Archives August 2014

Usually things at my job are pretty static and low key.  I have things generally engineered to be that way thanks to beefy, reliable hardware with redundancy.  Well yesterday I had two major headaches pop up at the same time.  I was working on them for most of the day yesterday and it looks like today they will be again front and center. Unfortunately I also have a pretty large race to time tomorrow morning which has it’s own set of challenges to deal with.

In addition to timing the race, this weekend is going to be absolutely jammed with work.  We need to do prep for the trip, pressure wash the pool area, the sheds and more, do maintenance on the Prius along with the regular cast of to do’s. It’s nice that with Cindy’s new job she no longer works nearly every Saturday, leaving her available to help me plow through stuff in her eager, happy way.

Ever since I returned to work I have been carrying a zip up document folder with me.  It is something my mom always gave me her tax paperwork in.  I have been keeping pretty much anything I could possibly need paperwork-wise for dealing with my mom’s estate.  I have utility bills, her car title, account statements, leases, insurance paperwork and more jammed in there.  In my determination to get her estate settlement settled as quickly as possible I want to have everything with me at all times so I can respond to requests for information/paperwork as soon as possible.  Currently the petition for my mom’s estate is in the process of being filed.

This evening my brother and sister are doing a second memorial for mom up in the Reading area.  I suspect there are going to be a lot more people at this one since a lot of mom’s friends and ex-coworkers are still up there and my brother has a very large circle of friends that may stop in as well.  I hope it goes as well as things did for us down here.

Last night after work I resumed my 1000 pull up challenge video series.  Yesterday marked two weeks since my mom passed away so I decided to do a total of 66 reps, one for each year she was alive.  It certainly isn’t as touching as a well crafted poem or eloquent speech but meaningful all the same, at least to me.

As I was doing my reps I noticed something strange, my high bar had something growing out the side of it.  Closer inspection just added to the curiosity. It looked like there was a small clump of sprouts coming out of the side of the galvanized pipe.  They were appropriately silver/whitish in color.  I assume this is some sort of natural phenomenon, just one that I never witnessed first hand before.

I was in a pretty down mood most of the day when I realized we were at the two week anniversary for my mom.  I did a lot of thinking about the 4 days my mom was in the hospital and my relationship with mom in general.  One of the things that I was ashamed of was that I did not tell her I loved her nearly enough.  After her heart attack I said the words “I love you mom” more in those 4 days than I had said in the last 30 years.

Now of course I expressed my love in cards and other written media but as far as verbalizing it, it just didn’t happen.  I was not alone, I think mom was equally uncomfortable verbalizing those words, perhaps for whatever reasons I am.  Hell in general, my entire family is this way, I don’t really know why.  We all love each other yet we don’t really say it.  Maybe we just have a silent understanding of these feelings that we never felt the need to reenforce otherwise.

Whatever the reason, I realize it isn’t the way things should be.  Unfortunately I can no longer make up for lost time with my mom so hopefully I can try to be less restrictive expressing those feelings going forward.

I forgot to mention yet another amazing accomplishment my brother Patrick pulled off this past weekend.  He placed third overall in in the Baker Trail Ultrachallenge which is a 50, yes I said 50, mile race.  Running 50 miles is a feat a miniscule amount of human beings can complete on a road however the majority of this race was a trail run. Check out this course description:

The Baker Trail is marked as a typical hiking trail. Yellow blazes on trees, telephone poles, fence posts, guard rails, and so on indicate the path.

Unlike many hiking trails, the Baker Trail is not always a footpath through the woods. In many areas, it follows dirt or paved country roads, some with narrow shoulders. As with road running everywhere, you must always be alert and cautious.

Because of the varying terrain, the UltraChallenge is more mentally demanding than similar ultras. You must always be watching for the blazes in order to stay on the course. In places, the Trail will be following a road only to abruptly turn off the road into the woods. Therefore, if you haven’t seen a blaze in a few minutes, you may be off course and should backtrack to the last blaze and determine where you went wrong.

Plenty of runners will go off-course at least once during the day. If you expect — and accept — that you will, too, it won’t be quite as frustrating. The key to a successful race is to realize it quickly.

So to place third in a 50 mile race, on a a difficult trail is incredible however there is one more factor that makes this approach a superhuman level feat.  Patrick has spent the majority of the last several months overseas for his job in locations that were not at all conducive to maintaining your personal sanity, not to mention ultra-marathon training.  He literally just got back home last week and had the race on Saturday.

Patrick’s determination, strength, work ethic, and endurance are truly exceptional.  When combined with his humility, kindness, and sense of humor, you have a truly remarkable human being whom I am so proud to call my brother.

Yesterday in the mail I received a couple more things I needed to move my mom’s estate proceedings along.  I am hoping to be able to get this wrapped up sooner rather than later.

Last night I also hopped on the tractor for an hour or so to finish up mowing the very high grass in the back yard.  When the grass is allowed to get that high it is a real pain in the ass to knock down, requiring two mowing passes in many spots.  It’s nice to finally have it done, hopefully it doesn’t need to be attended to again until we are officially in the fall season.

