inadequate

I had a bit of a weepy day, yesterday, because we buried Gloria (well, Gloria's "cremains") on Friday, and we had the memorial service on Saturday.  A lot of people, including most importantly, K&L, said that the service went well, and would have been what Gloria wanted.  I hope so.

But I felt inadequate planning it, and writing the obituary and eulogy, and delivering the eulogy.  As hard as I worked on it, my vocabulary and facility with words may be up to writing books, or preparing presentations, or teaching, but is not up to the requirements for celebrating Gloria's life, and telling everyone how wonderful she was.

Particularly since Gloria didn't get much credit during her life.  Even from Gloria.  She was "only" a secretary.  She was "only" a wife and mother.  But she was so very good in those roles.  Despite not having formal education or degrees, she had a boundless curiosity and a keen intelligence.  Once told something she would understand it, and could apply it, and use it to analyze other situations.  As "just a secretary," she was always close to senior management, and had a complete grasp of business management principles.  As "just a mother," she had un understanding of education that far exceeded most of the teachers with whom I have worked.

I must admit, I was inadequate because I should have practiced more while she was alive.  Gloria would often ask me "why do you love me?" and my standard response was "because you're wonderful."  If that wasn't enough, I would elaborate, that she was kind, that she was intelligent, that *I* thought she was beautiful (she said I was deluded), that she understood management, and education, and other things that I was teaching about or giving presentations on, that she had a sense of humour good enough to get my jokes (which is not easy), that she understood people in ways I never did, that she understood colour and art and fabric and embroidery and things I knew nothing about.  I should have been more detailed and exploratory and creative in my answers, and the fact that I wasn't left me inadequate when I needed to explain the second most important thing in my life.

(At least I told her every single day that I loved her ...)

Gloria's memorial service

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7nsTam0cBc&list=PLUuvftvRsRv7DUN1-UHliMaPvD6uLqgkw&index=11

services

I don't wanna say that I'll be glad when all of this is over, but I'll be glad when all of this is over.

Yesterday we had the committal.  Today we're having the memorial service.  I'm enjoying the chance to talk about Gloria, and celebrate her life and many *MANY* accomplishments.  She had too little credit, during her life, for all the great things she did.

But I think I'll have a heart attack and die from *NOT* being surprised at the selfishness, thoughtlessness, and carelessness that people have allowed to blossom into full flower in their implications and demands that *I*, who have to mange all of this, will respond, at the last minute, to their minor concerns (that could have been addressed far earlier).  K&L have been absolutely great, and, even in the midst of their own grief, are supporting me as much as they can.  Treasure stepped in at the last minute when I broke down yesterday, and did a terrific job, honouring his Grama.

Even while I was having a bit of respite with the family last night, some people were conspiring to delay things, and I faced an unforeseen pile of work when I got home that kept me up trying to address things for an hour and a half before I could try and sleep.  Some of the selfishness barely registered with me last night, tired as I was, and I only realized the full extent of it this morning when I got up (so I guess it's a good thing that my sleep patterns are a bit odd these days).  (Of course, even some of those last-minute and selfish demands pointed out other things that could improve the service, so it's an ill wind and all that.)

I want to do the best I can for Gloria with this next-to-last thing I can do for her.  So far a lot of things are annoying for me, but seem to be going OK as far as others see it.  I hope the memorial goes well today, and honours her memory and attainments.

Dyson in operation

(Appended addendum about Dyson's reaction to the review, 20220321)

(Appended addendum about charging, 20220328)

(Appended addendum about canister 202220413)

Well, I've had a month using the Dyson.  I like it.  Not completely unreservedly, but I like it a lot.

The counter is still a gimmick.  The yellow bar is always the highest, and the numbers are too small to read when you are working (and they go away soon when you turn it off), so it really doesn't tell you anything.  On the other hand, you can hear the change in power when the machine detects more dust on the floor.

For floors, it's a lot handier and quicker to use than the Kenmore.  With bare floors (and bare feet) that's important, because I tend to get it out about every three days.  I can get about five or six cleanings before a recharge.  Recharging takes a bit of planning, because it's out of service for almost five hours while that goes on.  You can buy a spare battery, but they are $200.  (I wonder how long they last ...)

I'm getting used to the swivel head on the power bar.  This *sort of* makes up for the lack of a flatter floor brush: if you can't get under things, at least you can get pretty near the edge of them.  It takes a while to get used to the wrist action necessary to turn and redirect the power head, but, when you do, it's surprisingly maneuverable.

I'm using the laser head pretty much all the time.  Partly this is because the beater bar is not suitable for bare floors, but partly it's because the laser, gimmick or not, is a handy guide to what you have cleaned and what you haven't.  Obviously my aging eyes are no longer good enough to see hairs and other indicators of what should be vacuumed without the laser.

Emptying the v15 is a lot easier and quicker than the old one.

Since my old Dyson went flaky after only a few years (and not much use), I'm a bit paranoid about the maintenance on this one, and have been watching the videos about how to clean the power head brush and the filter.  I've washed them both once, now.  It takes a bit of planning, because the machine is going to be out of service for at least a day while they dry.  They say to fill the filter with water and shake it.  With the wide openings on each end of the filter, and my small hands, that's a bit of a challenge.

The machine is still too heavy for dusting, and the leaf blower action of the exhaust is a nuisance.  Even when vacuuming the floor, you only have to go past a table with your household accounts, or a counter with some stacks of paperwork on it, and everything goes flying.  Last time out, it blew all the sympathy cards for Gloria all over the floor.  I'm seriously thinking of building some kind of deflector, with duct tape and cardboard, to redirect the exhaust either up, down, or back.

You have to be careful what you plug the Dyson into when charging.  For some reason, it has a tendency to "pop" out of certain outlets.  (When you have to charge it for four and a half hours, that can be a problem.)

Shortly after I got the Dyson v15, and registered it, Dyson started bugging me to post a review of it.  The review was to be posted on their "community" Website.  Well, having done the original, and now this, I posted a combination of the two on Dyson's "community."  Even though it's generally positive, for some reason (because it isn't completely effusive promotion of the product?) Dyson immediately deleted it from their "community."

I have found that it is quite possible to operate the Dyson with the canister insecure. Which means that the quarter hour I *thought* I spent vacuuming, I was, instead, simply redistributing the dust and dirt around the apartment ...

