Shittier Days

[Mongrel]

Starr's mom passed away.

She's been in a home for a while and was getting to be so far gone that communicating with her on any level was getting really hard, but still. She had a pretty rough life all around.

Funeral's... well I have no idea what's happening. I can't leave the country or I lose my Unemployment, but that might be moot because I'm not sure we would have been able to afford two last-minute across-the-continent plane tickets (though the flights are actually a cheaper than I'd feared, probably by virtue of it being a travel-desert time of year). Also we need to get Starr's passport renewed and that's not happening immediately either.

Ugh.

[Classic]

Condolences.

[Mongrel]

Thanks. I can't say that this wasn't something that had been coming for years, but it's very hard on Starr all the same.

Her sister is offering to cover plane fare, so that's something.

They do want us there (and I obviously want us to go if we can), but at the same time I don't know how long I can go. Even with someone covering the plane fare, it's going to be interesting to see if we can afford my not getting EI for X days. There's something on the website about possible exceptions, so I need to go down to the local office to find out more (phoning the government for info is basically impossible - they cut the customer service budget two or three years back and now it's effectively impossible to phone in an ask. In person is fine, so I guess I'm lucky I live in a brobdingnagian city). If Starr has to stay for a while to help settle her mother's affairs, I may need to come back early. Can't say I'd be comfortable with leaving her alone like that right now.

Other than that, we need to see about her passport. It's a US passport of course because she's still a US citizen so that's the first problem. It expired last July, so that's the second. And she'll need it right away so that's the third.

So we had three brobdingnagian problems and now we have two brobdingnagian problems. Not sure how much of an improvement that is but it's something.

[Mothra]

Sorry, man. It's never not terrible.

Do what you can to make it easier for Starr.

[Lyrai]

I'm having paranoid impulses that almost got me in trouble today. I thought someone on the road was out to get me and ended up blasting through a red light where a cop was present. When they saw me having a nervous breakdown in the car I guess they took pity on me and told me to just "chill out for an hour or so" before driving and let me off with a warning.

My mother's calmed down, at least. My dad talked to her about her insanity bullshit she pulled during thanksgiving and it seems to have tempered it. Can I post about the thanksgiving thing without DNi mansplaning how it's all my fault?

[zaratustra]

So the cat went to the vet for a single night and cost me nearly a third of what I pay for rent

and the landlord deigns himself to finally visit the fucking place for the first time in four months

and my wife is so fucking worried about CAT SHIT

that she forgets to tell him the fucking toilet needs repairs

I am

so fucking

angry

[Mongrel]

My mom managed to total her car in a packing lot, in what sounds she was maybe the target of an insurance scam (that shit is absolutely rampant here, which is why Toronto has the highest car insurance rates on the continent). She's fine, but whenever she can't drive anywhere *craziness intensifies*.

Also my dad finally got a job after months and months. Only it's shitty, is a three hour commute from where they live, and they have to move in four months or he will lose it. I expect he will lose it, because they are probably not functional enough as people to do something as complicated as move house. And on top of that, in order to save on gas, he is going to randomly crash on our couch from time to time now (since our apartment is halfway between their house and the new job). Which is fine because my dad at least knows how to behave in a quiet civil manner, but not exactly optimal.

Finally, I recently found out part of the reason he couldn't get a job for so long was because he let all his industry licenses and designations lapse last year for lack of money. LIKE IF THERE IS ONE FUCKING THING YOU PAY TO KEEP IT SHOULD BE THOSE MAYBE?! Of course he's worked for every company in the industry in Canada now and is disliked at at least half of them, so that doesn't help either, and he's almost 60, but those were known, established problems.

Life does not get better. Only worse.

[Mothra]

Do what you can.

[Mongrel]

I really don't think there's anything I can. At least my dad's going to get his licenses and stuff done back up this week, so even if the new job falls apart, there's that... I guess?

[Thad]

So, as I mentioned obliquely, my grandpa passed away the other day. Positive thoughts (and salutes by Brentai corpses) are appreciated, but I'm not really much for navigating condolences just at the moment.

Here's a thing, though: I used to think the scene with the mortician at the end of The brobdingnagian Lebowski was comically exaggerated. This week I learned it's actually comically understated.

A single tweedy guy trying to sell you an expensive urn through condescension? Nah. In real life it's a series of middle-aged women telling your grandma how sorry they are for her loss and what good care they're going to take care of him, trying to build up a rapport before they set documents down in front of her and try to trick her into signing them.

If you're ever in that situation -- and chances are most of us will be, at some point in our lives -- try to bring someone along who's not close to the deceased and who can keep a level head (and remind you not to sign anything, no matter how innocuous it may look, and get copies of everything). In-laws are a good choice, at least in my family's case.

And remember that it's a sales pitch just like any other, only more ghoulish. As Grandma herself said during one of the breaks where one of the middle-aged ladies left the room to go get another middle-aged lady, "If you stay long enough, they go down."

[Joxam]

Sorry man. Sorry for all that bullshit too.

