These are going to be in no particular order because its been one of those weeks.
Please give me your best thoughts on how to write an obituary for someone who is not yet departed from this world. Because writing obituaries at all is bad (how do you condense a life into a few short paragraphs?), but imagining yourself handing it to someone when the time comes? Also terrible.
I won't go in to details about the week as it relates to mom. But I feel like this laundry basket of her things sitting by my front door today should serve as a cryptic reminder to me to keep paddling. I want to do the right things for her and I think I am. But that doesn't make it less difficult, even for simple tasks like laundry.
Yes, we are those people who load up the driveway with vehicles. I need to make a decision soon about the truck and the Baja. There are only three drivers living here, and although that is a temporary situation, the car rodeo out front is a pain in the neck and I'm sure the neighbors don't love looking at it. My goal is to park my own car in the garage nightly.
To that end, I am still purging and cleaning the garage occasionally. I don't know how much longer that will take....when I say it was full, I am not kidding. At least I won't be bringing any more things from Highlands and as far as I know, Scout and Bubbie won't be adding anything else Every 6 months or so I haul a bunch of crap out to the curb for Big Trash Day. Its a dirty, sweaty, stressful chore.
But I like the direction its going. So I keep going. I know where 100% of my things are.
What's missing from this photo? (its not a rug, although I do want to add one to this room) Hint:
The wine fridge is going.
I think I can say now, with certainty - I'm over it. I no longer write for Texas Wine Lover, cancelled the last wine club I had, stored the wine away in one of my kitchen cabinets (it can be used for Christmas or birthday gifts), and made a decision to never again buy beer or any hard liquor and keep family holidays completely dry. It was fun while it lasted, but its not something that will be part of my life going forward.
We have a pretty nice exercise room at work that we can access at any time. And since my knee is feeling so much better, and since I do far too much sitting at work, I will be visiting it more often when we aren't busy. When the weather cools I will add neighborhood walks, but its just too hot here for that right now. I know people do that in the heat, but I'm not one of those people!
So looking forward to Fall...
Gina
I applaud you for thoughtfully going thru each step of organizing your life. Making any change has been a real stress for me, too. As far as writing the obit, I was in your shoes 2 1/2 years ago. My acute care dad was dying, my brother was a raging alcoholic and my mother was incapable of writing thoughts. I took it on, I had a very close relationship with him, so I wrote what I knew. Just getting the basics down and then asking for friends to help fill in the details worked well. Dad was extremely private, so this obit was basically his eulogy, it was not published except by me for his graveside services.
ReplyDeleteI started with a basic outline, filling in the growing up years with stories that he quietly told. Give yourself grace, you are doing a fantastic job of setting your life as you need it to be. I am cheering you on, following your lead and looking forward to one day waking up without a "to do" list.
When I was in graduate school, one of the assignments was to write our own obituary. I think that’s a good idea. I think it’s interesting to compare what we think of ourselves and accomplishments, versus what other people think of us. As far as your needing to write an obituary, it depends upon whether or not you’re paying for this to appear in a local newspaper, in which brevity would be called for, or if you are writing an obituary that’s going to appear online and that can be as wordy. I think it’s important to hit the highlights of the person’s life, even though you may not have been around at the time. I think you also need to consider what was important to that person versus what was important about that person to you. I am an avid list maker, notetaker, and mind mapper, so I would employ all of these things in my efforts, but then again, I’m an over thinker. As long as it comes from the heart, I really don’t think it matters. Good luck with all you have going on in your
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