Calls

A few of people have called (belatedly) and told me that they hadn't called because they didn't know what to say.  That's OK.  There is nothing to say.  You could, of course, listen.  Given the slightest indication that you might be willing to listen, I'll tell you all about it.  Having someone listen would be really, really great.

(Mostly, of course, nobody *has* called.)

Then there are those who, knowing they have nothing to say, insist on proving it.  They call, and then there are these long, painful conversations about--nothing.  They say nothing.  Nothing of any interest.  Nothing of any moment.  Sometimes literally nothing, with long pauses.  But, of course, as soon as ever *I* start to say anything, they start talking again.  About nothing.  About nonsense.  About people and things I know nothing about.

I suppose they are afraid that I'll say something sad, or depressing.  It's possible.  It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, would it?  (I mean, it's not as bad as losing your wife, is it?)  I'm not really sure what they are afraid of.  Silence?  Well, yeah, silence can be a bit of a pain.  I sit in silence for most of the day.

Mostly it's better than one of those calls.

Smudges

Until I got to the age where I needed reading glasses, I never needed them, and never wore them.  So it's taken some getting used to.

You have to remember to have them.  You have to remember to pick them up when you take them off and put them down.  You have to choose clothing that allows you to keep the glasses with you.

And you have to learn how to clean them.  Which is not as easy as it sounds, since any tiny amount of grease can create a smear that is at best annoying, and at worst makes it hard to read.

And now I have to learn to clean something new off my glasses.

Tears.

Unsettled

Yes, I know that she's not going to die from a minor wound.  I was through the wound clinic three times with Gloria.

But I've lost my best girl.  I can't afford to lose another.

So I'm sorry if I'm a bit clingy and nervous about the whole thing.

I (Gloria and I) made The Bookless Club!

I (well, Gloria and I) made The Bookless Club!

Well, yes, it's always a nice ego boost to get your name in the paper.  (OK, maybe not so much if it's an obituary.)  But it's particularly appropriate that Gloria was the inspiration for the submission.

Gloria really loved The Bookless Club, and read, faithfully, it every week.  She enjoyed Jane Macdougall's writing quite a lot.  So I think she'd be very pleased that she finally made it into the column.

Even if posthumously.

Blocking grief?

I've mentioned the sleep deprivation.  The doctor suggested an antidepressant, but one which is particularly suited to depressed people who also have insomnia.  For me, it worked (sort of), almost instantly (which is weird, for antidepressants, because you usually have to take them on an ongoing basis, and they usually take a while to take effect).

The "sort of" part is that while I while I seemed to have fallen into a pattern of alternating one night at four or five hours, and then the next night at six or seven hours, when I started the antidepressant I immediately started getting seven hours sleep every night.  This wasn't, obviously, a complete fix, but it was an improvement.

I even increased the dose (which the doctor had suggested), although the increased dose didn't seem to improve things any.  Over a week or so, I even got to the point of having a couple of nights at eight hours, and one where I might have gotten nine.  Then, as with all the sleep aids I have tried over my life, it stopped working.  I was back to four or five hours, waking up at one or two AM, and not being able to get back to sleep, even if I tried getting some work and then hitting the sack again.  (The middle ages "first sleep/second sleep" theory.)

So I stopped taking the antidepressant.

It didn't seem to make things any worse.  Although yesterday, I had had a shortish night, and was really dragging around all day, very tired.  Which happened to be a north shore day with appointments in my previous stomping grounds, including seeing the doctor.

But one thing I realized yesterday: I had had a very teary couple of days, since I had stopped taking the antidepressant.  Now, this may simply be a normal part of the grief cycle.  (Whatever that may be.)  As previously noted, grief doesn't work on your schedule, and comes when you least expect it.  But it might also be that the antidepressant had been blocking the grief, and that, when I stopped taking it, the grieving process just started up again.

In other sleep news, though, last night, when I was finally able to get to bed after dragging through the day, I got more than nine hours sleep, for the first time in at least three months, and probably longer.  This was without any drugs or sleep aids at all.

The sleep deprivation probably isn't completely over, but dare I hope?

You want a cleaner topic?

My showers are taking longer.

Yes, everything is taking longer these days.  I have no standard processes, no procedures, no schedules.  My life is barely controlled (I hope) chaos.

I generally shower in the morning, and it's usually pretty quick.  (I have been doing some soaks in a hot bathtub, at times, recently, in the evening, particularly if my back is sorer than usual.)  Gloria was always impressed by how fast my showers were.  But they are taking longer these days.

One factor is the shower enclosure.  I know you are supposed to squeegee the water off the walls after a shower.  That takes a while, and it also seems to have added to my exercise routine.  (Reach up, wipe down, bend down to get the lower part of the wall, reach up ...)  (Rinse and repeat, as it were.)

But there's also the body wash.  I've always used soap.  Gloria had a couple of samples, and one partial bottle, of body wash.  So I'm trying it.  (Hey, I'm Scottish, by heritage.  Use it up, wear it out, make it do.)  It's different from soap.  I suspect it has some kind of moisturizer in it.  (Or, at least, an extra wetting agent.)  I don't use very much.  But then it takes forever to feel as if I've properly rinsed off.  In fact, I never do feel properly rinsed.  I just stop.

Yet another in the endless series of changes in my life ...

This is not my life

As I've mentioned, people are asking me, "How do you like your new town?  How do you like your new place?"

I don't know.

Part of the reason is because this is not my life.  My life is with Gloria.  No, I'm not deranged with grief.  I know she's not coming, or coming back: she's dead.  I know she's dead.  I found her, not breathing.  I'm the one who alerted the nurse.

But life without Gloria is strange and lonely and purposeless, and I don't know why I would want to live it.  So far I'm just doing necessary jobs.  Like washing the sheets and making meals at least once a day and doing the taxes.  Starting with the medical expenses, which was always Gloria's part of the process.  It's not a lot of fun.

A while ago one of my colleagues suggested that now I could reinvent myself.  I don't know why I would particularly want to.  I haven't got anything I particularly want to do or be.  Except Gloria's husband, and the "until death us do part" section took care of that.

Wave? Nonsense.

