Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2002. This was Mattie's first Halloween. He was six months old and even back then pumpkins fascinated him. I will never forget that moment in time and thought we'd have a lifetime of Halloweens together.
Quote of the day:
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
I got up at 5:30am today because I had to juggle a generator inspection, getting my dad up, showered, dressed, and to his memory care center, and I needed to hop on a conference call at 10am. That may not sound bad, but I find the constant pressure of managing everyone's schedule overwhelming. At one time, Peter used to help me transport my dad back and forth and with other chores. Now I manage the tasks of five people alone.
Next week, I have been invited to participate on a panel presentation with two other non-profit leaders. I will have the opportunity to highlight Mattie Miracle (virtually) to one of our community sponsors and their members. Today's 10am call was a logistics meeting and technology check. I have to tell you, doing anything by computer makes me very nervous, because Peter used to be my tech support. Nonetheless, it was a positive call today and I feel better prepared for next week. But I have to admit, it is heart breaking not to be sharing this virtual platform with my other half. Mattie Miracle was something that I thought always united us and our commitment to Mattie's legacy was a shared passion.
The generator inspection did not happen until 11:30am. That was only because I called to complain and spoke to the company's electrical manager. I had a lovely conversation with Jake and he understood that I was promised a visit between 8am and 10am. Any case, in the process, I got an education about my generator from Jake and the person who serviced the generator also walked me through the process and now I know how to manually turn on the generator if I should need it. I have gone from the person who knew nothing, to the person who knows as much as possible about the house.
Later today, after I took my mom out and picked my dad up at his memory care center, my goal was to do some continuing education work. FORGET IT! It was a national catastrophe in my house.... the TV wasn't working. I tried unplugging the cable box, I checked our fuse box to see if any circuits were tripped, and I rebooted the router/modem. Nothing worked. I could tell all of this was making my parents anxious. So I called Verizon. All I know is for the most part, every time I call Verizon, I have lovely people helping me.
My Verizon tech was on the phone with me for an hour. He tried and tried to get our cable box to work. While talking with him, I text messaged our Verizon local service rep. He is a love, who was kind enough to give me his cell phone number. I text messaged him the problem and he instructed me to get a service ticket started, to give him the number, and he would be over my house tomorrow to correct the problem. However, it turns out that we were able to solve the problem remotely. Truly it felt like I had walked through quicksand, that is how stressed out all of this makes me. It is incredible pressure to be managing the impossible alone.
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