Lack of clarity?

 I did my first presentation since Gloria died, yesterday.  ("Security Awareness Lessons from Dr. Bonnie.")

I survived it, and I got lots of thanks and compliments.  (How many of those were due to my "bravery" in being able to present at all, I don't know.)  I used some illustrations and examples from or with Gloria.

Looking back on it, I have to note that all of the Gloria examples were either incomplete, or not comprehensive.  I'm afraid that, many times, it may not have been clear why I was using this particular illustration, or what I was illustrating.  I didn't break down at any point.  I may have been unconsciously hurrying past any particularly emotional points.  It may simply be the sleep deprivation, or background depression.  But although it seems like I can talk about Gloria and be OK, I'm not sure that I really can, or, at least, not in a completely public setting like a conference or meeting presentation.

Certified

 The crematorium people have finally delivered the "cremains" and, possibly more importantly, the death certificate.  There are all kinds of administrative things you need to do after somebody dies, and a whole bunch of them require the death certificate.  (Even placing an obituary in the paper seems to require confirmation by the "funeral home.")  Gloria died December 18th.  The death certificate itself is dated December 30th, so there was some kind of backlog there.  And then it took another dozen days (presumably delayed because of the snows, and possibly staff off sick with CoVID) to get it to me.

So, now I have to go and get about a half a dozen "certified  copies" made, and then start the rounds ...

(Gloria is sitting in her usual place on the couch ...)

TV

 I'm not watching TV.

That's not terribly surprising, I suppose.  Before Gloria and I got married, I didn't even *have* a TV.  Gloria had one, and the townhouse even had cable service (it came as part of the rent for decades) but the cable outlet was in a corner that wasn't convenient for where the TV was placed, and we never saw any particular need to connect the two.  Then one day some friends wouldn't come over unless they could watch some program on TV, so I went and got 50 feet of coaxial cable and connected them.

But we never really watched TV, or videos, until Ryan was almost three.  Then they were going to move back east, and Gloria thought Ryan would forget her, so I went and got a video camera and a VCR, and we extracted a promise from Number One Daughter to exchange video tapes, and then we needed a better TV, and then, since we had a VCR, I started to get some movies from the library, and so it goes.  We started watching the news (recorded on the new PVR that came when the cable system was upgraded), and, after the 2010 Olympics (and also because Devon was playing), Gloria got interested in hockey, and then became a Canucks fan.  For the past seven years, since the broken shoulder, we watched the (recorded) news with dinner, then a hockey game, if the Canucks were playing (sometimes also curling), then maybe Murdoch Mysteries, or Still Standing, or one of the British, Australian, or New Zealand series that we got to know through stuff I brought home from the library (if they were being replayed on PBS or Knowledge), and maybe a movie from the library.  At some point recently Gloria started watching a lot of quilting and stitching videos on YouTube, from channels of people whose newsletters she followed.  (Hmmmm.  Is watching a lot of YouTube videos a sign that the end is near?)

I still watch the news, recording it, and then racing through a lot of it, since I know what they are going to say about the high CoVID numbers or the amount of snow we had.  I've watched a few of the videos I've brought home from the library, but sometimes it feels like I chore that has to be done.  I don't even record the Canucks games any more.  I did enjoy watching them with Gloria, but I enjoyed her enjoyment of the games.  It's not as much fun without Gloria.

I'm plowing through some movies and DVDs (and it does, often, feel like a chore).  I'm using them to force myself to take a break sometimes, since, if I don't, I find that I just keep pushing and pushing at more tasks (and there certainly are no end of tasks).  I find that I am falling asleep, or at least dozing, with anything but action moves.  I wonder if this has to do with the sleep deprivation, or whether I really do need the breaks from work more than I think I do.

Carry forward ...

 Gloria is still helping me with accounts.

I'm finding annotations from up to a year ago where Gloria was trying to balance her chequebook, and it's helping me reconcile the running totals back then ...

Mind you, back then I would have been able to point out to her the weird numerical coincidence that two different bills, from two different stores, with different items being purchased, six days apart, both came to the same patterned number.  (Which I think is neat, and most people don't, but Gloria came to look for and find the patterns like I do ...)  (I don't imagine anybody will ever wonder why the 2021 accounts are so tear-stained ...)

Blur

 It's probably a good idea that this started out as a collection of the updates that I sent out to keep people up to date while Gloria was in hospital.  It's often surprising to me that it's been over a month since she went into the hospital.  (On the other hand, very oddly, it's surprising that the three weeks since she died is both that short and that long.)  I should go back and read all the details again.  But I doubt that my nerves and emotions would stand it right now, so maybe later.

As I've noted elsewhere, I don't know where the time goes.  I'm trying to keep up with email, and make sure that I'm not missing anything that I should be doing.  But, yesterday, pretty much all of the lower mainland was snowed in, so I wasn't going anywhere, and yet I only got two months of the accounts done.  When I think of it, I was doing other things: checking for the paper, contacting the Sun over the fact that the paper hadn't come, some minor issues with the Lucky Mobile problem, and some other contacts.  I did get out to the local store, and that wasn't fast since the sidewalks and parking lot, despite being shovelled and plowed, were still pretty slippery.  But, as I've also said elsewhere, everything seems to take longer than it should.  Even though I'm trimming what I'm doing with the accounts, a number of the things that Gloria and I used to do together take a lot longer with one person than with two.