Last night some friends of Cindy’s stopped by for some chicken training.  While we are on the road trip they are going to be taking care of the hens for us.  They brought their two daughters with, they found the chickens entertaining.  Chicken maintenance training is pretty simple, scoop the poop, swap out the water and food as needed, grab any eggs and move the chicken tractor location every day or two.  Even with it’s simplicity I have concerns leaving the chickens in someone else’s care for 10 days or more.  Even though they are farm animals, Cindy and I care for them like any other pets.  Their well being is important to us obviously.

As I was talking to Darwin, who does all sorts of handyman work and is about 20 years younger than I am, I discovered we had some common ground, video games. He is a HARD CORE Call of Duty player, a very popular first person shooter game.  When the original Call of Duty came out somewhere around 10 years ago I played a good amount of it on my computer with my friends, even participating in organized team matches with my “clan”.  I have played these type of games all the way back to their origination with Wolfenstein, Quake and UnReal.  Despite playing a lot I was never all that great at them, at my best I was only an average player.

Well Darwin plays Call of Duty on the PS3, a gaming console.  I really dislike playing first person shooters on a console, I feel much more comfortable using a keyboard and mouse as opposed to a gaming controller.  Well Darwin is the opposite, he hates playing on a computer but excels playing COD on his Playstation. We wound up having close to a 30 minute conversation about his glory in Call of Duty.

He is the leader of his COD clan and is literally one of the best players in the world.  He said there were currently 5 million ranked players in the game, as of Sunday night he was ranked 27th.  I don’t think you have to like or understand video games to realize how difficult that number is to reach. Of course there is a price to pay for this virtual accomplishment, he plays the game several hours a night.

He isn’t the typical high ranked COD player either, many of which are kids or even adults that don’t work for one reason or another and do nothing but gaming for most of their waking hours.  Darwin works sometimes 7 days a week, maintains their home and tends to their daughters all while maintaining his COD epic-ness.  I need to get the guy into playing some WoW. 😉

Darwin does a lot of general handyman work on the side as well so there is a good chance I could enlist his skills in the future on some project that I don’t feel like undertaking myself.

As expected this weekend was filled with mostly chores and work, even with Cindy and I both working diligently at it.  On Saturday morning after weeding we headed out to get a few things I needed like filling the gas cans and some AC recharge refrigerant.  The refrigerant was for my mom’s Rav4, it’s AC was blowing hot.

My mom had some odd theories at times, one of those had to do with the AC on her Rav 4.  She was absolutely convinced that if she ran her air conditioning it caused her brakes to randomly not work.  Multiple times I tried to logically explain to my mom that the AC and brake system do not share any components and that there is no way running the AC would cause brake problems.  I even swapped vehicles with her for a couple days and ran the AC the entire time.  Despite my telling her I had absolutely no problems she still refused to run her air conditioner, insisting on using open windows to regulate temperature.  So anyway, when I drove the Rav4 back from the tow lot I noticed the AC no longer worked at all, probably from nearly 10 years of non-use.

The vehicle has never had anything done to the AC so I hoped that the system was just low on R134A.  I hooked up a can of coolant/sealant and filled the system until the pressure gauge was safely in the green area.  I stuck my hand inside and once again felt cold air coming out of the vents, nice.  I plan to drive the Rav4 once in awhile to make sure it stays in good running condition until I have the legal right to sell it.

I also wanted to give the AC in the Tacoma a little shot of refrigerant, I figured it can’t hurt with the temps averaging in the high 90’s the past week or so.  When I popped the hood I was amazed at what I saw, no oil cap on the valve cover.  The cap was still sitting on top of the intake manifold, just where I left it after the last oil change around 2000 miles ago.  Geezus cripes, what a fckin idiot I am.  I surveyed the engine compartment.  Surprisingly the oil residue was confined to a small area, mostly on the casing for the battery wires.  I felt fortunate that oil did not spray everywhere.  Of course driving the truck for 2000 miles with a big open hole in the valve cover can’t be a good thing but I have not noticed any short term problems as a result.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

While Cindy worked on giving the interior of the Rav 4 and the Tacoma a thorough cleaning I attended to lawn maintenance.  We have not had any significant rain out at the house in well over a week so all of the wet areas were now dry. The front trench which has been underwater for weeks had two foot high grass poking up from it.  It was nice to finally knock that area down so it didn’t look so shitty.  After I mowed it all I followed up with the weed whacker.

We had the chickens outside for a good portion of the morning, they love milling about.  At one point they were in the garden with Cindy snooping around amid the huge sweet potato vine.  Speaking of sweet potatoes, Cindy harvested 6 or 7 of them, the first time I have ever grown them, another feather in our gardening cap.

Saturday afternoon I dropped off some of mom’s plants at Ali’s place that she said she would take care of.  Ali’s new place has a nice lanai and interior space to house a lot of plants.  I’m sure my mom would be happy to have some of them there where Nicki and Sadie can look over them on a daily basis.

