gratitude

Every morning that I wake up in a warm, safe apartment surrounded in love is such an overwhelming miracle. The waxwings on the winterberry trees this morning were so beautiful, I stared at them and watched them and thought about how much mom would have loved the sight of them and just started sobbing and haven't really stopped crying since. I'm so stunned at the beauty of life and my luckiness to be here. Practicing letting go. It's really, really, really hard.

going to clear out some stuff from her room today. josh will help. so grateful. pretty much prepped for the cremation, finished all of the tissue paper flowers. I'll take photos. Need to draft some words probably. Was thinking about this morning and crying, before I even rose from bed. Bed is so nice.

need to write a thank-you card for the doctor I'm sending a gift to. It's hard to draft, I just, need to. My gratitude is just too massive, I need to do something with this feeling.

husband duty

poor Josh. told him I was sort of functional (cleaned out some serious crap that was building up in the kitchen this morning) but the tree isn't coming down anytime soon. As soon as I said "mom loved Christmas, I don't want to take it down" I started crying. He's suddenly saying "It's okay it's okay, you don't have to take down the tree."

poor thing.

just what i do.

not doing well today. it's okay. there are just going to be some hard days. after the cremation i will feel better, pretty sure.

talked with harity, trip to clear mom's room postponed until tomorrow, which is fine.

loretta still won't charge me for coffee. she's too kind.

i cried at a tree in someone's lawn with christmas lights still on it.

i cry at so many random things.

my brother is doing poorly and i'm not strong enough to help him. i can barely keep treading water myself.

he said not to do too much. i built a little website and he thinks it's overkill i guess. it feels like way not enough to me. i'm not done, and i'm not going to stop until we have a proper memorial and online celebration. it's okay if they're small but they need to happen.

next step is choosing an animal shelter for donations, finishing the bench application, and drafting and publishing the obituary. i'm late on that but it's okay, i want to include online celebration info and donation info and we just haven't gotten that together, yet. it can be late. there is no rush. within a week is standard but within a month is something i am giving myself permission for. especially during covid. things are just different, now.

i stopped by my mom's 3 most frequented storefronts, today, and dropped them off sheets with a color photo of her, an explanation, and the website url, (it's mollyrodway.blogspot.com if anyone is curious) so that people can reach out and participate if they want to. even if only 2-3 people in the neighborhood see these, it will help. it makes me feel better to do it. but it was really hard.

harity is with her family in seattle. she said she couldn't stay in the house because she misses my mom too much. poor thing. she'll be back tomorrow though, so that's good, we can go over later, it's fine. i'll take the gift for the doctor who helped us over there tomorrow too, the facility is right nearby.

talked to tyler last night. he's worried about his mom. he expressed disbelief that i was willing to talk on the phone. i know he doesn't like texting but i didn't know that his feelings were so strong about it that it warranted ignoring me in a time of great need. i have a lot of trauma over voice conversations on the phone. for a variety of reasons that i don't want to get into. also i don't want to suddenly disrupt someone's life with a phone call, my cortisol spikes whenever my phone rings, i hate the thought of doing that to someone else. who knows, maybe he has texting trauma or something. i just process better by writing. always have. i started keeping a journal at age 10. it's just what i do. will try to keep his needs in mind, but my needs are not going to change.