People often talk about grief washing over you like a wave.  Tsunamis aside, that's way too mild a description.  Grief usually blindsides you and bashes you over the head, without warning.

RFB

It started as a joke.  Actually, I guess it really started as a Valentines Day card.

One of the cards I got for Gloria, that first year (I sent her one a day, all week) had a tired and slightly grumpy looking bear saying something like, "You are my reason for being, the ground of my existence, my everything," and then, when you opened the card, it said, "Now can I go back to sleep?"

So, one day soon after, when I walked into the reception area of the college, I asked, "Is my RFB here?"  The receptionist asked, "RFB?" and I replied "Reason For Being."  (The receptionist, young, as almost all of them are, went misty and said, "Ahhhhh ...... ")

They became our private names.  I called her RFB.  She called me MSR, which stood for "My Sweet Robbie."  I had been called Robbie as a young child, but nobody had called me that since I was ten.  (MSR was also a sort of anagram of my real initials, RMS.)  Until we unwisely told someone who started using them, so then they weren't private names anymore, so we stopped using them.

I no longer have my Reason For Being ...

The Trash Terrorist Talks Turd-y

The Trash Terrorist has become a kind of urban recent archaeologist.  For example, as you find a higher density of takeout containers, you will find you are approaching an intersection with multiple convenience or fast food outlets.  Near schools, you find a lot of disposable vape tubes, and the refills for vapes.  Pretty much everywhere you find cigarette butts.  (When you are a smoker, the world is your ashtray.)

And then there are the small, knotted up, plastic bags, with lumps in the bottom of them.  These are the bags that dog owners take along, dutifully scoop up after Rover has done his business--and then immediately discard.

Look, tosh, if that's what you are going to do, you might as well not bag it.  Canine excrement may be messy and a minor health hazard for a brief time, but it degrades.  Plastic bags don't.  And, in fact, they prevent the "processed food" from biodegrading as well, unless dealt with.

So, what do you do with the bagged "business"?  Well, you can carry it until you get to the next garbage can, and chuck it in, but that still puts both bag and poop into the landfill, where the bag breaks down into microplastics, and the poop produces a lot of methane.  Best solution is to take it home, and empty the bag into the toilet.  DO NOT FLUSH THE BAG, even if it says green: that's simply a marketing term and unless you *KNOW* that the bag is actually made of polyvinyl alcohol film (and nothing else), it's probably going to end up clogging the sewage pipes.

Happy noises

 I was having a shower, facing into the corner (it's a big shower enclosure, which is why it would have been so good for Gloria: we could have put a shower chair in there, and I would have been able to get in too, and help her), and I suddenly realized I was making happy noises.

So now I have to explain about happy noises.

"Happy noises" was Gloria's discovery.  When I'm happy, I apparently make a kind of soft, tuneless humming.  It's not melodic, but it's not just a continuous hum, either.  There are discrete notes, and they vary in pitch, but they don't vary by any kind of scale (or even key, come to that).  Sometimes the "notes" are equally spaced in time, but often they vary in spacing, so I don't even keep regular time.  The thing is, I didn't know I did it, and, for the most part, even now, I don't know when I'm doing it.

When Gloria first accused me of "happy noises," I didn't know what she was talking about.  Nobody had ever mentioned it.  (Maybe I was never happy until I met Gloria.  More likely, nobody had ever paid any attention to me or what noises I made.)  I thought she might be referring to the fact that, when I try to whistle or hum a tune, I'm not very good at it.  (I'm fine with singing.  Not Gloria's standard, of course, but I'm good enough for pretty much any choir.)  So I didn't believe in "happy noises."

Until I inadvertently documented it/them.

R was not quite three, but they were leaving, so I had bought a video camera (we were going to exchange tapes).  We had R for the day, and were in Bridgman Park.  After we got home, and were reviewing the tape, Gloria suddenly cried out, "There!  Happy noises!"  And there they were.  Happy noises aren't very loud, but, of course, I was holding the camera, so I was the closest thing to the microphone, so you could just hear them.  And, of course, I was happy: I was watching my grandson play.  We still have the tape.  (And it's even one of the ones converted to DVD.)

So, if I was making happy noises in the shower, I was, even if briefly, happy.  Probably the first time I've made happy noises since before November.  I don't know that there is any reason that I'm happy, although the streaming and singing aspects of the memorial are starting to come along after what seemed like two solid weeks of problems.

So then I had a good cry in the shower.  (In the shower, nobody knows you're crying.)  Why?  It wasn't because I feel guilty about feeling happy with Gloria gone.  Gloria would, definitely, want me to be happy, and I'm more likely to feel guilty that I'm *not* happy.  It's probably because happy noises were Gloria's discovery, and I miss her, every day.

Even when I'm happy.

Blogging is backwards

Recently, via email, someone commented on my blog, and, at first, I didn't understand the remark.  Then I realized that, the way blogs are structured and laid out, this person saw the *last* thing that I wrote, *first*.

I'm new to blogging.  I've written lots, but this is my first time on a blog, my own blog, for any extended period.  I've contributed to lots of other people's systems, but those items were, for the most part, one-off pieces about specific topics or issues.  So this business of me knowing the flow and background of what I've been writing, and other people only getting the last bit, is new to me.

In addition, I discovered, quite by accident, how easy it is to edit an existing posting, without even meaning to.  Once I discovered this, I started going back and making additions and corrections to some of my earlier posts.  And then realized that a lot of people see the posts as static, and, if they've read it once, never do go back and see it again.  Particularly with the "Images" posting, I added a lot of new pictures, over time, and even some video, and then found out that a lot of people who saw it at first, never did see the later pictures that I added.  (I've started to add a notice, at the top of some posts like "Streaming," where I am doing a lot of research and testing over time, to the effect that the page is subject to ongoing maintenance, and that you'd better keep checking if you want the latest details.  (Does Blogger support RSS?  Not that I've ever used RSS ...)

(I have, at time, idly been considering going back and making references and links between a number of the postings that relate to each other.  But, particularly with the planning for the memorial service, and researching all the bits to do with the streaming, and fighting with VHS tapes and the video editing, it just hasn't been a priority ...)

Why VHS, you ask?

We want to get Gloria to sing at here own memorial service.  I mean, that shouldn't be too much to ask, should it?