On Saturday night Cindy and I got out to see Expendables 3 which I saw had a very disappointing opening weekend.  I didn’t understand why it would have done poorly since the first two films seemed to be building momentum.  As soon as we stepped foot in the theater we both commented how it felt warmer than normal.  Well by the time we were halfway through the film it was downright hot, hot enough that I went out in the lobby and asked them if they had some sort of AC problem.  I was surprised when they said they actually did have a problem and someone was up on the roof trying to fix it.  Thankfully some cooler air started to blow down a short while later.

The theater had more people in it than we were accustomed to.  Unfortunately more people means more opportunities to be seated near morons.  About 5 or six seats to our right was what I assume was a hispanic father with two young boys.  The two kids were talking almost the entire movie while the father stood at his seat.  Well he leaned against the seat bottom which was flipped into the up position. It was very odd.  Since the movie was filled with tons of loud action, it drowned out the children for the most part however I questioned the father’s judgement for first not telling the kids to be quiet and second for taking them to this sort of movie.  Despite it’s PG-13 rating, it is filled with non-stop graphic violence that I certainly would not want my young children sitting through.

So as far as the movie itself, it was good but in my opinion the worst of the three films.  They went too far, trying to appeal to everyone, awkwardly inserting younger actors in the film in addition to the action stars of the last 30 years.  It just seemed unnecessary and contradictory of what the Expendables movie series is all about, a bunch of big name, older action stars raising hell.  Despite this flaw, overall I found the film fun and enjoyable, especially once the AC kicked back on.  I’d give it a B+.

Sunday morning the van was fully loaded.  In the back of it I had Cindy’s 55″ tv that we were giving to her daughter along with a few other things.  Behind the front seats we had both of our road bikes jammed in.   We were doing our first training brick in a long time.  They had been on hiatus since Cindy injured her foot.  It felt odd as I was preparing the bikes since it was just before I was leaving for a ride two weeks ago that I got the initial call from the hospital about mom.  I couldn’t help but think about that phone conversation and how it was just the first step in what was and will continue to be a long, painful journey.

The 12.25 mile Livingston ride went well.  We intentionally did not push it too hard, averaging 17.3 mph.  Cindy was riding with her bad foot in a sneaker instead of a bike cleat so that made it challenging already.  During the last segment of the ride, after we turned around at Vanderbilt Beach Road I exhausted whatever energy reserves I had, pedaling my ass off back to the water park entrance, averaging 23 mph the entire way.

Despite not swimming for awhile either, I opted to do 1600 yards in the water.  Lately when I feel reservations about pushing myself in some manner all I need to do is think that it is dedicated to my mom in some way and that will be all it takes to make me hang in there longer.

I did have a bit of humbling experience while I was cranking out my laps.  A young kid, no older than 12 I imagine hopped in the pool and absolutely smoked me.  Obviously the kid has done a lot of swimming  but still to get passed like you are standing still by a kid doesn’t make my chest expand with pride.  The only saving grace was the kid only did 5 or 6 laps while I was in the midst of logging 32 of them, so I imagined this was simply a tortoise versus the hare situation.

After grabbing some lunch we headed down to Katie’s apartment to deliver her tv.  Despite it’s size and weight I stubbornly carried the big tv up to her second floor apartment solo.  It fit the space on her wall well.  Cindy invited Katie to come out to the house later along with Tank, her high energy french bull dog.  We figured he would love being able to run around the back yard unrestrained.

I was out in the back yard doing more mowing, this time the very jungle like rear of the yard when Katie and Tank arrived.  When I poked my head into the slider door I had to laugh, there were literally 20 dog toys strewn across the floor, Tank evidently wanted to try out nearly every one of them.  He did have fun in the backyard as well, unfortunately part of that fun was running around the chicken coop.  The hens did not feel safe, despite being securely inside the coop.  Tank’s excitement made the chickens run around frantically, we had to grab him a couple times after he ran over to harass them.

It was so hot yesterday that we didn’t want to have Tank outside too long.  He wasn’t used to running around in the first place, to do it in 95 degree heat with blazing sunshine could be dangerous.  Even with his limited time outside he was panting like mad for awhile inside as he laid on the tile to cool off.  I played with Tank quite a bit while Katie and Cindy were doing some other stuff.  He is a lot of fun.

After Katie left Cindy and I ate dinner while watching my latest Netflix rental, Red 2.  Despite my drowsiness, I thought the movie was good stuff, on par if not slightly better than the original.  B+

So yesterday was a frustrating day.  I have been patiently waiting for my mom’s remains to be cremated for several days.  When we first made the arrangements last Thursday we were originally told that Monday would be the likely day it would happen.  Well it didn’t occur until yesterday because of  delays first in the death certificate being signed by the cardiologist and then supposedly because the medical examiners were dragging their feet on giving the go ahead for the cremation.

Well in addition to the cremation, the funeral home was providing me with the death certificates that will be needed for various things related to my mom’s estate.  The plan was I would pick up my moms remains and the death certificates at the same time.  Well now it was the health department that was dragging it’s feet in producing the certificates.  When I picked up mom’s remains they said the certs were not available when their courier stopped by earlier however they should be ready now.  The funeral home director said he left a long detailed message with the birth and death records office telling them I would be stopping in to get the certificate since their building is in the same government complex where I work, ok fine.