I am functional, as I keep saying to people who ask how I am.  I'm getting through the accounts, even if I have to stop every once in a while to howl in emotional agony.  I'm feeding myself, even if the meals might be considered a bit odd.  (I'm trying to push fruits and salads at home, to make up for the occasions of binge comfort eating at fast food places.)  I'm vacuuming the bare floors a couple of times a week.  I've done several loads of laundry to catch up, although I subsequently haven't produced enough to justify a load.  I've made a couple of grief counselling appointments with different sources.  I'm collecting resources for what I'm supposed to do once I finally get Gloria's death certificate.  (They promised the ashes and certificate some time this week, and, since it's Friday today, they don't have an awful lot of margin to fulfill on that promise.)

I'm not thinking particularly clearly, so I'm sure that there are things I should be doing that I am missing.  I still don't have any particular plans.  Things are happening around me, and I'm trying to respond appropriately, but I'm not sure that I'm a really good judge of "appropriate" right now, and a lot of time I'm running on automatic, except that "automatic" often had references to Gloria, and so pieces of the process are missing ...

Accounting for accounts ...

 I have finished January of 2021.  Which doesn't sound like much.  But today has been an extremely difficult day.

As painful as it was, I also have a bit of a sense of accomplishment.  In places I had to go back almost to October of 2020.  In trying to sort out the various files that were very hastily packed in the move I have been able to find a lot of things that I thought had been lost.  And I've been able to get through the entire month, and sort things so that later months should be a bit less time-consuming.  The answer to the question of whether I can do the accounts without Gloria thus seems to be a resounding "maybe" as opposed to a definite "no."

But it's been arduous and enervating, and I think I'll go get dinner now ...

Triggers

 It's strange, what sets you off.

I decided to finally tackle the mountain of accounts.  I've got to do tax returns soon.  I'll have to do another "own your own business" one for myself, since I wrote the book in 2020 (and will get paid something this coming year for that), and also because I did some teaching this past year.  I'll have to go back a couple of years to bring forward some of the expenses, particularly for "business use of home."  So I need to be up to date on the household accounts for that.  And, of course, I'm going to have to do a final tax return for Gloria.  (Death and taxes, and all that.)

The household account are a year out of date.  We managed to catch up to the end of 2020, probably some time in April, so that I could do the 2020 taxes this past year.  But, after that, Gloria never felt up to a session of accounts.  So 2021 is sitting in a bunch of folders, sorted by month, but that's about it.  (I thought I'd lost the first week of 2021 in the move, but I think I've found them again.  Although some pieces don't seem to be there ...)  I haven't been looking forward to the enormity of the task, particularly with so many other competing demands on my time.

So, I girded up my loins, set out the account books, got out the accordion folder that Gloria keeps ... kept the current year's bills in, looked for (and didn't find) my coloured pens that I use to distinguish different kinds of entries in the books ... and started crying.  And kept crying for quite a long time.

We always did the accounts together.  Neither of us particularly liked doing accounts.  We did them in different, but complementary, ways.  I did a kind of general ledger, and Gloria did books of accounts.  We always did the accounts together.  And now I have to do them alone.

So, after a while I started sorting the folder where I found the slips from the first week of January, to make sure that nothing else was lost, and to check what was there.  And one of the things that was there was a scrap of paper with a postal code on it, because Gloria had wanted to write a formal thank you note for the friend of my mother's who had held a reception after my mother's memorial service, and I had looked up the postal code for her.  After my mother's memorial service, Gloria never felt well enough to get that done.  So I went to the box, which I knew I had here, where Gloria kept cards for emergencies such as this, and found a thank you card, and started to write out the thank you card ... and started crying again.

I'm crying as I'm writing this.  (I thought I had more boxes of Kleenex in stock.  They are probably in the storage locker in the basement ...)  I suspect it's going to be a crying day ...

Even the next day, as well as triggering over doing the accounts, there are a considerable number of triggers in the accounts.  Purdy's.  Gloria always insisted on getting Purdy's high quality chocolates for the grandkids at Easter, or for Halloween "gifts," or if we brought house gifts to a family party.  Always.  Well, I'm not going to be buying that anymore, am I?  (I don't even have to look for Ultra Fibre any more.)  The cheque for the yearly membership for the North Shore Needle Arts Guild.  Various candy charges in the groceries, because sometimes Gloria would suddenly want candy after dinner.  (And then, if I was stocking up to much in anticipation of when she would want candy again, she'd complain that I was buying too much ...)  The charges for my haircuts, because Zahir charged me double, because he didn't charge Gloria when he did her haircut, so that I wasn't coming into the work area during CoVID restrictions, even though I was always bringing Gloria for her haircuts.  Then there's sushi, which probably meant that Gloria didn't want much dinner that day, so I was augmenting my part of dinner with a little sushi, and the date is probably an indication that this, had we but known it, was an early warning of what was to come ...

And then there's Jacques Brel's "The Old Folks" ...

(Of course, for every Jacques Brel's "The Old Folks" there's also a Stan Rogers' "Mary Ellen Carter.")