Back in the day, when I was still shooting family video, I did, occasionally, have an opportunity to record Gloria when she was rehearsing for some performance.  Sometimes I could shoot her performance, from the back of the church or off to the side, if I could find a place where I wasn't in the way.  At one point I collected all of the bits I could find of Gloria singing.  I filled three VHS tapes, about two hours each, so that's six hours in total.  The stuff ranges from about 1995 to roughly 2004, when I wasn't doing as much video taping, and was just getting short clips from the digital cameras.  Now, of course, I'm only getting little snips from my phone at times.  (There is one song from 1991, but that was before I got either a videocamera or a digital phone, so I suspect it was shot by Larry Barker.)

At one point, probably around 2004-ish, I started copying the VHS tapes that I had made of family videos to DVD.  I had a Toshiba VCR/DVR combo that did dubbing from one to the other.  Then the VHS side of that machine gave up, and I got another, again a Toshiba, the DVR620KC model.  Again, I started to do some copying, but it required a commitment of about three hour to do every tape, and it didn't seem that important at the time, and life got in the way.  After all, I still had the tapes, and the machine, and could start up the project again at any time.

So then came the move, and then Gloria died, and then, in planning the memorial, somebody said why don't we have Gloria sing, for the special music?

So, I found one box of tapes that K&L had moved, but none of the music tapes, or any of the general family videos of events that I had copied the singing from.  Had they gone missing?  Been thrown out?  And I couldn't find the manual for the VCR/DVR, either.

L finally found the missing VHS tapes (oh joy!), *and* the manual for the VCR/DVR (oh rapture!), but we found that "Gloria's greatest hits" was not among those already converted to DVD (oh rats), but we found a DVD of Gloria playing with R and T (glad to see her and missing her all at the same time), but we did find the three VHS tapes (and therefore six hours) of Gloria singing (yay!), but then I found that the VCR/DVR (or, at least, the VHS side of it) had, again, died (MASSIVE downer).

So then comes a search for various options.  Can we find anyone in the Vancouver area who repairs VHS equipment?  (Couldn't seem to find any.)  I've even asked people in the movie industry, and nobody seems to know anyone who does that type of repair.

There does seem to be someone in Vancouver who offers to do VHS to DVD conversions, but he charges $30 per hour of tape, which would mean almost $200 just for the tapes of Gloria singing (and around $4,000 for the whole video conversion project), and he also seems to operate out his basement in a house near Vancouver City Hall.  (There also seems to be someone who does the same out of Ladner, and apparently London Drugs offers the service, but so far I haven't got prices from them.)

K came up with some options for buying VHS, and one outfit (again, seemingly a home operation, although a bit slicker, and with a Website) that seemed to be promising VHS players that you could use to convert to DVD, but, when you actually got down to the details, they seem to be including a device to copy the tapes to your computer, and then you can do your own DVD burning.  Still, they had a machine advertised for $99, so I bought it.  (With shipping and conversion it came to $150.72 in Canadian currency.  I put it on a credit card I got recently that I don't plan to use much, just in case it was a form of phishing scam.  If it's not a scam, it should show up on Monday.)

She also found some other options for VHS players and combo machines, but all of them are old, or refurbished, and don't have much in the way of documentation or specification details.  And all are very expensive, now being collectors items.  I found a couple of my old DVR620KC machines: originally I paid less than $200 for it, one was $500 and one was $800.

She also found someone in the Vancouver area who was offering conversion.  He was charging $20 per tape, which was cheaper than the guy near City Hall.  However, it was a conversion to USB.  Since the church wants whatever we do find playable through PowerPoint (no, I don't know why), this seemed an option.  I've had him convert the three "singing" tapes.  I'm not *really* thrilled with the quality of the video.  (He knows what the project is for, and offered, for additional cost, to "edit" the sound on selected pieces, if we wish, to remove background noise.)

In the meantime, a friend in Vancouver has offered a VHS player.  Another has offered to lend me a DVD burner.  Another, from Minnesota, has actually bought a VHS player (at a thrift store) and is Fedexing it here to Vancouver!

I now have three .MP4 files, between three and four gigabytes each, on my computer (and copied to as many many USB sticks as I could find, and uploaded to YouTube and Google Drive, as backup) (I'm not a BCP and emergency management expert for nothing).  Now I need to do something with them.  Video is not my field.  I need video editing software.  I need to know how to *use* the video editing software.  An awful lot of people are throwing quick "fixes" in my direction, with no explanation or details, that, when I waste time looking into them, don't actually address any of the problems that I'm facing.  Somebody suggested the video editor that comes included/built in to Windows.  Unfortunately, as well as being completely opaque to use, it doesn't deal with .MP4 files.  (Yes, I can do a Google search for "video editing software Windows."  But how many of those results will be useful, and how many actual malware?)  The guy who copied the tapes to .MP4 files on the USB suggested iMovie.  But I'm much less familiar with the Mac than Windows, so I'm a bit nervous about that.  However, at the moment that may be my only choice.  (No, I don't currently have a Linux machine, and I don't have time, right now, in the midst of all this, to set one up.)

This is all very stressful.  Not just the extra work, with a deadline before the memorial service.  I'm having to seek out options, ask for advice, and learn all kinds of new stuff.  And I'm feeling guilty about possibly failing.  After all, this is my field, right?  I'm a geek, a techie, a "beard."  I always felt guilty, whenever Gloria had a problem with the computer and I couldn't fix it.  So now, we want to do this one last thing for Gloria, and I can't make it work?  How guilty and useless does that make me feel?

(I've put one of the USB sticks into the TV, and I'm listening through all the files to list all the songs on them.  Right now Gloria is singing "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child."  Somehow that is really fitting to what I'm feeling right now ...)

The Trash Terrorist

 There's a new sheriff in town, cleaning up the mean streets, and his name is--The Trash Terrorist!

Delta is filthy.  The amount of trash I'm seeing on the streets around here is just phenomenal.  I've lived in different parts of Vancouver, and then in North Van, and I never saw trash like this.  I sometimes saw a lot of trash in American cities where I was working, and in some other places around the world where I've taught, but seldom so much litter.

There's an "adopt a street" program in Delta.  It only seems to want to do a once per quarter cleanup, and I don't think that does much good.