That is one of the best things about living where we do. Because my tribe is so ingrained in the local businesses around here when mom died all we had to do is basically go into the funeral home choose the 'Ho-Chunk Nation' option and pick out flowers.

Again, if you need to talk or something I'd be happy to give you my number.

[Büge]

:( I'm sorry, Thad. You have all my sympathy. I hope you and your family are okay.

[Thad]

I appreciate it. Still hard to talk about.

He'd been in the hospital for a month, and deteriorating. We're relieved that he's no longer trapped in a failing body. That makes it easier, but it doesn't make it easy.

I haven't done this before. I'm pretty unusual in that I made it to 32 before I lost a grandparent. (Hell, taking my step-grandfather on the other side of the family into account, I've still got four grandparents, and that's as many as most people ever get. I still had a living great-grandparent until two years ago.) Still pretty dazed, and feeling helpless. Objectively, though, I guess I'm living pretty much normally, maybe even a little more productive this week than most. I got a haircut so I'll look presentable for the funeral, I'm still doing all the usual job app stuff, and I'm getting plenty of exercise in.

Guys, find some time to get some exercise in. I've just watched what it looks like when you're 86 years old and you haven't taken care of your body. Don't put it off. Go to the gym, or jog, or bike, or climb up and down the stairs at work on your break, or do whatever you can. Make time -- and yeah, that's easy for the unemployed guy to say. But do something.

[Classic]

It also helps your brains deal with stress.

Guard your knees though. My shit is unhappy from doing squats incorrectly.

[Thad]

Yeah, Grandpa had both hips and one knee replaced. I forget whether it was the knee or the second hip that left him using a walker, but he might have been able to recover if he'd kept up with the physical therapy.

I quit doing pushups years ago because they messed my wrists up. I've got an elliptical machine so that should be better on the knees than real stairs would be.

[Joxam]

I find that walking to a calm place at night and staring at the stars to think about things and deal with it on my own helps a lot.

[Brantly B.]

I wish I could remember what it was like to lose my grandmother. I was about as close to her as you were with your grandfather, but only at that time and not for my entire life, so... I dunno. Probably not equivalent anyway. It's one of those "life goes on" sort of situations, where everybody cries somewhat more easily for a little while, sorts it out, and then adjusts. I wish you luck, man.

[Thad]

It's weird. He's always been a part of my life but it's hard to say I was close to him; I don't know that I really knew him that well. He'd talk about sports, the weather, and not a whole hell of a lot else. Once in awhile he'd get to talking about his time in the Air Force, in Okinawa right as things were heating up with Korea but before the war started, but not often. Grandma said that when he was around other vets the stories would start coming out, as usually happens when vets hang out together, and sometimes she'd say "You should tell that story to the kids," but he usually didn't.

Once in awhile he'd talk about the work he used to do, too. He worked at SRP (the brobdingnagier of our two local power companies) and was involved in their early conversion from mechanical systems to computers. Once, when I was talking about my CS program, he asked me if COBOL and FORTRAN were still around. I told him that COBOL's pretty much history and FORTRAN is pretty much exclusively used by research scientists, but that the third of the original high-level programming languages, LISP, is still in fairly wide use -- but that most languages that are widely used today derive in some form or other from something called C that was devised in 1969.

The funeral was today. Grandma started, a few days ago, to write up his life story for me to read, but then she got as far as 1951 and forgot to finish it. (Ultimately we decided that I could stop at 1951 and then hand things off to my dad and my aunt to finish, since from 1960 onward it's partly their story anyway.) There were a lot of details in there that I didn't know -- I think I was in my late teens before I learned they'd eloped to Vegas (which sounds like Grandpa but does not sound at all like Grandma), but I never knew until now that they started dating as the result of a game of Spin the Bottle. Neither Dad nor Nancy nor any of the other grandchildren or great-grandchildren had ever heard that story before. (I commented that it's one of those things that really makes you think about the role that chance plays in our lives -- eight people in that room, plus my brother who couldn't make it in from Hawaii, might not be here if that bottle had landed on somebody else.)

Don't remember if I mentioned or not -- he fell, in late January. That's what, ultimately, killed him. He fell; Dad, who came back from Hawaii a year ago and has been staying with them, picked him up and asked him if he needed to go to the hospital. He said no, he'd be okay. (Not really worth dwelling on whether things would have gone differently if they'd taken him anyway. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't; at any rate he thought he was okay.)

Two days later, he started to have trouble using his arms and legs; they took him to the hospital then. Dad said it took him twenty minutes to walk from his bedroom to the car.

They took him to the ICU, where the nurses told us his neck was badly bruised but not broken, and that it should heal in a few weeks.

