couldn’t figure out his Amazon password to do the return. I finally called Amazon and explained the situation. They will hard-mail me three return mail labels. All I will have to do is drop them off at a UPS store. The refund will go to the credit card listed on his account. Okay, which one is it? I had to pull out all of his cards before I found it. They told me that if the credit card was shut down, the card company would send me a check. Or would they send Mike a check? What then? How do I cash a check made out to Michael?
When going through old pictures, I found one of my mother holding my sister on her lap in a way that looked like a normal mother-child relationship. It was ordinary, relaxed, strain-free. I had never seen her like that even with her grandkids. Dorothy said it must have been a one-off. I wanted to send it to Dorothy, but now I can’t find it. I know I set it aside in a special place to be sure I sent it to her. I’m sure it will show up someplace sometime.
I sorted the charity receipts I had for tax purposes, inventoried them, and compared them to my record of the charities I contributed to. I will have to make some follow up phone calls.
I walked Elsa, had some dinner, watched Tv, walked Elsa, and went to bed.
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