So I head to the office where they produce the death certs and come into an area that is empty besides the Haitian woman sitting behind a window.  She was in the middle of eating her lunch. I told her I was there to pick up a death certificate.  She asked me for what year, puzzled, I said “Last week” She points to the wall behind me and tells me I need to fill out a form, as she went to pick her food back up.

I told her that I was actually sent here by the funeral home to pick up the death certificates for my mom. This began a few minute exchange where I repeatedly caught myself on the edge of blowing up in the face of this woman.  The woman told me that she knows nothing about me picking up forms, that maybe the funeral home talked to the other clerk who is out on lunch but  she repeated “noone told me nothing” in her thick Haitian accent.

She even got up and saw that the death certs were indeed completed and sitting on top of a file cabinet but her directive to me was to call the funeral home back because she can’t give them to me otherwise.  If I didn’t really want to get the certificates in my hand, this was the point I would have started to angrily chastise her for being insensitive to the situation and for being more interested in stuffing her face then sorting out the confusion.  However I instead took one more deep breath, and told the woman I did not have my phone on me, and asked if she could call the funeral home to verify I was telling the truth.

It was obvious that the woman was not very interested in doing anything that kept her away from her meal a second longer but she found the number and made the call.  Of course the call confirmed that what I told her was indeed true.  She finally handed the papers over to me after seeing my drivers license.  I suppose once I had the papers in hand I would have been able to lash out at the clerk as I wanted to during the heat of the exchange.  I declined however, not seeing any tangible benefit from doing so.  My energy would have been wasted since I don’t think she was a deep enough thinker to even comprehend what was wrong with how she handled the situation.

So once I had the certs I made copies and distributed one of them to my lawyer working on my mom’s estate.  Shortly afterward he sent me a draft of the petition that would be filed with the clerk.  I immediately flagged that he had my mom listed as living in Collier instead of Lee county.  I replied back to him about the error.   He said he listed Collier because the death certificate had a Naples address.  I quickly pulled out the cert and looked at it.  The street address was correct but for the city it did indeed have Naples instead of Bonita Springs.  You have to be kidding me.

So I called the funeral home back, unsure if the error was from the health records department or from them.  It was the latter.  The guy I talked to looked at the original paperwork we signed off on and it did indeed say Bonita Springs, somewhere along the chain it was mistakenly entered as Naples.  The guy told me that for most situations, the city error will not matter when it comes to using the cert to confirm my mom’s death to whomever needs it however obviously they owed me a 100% correct certificate that he assured me they would expedite. Ok fine.

So when I picked up my mom’s remains during the afternoon it was a sad moment.  I opened the cardboard box that housed the plastic container that contained the ashes.  I did not open the inner container, I simply placed my open hand upon it and kept it there for a few moments.  I immediately felt a surge of emotion as I tried to grasp that all that is left of my mom’s physical being is in this small vessel.  As I have often done in the last 10 days, I  quickly reinstalled the dam that has kept that flood of feelings under control as I backed up and drove away.

When I returned to my office with my mom’s ashes I thought it would be a little too weird to walk in there with human remains in hand.  I instead decided to leave them in the truck however for some reason I felt badly about leaving the ashes in a hot space.  I decided to leave the truck locked and running with the AC on for 90 minutes until I left.  I don’t expect that to sound sensical but not a whole lot makes sense nowadays.

So later after Cindy got home we opened up the black plastic container that contained the ashes.  When we did I got another jolt of aggravation and anger.  My siblings and I decided that mom’s remains would be spread in the ocean.  In order to facilitate that the funeral home recommended her remains be placed in a special biodegradable bag that is designed to dissolve in water.  Doing it this way prevents scenarios where human remains are blown around in the normally windy ocean conditions.  Thursday morning I reconfirmed with the funeral director that her remains would be in one of these special bags which would in turn be placed inside of a second regular plastic bag for safekeeping.  Well what I saw was just the ashes inside of a regular plastic bag.  You have to be kidding me.

Throughout this entire process I have been very patient with the delays and bad timelines we were given.  The events of yesterday, both due to simple lack of attention to detail seem pretty incredulous.  In the funeral home business I would think attention to detail would be taken for granted.  When you are dealing with grieving families the last thing they need to deal with is your fck ups, yet there I was with two of them in one day.

So I again talked to the funeral director, in a far angrier manner this time around.  When I told him of the mistake he groaned out loud as if he was the one who actually packaged the ashes and forgot to use the bio-bag.  I told him I didn’t understand how these sort of mistakes happen.  He apologized repeatedly.  So now there has to be arrangements to get ashes back to them to place them in a container as they were meant to be.  I certainly don’t want to be the one to do it.  So yea, anyway, the funeral home’s performance score overall has dipped greatly in the last 24 hours.

So last night I again transformed my great room into a high tech fantasy football drafting venue.  I forgot to do a total head count but I think we may have had 15 people in the house in addition to Cindy and myself. As always there was a ton of food and alcohol on hand.  As always I indulged in way too much of both.

