Friday

Well, it rained. Not quite an inch, but heck, I'll take even that modest amount. It's been a challenging growing season -- constant rains in spring, leading to a proliferation of weeds the likes of which we'd never seen before and then, in the second half of the summer -- a drought. No rain at all. Here's how that works: the weeds grow with the help of all that mositure, pushing and shoving their way to the top and then, when the rains stop, they suck up the much needed water reserves from your flowers, trees, grasses. So yes, I'm glad I spent the early summer months making an effort to stay on top of the weed situation, but in August I let things go and as a result the flower beds are dry as a rock that had been sunning itself out in the dessert far too long.

Well, there's some life left in some flowers. And many of them appreciated the overnight shower.

(a sweet pea climbing a crab apple...)

(another sunny and warm day...)

Breakfast, on the porch, with Ed! Can you believe it, we are actually eating a meal together on the porch again! 

Okay, he's not eating, but at least he's keeping me company. His schedule is right now completely wacko and even my long history with him does not equip me to understand when exactly he might want to reach for his granola or last night's salad. But at least he keeps me company!

Which is a good thing because this afternoon he heads up north to help his friend clean up and winterize his boat. This can take several hours or a couple of days. Given his strange maladies this week, I'm glad he has something out of the ordinary to distract him. At the farmhouse, he is still either reading or sleeping. Worn out from medicines and terribly unnerved by the constant focus on taking care of himself. 

Me, I have the remnants of mom care for the first half of the day. Oh, and a Covid vaccination, even though it's just short of three months since I've had my famous July 4th surprise (Covid!). 

As for mom care -- well, there are her finances that need cleaning up. She pretty much had exhausted her resources, which was lucky for her since it gave her the eligibility for care at one of Madison's best Retirement Communities (Oakwood), with Medicaid picking up most of the tab. There isn't, therefore, that much to "clean up," but you still need to do it: make sure Social Security doesn't send a check (because they will ask for it back!), make sure her credit card bill (for newspaper delivery) is paid, make sure the nursing care payments are stopped, make sure, make sure, make sure. 

And then I have to pick up her ashes. Nothing about the funeral parlor is pleasant (what a surprise). It feels cheap and overpriced all at the same time. They give me a copy of her fingerprint and it, too, is at once enlarged and not really large enough to reveal some interesting pattern. It's just plain weird. The forced solemnity feels artificial to me and the woman who helped me before is there now, darting in and out with more and more papers to sing all the way until the final one where she tells me I still owe her $102, even though I prepaid for everything. You don't argue over your mom's ashes, so I hand her my credit card and wait again for more papers to sign. The container of ashes is heavy, but then I knew it would be. Ed and I did the calculation -- it's 3.5 times the person's weight and she clocked in at 160 at her death (she had a voracious appetite all the way until the end when she went blind and stopped eating). So, somewhere between 5 and 6 pounds. 

As I stand there, I think about all the things she liked in life. When you live to be 100, that list can be very long. Here's what I came up with, just in the time I stood there waiting to sign away everything: 

Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, my ex, my daughter's friend who occasionally stopped by and listened to her stories when she lived in Berkeley, Ed who taught her computer stuff, and George, the guy in assisted living whom she claimed as a friend. He was from UW and she liked university people. Hathaway, who had been married to a professor and who, amazingly, survived her. Hathaway is 102. Chocolate covered almonds, chrysanthemums, Nivea cream. Tooth brushes (each time I moved her, I saw and disposed of a dozen or more used toothbrushes in the bathroom). The color magenta. Sun-bathing. Valium. Mozart. Earthing -- something you plug in and lie on and it connects you to the earth in some fashion that I dont fully understand. She swore by it. Letter writing to CEOs. I just found one she wrote recently to Mr. Bezos explaining her ideas on how to employ a certain class of people over another class. She wrote a lot of letters proposing her own fixes to societal problems, addressing her letters to important people all over the world. She liked water aerobics. Shirley Temple movies and I Love Lucy episodes. Politics. Gossip. Encounters with famous people in her U.N. days. She also liked pearls, and very bright red lipstick, sewing, reading, and the New York Times. Soup for lunch and dinner, and Kitkats throughout the day.

When I was still adding to this list in my head, the woman with the trail of papers gave me the final one to sign and after that I left.

At home, Ed left in a flurry of movement, forgetting half the things he should take. Clearly the guy doesn't travel often. I tidied up and then went to get the kids.

They were, um... lively!

In the evening, I plucked a few weeds, fighting off guilt for not being thorough. And I fed and put away the animals -- typically an Ed chore, but not this week, and not this weekend. 

Covid vaccinations make me tired. Or maybe the weeding zapped my strength, or the kids' cavorts. Cat messes to clean up, dishes to wash. groceries to put away. My, it's been a full week! Tomorrow is the last day of summer and coincidentally, it will wrap up our incredibly warm, dry spell. Maybe I should celebrate the end of the season with a long walk. Or, in the alternative, with a book outside. Feet up, cool drink in hand. Sounds good, don't you think?