But after that he had a series of strokes. He never recovered the use of his arms and legs, and his speech started to go too. Some days he'd be more energetic and articulate than others (one night Grandma was talking on her cell phone for too long and he started saying "Quit fuckin' around!" and we all had a good laugh), and there were times when we thought he might rally and at least be able to get out of that hospital bed. But he didn't. He was in there for a little over a month. Eight days ago Dad and Grandma said he seemed more talkative and energetic, but that was the last time he woke up. I got a call at 4:45 AM on Monday morning, from an unknown but local number; it was exactly what I expected it to be. He was fading and they were contacting the family. He was gone within the half-hour; I didn't make it in time (before leaving the house I let my dog out to pee and fed her in case we didn't make it back for awhile, and took a few minutes to make coffee and clean my face, hair, and armpits in the bathroom sink) but Dad and Grandma did; the hospital's about a 10-minute drive from their house and I bet at 5 AM you can make it in 5. My wife and I were in the car and on our way to join them; I called Dad to see if they'd made it and he said Grandpa was gone and there was no reason for us to come and we may as well turn around, get some sleep, and catch up with them later.

And when I caught up with them it was for the meetup at the cemetary, as previously described.

As I mentioned earlier, the funeral was today. The way I see it, we're finished with the first hard part -- Grandpa in the hospital unable to move -- and the second hard part -- his passing. The third hard part is going to be less dramatic but longer and slower: trying to figure out Grandma's finances so she can take care of herself. With Grandpa gone the household income is going to be cut dramatically; it's pretty much a given that she can't afford to keep the car they were leasing, and I'm not sure she'll be able to keep the house either.

My other grandmother (Gran -- mom's mom is Gran, Dad's mom is Grandma) has been helping her navigate the bureaucracy, deal with the state and the VA and the bank and the title company and all the various other bureaucracies. And was one of the in-laws I referred to who helped her avoid making any mistakes when dealing with the sharks at the cemetery (the other is my wife). I really don't know what Grandma would do without her; I don't understand any of this shit. (I mentioned a bit ago that, until a couple years ago, I had one living great-grandparent -- well, that was Gran's mother. So Gran's been through this minefield recently, and knows what needs to be done, who needs to be called, and what papers need to be filed.)

My cousin -- the oldest of the grandchildren, the one who's closest to my age and who I was closest to growing up -- came in from Colorado and I got to see her today. I'm planning on seeing her again tomorrow; they're having a barbecue before they head back up north. She's talking about maybe moving back to town; it sounds like Colorado really isn't their speed. (Me, I think I'd like it a lot better than I like the Phoenix area -- based mostly on how much better I liked Flagstaff than the Phoenix area. Then again, we had maybe two hard winters in the five years I spent in Flagstaff. This has been a record winter in Colorado, and what with Dreadnoughtus I expect we'll be seeing lots more of them.)

Brent, you met all these people at the wedding, so names or faces might mean something to you if you wanted any refresher. (Grandpa was the old guy with the walker. The venue where we held the wedding is a private club for SRP and its retirees; he got a lifetime membership as part of his employment there. My older cousin is the tall skinny blond with two kids. And so on.) To the rest of you guys, of course, none of that stuff's actually going to mean anything, so vague descriptions like "Grandpa" and "Older Cousin" are good enough.

So I'm rambling. You have all presumably inferred by now that I've had a couple of beers. Can't think of anything else to add at the moment; maybe more later. Meantime, I've got some friends to E-Mail, with E-Mails that will probably look a little bit like this post.

Thanks again for all your kind words and sympathies.

[François]

I remember when my maternal grandfather passed away. We were never close, but seeing a human being slowly wither from Alzheimer's was still heart-wrenching, and when I was called on to speak at his funeral I got so emotional I was barely able to say anything. It's always tough losing someone very close, but losing someone that in retrospect you maybe would have liked to get to know better, circumstances permitting or not, that is its own unique kind of emotion. My condolences, Thad.

[Lyrai]

My father has a terrible back. Ever since a botched landing in the air force since before I was born, he has been struck with increasingly terrible pain in it. #ff regulars may hbave heard me rant and rave about it before.

He got accepted into some month-long treatment at a facility up in north carolina. Fully paid for, everything. They paid for him and "A second" to fly out there. Originally, that was going to be me. Then, my dad said he was afraid my own issues would conflate things, so he'd ask his gun buddies. One of them agreed. We'll call him Shitfuck. Shitfuck is a 70+ year old Ex-Marine. Shitfuck said sure, he'd watch after my dad.

They flew out there on April 3rd. The problems started almost immediately after they landed. Shitfuck has been acting like a god damned fucking petulant child abgout not being able to do anything because car rental isn't covered under what the Fund doing the work on my dad will pay for. So he's gotten so bad they're flying him back here and my dad will either be up th ere by himself, or I need to drop Five hundred fucking dollars and fly up there, which is something I don't want to do (My dad wasn't kidding about my own issues) but I will shut the fuck up and do it if it is needed, but that leaves my mother alone here, which is not a good prospect either.

A grown fucking man, ex-fucking-marine, acting like such a spoiled brat he's being kicked out. Fuckiong fuck. Fuck. Fucking fduck fuck fuck fuck fucking fuck.