Memorials

This has been quite a week, and I can't even write about some of it. Suffice it to say that there was more tragic death in our community and I am going to a memorial service on Tuesday. I won't say anything more because everyone has been asked not to talk about it on social media. Maybe next week I'll be able to write more (or maybe not), but for now this is plenty. But it's been a sad week.

Rocket Boy is coming home on Tuesday, also -- he wanted to go to the service, but we just couldn't get him back in time. We originally bought him a ticket to come on Friday, July 2nd, but an important, non-Zoomable meeting scheduled for Tuesday was postponed, so he's coming earlier. This means that I have only a few days to get ready for him, but it's OK. This is the cleaning schedule:

• Saturday: I sorted through the papers that have been piled in boxes in our bedroom for months, getting them into reasonable shape so they could be moved out of the bedroom. (Maybe RB and I can put them in the files while he's home, fulfilling one of my New Year's resolutions.)
  
• Sunday: This was supposed to be general housecleaning day (bathroom, vacuuming, etc.), but is not going well, because I woke up with a stomach ache which transitioned into full gastrointestinal distress. Our usual Saturday night takeout was from Panera this week, and I thought I'd try their French onion soup. Seemed innocent enough, but that's the only weird thing I ate, so maybe? Anyway, I don't have the energy to do very much, but I've cleaned the kitchen (it wasn't very dirty). Whatever doesn't get done can either be done tomorrow or not at all.
  
• Monday: wash sheets and remake the bed, straighten the living room, make meal plans, pick up my prescription and get cat food and other groceries. Do what didn't get done today, maybe.
  
• Tuesday: attend the memorial service, clean the kitchen one last time (and the litter boxes, etc.), pick up Rocket Boy at the airport.
• Wednesday: have my bone scan, finally; call the scheduler to arrange next steps in the process. Get RB started on his honey-do list, or maybe he can just work from home and we'll save the list for the weekend.
  

If we get a break in the rain, I'd add "mow the lawn" to this list, but I don't think we're going to. I had just gotten my flowers planted in the front yard when the rain hit on Friday, including big chunks of hail. Not golf-ball sized, more like gumball sized. Still, quite large for us. Someone driving down our street stopped in front of our house and actually pulled onto the lawn, presumably blinded by the hail. (Once the hail lessened, they pulled back into the street and drove on.) You can see some smaller bits of it in the pot with the marigolds and fuchsia. Nonetheless, those flowers came through it pretty well.

The other flowers had a harder time of it, and are looking rather bedraggled today. But maybe they'll rally.

Speaking of weather, I'm blown away by what's happening in the Pacific Northwest right now. The predicted high in Portland today and tomorrow is 112! That's hotter than it ever got in Ridgecrest when we lived there -- 111 was the highest high, though it has been a few degrees hotter a few times since then. But 112 in Portland! At least in Ridgecrest everyone had a swamp cooler. And we were used to the heat and knew how to deal with it, more or less -- to the extent that anyone really knows how to deal with it. But people in Portland are not familiar with that kind of heat. I just checked and it's 111 at around 3pm (checked again, still 111 at around 5 pm). Poor Portland! And it's so cool and rainy here.

Desert heat in a cool and wet climate makes me think of end times, and so does the collapse of the condo building in Florida, even though that's quite different. I keep watching the news about it. Perhaps I shouldn't -- I can't help those people, and it's upsetting me. But I want to know about it. It sounds like corruption plus mismanagement plus climate change, a really terrible combination. I remember reading years ago about problems with buildings in Miami, sea water flooding streets. It didn't sound good. And now this. 

The month is ending, and with it the second quarter of the year. I should do a summing up, but I'm not really in the mood. Maybe next weekend.

Thinking about the memorial service coming up this week, I looked back in my list books to remind me of funerals I've been to in my life. The list might not be complete -- it gets sketchy as it goes along -- but I seem to have been to 24 memorial services/funerals in my 60 years. Does that seem like a lot or a little? I've had a lot of family die, but there were also other people, friends of family, parents of friends, relatives of people I worked with, that kind of thing. Here is the list:

1. My grandmother (mother's mother). I remember the terrifying sight of my Uncle Bob crying.
2. My little sister's ex-boyfriend, who was a cop, killed in the line of duty. Huge cop funeral at Frost Amphitheatre. I went with an ex-boyfriend, kicking off a last fling between us before he got married.
   
3. An old friend of my parents. I attended it with them.
4. My daddy. I remember the young woman who played the oboe.
   
5. My grandfather (father's father). I almost didn't make it, as my flight was diverted from Chicago to Milwaukee. I had to drive a rental car from Omaha to Lincoln at the speed of light the morning of the funeral, got there just in time.
6. My brother-in-law's father, less than a year after my brother-in-law's mother died.
7. The 16-year-old son of my graduate advisor's secretary. Heartbreaking. 
8. My syntax professor. He died of a Tylenol overdose.
   
9. My boss's son, another heartbreaker.
   
10. My Uncle John. Rocket Boy and I drove my little old Toyota to California because 9/11 had just happened and everybody was afraid to fly. When we got back we realized that my tires were almost bald.
    
11. Rocket Boy's dad.
12. Rocket Boy's uncle.
13. The partner of one of the secretaries at work.
14. The husband of a friend in the Boulder Bird Club.
15. The father of a friend at work. I need to call her -- haven't seen her since before the pandemic.
    
16. A member of the Boulder Bird Club. I was late, and spent the service standing in the lobby of the church, listening.
    
17. Someone who used to work with Rocket Boy's mom at CU.
18. My sister.
19. The president of the railroad club.
20. My mother.
21. My Uncle Bob.
22. My Aunt Esther.
23. A teacher at the twins' Baptist daycare in Ridgecrest.
24. Our next-door neighbor to the east.

I do feel as though I'm forgetting some, but it may just be that other people have died and for whatever reason I didn't go to their memorial services. Our next-door neighbor to the west also died, but his family didn't have any sort of service.

For everyone who lives, there will eventually be a death, and possibly a memorial service. I don't mind going to them. The person I'm going to this week's memorial service with wasn't sure she wanted to go, maybe it was better not to intrude on the family's grief, she said. I wanted to explain to her that it's the opposite -- I loved every single person who came to my father's memorial service, my mother's, my sister's. It's such a tribute. And there's so much time before and after to have that private grief. So much time.

And after it's over, Rocket Boy will come home. So grateful we didn't have to plan a memorial service for him this month, after what happened when we were in St. Louis. So grateful for every day.