I woke up around 4 am. I worried if someone had been in my backyard last night, they might have left the gates open, which would be bad for Elsa. I grabbed a flashlight and went out and checked. Both gates were closed. I went back to bed.
I was going to meditate for the remaining time before I had to get up at 6 am. When I woke up, it was full daylight. I knew It was late. The clock confirmed my suspicion, saying seven. I must not have put my alarm on. I usually leave at 7 am. I still had to take care of Elsa. There was no way I was going to make it on time for the 7:30 yoga class. After some disappointment, I thought this is an excellent opportunity to tackle the closet in my study. Who knows what is in there? I just know it's stuffed.
I did a longish walk with Elsa. I passed a FedEx truck making a delivery. The man said, "Have a good last day of the year." Ow! This is the last day of my final year with Mike. My heart hurt.
When I came home, I worked on the blog and drank my two cups of water. I called Kaiser about the statement I received saying Mike was billed for services in November. If I had looked at all the pages in the document, I would have seen what happened. This was a bill for his emergency room services in January 2019. Yes, he used emergency services before he was confined in the hospital.
I had to read some of my entries for when he was in the hospital the other day. I was looking for information on a motel I stayed in for a few days in Oahu. I needed the bill for tax purposes. Reading those entries was painful. In the early days of his hospitalization, he often called out, "Help me!" He was just miserable. He couldn't even get up to pee. He was flat on his back after the first few days until the moment of his death. It was more painful to revisit those moments than to live through them the first time. At the time, I thought of all this as temporary, something we had to go through until he could leave the hospital. Now, I know those moments were all there was. He never felt the relief that comes with recovery.
After I had my morning soup, played umpteen rounds of FreeCell, and did some work on the blog, I got to work on my study closet only to discover that the boxes on the upper shelves were too heavy for me to deal with myself. I sent texts to Yvette and B, saying, "First one home, please give me a hand."
However, the shoes and boxes were sitting on the floor of the closet I could get to. There were four pairs of shoes, hiking shoes and athletic sneakers, shoes Mike hadn't worn in years. Those are going to the homeless at the Friendly Place. That will keep their feet warm at night. And make it easier to walk over ah-ah lava when they search for a place to sleep for the night.
One of the boxes was filled with Christmas cards. I hardly send any out anymore, and when I do, I use the ones that come with an appeal for a donation. A second box was filled with pictures: some of my mom as a youngster and a young woman, some old photos of me, and one or two wonderful pictures of Mike either with me or my mom. And, of course, three more books. Just what I needed.
There were Christmas decorations up there, too, Santa Claus, elves, and reindeer for tabletop display beside the boxes. I've already gotten rid of the large outdoor displays, but Damon said to hang on to stuff until he comes out and can decide what he wants to keep.
I found some scrapbooks, one Randy, Mike's sister, had put together for Mike for a Christmas present. There is a picture in the memorial book Randy put together for the family, which shows Mike in tears as he opens a gift from her. I had some vague memory of the incident. When I came across the scrapbook, I remembered that his reaction was to the scrapbook.
There was a second scrapbook that I put together for my mother after Mike and I visited Germany, particularly Berlin. My mother was raised there. Her first cousin, Helmut, twenty-one years her junior, gave us a tour of the places she lived in Berlin. Many of the pictures were about that area.
A few pictures showed where my father had lived in Berlin before his family fled to Teletow to avoid the worst of the persecution. (That worked, by the way, until they fled Germany altogether.) My grandparents' home in Berlin, which was not in the Jewish ghetto, had been replaced by a more modern building. I think one can assume it was destroyed when Berlin was bombed. There were some additional pictures of my mother's remaining family in Germany. (My mother was Lutheran. Her family was never in danger, as long as the Nazis didn't find out my mom had fled to the US to marry a Jew. That had to be kept hidden.)
I called Dorothy and told her about all that I found. I am going to mail her the pictures; she's good with that. If I sent her the whole box, it would cost me a small fortune. I got her on FaceTime and had her look at each item and say if she wanted it or not. The rest I will deal with one way or another.
I found a box filled with old 'linens,' already musty with confinement. I have to get rid of them. What am I going to do, keep them in the box until I die and leave it to Yvette and Damon to deal with? I know what Damon would do with all of it: dump it at the transfer station.
Once there was no more I could do with the linens, I headed to the library to sort out a few more shelves. I did three more shelves- and found no new books. Since I had to stand on a ladder to reach the shelves I worked with, my leg gave out. I went back to my computer to play some FreeCell and work some more on the blog.
I did some vacuuming of the lanai. I wanted to do more, but Elsa insisted that I hold her. She has been doing this more and more. Of course, it is New Year's Eve, and they've been shooting off firecrackers on and off all day. Dogs don't do well.
Yvette stopped off when she got home. She was here to help me get the boxes down from the shelf in my study, but B had beat her to it. I asked her to close the windows in the library. The goal is to seal off the room from sound as much as possible to help Elsa deal with the New Year's Eve celebrations.
I took Elsa for a walk. We were doing okay until a firecracker went off. It was a mad run for the house. She insisted on being held the whole time I was preparing dinner for me and her. I made my limeade and salad and waited for Judy to drop off the spaghetti and meatballs she promised me. I volunteered to pick it up myself, but she insisted.
When she arrived, I was moving my food and Elsa into the library. She was in a hurry because her son and his wife had come up looking for dinner. She had to get home.
Once Elsa and I were in the library, she was content lying by my side while I ate. When I finished, I brought my dishes back to the kitchen and got some of the chocolate covered cheesecake and almond cookie cake that was left over from Christmas dinner. I looked down the hallway back to the library. Elsa wasn't looking after me through the glass door. That was a good sign. It meant she was feeling safe in the library. When I got back, she was happy lying on the sofa near me but had no need to be physically attached to me.
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