Today's high temperature was: 73 degrees
Today's humidity was: 29%
Sunny and very nice
==================================================
I just realized this morning, that I am like one of those Pharaohs--watching as my tomb is being built. Having a say in life after my death. It seems that lately, I have been
Making sure the house is cleaned. Making sure things are thrown away. Making sure plastic storage boxes (no--I don't have cardboard boxes used for storage--that would be normal. I have the big plastic ones!) are organized with like items, labelled, stacked in order of importance.
Lists made, forms filled out and put in folders with marked tabs--a box enclosing smaller boxes with jewelry or coins inside for the grand kids, pictures, scrapbooks--all enclosed in a large plastic box with the word "FUNERAL" in permanent marker on the lid. Knick Knacks sitting around, with the person I want to have it, name on the bottom.
I think about it all the time. It's like a major event I have to plan to the nth degree!
I am not living!!! I am merely breathing while preparing for my death! GEEZ!!!
This morning I read Jean's blog post and she spoke on being relevant. Her husband had a stroke when they were still fairly young. Her relevancy then was to care for him. I liken it to her "career". He died, about two weeks after Fred did. Can you imagine the huge hole that was left in her life? All she had done for fifteen years, was gone. A quick, early, unwanted retirement from her career. Now, she is trying to find new relevancy in her life--and she has.
I have no relevancy--really, I don't. AND--I don't actively seek it.
I am so enamored with quietness, solitude, perfect silence most of the time. It has become very difficult for me to be around a group of people for more then two hours. There is too much talking, too much noise, too much activity--it tires me out. Having to go to the Senior Center, with all those people, all that "noise", to me, would be torture. Going on a bus trip with them, would be torture.
Even going to family functions, is very hard. There is so much noise and activity and movement all the time, every where. After a couple of hours, I just want to come home and be quiet.
I don't understand any of this. I use to be so involved in so many things-- a meeting or an activity every single day--well into my sixties. People counted on me. Every committee knew that I would be the one to plan the next event, take notes at all meetings, make the phone calls, head the different groups. When I worked at my last job, I was the one who planned the entire company picnic--the company Christmas party--for 300 people. I made the invitations, took the RSVP's, set up the time and place, planned the games, met each and every employee at the door, knew every one's name and their spouses names. Contacted every new employee and put out the bi-weekly newsletter for the entire company of over 600 employees--along with my regular duties. I LOVED IT!!!
When our class had their reunions, I was the one who typed up and mailed the invitations, contacted each classmate, scanned and copied every one's graduation picture to use as a "Hello, I am" badge. Got their most recent picture to go on a page with their life history, made up the books that everyone received at the reunion. I LOVED IT!!!
I WAS RELEVANT!!!
Now--I'm just a dud! Oh--I still love one-on-one conversations and visits, but I can't take one-on-many. Perhaps it is because I am getting hard of hearing and with all the different conversations going on, it is hard for me to keep up. Or, perhaps, in a group, I go to say something and someone else interrupts, or a different conversation starts up at the other end of the table?
I had a really funny, I thought, story to relate at our gal pals luncheon Thursday. I tried to tell it twice, but there was so much conversation going on at different parts of the table that I just stopped talking. When we were done with lunch, they all went for a ride on the pontoon boat and I used the excuse that I was afraid of water and boats (which I am) and was going to get on home. In reality--I was just so exhausted and I just wanted to get into my nice quiet car and drive a nice quiet drive, to my nice quiet house.
I am very weird lately. I don't feel like the person I used to be. I don't react like I use too. Sometimes, I don't even know who I am anymore. So--I close myself off and in doing so, I close myself off even farther--becoming even more old and eccentric. When I was in six grade, I wrote a story about a hermit who lived in a hut in the woods. I was very descriptive. It seems, that is my life now--except I have all my electronics to connect to the outside world. Maybe that is why I don't go out much anymore--the world comes to me. Ah yes--I remember in 1984, a class on computers--those new things, and how the instructor said that it wouldn't be good for people's social life because--we would quit going to the library, order our groceries delivered, talk to people through electronic mail instead of on the phone or face-to-face--we no longer would interact. I thought he was nuts--apparently he was very wise.
=====================================
A picture I found on my way looking for something else. My mother made me the skirt--white felt with the green tree and many ornaments sewed on it--it had a battery pack I put in my pocket and could turn the lights on it. I do not look happy and I was not happy. I am holding my 10 1/2 month baby (Mark) and already 6 weeks pregnant for my second child (Pam). I had an extremely long, difficult labor with Mark (22 hours) (42 stitches inside and out) and I was terrified about going through that again. So I was not happy. However--Pam only took 4 hours and 4 stitches. I think the next Christmas with two little ones, I was all smiles and by the fourth Christmas of my marriage, with three, one a little 6 week old baby, I was quite contented actually.
Love my shiny green shoes, in the picture,however!
========================================
On my 60th birthday, with all my kids, a couple of new sons, and 5 grand children. I would like another family picture taken. Maybe I could request that from my kids for my 75th birthday?
(Pammie's husband Allen behind her. I loved that boy!!!{still do}).
front: Helene, Pammie, Me, Madeleine, Karen, Susanna, Stephen in red shirt.
Back: Allen, Jennifer, my Mark, Karen's Mark and Marcus.
===========================
Aha--I just figured it out.
Control!!
I have very little control in my life right now, but at least this one last thing, I can control. Not death itself, but the final presentation.