So, I'm cleaning up litter.  I'm out for walks a lot anyway, so I got a grabber from the dollar store (I'm old, and bending down is hard), and I am starting to save plastic bags, and I'm picking up trash when I'm out on my walks.

I noticed something, yesterday.  I felt better in the areas that I cleaned a few days ago, at least, the ones that were still clean.  Not just in a vague oh, look what I good job I did way, but actually felt viscerally, almost physically, better, as I was walking through the cleaned areas.  When litter had been dumped, again, in areas that I had cleaned, or when I was in areas that I hadn't cleaned yet, I felt depressed and vaguely physically unwell.  I'd cleaned up the area around the library, and, when I went to drop off some stuff there yesterday, and saw that there was more litter on the grounds, it was very disappointing.  So, I went back later and cleaned up around the library (and the health unit building, too, for good measure).

Dad

 I dreamed about my Dad.  (It's unusual enough that I dreamed, since I almost never wake up at the point where I remember my dreams.)

Dad died seventeen years ago.  In the dream, he's involved in planning Gloria's memorial service.  He doesn't say anything during the whole dream.

(Now that I've posted that, can I go back to sleep?)

Fun

 Any of you remember that song, "Is That All There Is?"  Well, that's my life right now.  Is that all there is?  Emotional pain, a huge and looming pile of death admin, accounts and taxes, household chores, and desperately trying not to stress eat myself into an early grave?

Although I have no idea why I would want to avoid an early grave.  This isn't much fun.  My buddy is not here to talk to, or help with the admin.

Is that all I've got to look forward to?  Endless drudge work?  OK, I know that the death admin has to end some time.  And the taxes will get done some time.  Mostly because the government has a deadline, and won't *let* the taxes go on forever.  (Until next year ...)

The walking is OK.  But only OK.  It's not particularly fun with nobody to walk with ...

VHS

 For all those who asked "If there's anything I can do!" in the past, and those who do it in the future, the answer is, find me a VHS player.  Or a repair shop that does VHS machines.  (Particularly Toshiba.)  Or a conversion to DVD service that doesn't cost the earth ...

Sleep!

 Success!

Of a sort.

Last night was the first night since November that I managed to get at least eight hours of sleep.

Mind you, not any more, and I did still wake up fiendishly early.

But, dare I hope that this is the beginning of a trend?

I feel ...

First of all, I suppose I have to explain response generalization.

When we humans are in a stimulated or aroused state, the physical manifestation is similar, regardless of the stimulus or cause.  Our heart rate increases, we are agitated, and we have a hair-trigger reaction to any other stimulus.

In the middle of the last century, some researchers tested the hypothesis that we humans don't really know what it is that we are reacting to, when we react.  Subjects were given some adrenalin, usually administered in water or coffee that was "provided" to the subjects, without the subjects' knowledge.  Then they were put into a situation, and given an ostensible "task," with a "stooge," who was one of the experimenters, but seemed to be another subject.  The stooge would then model some strong emotion, like anger, sadness, or fear, supposedly in reaction to the task.  In pretty much all cases the actual subject would show a stronger version of the same reaction; rage, crying fits, or terror; and would later attribute that reaction to the task.

(Responses generalize in other ways as well.  If you deliberately scare an infant, say with a sudden loud noise, they become afraid not only of the noise, but also of other stimuli or objects that are, coincidentally, in the same environment where they were scared, and even of objects *similar* to objects in the environment when they were scared.)

Last night I was feeling very strange and agitated for a few hours.  We were talking about caffeinated drinks, and so, initially, I thought my reaction might have been to a latte I had earlier in the day.  But, as time went on, and the feeling got stronger, I was wondering if it was a reaction to exhaustion (I'm certainly sleep deprived enough), or whether I might be getting sick.  Eventually, though, I recognized that this was a physical reaction I often feel when I am very angry at something, so this was probably some kind of unresolved emotional reaction.  Earlier in the day I had been reminded that I'd soon see my great grandson for the first time (positive), which also, of necessity, reminded me that Gloria never did get a chance to see him in person (negative).  And even before that had been an emotional roller-coaster as L finally found the missing VHS tapes (up), *and* the manual for the VCR/DVR (up), but we found that "Gloria's greatest hits" was not among those already converted to DVD (down), but we found a DVD of Gloria playing with R and T (glad to see her and missing her all at the same time), but we did find the three VHS tapes (and therefore six hours) of Gloria singing (up), but then I found that the VCR/DVR (or, at least, the VHS side of it) had died (MASSIVE downer).

L thinks it was some kind of, or at least similar to, a panic attack, as Shining had when she was younger.  That may very well be true.  And certainly her suggested treatment, of walking, apparently worked, and I was much calmer after we had done a couple of laps.  My emotions have always been something of a mystery to me, which often irked Gloria, and is partly why I am working so hard to catalogue and analyze them here.

Honestly, it's not a big deal ...

 I've had a couple of people comment on how open and honest I'm being in this blog.

Well, thank you for the compliment.

But I find it kind of strange.  I agreed to do this blog because it was presented as a kind of therapy for my grief.  Grief is a natural reaction to a loss, but, like any natural reaction, it can be damaging if allowed to go too far.  Grief probably will diminish in time (if it doesn't kill or damage you first), but working at it in the proper way can both reduce the amount of time and increase the likelihood of coming out of it (well, you never *really* come out of it) in the best state possible.  So, this blog is therapy.

If this blog is therapy, what good does it do me to lie?  (Unless writing fiction is a form of art therapy?  Hmmmm.)  What good does it do me *not* to talk about certain things?  This blog is for my good, so being open and honest is just a given.

I suppose the reaction speaks to our concern, as a society, with privacy.  As I've mentioned, I'm a security specialist.  I've studied privacy.  But, possibly unusually, I don't have strong personal feelings about privacy.  (For one thing, it's very clear to me that I am too unimportant for anyone to care about what I do or think or how I live.  Most people don't care if you live or die.  Does *that* make you feel better?  Or there's Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:  "No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.")  I'm of the opinion that this lack of feeling about privacy is a definite advantage in regard to work in security and privacy.  I can study the field with a dispassionate eye, without being distracted by emotional reactions to privacy issues.  I can see both that others *do* feel strongly about privacy, and I can see the realities of privacy laws, definitions, and concerns.

