Val Has a Near-Drowning Incident in Minutiae. Multilpe Incidents, in Fact

Here's the thing. People grieve in different ways.

Some people wail and swoon and let it all out in public. Some people sniffle quietly in a corner. Some people hold it in until it hits them like ton of bricks. Some people find dark humor in the details and do their best not to let their inappropriate flag fly. And some people like to think they have control.

As a would-be controller from way back, I recognize this unconscious strategy in my sister the ex-mayor's wife. I love my sister. She's all I have left. Which is not to say she doesn't drive me crazy. We've never been the close siblings who wanted a double wedding, or to hang out with each other in our spare time, or would bear each other's children if something was wrong with our babymaking plumbing. But most of the time, we are civil to each other. And sometimes we have great laughs.

Ever since Mom had her seizure the day before Thanksgiving, Sis was the one taking her to appointments, talking to doctors, filling prescriptions, laying out meds, doing the laundry, and paying the bills when Mom was not able. She's already retired, you know. Even if she was not the one with more flexible time for these tasks, she would have taken charge. Many a time, Mom got mad at Sis. And Sis wondered to me if she was pushing too hard for Mom to do things she was not capable of doing. I think Mom was more upset with herself, and Sis was wishing Mom was better. Nothing made Sis happier than the day Mom snapped at me in the hospital. "See? Now you know what it's like." Still, Sis would let all that Mom-mood roll off her back, and continue fighting for the best care she could squeeze out of the doctors and nurses and health care administrators. I commended her more than once for her diligence.

Currently, Sis has me on a tight leash over the disbursement of the estate, and I am quick to heel. I complain about her here, and to Hick, but I am not going to risk a blowup to make myself feel better. A couple of times I have voiced my hurt feelings, and Sis apologized, saying that was not her intent. I believe her.

The cleaning out of Mom's house is taking my whole summer. Except for the two weeks of Sis's vacation, when I was not allowed to step foot on the premises. Every time we meet there, I tell The Pony, "It's only going to take a couple of hours. We should be able to finish my bedroom, Grandma's bedroom, and half of the family room." He sighs. And all we get done is the rest of my room, which should have entailed boxing up a dresser full of cross-stitch and other crafty items.

What we actually did was this. The Pony and I boxed items such as little jars and cross-stitch books and thread and Christmas stuff. Sis looked at EVERY SINGLE ITEM separately. That's right. Even that one drawer in my other dresser that held old T-shirts from my high school days. EVERY SINGLE T-SHIRT. She found a drawing pad in which I used to do pencil sketches. And pulled out EVERY SINGLE DRAWING. I had to tell her, "Hey! That's my stuff. Leave it alone.!" She did then. A little huffily.

This is what takes so long. I rue the days we discovered a cache of greeting cards. I now know who wrote each one, and what they said. EVERY SINGLE CARD! Sis had to take each one out of the envelope, open it, read it, comment on who it was from, and decide whether to keep it or throw it away. Don't even get me started on the costume jewelry that lined the top of Mom's dresser. That's how it goes.

Sunday, we went through the family room closet. It was stacked with board games, and had a shelf build into one half that housed old teaching supplies. Mom had been a retired 4th grade teacher for 20 years. So you know those markers were dried out by now, and that the pencil erasers were petrified, and the construction paper was fragile, and the tape didn't have the right stickiness any more. Of course Sis had to test each item. And open each game to see how many pieces were missing. That was a moot point. Sis wanted those games, and I said she could have them all. Every. Single. One. So all she really had to do was load them in her car. Was looking in them going to bring the pieces back? No. But we spent three hours on that closet.

It's a control thing. Sis is letting go. One piece of Mom at a time. I can't fault her for that. I can, however, complain. That's how I deal with it. There's no question of me taking over, cleaning out half of the house while Sis does half. Nope. She would follow along right behind me, doing it over. Like when I got the albums down out of the bedroom closet. Anyone for Dean Martin? Eddy Arnold? Charlie Pride? Sis had to sit down in the rocking chair, pick up the whole stack, and read the song list on the back of each one. Then ask if I wanted it. She took home all but the six I chose. "The ex-mayor and I put on records like this all the time."

We were supposed to close on the house this Thursday. However, last Friday the title company called about a glitch in the county records. The map shows an extra three acres included as part of the estate, but it was actually added later, and was not linked with the main house and property in the recorder's office. Therefore, it was not on the beneficiary deed, and might have to go through probate. Which would delay the sale another six months. We think we can switch it over within 2-30 days. The lawyer is working on it.

Sis will be cutting him a check from Mom's bank account. She also paid the water bill, which is done by going to a person's house and paying 1/10 of the bill, what with it being backwoods hillbilly town, and ten families sharing the city water line from the city limits. She has kept the house insurance up to date, paid the electric bill, and only last week shut off the phone service. We kept it for a while, because cell reception there is abominable. With the sale so close, she figured nobody would need to reach us there much longer.

Now...after all that...here's my revenge. It was subconscious, you know. Keep that in mind.

As I said, we had scheduled Sunday afternoon to work on Mom's house. Hick and the ex-mayor would do the basement, because Sis had already handled everything down there the previous weekend. Saturday night, I had a dream. I was at an outdoor sporting event, perhaps a Little League game, sitting in a lawn chair next to Mom. She was on my right, in a webby, woven, old-timey lawn chair. The webbing was yellow and white. Mom wore yellow pants, white tennis shoes, and a white knit top with a plaid yellow-and-white cotton shirt over it, unbuttoned. Yes. My dreams are quite detailed. I had seen her wear this outfit before. Everything about Mom was bright and yellow. Not golden. Not glowing, Just a cheery yellow scheme.

In this dream, we were waiting for Sis to arrive. Just chatting, like old times. It seems like Mom had been lamenting that things in her house were breaking down. In reality, she had just had new windows installed a few months before she passed away. Dream Mom was wearing her sunglasses. She turned to me and said, "And my phone won't work!"

So many thoughts went through my dream head. I wanted to tell her, "Mom, you're not going to be needing that phone, because, um...you're dead." Of course I couldn't tell her than, even in my dream. So do you know what Dream Val told Dream Mom? "You're going to have to talk to Sis about that."

Yeah. Even in my dreams, I'm a smart ass.