Saturday, June 29, 2024

 Saturday, June 29, 2024

      I’m up-to-date on my updates. I have plenty of time to do the other things I want to do: more gardening, posting some items for sale and free on Next Door, Facebook Marketplace, and Craig’s List, and posting ads for my tutoring on all those sites. 

    I posted my Teaching Hacks Reading videos on Facebook yesterday. It netted one viewing of each. Last I knew, Facebook had banished me for violating their rules. I had a notification to that effect. The notification included a link to contact someone to challenge the block. The link didn’t work.  I had no idea why I would be blocked. Did they feel I was advertising for free when I should pay?  I did that for a while without consequences. I have reason to believe it was because I advertised dog food. One of the restrictions is the selling of animals.  It may have been flagged as an animal instead of animal food. Whatever, it does seem the ban has been lifted. 

   Shelly told me about someone she knows who has 28,000 followers on Instagram.  She sent me a link. The link leads to her Website, not the Instagram videos. I would love to get to the point where I can advertise there. I would love regular webinars to instruct people on my reading methods. They are surprisingly effective, easy to learn, and easy to use. I need to get it out there but don’t have the courage to do it.

   Over the past two days, I have trimmed my bougainvillea in the yard outside my bedroom door. I finished up the trimming that I started yesterday. I loaded the trash barrel in my compact SUV and took it to the transfer station to dump it. Today was a green waste day. It’s only open three days a week.

   I don’t pull my car into a slot. I park it and roll the trash barrel to the shoot. It was heavy; it had some difficulty lifting it up. The man in the truck in the slot to my left was sweeping out his truck bed. I didn’t want to ask him to help me. But he saw I needed help.  He reached down from his truck bed, lifted the container, and dumped it. I was horrified that he would do it from that height- his back!  I hope he didn’t hurt himself.

   Then, I went into town to go to church for the retreat. As I arrived, people came out of the church. I asked what was going on. It was a fifteen-minute break.  I spoke to one woman who volunteered to tutor at Ulu Wini as I did. She said no one needed help.  I have no idea how that happened. Well, I didn’t until I told her about what I did. I told her the kids had no number sense. They had difficulty with abstract thinking, as it was unnecessary in their lives on those small islands and atolls. They lived much simpler lives. The woman’s eyes clouded over as I spoke; she had the same reaction to what I had to say as the kids did when I explained math to them. 

   During the break, a woman I had never met sat beside me on the south lanai and started chatting. I asked her name, Mary Lynn, and introduced myself, and added,” I’m Mike Ross’s wife.” She said, “I know,” bestowing celebrity status on me. 

   She opened up about her experiences with Mike. She participated in his bible study classes. He had been part of her conversion experience. She felt seen by him.  He had encouraged her to join the parish council. She tried it, but she didn’t like it and dropped out. She felt Mike paid her less attention after that. She thought he might be angry at her. Probably, more like disappointed. Since his concern was primarily for the church, he had less interest in her. Several people have told me how Mike made them feel seen. Mary Lynn hadn’t felt seen as a child. Mike’s attention meant a lot to her; his subsequent lack of attention did also.

   She told me she experienced moments of connection with Mike when he was in the hospital those five weeks before he died. At one point, she felt inclined to ask God to shift some of the burden of his pain onto her. She had what I recognize as a unique experience. I was delighted that Mike had that connection with her and perhaps with other people in the parish. He was much loved by those who knew him. 

   This connection was significant for me as I didn’t have that connection with him while he was in the hospital. I was physically there, but the warm, energetic connection essential to our relationship wasn’t there.  I didn’t think about it while I was going through it. I was handling the situation from minute to minute. I’ve thought about it since and wondered why that happened. I had some sad feelings that I couldn’t give Mike more while he suffered so, but I decided to accept that’s the way it was meant to be and forgive myself. 

    His death was as mundane as a family dinner party.  It was drama-free. There were no tears on anyone’s part. Once all life support was removed, he died after six hours of waiting for it. The movie was over, and we all went home. “We” consisted of Yvette and me at his bedside and Daman and Cylin on Facetime. We had two phones. When one ran out of juice, we used the freshly charged one. The four of us engage in casual conversation. There were no tears when he gave his last breath

 . It took me a long time before the grief set in. I always felt his presence or thought he was just somewhere else.  It took three years for my nervous system to believe he was gone for good. 

   After my encounter with Mary Lynn, I was exhausted. I cried several times during our conversation. I figured that’s what I had come for, not the retreat, and headed home for a good sleep. 

  I had Adolescent D at noon. He divided a word into syllables before he started identifying the phonemes for the first time.  Now, he must do that in his head, not necessarily on paper. I  have no way to know.  

  I’ve been watching Never Have I Ever on Netflix.  I think it’s very well done. I can live with her errors of judgment; it’s her plaintiff, “I’m sorry!” that drives me nuts. She’s always ready with excuses. She’s not saying I’m sorry because she is sorry for what she did to the other person. Her ‘I’m sorry’ is just a plea for mercy. Embedded in that plea is an accusation. If you don’t forgive me, you are a bad person.