Life After Windbird, Day 32: Taking Care of Business
Date: Tuesday, September 13, 2016
Weather: Clear and Windy; High 79 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio #8, Falmouth, MA
The Weather Underground tells me it was 79 degrees here today, but it felt much cooler. In fact, it actually felt like the first day of fall. But if today felt cool, the forecast for Thursday is ten degrees cooler. It will be interesting to see how that feels, but I think summer is quickly turning into fall.
Today was a day of taking care of business. But before meeting with a representative at the funeral home, I spent time down on the dock with Ziggy, Coco, and Ollie. Ollie opted out of school today to play with the cousins. We goal this morning was to cut up raw chicken, tie it to the end of a string, and put it in the water in an attempt to try and catch crabs. Unfortunately, we only saw one crab. So we turned our attention to catching “teeny weiners”—Ziggy’s name for Ctenafores (silent ‘c’), more commonly called comb jellies. These are tiny jelly fish with no tentacles and no sting. They move slowly through the water and are easy to catch. So the kids caught a bunch, put them in a bucket, and then released them “in the wild” in their terms. Then they started over and did this again. Coco does all of this wearing her fanciest “girl” clothes which is entertaining to watch in itself. Coco and Ollie are just so “four”—too cute for words. They could be catching air and be just as happy. But Ziggy is much more serious in his attempts to capture and study wildlife. But whatever stage they are in, it is a delight to be with them.
After my dock time with the grandchildren, Heather and I headed to the funeral home to make arrangements for Mark’s cremation. Mark and I had discussed this at length and he wanted the simplest possible arrangements. But you just don’t know how you are going to react to things until you are in the moment. We always discussed a simple pine box to be the required container. But these days they offer a much cheaper cardboard box. I really flinched at that notion. All I could think is “just don’t put me in a cardboard box”, so we went with the more expensive pine box. I make fun, but the entire experience was much more difficult than I imagined. But it was short and to the point, so we were soon on way back to the apartment. When we returned we dealt with Jo’s very irritated eye. Not too long ago she had a serious problem with the same eye. Earlier she had walked down to the closest eye doctor’s office and was told that the beginning fee for just looking at the eye would be $300 to $350 dollars. Yikes! So I recommended that we call my eye doctor. They had an opening in the afternoon and their fee was much more reasonable. Thankfully when she finally got to meet the doctor, she found out that the problem was much less serious than anticipated.
Heather and I had taken all three children to their house in the early afternoon to play leaving Justin at the apartment to do some work and Jo to go to the doctor. Just before we left, Heather got a call from Jed saying that Jonah was having a tough time at school because he was very sad about Granddad. So Jed had picked him up and brought him home. Jonah appears to be Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky, but his feelings run much deeper than you would expect. He is going to be fine, but it is just going to take a few days to adjust to the absence of Granddad for all of us. Heather and I spent the afternoon contacting insurance folks and dealing with other financial issues. Justin and Jo came to have dinner with us and then we all went to the corner ice cream shoppe to have an ice cream in honor of Granddad. He loved ice cream, so the kids thought this was a great way to pay tribute. Mark would have loved this.
Justin has been feeling bad since they arrived, but he crashed tonight. He obviously has a fever and was chilling terribly. Coco has been sick for the past couple of days with a temperature, so Justin must have whatever Coco has had. Tomorrow is Justin’s birthday, so I sure hope he is feeling better by morning.
I continue to be amazed by the beautiful comments I read on Facebook about Mark. Work colleagues and friends from all over have posted the most beautiful tributes. And I have received so many emails from friends and family. I haven’t had a second to respond, so I sure hope everyone understands. I’m hoping tomorrow will be a bit of a slower day with time to write back to people. I need that back and forth connection with family and friends as part of the healing process.
