Day 28

Saturday, 12/29/2018

To-Do list:

Drop off Marian’s knitting
Drop off canned goods
Buy a belt

Explanations. Early on I collected all Marian’s knitting supplies — a fat sack of assorted hanks and balls of yarn, three nice cloth binders each holding dozens of knitting needles, some other knitting doo-dads — into a basket. I offered the collection to a friend who had often talked knitting with Marian, but she said no thanks, she had all that stuff. So now the collection needs to go to Jean, who will take it to the Church thrift shop. So I went through the basket again before putting it in the car, and spent the next half hour sniffling. She worked so hard at that hobby, enjoyed the challenge and even the frustrations (“Oh no, I made a mistake three rows back!”), created nice things. And of course had all her tools perfectly organized. It’s just deeply saddening to see it go.

The canned goods? Two bags of unopened tins and jars from our pantry. I cleaned out the pantry a week ago, dumped a lot of partly-used stuff (I expect never to use panko crumbs again, or the opened box of cake mix, or a half bottle of balsamic, etc. etc.), but I set aside the unopened items, meaning to donate them to some food bank. I had a notion there was a donation barrel at the local Safeway, but there wasn’t. So this morning I googled food banks and have the address of the nearest, coincidentally not far from Jean’s where I have to go anyway.

The belt. My weight dropped significantly over the past months. Per my PAMF online records, it was 185 this past August. Sometime in November I noticed my weight was just under 180 for the first time in several years. This week it has been bouncing between 176 and 178. That’s not an unhealthy weight for me at all, and not unprecedented. Back in 2009 we both did calorie-counting for several months, and I see by the PAMF records I was at 176 then for a couple of visits, before climbing back up into the 180s. (For the record, my high school weight was 165.)

Anyway, the result of being smaller is that I’ve been having to hitch up my jeans often. My belt is in its last hole and isn’t doing the job; it needs to be one hole shorter. I could punch another hole, but the belt’s at least ten years old, so why not buy a new one, sized to fit me in the middle of its range?

To-Done

Mostly. The food bank (at the Mountain View Community Center) wasn’t available; Center closed for the holidays. Got a nice belt. Dropped off knitting stuff. (Later Jean emailed to say she would offer it to another relative who’s a knitter. That would be nice!)

Then did a thing I’d written on the list with a question mark: “Campbell?” Looking ahead to where to live, I place a high priority on being close to, or actually within, some walkable town center, so I can easily stroll to shops and restaurants. I had a vague recollection that Campbell had such a center, so I drove down to look at it. Campbell does indeed have a compact, interesting and “Historic” town center. I walked around and was impressed by the dozen or more attractive restaurants, a couple of coffee shops, and lots of people strolling.

Back home and then off to a

Basketball Game

where I had an awkward moment when two fans, Fred and Cheri, asked “Where’s Marian?” I thought everybody we knew among the fans would have heard, at least from the banner that was on the fan website for a week, but nope. I wonder who else I know hasn’t heard? It was awkward; and taken aback, I just baldly said, “Oh, you haven’t heard! Marian died just earlier this month.” Which was rather a shock to them, and I apologized for being so blunt, “dumping it on you like that” I think I said. Making lemons out of lemonade. Well, so it goes.

Day 26, out of town visitors

Thursday, 12/27/2018

Today I had a long-planned visit from Joanne and Brad. Joanne is the daughter of Marian’s college roommate and long-time friend Lolly. Marian liked Joanne and Joanne shared Marian’s interest in birding. Joanne and Brad planned this visit back in November, expecting, of course, to see Marian. When that sadly did not work out, they came anyway and I was glad of their visit.

Besides Joanne and Brad, there were their daughter Sierra, and Ria, a visiting student from Thailand. As I had planned, I gave Joanne a silver and onyx pendant that Marian had made when she was learning jewelry-making in her 20s. The pendant is kind of large and clunky, but Joanne seemed to think it was quite wearable.

Then with some trepidation I invited the three women to look at the remaining items in Marian’s closet, those “better” items that consignment stores didn’t want (see Day 20). I thought they might flip their way through the hangers and see just old-lady stuff, but in fact they seemed to enjoy looking at everything and critiquing each other’s taste, and took away several items each.

Then as planned we went to look at the Stanford campus, although since the trip was planned Sierra has decided not to apply to Stanford. After a short walk around the quad and a bit of a drive around, they dropped me at home and headed off to meet another friend. So that was a pleasant and warming visit.

In the afternoon I spent another couple of hours on a programming project and actually made some progress.