So, no, I'm not going to post my bank account numbers here.  That would be foolish.  But I am going to continue to talk about my feelings as I'm going through this.  This week has been difficult.  I've felt even more lonely, as I've tried, in many ways, to reach out and make new contacts (mostly unsuccessfully).  I'm feeling more depressed than I have since Gloria died, even though I' still functional, and got quite a few things done this past week.  Accounts are still an emotional minefield, as I move into catching up and changing the way that I do them (which vaguely feels like I'm betraying Gloria because, although both of us hated doing accounts, we did them together, and mostly to Gloria's pattern).

So, I've had a terrible week, thanks.  And you?  (No, don't worry.  I know you're not going to answer ...)

Mandala as grief art therapy

This posting will likely change frequently as I add, extend, edit, and modify what I find as I work on mandalas.

The Surrey Art Gallery Association had one of it's "Thursday Artist Talks" last night.  I've got pretty much zero talent or knowledge about art, but, in a possibly vain attempt to expand my horizons, I went.

The artist is local, a software engineer by day, and said that she started mandala art as a way of relieving stress caused by, and during, the pandemic.  I didn't expect to participate, just to listen and see what was said, but the artist gave a list of requirements to start (which was fairly simple: paper, pencil, eraser, ruler, compass, protractor, and you can extend from there), and there was a "hands-on" time towards the end of the presentation.  I was surprised to find that, even with just paper, pencil, and copying a grid "through" another sheet of paper; and even with my non-existent art skills; I was able to get a start on some ideas fairly quickly.

I can see that mandala art would be good art therapy.  For those, like me, with no skills, there is enough structure to get started, and the procedural nature of the art makes it possible for us non-skilled to actually do something.  Following the structure and processes requires concentration, which provides a focus that can take you away, if only for a time, from your grief or problem, and give you a bit of mental respite, which can allow for different types of healing.  The "hands-on" exercise that you included at the end demonstrated to me that it would be possible for a non-artist, like myself, to actually participate.  (I've had all kinds of "art" workshops over my life where we were told "there are no wrong answers!" and then what I produced was definitely wrong.  This was the first time that I've produced something that someone made a positive comment on  :-)

To get started with mandala art, start by making a grid.  It's a circular grid, not rectangular.  Don't worry, I can't draw a circle either.  This is where the compass comes in.  (Since a compass has a point on it, you don't want to do this directly on your good dining room table.  You may want to get either a stack of paper, or a grocery store flyer, or a pad of paper of some type, to have as a drawing surface while you are creating the grid, or, at least, the initial circles.)

I have some old rulers and stuff laying around in a corner of s shelf.  This is what I hauled out:

The only compass I could find was a high-end engineering model, and I have no idea why I have it.  You don't need anything that fancy: a cheap thing from the stationary display in any grocery or dollar store is good enough.  Like the three cheap protractors that I found.  This isn't engineering, it's art.  (Remember, creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.  Art is knowing which ones to keep.)  This is all you need to get started, and you probably have everything around the house (even if you have to scrounge in your kids' desks or book bags to find it).  If you really get into mandala art, and find you want better tools, you can always get them later.

You start with a point, reasonably close to the middle of your page.  (Remember, art, not engineering.  Reasonably close is good enough.)

(Yes, that's it there, just under the end of the shadow from the compass.)  This is your set point for the centre of your mandala grid.  You'll put the pin part of the compass on this point for each circle.  (This is about the only time you have to be really accurate and consistent in any of these steps.)

Draw a circle with the compass.

Then you draw more, increasingly larger, circles, making sure that you are careful to place the compass pin point in the same place each time.  As you make larger circles, you can measure the spacing (if you are anal retentive, like me), or you can just make them larger.  (Remember, art, not engineering.  Also, creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.  Varying the spacing may give you interesting effects.)

When you have made enough circles (strictly defined by you thinking, "OK, that's enough circles for now"), you start to form your grid, with straight lines.

I'm going to briefly jump ahead here.  You can, but you don't need to, bisect the circle(s), and have bilateral symmetry.  A lot of mandalas, particularly those with religious symbolism or significance, have uneven numbers (and even prime numbers) of divisions.  However, the artist who gave the talk was big on bilateral symmetry, so we'll start with that here.  Later we'll work on uneven numbered divisions.

Bisecting the circle is easier than it sounds.  You simply place your ruler on the concentric circles, making sure that the edge is on the centre point.

Then you draw a line along the ruler's edge.

Congratulations!  You have bisected the circles!

Next, you take your protractor, align the centre point of the protractor with the centre point of your circles, line up the base line (or the 90 degree line) with your bisect line, and start marking points around the edge of the protractor.

What numbers you pick depends on how many divisions you want for your mandala.  (Remember, there are no wrong answers.)  If you want four points, mark every 90 degrees.  If you want eight points, mark every 45 degrees.  If you want twelve points, mark every 30 degrees.  (For the mathematically inclined, simply divide 360 by the number of points you want.  So, if you want ten points, mark every 36 degrees.)

Next, set your ruler to align one of the marks you made around the protractor with the centre point, and start drawing the grid lines.

Continue with all the marks until you have a complete grid.

At this point, let your creativity (and, possibly, mistakes) take over.  There are few rules.  About the only one is repetition.  Most mandala art creates forms that mirror over the grid lines, and repeat around the circle.  However, you can vary that, too.

At this point you can darken the lines with ink, darken *some* of the lines with ink, colour in certain parts of the pattern you have created ... or start again with another grid, and another mandala.

You can do a search on the Internet to find more about mandalas, traditional symbols to use in mandalas, the religious or philosophical meaning of mandala symbols, using mandala art in other shapes, and, of course, there are hundreds and thousands of YouTube videos that will teach you to make mandalas.  If you want to search them out, there is plenty of material there.

Or, you can just make your own grids, and your own mandalas, for your own purposes.  Look!  I've just wasted three hours making a brain-dead simple mandala, and creating this posting!

Some research into arts therapies.

Alone again, naturally

 There's no "again" about it.  I'm lonely.  I'm still lonely.  It's certainly not getting any better, and it may be getting worse.