The draft wound up around 11 but as always I needed to have the house more or less back to normal before heading to bed.  Thankfully with Cindy helping me this process didn’t take nearly as long as years prior.  I woke up this morning wishing I had taken Friday off.

This weekend is going to be all about getting things around the house back in order.

Last night after work I stopped to get supplies for tonight’s fantasy football draft party which I am hosting again for the 5th or 6th consecutive year.  Despite being geographically inconvenient for most of the owners, they tolerate the drive because I have the space and tech to hold a pretty fun draft.  Having the remote owners that “attend” the draft via a Skype video call displayed on the 73 inch tv with 5 speaker surround sound is cool as well.

Because of what has gone down the last 10 days I have obviously not been giving the draft party or the draft itself much thought at all.  As far as drafting my team I will put the same prep into it that I typically do, next to nothing, outside of a player ranking list that I will refer to.  Despite my lack of conventional draft prep I have somehow managed to earn second place in the league the last two years in a row.  I make my picks mostly on feel.

I also have the last draft position, drafting number 12 out of 12 teams.  I have been the last team to draft at least 2-3 other times. I’m not sure how I managed that since it is statistically very remote to draw the 12th spot so often.  Although picking last isn’t great, it is nice that when I am picking, it is two players at a time, as the pick order is using a “snake” method.  So when I make my first picks it will be the 12th and 13th player selected which isn’t a bad deal.

Cindy will be around this year to help me with the hosting duties which will be nice.  Trying to attend to the party logistics and making quality draft picks is not always an easy task. Go Team Green Machine.

Today if things go as planned I should be taking possession of my mom’s cremated remains and will be handed her death certificate, something that is needed to muddle through the estate settlement process.  I just want it all to be over with.

It’s odd, it doesn’t feel like my mom being gone has really sunk in yet despite it now being one week since she passed.  It feels like I am still able to pick up the phone and call her or drive be her community pool and see her out there chatting with the pool ladies.  Of course I can no longer do these things but I wonder when that reality will become more accepted internally.

On Monday I contacted pretty much everyone that needed to be contacted regarding my mom’s death.  My current focus is getting the will filed with the clerk of courts and getting my mom’s remains in my possession.  Due to what seems stupid rules and procedures, my mom has still not been cremated.  I am hoping it finally happens today.

I figure it would be a good thing to not focus exclusively on my mom’s passing, after all it is a pretty sad subject.  I thought a good old fashioned rant would help clear the pipes.  Let’s talk about the ice bucket challenge.

For those of you that are living in a dark cave somewhere, the ice bucket challenge is this years version of the Harlem Shake, a viral phenomenon where people are dumping ice water on their heads on video to raise ALS (Lou Gehrigs Diesease) awareness.  Prior to dumping water on your head you are supposed to name other individuals that you are challenging to do the same thing.  If you don’t take the challenge you are supposedly tasked with donating $100 to ALS, if you decide to go the ice route, a smaller $10 donation is advised.

Ok let me first say something positive, raising awareness about ALS is a good thing as is raising awareness about any serious disease or ailment.  But come on,how many people honestly care about ALS awareness that dump the ice? If you ask me, precious few.   This is all about looking silly, and encouraging others to look silly,which I guess is fine but the lemming mentality of it is something that I certainly don’t embrace myself.

However the thing that really perturbs me is when you start to look at where the national ALS foundation spends it’s money.  Their most recent public filing shows that only 22% of the revenue they took in was actually given back out to help ALS research.   The CEO of the organization was earning 325K in 2012 and every single position listed in their filing was paying at least 6 figures.

Unfortunately this is a very common scenario.  Somebody a long time ago realized that preying on the good will and charity of others is a great way to make a living.  Very few individuals that donate to a charity will take that extra step to actually look into how that organization is spending the money that is so generously donated to them.  For those of us that like to look behind the curtain, http://guidestar.org contains the full disclosure information for just about any charity you can imagine.    To me, skimming 78% off the top for salary and expenses is pretty egregious, unfortunately there are many examples of charities that give even less back, one of the biggest being Suzy G Komen.

So what exactly am I saying? Don’t do the ice bucket challenge? No.  If you want to do the challenge feel free, it’s your right to do so.  Personally I won’t be participating due to my built in dislike of going with the flow. But I would encourage you to be more picky about who and how you donate money to a cause.  Find ways to be charitable in a more direct manner instead of throwing money at charity custodians that sleep just fine at night skimming large chunks of money off the top for personal gain.

So yesterday I was busy making calls to tons of different places trying to get accounts of my mom resolved.   For the most part it was a positive experience, everyone was nice, cooperative, understanding, and offered their condolences, except one place, Century Link, who provided internet and land line service for mom.  I told the guy that my mom passed away last week and I needed to cancel her service.  The guy offered no “I’m sorry to hear that”, simply “What is the account number”.