In general I think I am feeling more comfortable in my new life. I haven’t been bothered by that low-level anxiety for several days. It’s easy to trip into spasms of grief of course (I nearly broke down explaining the provenance of the pendant), but on the other hand I’m noting little satisfactions. Every partnership requires compromise, and when the partnership ends, those constraints are removed. I mentioned in passing on Day 9 that I’d gotten rid of three ferns that I’d never liked. That was one compromise eased. Here’s another: I stopped at the grocery store yesterday and among other items, bought a loaf of bread — bread of a brand that we never had in the house because Marian didn’t like it. I did like it, and now I can bring it home when I want. Trivial, but a tiny up-side to the process of fitting into a new life.

Day 25, Boxing up shards

Wednesday, 12/26/2018

Began the day with the customary run. (Marian often complimented me on doing something for exercise every — well, almost every — weekday morning. I accepted the compliments but felt awkward, as if I didn’t deserve credit for doing something so simple. I really do it out of fear; I’m scared by prospect of how fast my body will turn into a blob if I don’t keep it moving. Twenty years ago, when I was still cycling, I was “off the bike” for six weeks because of a persistent pneumonia. I’ve never forgotten the shock, when I could get back on the bike, of how feeble I had become in a few weeks, and how long it took to get any sort of condition back.)

Then I took care of a loose end. I’ve been keeping Marian’s laptop going just so I could check it each day to see what mail she’d gotten. Boy, was she subscribed to a lot of lists! But after a couple of weeks of clicking “unsubscribe” — and changing the contact email on a number of financial accounts — I’d gotten it down to almost no incoming mail at all. But in the middle of the night a couple of nights ago, it had dawned on me, doh! why do I not simply redirect email to her gmail account, into mine? There must be some way to do that. Today, with only 15 minutes of fiddling around reading Gmail help articles, I found out I could sign in as her, then designate me as a “delegate” who could read her emails and reply or delete them. So I set that up.

Now I can let her laptop sit on a shelf until such time as I can get up the nerve to reformat the drive and sell it. Opening it to see her familiar messy desktop littered with files she’d created… I can’t. Not yet.

I spent a couple of hours on a programming project, or rather, an hour rummaging through system documentation trying to figure out how to do something, and then encountering a bug that kept me from running a test case, then an hour googling for solutions for this bug. Programming. I do it for fun, I tell myself.

Shards

As 2pm was approaching and I’m due to help sort books at FOPAL today I pulled down another shelf of books to box up and donate. Here I hit a couple of “shards”, bits of the old life that is going away, which hurt quite a lot as they peel off.

One is a box of bookmarks. We were both readers and until, say, ten years ago we had several books apiece in progress. So we needed bookmarks, and we’d grab free bookmarks wherever, and after a while Marian set up a box on a handy bookshelf to hold bookmarks so it was easy to grab one. There are bookmarks in the box from several decades of reading. Bookmarks from bookstores we’ve been in: Powell’s in Portland, Davis-Kidd in Knoxville, the Tattered Cover in Denver, Munro’s in Victoria. Dozens.

Now, here’s the thing. Starting a decade ago, we pretty much stopped buying physical books and moved to reading on our laptops: stuff on the web, or books on Kindle for Mac. We typically had one (1) bookmark in operation, in whichever book we were reading aloud from at bedtime. Everything else was on a screen. So these bookmarks have been gathering dust, unused, for years. The newest is from a hotel in Normandy from our 2012 trip there.

Unused, unregarded bookmarks. They should be tossed. But it definitely hurts to do it.

As I was boxing books from this shelf I hit three map books from our days touring the UK: a road atlas for Ireland, the AA road atlas of Great Britain, and a book that was absolutely essential to us for several years, the Master Atlas of Greater London. You see, children, there was once a time when we didn’t have GPS or a phone that ran a map app. We were utterly dependent on maps printed on paper, if you can imagine something so crude!

These handsome volumes have no use whatever now or in the future. The maps are out of date; before today they literally haven’t been off the shelf for 20 years; it has been literally forty years since we used the London Atlas. On my first day of sorting at FOPAL I learned that travel guides printed before 2000 are not kept; they go straight to the recycle bin. These books need to go into the recycle bin right here at home.

Along with the bookmarks.

And it hurts.

I can imagine a sympathetic person saying “Well, why don’t you keep them, then? Or a couple of bookmarks anyway.” But that just puts it off. I’d face the same issue when packing to move to wherever I go next spring. It’s just more possessions to be responsible for, and really useless ones at that.

There’s the contradiction: these objects have a triple nature:

To me, they are powerful symbols of a life I once lived.
To anyone else they are meaningless.
And for me, they have no practical use in the life I am moving into.

There are a lot of objects in this house that have this contradictory nature. How many do I keep?

Day 23, Calendar, Cushions, Varnish, Amazon, Good Grief

Monday 12/24/2018

My Calendar

It’s Christmas eve, and as of the morning my calendar for today and tomorrow was completely blank. This did not perturb me. I have intentionally, deliberately ignored everything about the holiday season this year, first as Marian was getting sicker and neither she nor I wanted any celebration; and of course after she died I did not want to go through any empty motions.

