Bertram's Blog

I knew that once there was a break in my blog-a-day routine, I’d have a hard time getting back here, and so it is. (Or was.)

Life has hijacked me, and even after the computer problem seemed to be fixed, doing any sort of blog put too much pressure on me. It was easier just to let it slide, but I stole a couple of hours tonight to bring you current with my ridiculous life.

Not only have I been on the phone late into the night on two different occasions with a computer technician, I’ve been spending most of my days emptying cabinets and cupboards in preparation for the cleaning crew who was here yesterday. (The window cleaning crew was here, also, which added to the commotion, but at least I didn’t have to do anything to prepare for their arrival.)

The ways of grief are strange. I was doing fine cleaning out my father’s stuff until I came upon a glass I had put in the cupboard. I hadn’t been able to decide what to do with the item when I was packing my own glassware, so I put it in my dad’s cabinet sort of as a joke for whichever of my family would be clearing out my father’s “effects.” I don’t know why, but it never occurred to me I would be the one for the task. And seeing that glass sent me spiraling into grief.

I emailed my siblings: This is the second time I had to clear out the possessions of someone who died. When Jeff died, there was no one else, so I had no choice but to do it myself, but this time, there are a whole slew of you. Not one of you volunteered to help. Yes, I know, you all have lives, but still it would have been nice for someone to at least acknowledge that the task needed to be done. It simply was not fair.

It’s all done except for the tears. The only thing left in the house is the furniture, but that will stay here until the house is sold.

I hope none of you ever have to deal with this emotionally taxing chore that I’ve now had to deal with twice.

Maybe that wasn’t a nice message to have sent, but I was too exhausted both emotionally and physically to care about niceties.

I’ve also had to deal with chirping alarms — both smoke and burglar; bills that aren’t forwarded where they are supposed to go, nasty customer reps who won’t answer simple questions such as if we could enclose a photo of the bill with payment rather than the bill itself, and a hundred other small tasks.

And, of course, there is the matter of my recently unreliable 43-year-old VW. Because I didn’t want to risk the car breaking down during the weekend, on Sunday I hiked seven miles round trip to the nearest grocery store to get oven cleaner since the cleaners don’t carry it with them. Add in a few comestibles, and I ended up carrying a five-pound pack on the trip back. Five pounds is not much, but it totally wiped me out. Puts sort of a damper on the idea of my taking an epic walk. Truth be told, that hike to the grocery store seemed pretty epic to me!

On the bright side:

1) My computer seems to be fixed. Even after they cleaned my caches, uninstalled and reinstalled the antivirus program, there were problems, but shutting down the computer every night instead of just leaving it in sleep mode has made a big difference. The way the computer guy explained it, the computer runs on memory, and sometimes bits of the memory get tied up and become unusable, so restarting the computer resets the memory and makes more of it usable. That could be computer speak for “I haven’t a clue what is wrong with your computer, but if it works when you shut it down every night, then do it.”

2) Except for the furniture, my father’s stuff has been disposed of. All cupboards, closets, drawers, cabinets are empty. The house is so clean it looks new, (except for the carpets, but that’s next week’s task). The windows, screens, sills, shutters are all clean. And best of all is knowing I will never again have to deal with the effects of a newly dead loved one.

4) It will give me great pleasure to discontinue Charter Communications when the house is sold. They are almost as unpleasant as Microsoft folks. (Though no one, so far as I know is as unpleasant as MS people. During my computer troubles, the computer guy suggested I contact Microsoft for help on a particular registry issue. One MS person couldn’t speak clearly enough for me to understand, and when I asked her to repeat what she said, she hung up on me; another said they would help but demanded money; and third spent more time on a hard sell for some sort of protection plan than they did listening to my description of the trouble. Thank heavens for System Restore! It made the MS people redundant.)

3) I found a VW guy who specializes in air-cooled engine bugs! Yay! I have an appointment with him in two weeks. He already knows what the problem could be — the coil combined with cheap parts from the auto parts store rather than the real thing. (Bosch being the real thing, apparently.) He’ll give my car the shake test (as I understand it, they literally shake the car), and check to see if it’s worth keeping.

Several people (well, two) have told me that so much going wrong is indicative of a major shift in energy, and that breakdowns could be a sign of breakthroughs. I suppose it’s possible, and I would like to think they are right. All I know is I am exhausted.

I still have a lot of work to do — I didn’t finish packing my stuff, just threw the stuff from my cabinets and drawers in boxes to make it easy for the workers to deep clean, and I now I can’t find anything, so now I have to unpack and repack. And I still have several unfinished projects to do before I become that fabled creature — a lady of leisure.

If all goes well, I’ll be back here again tomorrow. I hope you are doing well.

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Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.