Bereavement 101

For people unfamiliar with the American educational system such as it is, the title refers to the kind of course that beginners take in college at the start of learning a new field of knowledge. As usual of course, I can't help seeing a Monty Python take on this, oh well, some of us are hardwired to be frivolous.

But learning is happening around here. One thing I have learned in the endless meetings I have to have, in person and on the phone, with officialdom, where I have to announce HPs death yet again, is to start with: this meeting is very hard for me, bear with me. that puts the other people into a possibly sympathetic, possibly anxious, frame of mind, but it works better than just plunging in.

I got the meeting done at HPs bank yesterday, closed out his account, got a check to take this morning to my own bank where I want to open up the estate account, all of which is already owed to me, having picked up the slack since I couldn't access his funds recently. So I'll have ANOTHER meeting, proffering various documents and letters of whatever the surrogate calls them,but my skills are improving.

It's going to be another of those skillsets I hope never to use again, I can see it.

The Monty Python side of me can also see that bereavement is going to be a card I can whip out to drive people mad. I HAVE to be at the front of the movie line, I'm BEREAVED!!! whaddya mean, you're out of my shoe size? don't you know I'm BEREAVED?? and so on. But I think it has a limited lifespan before people start to catch on and say, wait, wasn't that ten years ago? back to the end of the line, lady.

I'm higher up on the roller coaster this morning, because I had a wonderful afternoon of playing music with the quartet, who welcomed me back, had kept a place for me all this time, and were nearly as happy as I was to see me back with them. And the huge luxury was that I had no need to be nervously checking the time to get back home for the respite person to leave.

Another close friend advised me to learn to stop wearing a watch, unless I had specific reasons for knowing the time, just to get out of the anxious habit of checking. I like this, but it's hard. It's in my pocket...can't quite leave it at home. But I wear a bracelet instead of it now. And I didn't look at my watch once during the music session, though I wore it to make sure I got there on time. So this is progress.

I actually have a very good sense of time, usually can guess the hour and minute without checking, which is a compensation for having no sense of direction at all, so I think I'll be checking my bracelet out of force of habit, and getting a good idea of the time anyway.