I give him the information he asked for.  He then tells me there is a $200 early cancellation fee.  Well despite being a bit beaten down from the events of the last week  this instantly got my fuse burning.  I asked him how there could be an early termination fee when she has had the service for over four years?  My fuse expired when the guy says to me “Why did you say you were cancelling again?”  “WERE YOU NOT LISTENING? MY MOTHER DIED LAST WEEK” I blurted out abruptly and angrily.  I couldn’t believe he was paying so little attention.

The guy then tells me that the fee is waived if a customer is deceased, how nice.  He told me things were cancelled but was unable to provide me with some sort of confirmation number.  He said confirmation would arrive in the mail.  Idiots.

Another one of my calls was to the hospital billing department.  I was trying to get a handle on if I could be seeing any surprise huge bills connected with mom’s care.  As has been the case with every NCH staff member I have dealt with in the past week, the woman on the other line was extremely kind and accommodating.  She explained to me exactly how it all works and that I should not be scared by the massive bill I will be seeing in the mail.  She said that it will be submitted to Medicare and between that and the insurance supplement that mom carried more than likely it will take care of the medical expenses which is a big relief.  She even gave me her direct number if I needed anything going forward, so nice.

When we were cleaning out mom’s place we found a single pack of cigarettes in the small cabinets above the stove.  Evidently this was mom’s emergency pack.  A tired smile came across my face when I saw it was still wrapped in plastic and untouched.  The pack was thrown in the trash, something I wish we could have done permanently 40 years ago.

One of the bigger challenges in cleaning out mom’s place was what to do with my old 61″ Sony projection TV that I gave to mom years ago.  Mom loved the tv and it still worked just fine despite no maintenance in 13 years.  The problem is nobody wants older style tv’s anymore, even charities.  I tried giving it to the donation center a couple miles from mom’s place but they said they don’t take any TV’s produced before 2007.  So we wound up using the truck Todd rented to deposit the tv in the garage at the house.

Now I probably could have dicked around, listed the tv on Craigslist and gotten a handful of dollars for it but I just did not feel like adding that to my already long list of to do’s.  Instead I utilized my pretty reliable curbside disposal service.  I rolled the tv to the road, attached a sign that said WORKS GREAT, FREE and crossed my fingers.  When Torrin, Cindy and I left for an errand the tv was still there.  On our way back it started to rain which concerned me, if the tv was sitting out in the pouring rain it surely would no longer be worth anything to anyone.  I breathed a very large sigh of relief when we approached the house and saw the 61″ behemoth was gone.  When we built the house in 2001 the Sony tv was the crown jewel, fitting beautifully in the entertainment nook.  To have what was then a $3500 tv given away more than decade later felt a bit weird but if it continues to serve somebody else needs going forward I’m happy enough with that.

I was so tired on the way home last night it was ridiculous and dangerous.  I literally could not keep my eyes open and caught myself more than once momentarily dozing off.  Sunday night I awoke before 4AM to pee but could not fall back asleep as my mind was racing between everything I needed to do.  Last night my sleep was again interrupted by Nicki whining by the bedside to go out at 4:45 AM, something she never ever does at Ali’s place.  I’m hoping to get my first solid block of sleep in awhile tonight as I returned the dogs to Ali’s place this morning.

So as you can imagine the days since my mom’s passing have been very, very busy and filled with emotion.  On Thursday morning we went to make the arrangements for mom’s cremation.  The guy we dealt with was very understanding and thorough.  Their services include notifying Social Security, providing multiple death certificates and notifying the credit bureaus so some dirt bag cant try to get credit under my mom’s identity.  We were also warned to keep any obituary we write deliberately vague as these same criminals will scour obits looking for info to help them with their disgusting craft.

Later, Todd, Torrin and I were over at my mom’s place trying to get a handle on cleaning it out.  Basically I wanted Todd and Torrin to decide if they wanted anything that was in there and then we would donate or throw out the vast majority of what was left.  As you can imagine, cleaning out each room contained various emotional landmines as we came across that things that had meaning or memories.

As the day went on the amount of things that Torrin and Todd wanted to keep was growing.  Todd suggested that maybe since he bought a one way plane ticket to get to Florida, instead of flying back he could rent a truck, allowing him to drive stuff north instead of paying to have it shipped.  It sounded like a good plan to me because I was envisioning having to rent a storage space to accommodate the furniture and other items until something could be figured out.  On Thursday evening he was able to secure a truck rental for a reasonable amount of money.

On Thursday I also met my mom’s landlord for the first time.  When mom rented the apartment, it was pretty much furnished but over the last 4 years mom swapped some stuff out so I needed the landlord to let us know what stuff was hers versus my mom’s.  She was very understanding and supportive of our loss.

Mom’s good friend Sara Lee was also over to help guide us.  Some of the furniture that was in there she had given to mom over the years so I asked her if she would like any of it back.  I didn’t think she would since surely she replaced the furniture with newer stuff. Well she said she could actually use some of it since she is an interior decorator, she said the stuff could be used to stage some homes she is working on.  She said she could have someone come and pick the stuff up.  Great, less for us to do. We made good progress on Thursday.  I had the van stuffed with donations.  Most of it went to The Shelter for Abused Women and I dropped huge three bags of towels to the Humane Society, something they always need.