I'm functional, as I frequently tell people when they ask how I am.  (The other common answer is "It's complicated, these days."  Few people [read "zero," so far] take me up on why it's complicated.)  I'm doing tasks.  I'm doing chores.  I'm going for walks.  A lot of walks.  (My cardio-vascular status is possibly better than it has been for some time.)  Maybe I'm doing all of that because when I'm stuck down into a task, I'm not as lonely.  (Except for those times when the task, itself, reminds me that I used to have help with this, but now I'm going to be doing this by myself for the rest of my life.)

(I've also apparently been blackballed from ESS, so that doesn't help.  I'll have to find a new way to volunteer.  Yet one more thing on my endless to do list ...)

I'm being pro-active.  I'm calling friends much more than I have in the past.  I get the feeling that I'm becoming a nuisance.  (Except for those friends who want to tell me their troubles or give me advice.)

I'm going to a new church nearby.  (It's close enough that I can walk there.)  They are a nice, friendly bunch.  A number of them have started to say that we should get together.  Sundays are getting to be a pretty bad time of the week.  Only one of them has.

He took me to breakfast.  A number (at least four) of his friends have recently lost their wives.  We talked about their different (and common) grief reactions.  He seems genuinely interested in the issue, but, at the same time, genuinely puzzled by it.  Well, naturally.  *His* wife is still alive.  He also suggested that I meet with a group of guys who meet weekly for coffee, so now I have attended my first Old Guys Coffee Time.  (I have to be careful with coffee, since it can make me hemorrhage.)

I'm working at being connected to others.  I'm working so hard at it, that it's making me feel even *more* lonely that/because it's not working.  Nobody knows de trubbel I seen, nobody knows de sorrow.  It's depressing.  Two of the guys at the coffee time have lost their wives (one only two days before Gloria, so we at the same point in the grief cycle), but their life experiences are so different from mine that there aren't many points of commonality.  Grief circle does provide some commonality (some people have wondered what good "group counselling" for grief would do), but that's only an hour, only once a week, and (due to CoVID) virtual.  (And it doesn't help that I'm the only guy.)

Streaming

This posting is going to change frequently as new information comes to light or is decided.

20220214: added notes about the two separate "chat" functions.
20220219: added notes about WVBC Web page announcement and bulletin links

There are certain additional challenges when you are planning a memorial service during a pandemic.  There are, of course, restrictions on attendance, and rules about masking and checking vaccine status.  But, by this point in the pandemic, many people expect that streaming of the service will be an option, particularly since, with the advent and onslaught of Omicron, many of those of our age are extremely nervous about attending any kind of gathering.  That is exacerbated, in my case, by the fact that many of my colleagues are contacts I have only ever made online, and they live in different countries, or even on different continents.  Thus the streaming and technical side of Gloria's memorial service takes on greater importance.

Gloria was a member of different churches, at different times, around Vancouver.  But the church where she was a member the longest, and where Karen and Linda grew up, was West Vancouver Baptist Church.  It's a lovely church, in a lovely setting, and so has always faced the problem of having all kinds of people who are not members wanting to use the church as a venue for weddings and memorial services; so much so that they have often had to have policies forbidding outsiders.  However, they made an exception in our case, and we are grateful.

Unfortunately, WVBC has not been doing online streaming of services as much, or as long, as others during this pandemic.  They are certainly doing a decent job of it, and improving and enhancing functions as they go along, but they don't yet have the experience to handle special requests.  And memorial services, as opposed to regular Sunday services, present challenges.

For example, Sunday services are primarily for your congregation, and are much the same, in format, from week to week.  You are able, over time, to explain to your congregation how to access the stream, and what is required, and what options are available.  You can point out that the link to access the service is on the same place on your church's Website every week, or you can get your parishioners to sign up for a newsletter, and publish the link for the stream that way every week.

That's not the case with a memorial service.  A lot of people are going to access the memorial stream on a one-off basis, and have never even looked at your Website, and will never visit it again.  For a memorial service, there is one opportunity to provide instructions for access, and no second chance to correct any problems.

So, it's been an issue for us to collect and provide this information.

(Not aided by the fact that we have to handle the limitations on attendance and the instructions about CoVID restrictions, and so have set up a special email address, gsladememorial@gmail.com, for that purpose.  But the first time we used it, to send out the obituary, we ran into weird problems, and, in checking, found that many of the messages were delayed in transmission for hours, and an unknown number of the rest [by rough estimate about half] were trapped by spam filters for unknown reasons.  It's difficult to fix this: how effective is it to send messages out saying "if you *don't* get this, check your spam filter"?  We may have to resort to a non-technical solution, such as having everyone who *does* know about Gloria's memorial call around to all those that they know of who may not.)

WVBC uses YouTube to stream their services.  This has a number of advantages.  There are few limits on the number of people watching the stream, streams are generally automatically archived for later viewing, and the quality is generally quite good.  Streaming is fairly simple.  However, people who are used to using Zoom for streaming of services (as many churches do) find some aspects of the streaming and access unusual.  With Zoom you can schedule meetings long in advance, and thus publicize the specific link to the service.  That's not the case with YouTube.  YouTube streams are generally available only a few hours in advance, and so cannot, for example, be published in an obituary in a newspaper.  Even if you want to send people the link to the YouTube stream by email, you have to warn them to expect it to come at a certain time before the service.

We have additional requests that can be problematic.  Gloria was a singer and a soloist.  It makes sense that we have Gloria "sing" at her own memorial service, as the special music.  Unfortunately, there is no professional grade recording of Gloria.  The only recordings we have of her are some videos that I shot myself at different times.  These are hand-held, and therefore wobbly video.  And, of course, I was recording them from the back of the service where Gloria was singing, so the sound quality isn't great.

To make this problem even more difficult, WVBC is a beautiful architecture with huge glass walls, letting in lots of light.  This means that projecting videos during the service is difficult, and they are not very bright in contrast to the ambient light.  In addition, WVBC does not yet have the video editting capability to directly broadcast video during a service.  However, in this case the video is not the important bit, and we hope that the sound, as bad as it is in the original recording, does come through.

For those wishing to "attend" Gloria's memorial service online, via streaming video, the research and testing we have done so far indicates the following options.  We will be trying to make a PDF copy of the bulletin available for download before the service.  We don't yet have a specific link for that.  However, there is an option to display, at the very least, the order of service in the chat function linked to the YouTube if you access it via WVBC's own page at https://www.westvanbaptist.com.

