Sunday, January 1, 2023

 Sunday, January 1, 2023   

 

   I woke this morning almost doubled over in grief. Everything hurt. I finally did a release. I released everything negative of my hate for this pain and kept everything positive or anything I still needed. This works like a charm almost every time. I have no idea why I don’t use it more. The grief didn’t go away, just the overlay of suffering from hating the feeling. “What we resist persists.” 

     Something unexpected followed. I grieved the death of my father for the first time. The man died on March 26, 1956, when I was fifteen. I couldn’t afford the luxury of grief at the time. I had to deal with being alone with my mother without his protection and support. I had to deal with my terror. (Note: my mother never abused me physically. She just delivered endless criticisms and put-downs with the sharpness of a cattle prod.) Sitting with this grief calmed my mind, which had been getting a little out of hand, racing ahead with uncomfortable thoughts as I dealt with real or imagined awkward social situations.

     I made it to church just in time. I parked in the library parking lot as I always do. I checked the wall to see what happened with the graffiti I saw last week, “Kill all white men!”  Since it was the public library’s parking lot, I couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t have dealt with this. They had scrubbed all the graffiti, particularly the one declaring war on white men.

   I always sit on the south lanai for mass. I prefer the outdoor setting because the church is painfully air-conditioned, and the open air reduces the risks of viral infections. The greeters told me that the chairs were all on the north lanai; we were all to sit there and not on the south lanai. It’s dark and cold there. They set up benches on the south lanai instead of the folding chairs. I have no idea why they chose the arrangement. They weren’t close enough to each other for conversation. I had no idea what they had in mind. I chose a chair facing the altar. The sun bore down on me. A gentleman sitting on the bench in the shade offered me his seat. I think he was an usher. I took it.

     After the first reading, an elderly woman was wheeled onto the lanai. She comes to mass every week. She is always late; I’m sure through no fault of her own. Today, I was sitting closer to her than I usually do. She didn’t have a bulletin or handout with the day’s songs and readings. I offered her mine and got another set for myself.

    I got hot from the sun beating down on me and moved further under the overhang. I asked the woman exposed to the sun if she preferred the shade. Yes. I pushed her right up to the glass doors lining the sides of the church.

    Then I saw her struggling to get something out of a bag hanging over the handles of her wheelchair. I offered to help her with that.

    During a part of the mass, I finally released my hatred for the pain I felt from grief. I experienced some peace. I heard someone say, “Excuse me.” There was the little old lady right in front of me. Did I have an envelope for her to put her check-in? No, I didn’t, but I would take care of it after mass.

  Right after mass, I headed for the sanctuary. I had put a copy of Mike’s doctoral thesis on Simone Weil in one of the drawers as a gift for Sandor. He hadn’t texted me to say he’d gotten it. I wondered what the mix-up was. 

  When I checked the drawer, the book was gone. Had someone else taken the book? It was no big deal; I would order another one for Sandor if someone wanted Mike’s thesis that badly.  

    While there, I asked TJ for an envelope for Claire’s check. TJ looked for one but told me it was unnecessary when handing in checks. They would record the donation. I will tell Claire that next week.

    Those chores taken care of, I texted Judy to see where she was. I had asked Judy and Paulette to accompany me to Mike’s gravesite to help me pick a color for the cement wedges the gravestones would rest on. They were very helpful. I had been thinking of a brown color, close to the gravestones. They saw base platforms that the cement wedges and the gravestones would rest on and thought a color closer to that dark gray would be better. I agreed.

   Then I went to Long’s to buy more Hersey’s milk chocolate nuggets with whole almonds. I thought they would be on sale. That didn’t work out. I’m not quite sure why. I downloaded the coupon from the email. 

     Then I went to Lowe’s to pick up paint for the cement pillows supporting our gravestones.. I decided to do all the steps recommended in the Valspar brochure with the color samples. I picked up a prep solution and a semi-transparent paint. When I went to the desk to get the paint mixed, the guy said, “You know this will require two applications.” Yeah, it said so. He said it meant a second application with a different color paint. Then he said the paint job would only last eight years. I said I needed it to last forty. He said, “You need to go to a different store for that,” sarcastically. I figured it was more like a different planet. With a little more exploration, I discovered a stain for cement comparable to a wood stain. It lasts a lifetime.

     My last stop was at Office Max to get two copies of a will printed, one for me and one for Damon to put in the safe. I bought him to store all the legal will documents from his mother and me. A sign on the desk announced. “Only open from 8 am -4 pm on Mondays-Fridays due to staffing shortages.” It hadn’t been a very successful day.

   On my way home, I called my Hanai sister Jean to wish her a Happy New Year. She had her new hearing aids. Her hearing is worse now than it was before.

    When I got home, I napped for a good two hours. I was exhausted. I got up and Googled a few questions. One- how do people who believe in reincarnation explain the enormous increase in the human population? Lo and behold, they do have an explanation. People can have been animals in their last lifetime. There’s plenty to draw from.

     I continued watching Rumspringa on Netflix. I found it mildly annoying. I find myself easily irritated these days. Fortunately, that isn’t showing up in my tutoring sessions. If it did, I would have to stop doing them. That would not be good for me or my students.