On Friday morning we finally decided what to do as a remembrance for my mom.  We were worried that if we had it down in Naples that some of mom’s friends wouldn’t come.  After doing some checking it didn’t seem to be a problem so we decided to hold it at beautiful Lowdermilk Park on Saturday evening.

On Friday we were very busy trying to wrap up the lionshare of the remaining work, we loaded up the 16 foot truck with stuff for both Todd and Torrin.  By the time we were done all that was really left was a few scattered things along with the need to clean the place which Cindy and I planned to do later.

During the day I was mostly numb as has been the case since last Sunday when mom had her heart attack.  There were however random moments when intense emotion would bubble up.  During one of my trips walking back from the nearby dumpster I had one of these moments as thunder rumbled overhead. I felt intense sadness and anger.  As I was approaching the moving truck I had a very strong desire to just start punching it repeatedly until either my fist or the truck broke first.  Luckily I did not embrace my inner raging being.

Todd had originally talked of pulling out for PA late Friday night as he needed to get home.  He was talking of doing the drive more or less straight.  Luckily he changed his mind.  Instead the four of us stayed up late Friday night drinking beer and reminiscing about funny times gone by.  If my mom was witnessing it I am sure she was smiling broadly.

Todd did get up early on Saturday and pulled out before any of us woke up.  He left somewhere close to 6AM and pulled into his place in PA somewhere between 2 and 3AM Sunday morning.  It must have been a pretty miserable drive.  Along  with the stuff at mom’s place we also loaded up mom’s old antique corner cupboard that has been in the house since she moved down.  Mom never wanted to move it the places she rented so it has just sat in the office for the last 10 years.  Well I had no attachment to it and Todd always wanted it since his house is heavily decorated with older furniture so I told him to take it.  The spot the cupboard took up was now filled with the custom decorative barrel my uncle made for my parents back in the 70’s.  It was a trade up in my view.

On Saturday we had a lot of prep to do for the remembrance.  Cindy, who had felt bad she couldn’t help more since she started her new job last week, had really grabbed the reins for the event, wanting to make sure it was beautiful and not to require us to do much planning.  She said she would take care of it.  She really delivered on the promise.

She left before Torrin and I did for the park.  I brought three different shirts.  One to help set up before, a collared shirt for the remembrance and another t-shirt to put on afterward.  When Torrin and I got there Cindy was already hard at work, we jumped in to help.  My big contribution was a slideshow presentation that I wanted to set up on the table where the guest book was.  It was a laptop, a monitor and a wi-fi hotspot.  As the close to 90 pictures I collected covering various points of mom’s life displayed I had a Pandora station playing in the background.

Of course to pull this off I needed power.  I brought my entire collection of extension cords to help facilitate that.  Getting power to the tents was a 20-25 minute ordeal.  I did not want to run the cord across the walking paths from the outlet which was a couple hundred feet away because of the potential trip hazard.  Instead I used a stick to dig out a small trench under the boardwalk.  I then tied the extension cord to the stick and jammed it as far as I could under the boardwalk.  I went to the other side and jammed my arm in as far as I could reach until I felt the cord and could yank it through.  I emerged a sandy, sweaty mess. Torrin and Cindy were doing most of the decorating, complete with around 20 white balloons.  They did a really nice job of making everything look great.  We had plenty of water, wine and a nice little spread of food.  My buddy Sean also showed up early to help us set up which was very nice of him.

As people started showing up I figured I better put on my collared shirt.  There was a good mix of people from the circles of both my mom and myself, in total close to 40 people were in attendance.  I was surprised to see Randall and Lily show up since they both live on the east coast, I certainly did not expect them to log a 200 mile round trip.  It was very, very kind of both of them.

I tried to make my way around to everyone that was there to thank them for coming.  I got on the PA system I brought along and encouraged people to indulge in the food and drink we had available.  Some did but it seemed like most people just hung out.

We waited until closer to 6:30 to get started, I let Torrin go first.  She had made some notes to use as speaking points.  She did a good job, despite her voice cracking a few times.  I stood by her side as she tried to talk about all of the positives that mom brought into the lives of both her family and friends.

I went next.  There was no way I was going to wing it.  I put too much importance into making sure I used words that were thought out, heartfelt but not overly verbose.  I spent close to two hours in the morning trying to craft a single page.  Here is what I said.

As I stare here at a blank page, trying to figure out how you are supposed to represent the life of your mother in a few paragraphs, I am struggling. How do you describe an entire lifetime of love and support that a mother provides for her children?

As her son I knew Mom as a loving parent who time and again would do the best that she could to ensure I was provided for. She truly was my rock solid foundation. No matter what situation or trouble I found myself in I could always count on my mom to support me when I needed it and to tell me when I was acting dumb when I deserved it.

My mom’s hard work ethic, sense of responsibility, kindness, and humor are all qualities that she passed on to her children which I am eternally grateful for.

