The trials of Peter or, sometimes life can be very ……
April 8th – my dear 81 year old mother dies. A remarkable woman of great courage and determination. She will be sorely missed by her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. My consolation is that she is now at rest and no longer in that increasingly frail and failing state of body and mind that she so detested because it robbed her of her independence. Someday I hope to write more about her remarkable life. Can’t just now.
April 12th – my daughter, son-in-law and granddaughters drive in from Michigan to attend the funeral. Shortly after arrival, we notice that the right front tire on their van has shed a large chunk of tread and that there is a large bulge in the sidewall signaling imminent blowout. Emergency trip to tire shop for new front tires.
April 16th – all the out-of-town relatives who came in for the funeral have left. The quiet is deafening and very much welcome. I sit at my computer to begin composing a list of all the loose ends regarding my mother’s affairs I need to attend to. Computer begins making strange noise. Seconds later, I get a read/write error. Hard drive crashes. Drive to store and buy new hard drive and begin marathon 48 hours of installing new hard drive, reloading operating system and programs and restoring 10 years of personal and client data.
April 19th – it’s evening and, I’m exhausted. I flop on the couch for a little mindless TV time. The sound comes on but no picture. I fool around desperately with the remote control for a couple of minutes – nada, zilch, bupkus. I call my son to ask that he come over the next day and help me carry it out (it’s a large older set that must weigh 300 pounds) to the garage so I call for a special garbage pick-up.
April 23rd – my longsuffering wife, still trying to catch up on laundering bed linens from the gaggle of funeral house guests, informs me (gingerly) that there may be just one more teensy problem I need to be aware of. It seems that the clothes dryer has stopped drying. I go look at it, fool around with the controls and sure enough, it goes round and round but no longer warms up. Go get some tools, pull it out from wall and remove its’ back panel. Determine that the electrical heater coil has failed.
I go out into the back yard early this morning with my coffee and cigarettes. I intend to shake my fist at the sky and have (yet another) one of those conversations with God (think Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof but with lots of explicative language) when I notice that the deer have wandered in and are peacefully browsing the new spring grass. I sneak back into the house so as not to disturb the deer. I can have that conversation with God another time. Meanwhile, life continues …..
My way of dealing with a household item failure is to remind myself how lucky I was to have it to go wrong - many people in other countries don’t. Oh, and I swear a lot at it too, because that helps.
The deer may be God’s way of telling you to quit smoking
Hey, another backyard coffee and cigarettes person.
It sounds like not too much more could go wrong, so maybe you’re over the worst of it.
[I’m not including the death of your mother in that little joke, because of course that is a whole different thing. You should write about her because your children and grandchildren will want to know everything they can about her.]
I’m sorry to hear about your loss and your bad luck stories, Peter. Curious, isn’t it, how sometimes bad luck comes in a rush.
Coping with the loss of a parent can be very hard, but the volume of work required to be done somehow keeps one going, at least that’s what I found. With both my parents I found the real grieving didn’t kick in until months later, when all the immediate practical chores were done.
Or Robert Duvall, in The Apostle. Geez, I know that feeling. I go to the garage for those, so as to not further apall the neighbors.
My deepest condolences in the loss of your mother.
I will be singing this song (Don’t click the link unless you are ready for a good cry, or you are made of sterner stuff than I am) as the offertory on Mother’s Day, as a duet with another friend. He has to sing Verses 2 and 4, because I can’t get through Verse 4, even ten years later.
Sorry for your troubles pete.
It never rains but it pours,eh?
I can really identify with Wombats thoughts on the grieving coming later.The momentum carries you along until everybody and everything returns to whatever they were doing beforehand.
Obviously you’re sense of humour has not deserted you in these troubled times and that will help (I don’t mean that in an insensitive way but the written expression of heartfelt concepts is not my strong point).
Certainly sounds like a tough, tough month, and that you are holding up remarkably well. Your family is blessed to have you be such a pillar of strength. It also sounds like you still have many, many blessings, despite the setbacks.
Not to make light of your cascade of troubles, but when many things go wrong at once, I often think of the Gahan Wilson cartoon with two guys standing on a street corner watching one ugly little monster chasing another ugly little monster.
One of the guy’s is saying, “It’s just one damned thing after another.”
I think your dear mother and my dear grand-mother in law, who passed this last week, may hang around us a bit to test their new skills and gloat over the fact that they now know something the rest of us can only theorize on.
May they find their souls on wings as strong and free as ever their own hearts dreamed of being.
Thanks to all for the kind words here and in the PMs. It’s good to be able to “vent” a little. Now that (hopefully) things are calming down, I need to catch up on what’s been happening here for the last couple of weeks.
peter, my deepest condolences for your loss.
I find it remarkable how you wrote about your ordeal, how things can go wrong, how it seems it happens all at once and also how you wrote it with a little hint of humor…, i might have lost my mind in your place.
Thanks for letting me know that shit happens to everyone, all the time, and that i am not the exception.
