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Mimi Watches TV, Too

Several Caturdays ago, I displayed a picture of Walter watching “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Well, Mimi watches TV, too, although her tastes run more to this century. Granted, “Gilmore Girls” is early 21st century, but good television is good television. She was watching the show up close and personal until Walter caught her attention while he was chasing a flying bug. That’s when I was able to capture this picture of her. Like I’ve said before, she’s elusive when it comes to the camera.

Mimi GG

Image Credits: Cesar Cat © Belinda O, Paws in Heart, © bigstockphoto.com,

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I Don’t Know What to Say

Today at my writer’s group I finally had a chance to share something with one of the women there. She lost her husband about a year ago to a bad fall. A few months after he died, I was idly listening to NPR during their fundraising week when one story caught my attention. They told about a donation from a group of men who had raised money in memory of a buddy. It wasn’t a large group, I found out later, maybe eight or nine men, but together they gathered more than a thousand dollars in memory of Bob, my writer friend’s husband.

I was moved to tears. I’d never met Bob, but I knew his wife from our shared love of writing. I wanted to tell her how I felt when I learned of this donation, but the time was never right. Today we critiqued a piece she’d written about him, sharing what a fun-loving man he was as well as the horror of his fall. The time, I decided, was now.

It’s hard to know what to say and when to say it when someone you don’t see often or don’t know well suffers a serious loss. A woman I had worked with for only a few weeks lost her mom to Covid in the middle of the pandemic. My co-worker returned to the job two days after her mom died, taking one day off a week later for the funeral. When I expressed my sympathy, she snapped and said, “don’t worry about it.”

I wasn’t sure about the layered meaning of her retort and her quick return to work, and I didn’t know who to ask. Later she opened up more and said she felt guilty about her mom’s death, thinking she should have done more to protect her. I understood that.

As humans, we experience the death of those we are close to. Even having gone through the death of a loved one, we’re often at a loss with what to say to others experiencing the same thing. A card is good, we know, but what happens when we see them again? Will they break down crying if we say something, and what do we do then? 

I have no answers for this. I remember when my stepdad died, a friend warned me that some people were going to say really tacky things and to be prepared. He was right. It made me wonder if I’d been guilty of the same thing in the past, and even now I wonder if I have been thoughtless in some way I’m not aware of.

We can only pray and hope for increased sensitivity and maturity. Life is a journey we take together.

Image Credit: © Butch–stock.adobe.com

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First, My Hair. Then The Real Stuff.

Augh! My hair is too short!

That’s my great frustration of the moment. Actually, I have many more frustrations, but that’s the one I’m focusing on. My hair is thick and has a lot of natural wave, which sounds good until I get into some humid weather, which I’m swathed in right now. 

Haircut

It’s not a huge problem. My hair will grow. But the other problems in my life overwhelm me at times, and I don’t have simple answers for them. Planning for the future has become paramount in my mind, and I need to take some action to help things go more smoothly when the time comes, for example, to move. But it isn’t easy.

So I focus on my hair. If I could get it under control, I’d feel a lot more control over other things in my life as well. But every step I take backfires on me.

Some problems I have been able to solve. W couldn’t get my mom’s free phone set up, but we did get her (not free) cable tv in place. This done from hundreds of miles away and with the help of a very gracious staff at the assisted living facility my mom is living in. I feel a sense of accomplishment there.

The phone situation remains unresolved. She has a phone she’s paying for, but because she’s on Medicaid, she’s eligible for a free phone through a government program. We got her signed up and the phone was delivered, but she couldn’t figure out how to set it up. There’s a time limit and we actually got an extension on that, but it still didn’t work out.

Caring for an aging  parent long distance is a challenge. I’ve written about this before, but it’s constantly a part of my life, so I’m writing about it again.

My mom has frustrations with her hair as well, so we swap stories. Her woes are different than mine–I inherited my hair from my dad. Besides the hair, the other difference between my mom and me is she’s being taken care of, while I’m responsible for what goes on in my life.

So I’m back to fixing my hair–or trying to fix it. Then I’ll try tackling the real problems again.

Image Credits: Bad Hair © nicoletaionescu–stock.adobe.com; telephone © martialred–stock.adobe.com

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It’s a Special Caturday!

Mimi and Walter are eleven today, and our feline blogging buddy Parker is ten! Happy Birthday to all of you!

Happy Birthday Mimi

Happy Birthday Walter

Image Credits: Cesar Cat © Belinda O, Paws in Heart, © bigstockphoto.com,

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A Few Random Thoughts About Life and Death

I just found out that the attorney who had been the most help to me during a period of legal woes a few years ago died in a car accident. They think he had a diabetic seizure and lost control of his car. The accident actually happened some time ago, but I hadn’t needed his services for awhile and since I’d moved the letter that was sent didn’t reach me.

He was young and this shouldn’t have happened. although I know with diabetes it can and does. Still, you don’t expect someone who exuded a gentle strength and confidence to die so soon. I was crushed to hear about it.

CandyI fear diabetes. I have a sweet tooth and I know that can spell disaster for so many reasons. I also fear it for my mom, who, at the age of 87, thinks nothing of having a lunch of Milky Way bars and raspberries (which turned out to be a bad combination). If I got diabetes, I would do my best to manage it. If my mom got it, she wouldn’t manage it at all. That’s where her mind is at now.

Which brings us to another issue that’s been difficult for me. Last month I spent a week with my mom, who lives in assisted living 650 miles from me. It was a good week, and ever since, I’ve wanted to move closer to her. While she is well cared for, she has little opportunity to get out of the building she lives in. She has friends but no interest in the social activities the facility provides. She’s bored a lot of the time.

Frankly, she can’t take a whole lot of activity. We went out on errands almost every day that I was there, and while the trips were short, she was exhausted by the end of the week. There were things we weren’t able to accomplish in the time I was there, and things we can’t accomplish from a distance.

This whole end-of-life aging thing has been difficult for me. I want to be closer to her to spend what time she has left together. It isn’t possible right now, but as soon as I can, I’m moving. Of course the logistics of that overwhelm me at times.

It’s a bear getting older. But it beats dying young.

Image Credits: Candy © Steve Cukrov–stock.adobe.com; Hands © Dmytro–stock.adobe.com