My nephew Nick dropped by for a visit with mom (his grandma of course). Nick is living in Alabama now and got tickets to come here the day before dad passed, so unfortunately he didn’t get to see his grandpa. It was still a nice visit and really good for mom to see her grand kids. Dad did get a chance to see his great grandson one last time in the hospital and I know that he enjoyed that very much. I recorded about 2 hours of video while Nick and mom talked about all sort of things. Slowly, but surely, I am gathering stories from mom to write up. I don’t know if I will ever put them all together in a memoirs type of situation or if they will stay in disconnected bits and pieces for the family to look over from time to time. Either way, it is good to have the stories we have heard (and some we haven’t heard) recorded for the future.
Mom has continued to do well with dad’s passing. I was a little worried, now that things are settling down, that she might start having a tough time dealing with things. For the most part though things have been good. I suppose one way that she has been manifesting her emotions is in her patience. She and I had a little bit of an argument the other day when she was trying to figure out something with the household finances. She got frustrated and panicked and I got short and damn near walked away. In the end we both calmed down a bit and were able to get through it. I don’t have chemo brain, so it is difficult for me to understand how she can look at a piece of paper, decide that it is something she doesn’t need to look at right now, set it down and then pick that same piece of paper up moments later and go through the process all over again. It is very difficult to watch that happen because I know it creates a lot of anxiety for her. She knows that she just looked at that paper and had already put it somewhere and now it is back in her hand and she can’t figure out why.
The tax deadline is on Tuesday and I have been dreading this, not because I think it is particularly difficult to accomplish for the normal person, but that it is very stressful for mom. We decided that the best thing for her was to put all the other paperwork on her desk some place else so they would not be a distraction for her. She got all the 1099s together and I helped her load up TurboTax and she got to working on the taxes. A little while later I checked on her and she was all flustered because she had a partial duplicate copy of one of the 1099 forms. I looked at it and told her it was a copy and asked if she made a copy with her copy machine. She said she hadn’t so I have no clue where this copy came from, but told her just put them somewhere she can’t see them and move on. This was where the argument I just spoke of came in. She didn’t like the idea of just setting them aside and said she needed to make sure they were copies. I had already saw they were copies and didn’t know how to deal with this anymore so I told her, “do what you want” and started to walk away. She got more upset and I realized that was not the right response from me 🙂 We talked through it and got them set aside. She worked on the taxes for a bit longer before throwing up her hands and saying she will just pay someone to do them and pay whatever penalties/interest she may incur. I asked her if she wanted me to give it a shot. I spent a couple hours entering the information and getting everything printed out for her to review. After a couple little corrections, we were satisfied with the result and electronically filed those suckers. Out of our hair now. Fortunately it wasn’t terribly complicated because there wasn’t much activity in the investment accounts.
The 2014 taxes will be a whole different story after having to sell off $10k worth of investments to cover the unexpected sewer fiasco in January plus all the changes like the life insurance payout resulting from dad’s passing (hopefully mom won’t follow suit this year) not to mention the itemized deductions for all the medical expenses. Mom has been really stressed about finances lately and concerned that she will not be able to make it without both of their retirement payments. I told her that we will manage, even if she has to use her kids inheritance. It’s just money. We will get by just fine. I think, in a way though, having the finances to worry about keeps her mind off thinking about dad.
We are settling on a date for the, whatever you want to call the party we will have for dad. My sister and mother don’t really like the term celebration of life so I have to figure out something else to call it. Regardless of the name, we are most likely going to have it the weekend after Easter. I will make up a flyer and post it on this blog site for all to see. It will have the date and time and all the particulars.
I have been finding myself in a strange place. We have been on the go so much the last couple weeks that now, with little to do, I feel a little lost. I feel tired, like I could sleep for about a week. Hopefully tomorrow we can get to the gym, get a good workout in and feel better.
Well I think that sums up the day. We shall see what fun stuff tomorrow brings!