A conflicted day

Greetings fellow lifers,
Interesting day with large doses of the human condition. This morning I just rolled out and went straight to work, I'm dealing with the proposed construction of a manufactured home in San Lorenzo on the back half of a lot that has been in the family for 100 years. Needless to say there are not many sales of manufactured homes in San Lorenzo or even with 15 miles. I knew this one would be touch when I took it and now I'm in the middle of writing it. Word came in this morning as to the details for Don's funeral. Don was a person I never met who ordered reverse appraisals once in a while. He was always pleasant on the phone and in his emails. I liked him. His brother has provided me with more work over the past 2 years than any other source. Tom and Don were just one year apart and not only brothers, they were great friends. The service was held in the lamest funeral home I have ever seen. Located between a house cleaning service and a auto body shop on an industrial row this little funeral home seems totally out of place. It has no parking other than what you can find on the street and a chapel so small that most of us spent our time in the hallway peeking in the door. The service was nicely conducted and tom spoke for his brother with honest and caring words.
While I was driving to Modesto Jason called and in the conversation he reminded me that this Sunday would have been our 38Th anniversary. Well the combination of the flood of memories and then the funeral experience really sent me reeling. Mind you these are not bad or dangerous emotions but they are strong just the same, powerful mind videos of happy times, other anniversaries. Nan always planned them careful and we were either at Reno, Vegas, Tahoe, somewhere special to enjoy our day. I painfully remember the anniversary just after her surgery on June 4 when she was not even awake yet as she clung to life in the ICU at Brigham and Womens in Boston. I remember the pain of that day, the first without Nan making it a big important deal and she slept right through the day. I thought my heart would break as it filled with fear and foreboding.
So as I drove to and then from the service today my heart was not light or carefree. To ease the passing of time I reached out to Art, my sister Sibyl and I tried others but didn't make contact. Pam was not answering her phone since she is just one day out of a pretty nasty surgery herself and Sylvia is in Russia on a tour.
This process called living life grows harder as difficult events stack up. Every time I hear of a long time marriage breaking up, about someone else with health issues, about cancer, about loss it just seems harder and harder to slap a smile on your face and pretend things are OK. Things are not OK, we live in a mess. Now some of you may not know it yet because things have not gone bad but we live in a mess. I have come to accept that God is even more troubled about the mess than we are since He sees it completely.
I've just lived through a week with almost no business calls. With interest rates climbing again and a growing concern about future inflation the loan business has almost shut down completely. Every loan agent I know has many loans in the pipeline that are not being completed since the rates began to climb up. The spending in Washington is having the total opposite effect of what was promised. Government cannot spend us out of the crisis but so far they have not caught on. I think the people have as they are spending less, being much more careful with what money have and even saving more. But the federal government is doing just the opposite. One wonders what they could be thinking. This is disaster in the making for not only our generation but for the little kidos, why should they have to pay for our messes.
This afternoon I had soup and salad at Olive Garden in Modesto, a place that I figure Nan and I ate at at least 50 times over the years. When I left I decided to pick up a couple things at WalMart. For those of you who know me at all you know I despise WalMart, not that I think it should not be there I just don't like being in a place where 98 of the items they sell just arrived from China. I'd rather pay more and have less and have it made in America by my neighbors! Warning, the next couple sentences are not going to be very PC. I have the feeling that I've just traveled to a very poor third world country when I'm in WalMart, much of the stuff is junk, gaudy and trashy and as far as lower prices, there is a reason in many cases. Now I know many of the same items sold there can be found elsewhere for more money and for that reason I found myself parking and walking into WalMart. Now this was not a super WalMart, in fact I stopped someone and ask if they were closing the store as so many racks were empty and the place looked like a wreck. No was the answer, they are just redoing the store. Well I found the little bulb for my desk lamp, some laundry soap, first I've had to buy since company was here and then I went to the garden section. I ended up with a hanging flower arrangement and a couple other pots of plants but even they looked pathetic. They can't afford water for the plants in WalMart? So I took my little basket of winners to the car and headed home. the poor flowers seemed to be saying, feed me, water me please. I feel like I've been a part of a plant rescue operation.
When I got home my desire to go back to work was a quart low. But then I had an infusion of life and fun. Kallie, Keanna and their mother burst through the door. Kallie started charging about on her newly acquired sea legs staggering from time to time but doing pretty well, Keanna set to work helping her mother sort through some shipping and we all had fun for awhile. Then they had to go home to feed Kallie and I was alone once again.
I summoned up my gardening skills such as they are, mowed the front lawn which is actually a grouping of weeks and crab grass and began to trim the beautiful bush that had grown nearly over the front window. Not wanting my house to look like the home of the Adams Family I cut and trimmed until the bush was groomed (can we say attacked) and Lois stopped by and helped me bag it up.
While I was on the back deck I discovered that one tomato had turned red enough to pick. It became the center of my dinner, tomato and peanut butter on thin slices of my most recent loaf of bread. Totally yummy! Tomatoes do taste better when they grow in your own back yard.
Sort of to round out the uplifting nature of the day I put on a video that came from Netflicks called Into Thin Air. For those of you who know the story you know that uplifting it is not. Its the tragic story of two teams of mountain climbers on Everest where things went wrong, judgements were made poorly and 5 people ended up dying including the leaders of both the expeditions, Scott Fisher and Rob Hall. So on that encouraging note I'm ending my day.
Tomorrow I plan to go with the kids to visit the walk for life cancer walk in Brentwood and then drive upto visit Barbie in Sacramento in the afternoon. Gerry says her recovery seems on track but I want to put in my personal appearance having spent dozens of days in hospital rooms I know the excitement of seeing new faces and feeling the love that walks in with those you love.
I hope your week has been meaningful and I want to encourage you yet once again to carefully consider how much time you are spending to share your feelings and words with those you love, think about what you would say at their funeral service and then say it now instead of then. Am I blunt? I mean to be. In our case due to Nan's gradually weakening condition we had lots of time to share everything we felt but without the pressure of the an upcoming deadline it is very tempting to just think the other person already knows how you feel so why bother to express it. Nan and I never went to sleep angry, some nights were so awful between us that we didn't go to sleep for awhile until we talked it through. Because of both our experiences with our parents we knew better than to let stuff go without fixing it. Its too easy to just begin to let it go and things get worse and worse and that becomes the new relationship, a sad one with less love in it.
A word on being alone. I guess there are some people that love it and others who lie and say they love it but I've been alone now for 18 months and together with Nan for 37 years. There is no comparison. Life is dreary being alone, oh yes it is livable and even enjoyable once in awhile but mostly it is just alone. Once again you could become alone in any one of several ways that are not up to you so while you are not alone make the best of it, just a thought!
So I bid you a warm goodnight and I do appreciate every one of you.

love

tim