In an academic sort of way I thought it might seem sad to have nothing to do Christmas day, not so much because I desired company, but because if someone asked me later in the week, “What did you do on Christmas?” I would have to say (no doubt in an Eeyore-like monotone) “Ohhh, nuthinnn.” Which would be embarrassing, and would provoke entirely unwanted sympathy from the questioner. Or maybe I could lie, invent dinner with a relative the questioner doesn’t know.

I went for my customary run, which felt fine. During it, I got a text from my friend Suzanne, very graciously inviting me to share supper with them on Christmas day! I replied with a grateful acceptance, and now I have something on the calendar for tomorrow.

I texted back asking what I could bring, and Suzanne suggested “flowers for the table”. Sure, I thought, no problem… oh, wait. It’s Christmas bloody Eve and I have no idea where to get a flower arrangement, OMG OMG OMG what’ll I do? Yelp to the rescue; there are at least four florists within a mile radius. I walked into the nearest and the proprietor, a very pleasant woman, said, “Well, there’s this one I’m just working on,” and showed me a nice arrangement of red candles and red roses in pine branches (not botanically convincing, but a good color match). So I stood by and commented as she finished it with lots of sprigs of tiny white blossoms, so it ends up a bit like miniature fireworks. So that’s set.

Cushions and Varnish

After that I finished putting Leather CPR goop on all the green cushions for the second and last time, and put yet another goddam coat of urethane varnish on the little tables, because there were two little screw-ups in the previous coat that I couldn’t stop seeing.

Amazon Fail

Back in 2014 when I was an original backer of Soylent, my first order of Soylent came with a pretty Takeya pitcher for mixing a day’s nutrition. Last week, the plastic top ring split, so I ordered a replacement from Amazon. According to Amazon it was delivered to my porch Saturday at 5:30pm. That would be 15 minutes after I left the house to get supper and go to a movie. It wasn’t there, and didn’t show Sunday; then today when I got back from my run, on the porch was the empty box. It had been crudely ripped open, and inside was only the little air pillows for packing. Inside my mail slot was a business card of a Palo Alto police officer, with the note, “Inform Amazon your package was stolen, if that was the case.” I assume the officer had found the emptied package somewhere and brought it around to my house.

Well, you know, Amazon offers no way to tell it, “My package was stolen.” You can return a shipment if the goods or the package are damaged. I started down that path but realized, how could I return an empty box? It would just confuse things. Back to the “where’s my stuff” link: nope; Amazon doesn’t give you any way to say, my package was stolen, please send another. At least, that I could find. It was only $18, I just ordered one.

Good Grief

Pathways Home Health, the company that provided home care for Marian after her operation, and again during her Hospice period, send me a brochure on Grief Support. Based on this I think I’m getting off pretty lightly:

As we grieve during and after the death of a loved one, we may feel numbness or anxiety, shock or fear, nausea or exhaustion. Confusion, denial, or disorientation are also common. … You may feel flooded with sadness, guilt, or a sense of being in a fog.

OK, I’ve recorded anxiety a couple of times, although not the last few days. Surges of sadness, definitely; although the strongest of these are associated, as I’ve written, with the loss of a lifestyle or life-pattern, rather than the loss of a person. When I think of Marian I feel pity and regret. But the sadness of bereavement is different, comes at different times and from different triggers. (I still can’t bring myself to take down that list of entrées from the bulletin board; and there is a whole closet I am carefully avoiding.)

Anyway they offer a “Partner Loss” group session on Tuesdays, resuming January 7th. I will think about this; maybe I’ll attend one.

Day 21, what will I do with myself?

Saturday, 12/22/2018

9am: In my Google calendar, today and the next two days (through Christmas) are blank. The first un-eventful days since… I don’t know when. How will I fill them? There are many possibilities… I’ll update this post later.

For a start, I made an errand run, first to the hardware store to turn in three fluorescent bulbs for recycling, then to Whole Foods for some groceries. I supplement the meal replacements with fruit, cheese, avocados, occasional bacon or sausage. Stuff that I can prepare in 5 minutes or less. While making this run I was hit with a couple of waves of deep sadness, not triggered by anything specific, just… sad.

Putting the groceries away turned into a further clean-out of the pantry. I’ve been nibbling at the edges of this job off and on. Threw out two more boxes of breakfast cereal that were lurking up there. Box of cake flour: out. I’m recycling these food items: the food itself is poured into a bio-bag and put in the green recycle bin; the box is flattened for the blue bin. I set aside quite a few unopened cans and bottles; I mean to find a food donation box for them. Saved a container of baker’s sugar because it will work in the hummingbird feeders. But I wonder how long the cake flour and baker’s sugar had been up there? I can’t remember the last time Marian did any baking.