I have many fond memories of mom growing up like our annual vacations to Rehoboth Beach, countless afternoons spent at the Green Valley pool, and our Christmas Eve family dinners where mom did all of the work with little acclaim, while my grandfather complained that he didn’t like eating by candlelight because he couldn’t see his food.

When my parents divorced, mom was thrust from the role of a housewife into that of a family provider overnight. She was able to build a long and successful career as a salesperson using nothing more than her honesty, friendliness and smile.

I was proud of my mom when she took the brave step over 10 years ago of leaving Pennsylvania to join me here in Florida. She loved Florida winters and having a surplus of sunshine year round. She also was able to make a new circle of good friends here in Florida, many of which are here today. I know my mom cherished these relationships.

Mom was lucky enough to see her children have children of their own. I know my sister has relied on my mom time and again for advice as she raises her own two beautiful children. My dogs, Nicki & Sadie loved their grandma. As soon as Nicki would spot my mom she would grab a toy as a gift and rush towards her with her tail wagging uncontrollably.  

I was most recently proud of my mom after she decided to finally give up cigarettes cold turkey in January, something I had always wanted her to do since I was a young boy. I used to hide or even throw her cigarettes out, until I got punished for doing it of course. For her to finally quit smoking on her own was very special to me.

Anybody that knew my mom knows that despite her far too soon sudden passing, it is exactly the way she would have wanted it to be with no pain and no suffering.

One time when I was discussing aspects of life with my mom she told me that she judged how successful her life was by the type of people her children grew up to be. She told me she was content that she did a good job.

Based on the outpouring of love, support and kindness I have witnessed the last several days for my mom I think she can rest peacefully, knowing she touched the lives of so many people in a positive way.

I was relieved that I was able to deliver these words cleanly and in a way that displayed the feeling behind them.  I had to pause once early on but for the most part I held it together.  Slamming a couple glasses of wine beforehand probably helped.

Cindy then read a poem/prayer she had found.  It was very hard for her to get through it as she tried to talk through the tears and emotion.  It was very sweet.

Ali was the only other person to speak.  She delivered a very touching tribute to my mom, talking about the years of great memories, how she was like a second mother to her and how whenever she sees a rainbow for the rest of her life she will think of my mom, since mom loved rainbows and always pointed them out.  I really appreciated her words as well as the support she has offered since the tragedy.

Most people headed out shortly after we were done speaking.  A few stuck around to talk and help.  Torrin and I snuck away for a walk down the beach.  We had both drank a decent amount of wine so the words were flowing freely.  As we slowly walked along the water we talked a lot about mom and all that had gone down in the week prior.  It’s been pretty staggering.  When we returned people were working hard on starting to take stuff down.  Most of the 20 balloons were already cut loose to rise into the evening sky.  Torrin and I released the last two white balloons together, a symbolic way to let mom go to whatever awaits everyone once their life on Earth is over.  It was a very fitting culmination of a very difficult week.

I had not eaten any food at all during the entire event, I relied exclusively on white wine to keep me going.  Randall, Torrin, Cindy, Cindy’s mom, and I decided to stop and grab some food afterward.  We all enjoyed some Chicago style pizza as we talked freely.  I told Randall he was welcome to crash on the inflatable mattress at the house instead of driving back to Coral Springs at night.  He assured us he was ok and he actually had plans for a long bike ride the next morning so he needed to get back anyway.  I again thanked him for coming, it really was a nice gesture that I won’t forget.

On Sunday morning I started on the daunting task of going through, putting away and organizing the stuff that I pulled from mom’s place.  The house looked to be in pretty massive disarray with stuff scattered about.  I just got busy attending to things one at a time, all that you can really do.

Shortly after lunch we dropped Torrin off at the airport for her trip home.  I am so grateful that she came down and helped me split up some of the responsibilities as well as help shoulder some of the emotional burden we both are feeling.  She now has to coordinate with my brother to try to do some sort of similar remembrance ceremony up in the Reading area in the near future for mom’s circle of friends that still live in the PA area.

Cindy and I headed back to mom’s apartment to do a final cleaning.  Cindy is a cleaning tornado and worked primarily on stuff like dusting and cleaning the bathrooms and counters.  I concentrated mostly on the floors, sweeping all the carpets and then using my mom’s Shark steamer to clean the tile in the bathroom and kitchen.  It was a pretty somber experience removing all traces of my mom’s life in the apartment..  When we finished up the place looked sterilized.

I drove my mom’s Rav 4 back to the house while Cindy drove her Prius.   Since the AC in the Rav 4 is not working it was an all four windows down driving experience.  By the time we got home my back was quite wet with sweat.

The rest of Sunday I was consumed with more sorting and organizing while Cindy busted her ass taking care of other stuff that needed to be done.  I at least got the list of papers related to my mom’s estate organized and formulated a game plan to get stuff rolling.

I am now back at work, trying to resume my life in whatever way is considered normal from here on out.  The tragic, sudden passing of my mom as well as the enormous outpouring of love and support that I have received in the aftermath has been life changing.  There are so many things up in the air right now but the one thing I am absolutely  sure about is my mom would be so very happy that her children came together to support each other and to memorialize her in an appropriately beautiful way.