In order to access the live stream, either:

1. Go to https://www.westvanbaptist.com
2. Scroll down the page and look for a link to Gloria's memorial service.  You may wish to check under either "Events" or "Sermons" from the menu at the top of the page if you can't find the memorial service right away.
3. Click on that link.

or

1. Go to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmfbCsa1gobo6HCbo0TifBg
(This is the YouTube channel for West Vancouver Baptist Church.)
2. Look either for a title listing Gloria's memorial service, or, a few hours before 2 PM, Pacific time, a link with a "LIVE" indicator on it.
3. Click on that link.

(For those not able to "attend" the live stream, following the service, it should remain available on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmfbCsa1gobo6HCbo0TifBg and you can access it there and view it at your convenience.  I note that, as of February 19th, the Sunday service on the 20th is already showing as "SCHEDULED" on the WVBC YouTube channel, so Gloria's service may be posted more than a few hour in advance.)

WVBC has already posted a notice of the memorial service on their Website (under "Upcoming Events," about two-thirds of the way down their home page).  Marking that page might provide you with a quick link to get to the service on the day.  In addition, they have posted links to the options for the bulletin for the memorial service, so we might as well, too.

Full bulletin: 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mEjENSefDHC1NxBH2PRSEUrUDiO2IiQO/view?usp=sharing
or
https://is.gd/hVfivh
Smaller size at lower resolution:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZtxgCqTTHNeD-2WKnk8kDCpgMiqtDfPM/view?usp=sharing
or
https://is.gd/PF8l9f
Flipbook version:
https://issuu.com/gsladememorial/docs/gloria_slade_memorial_bulletin.pptx
or
https://is.gd/1oWoLy

If you are accessing via WVBC's own page, https://www.westvanbaptist.com, up to several hours before (in fullscreen or window mode), at the very top of the screen (sometimes not visible because the page "opens" partway down the page) a legend shows "Next Live Stream starts in X Hours : XX Minutes : XX : Seconds"  However, if you ever, once, click that off, it seems to be impossible to get it back.

In fullscreen, just below the top banner, the page shows:

HOME   ABOUT   EVENTS   NEWS   SERMONS |West Vancouver Baptist Church and logo | MINISTRIES   MISSIONS   CONTACT   LIVE STREAM

In a window, the menu button at the top right of the page opens to show:

HOME

ABOUT

EVENTS

NEWS

SERMONS

MINISTRIES

MISSIONS

CONTACT

LIVE STREAM

DONATE

In either case, clicking on "LIVESTREAM" shows a black box with the "Next Live Stream" countdown, and a list of previous live streams on the right (in fullscreen mode) or underneath (in window mode).  About 15 minutes before the service, there is a button on this page for "Chat," which accesses a live "text chat" function, where people can chat with each other or a host.  Next to the  "Chat" tab should be the "Order of  Service" tab.  (There is also a "Playlist" tab, which simply lists the previous streams as mentioned before.)  A few minutes before the service is due to start, the black box goes "live" and the service starts streaming.  We have asked to use the Chat function, and, although family members may be a *little* busy just before the service, we have asked a couple of volunteers to be available in it to monitor the chat for any questions.

Actually, further research has indicated that a chat function is also available if you are accessing the stream via YouTube.  We tested this on February 13th, but, unfortunately, it confirmed that the two "chats" are, in fact, separate, and don't communicate with each other.  V is trying to cover both, but it might help if we had an expansion to the usher team to try and expand that cover.  In addition, on February 13th WVBC had some kind of meltdown on YouTube.  Hopefully that won't happen on February 26th, but when it did on the 13th, all they did was roll over to the "Mandarin Zoom Service" feed (a button about halfway down the https://www.westvanbaptist.com page), which, being a Zoom feed, was completely separate and ran, although with the Mandarin translation voiceover.  (Additional testing indicated some inconsistencies in the availability of the YouTube feed on February 13th: two "attendees" were able to view it while some of the rest of us were not, but, when they tried again, were unable to access it again.)

One of the volunteers proposed the title "ushers," so "virtual ushers" it is.  The duties for virtual ushers shouldn't be onerous.  The first is simply to be there, so that when (if?) someone pops into the chat and types a "hello world" into the box, they aren't just faced with the nothingness of the void.  Some people may have questions.  They may want to know how to get the bulletin.  (Some may not be able to attend the whole service, and might want to know if it will be available later.  (As far as we know, yes.  With some testing, we may even be able to predict what the URL/link for the archived service will be by that point.)  Some may have technical questions.  (We can do our best.  If they can't hear the service, ask if they have their speakers turned on or up.)  Some may want to send greetings or messages to the family: if you can copy and paste those into a file, you can email it to me (or gsladememorial@gmail.com) later.

Control

 I've mentioned that a lot of people ask how I am, or to consider what it is that *I* want, and that it is extremely hard to answer these questions.  (Of course, what *I* want is Gloria, and that's not going to happen.)

I have also mentioned that I seem to be reacting to everything as it comes at me, immediately, as soon as a reminder pops up, without planning how to work on it most effectively or efficiently.

(I'm trying to address that.  For example, BCAA wanted me to come in and fix some disastrous mistake that they had made, so we made an appointment for Monday.  Since I was going to be out, driving, seeing them, I planned ahead and made a shopping list for stores in the area, and it was reasonably successful.)

I am beginning to suspect that these two issues are related.

I'm feeling that I am not in charge, that I am not in control.  Now, of course, that may simply be a natural reaction to loss.  You have a big loss,  and that packs a wallop, and the world does not seem as controllable as you assumed it was when everything (well, most things) were going as they were (you assume) supposed to.

In reality, of course, we are not in charge, and random negative (and positive, but we don't seem to mind as much about the positive) things can happen.  We are not in total control.  We have some control over some things, but anyone who works in emergency management or business continuity or incident response knows that we don't have total control.  (Either that or they are delusional, and should not be put in charge of those fields.)

So, is this stronger feeling of a lack of control just a part of grieving?  Is there anything in particular I should be doing about it?  Is it related to the learned helplessness theory of depression, where the "cure" for depression is to make the subject "succeed" at something even if you have to force them to do it?  (What does *that* do about control?)