Brought in the hummingbird feeders and filled them. The feeders tend to get patches of a nasty black mold inside and have to be thoroughly cleaned. We’ve been supporting several hummers for a couple of years now. I feel obligated to feed them through the winter, but come spring when blossoms appear, they’ll be on their own.

Finished painting the little tables. There are imperfections but I’m done. They look better than they did after 40 years of neglect.

I have several “real” projects, projects that might have meaning beyond my domestic room. Two software projects, two books. I haven’t “laid a finger” (to use a phrase of my mother’s) on any of those worthwhile projects in weeks. This afternoon I spent two hours re-familiarizing myself with one of the software projects — rereading the code, editing the comments, getting back into it. Two hours is about all the concentrated thinking my brain can stand, but I did that much, and it felt like progress.

Watched the rest of the Return of the King DVD special features, all about the making of that huge project. They wrapped in 2003, 15 years ago. Wow.

Went out for a burger at Gott’s, then to see Bohemian Rhapsody. So quite a bit of stuff in this empty Saturday. Just to make sure tomorrow isn’t empty, I scheduled myself for a docent round at the Museum. And so to bed.

Day 19, Marian’s closet

The play last night was oooo-kayyy I guess. Into the Woods is a very complicated play with lots of characters, and the Los Altos group did a very good job of staging it in the confines of the tiny Bus Barn Theater. My seat was in the front row and I had to be careful not to stretch out for fear of tripping one of the actors. Most of the cast was competent (the young woman playing Cinderella was really good). But the play itself, oh my goodness. The first act ran an hour and a quarter, the second didn’t start until 9:40 or so, and it is slow and full of long, soliloquizing songs with very little melody. Didn’t get home until 11pm.

Thursday 20/12/2018

Walked to the Y for a workout in chilly fog. Then spent an hour beginning the process of clearing out all Marian’s clothes. I started with drawers in various cabinets. When sister in law Jean arrived, we began the process of dividing the clothes into “thrift shop” versus “consignment”.

Jean said her church’s thrift shop would take all used clothes, even shoes and socks, which surprised me. So everything worn-looking or inexpensive went to them, about 8 large plastic garbage sacks to stuff into the trunk of her car.

Almost that much bulk, four plastic sacks and some jackets and ensembles still hanging up, are the “consignment” collection. I don’t know anything about second-hand clothes stores, so I have emailed a couple of women who might, for advice.

This was not too bad an emotional experience, as long as I kept focussed on the practical job at hand and took care not to picture Marian wearing any of the items or remember a time when she got it or wore it. I was astonished at how much she had neatly (of course) packed away. She had at least 20 nice scarves in a wide variety of patterns, and she almost never wore a scarf. I recognized just one, a very soft knitted lavender-brown one. She bought it in Germany because we kept seeing German women who were wearing scarves and she thought the style looked good.

One object just broke me up. I tried to talk about it to Jean and just could not make my voice work. (Fortunately emotion doesn’t clog up my typing fingers the way it does my throat and mucous membranes…) Sometime in the 1990s, Marian embarked on making a quilt, based on a very elaborate pattern of stitched flowers. She bought the fabric and the matching thread; she stitched probably four complete squares out of the twenty or so in the pattern; cut and sewed parts (stems, petals) for a few more. But she found her eyesight just wouldn’t support the very fine hand-stitching required. She stowed the project neatly in a drawer; once every few years she’d take it out and look at it; but she could never finish it.

So here is this unfinished quilt, a pile of neatly-cut fabric sections, paper patterns and templates, and small boxes of completed components, representing probably a couple hundred hours of work with hundreds more to finish it. Does it go to the landfill?

Jean took it and said she was confident that the thrift shop people would find someone who wanted it. I hope she’s right; anyway it is a relief to have it out the house, I guess.

Day 18, Books and Haircut

Last night’s adventure was to attend a “story slam” put on by The Moth. Back-story: my niece Laurel has been trying to connect me to her friend Ed Lewis, who has an avocation as a story-teller. Ed was going to be in San Francisco for this slam, and we agreed to meet before the event to eat. My friend Scott was interested so we drove up together. Ed is a cheerful guy with a lot of stories. At the slam, anyone can put their name in a bag, from which ten names were drawn to tell their stories in five minutes each. Ed’s name wasn’t drawn. His professional opinion of the tellers who were chosen was not positive, except for the two who were scored highest by the judges. Those two really did tell gripping personal tales with confidence and panache. Ed invited us to come to a story-telling festival he’s running in January to hear “really good, professional tellers.”

Wednesday, 12/19/2018

After a run (another good one, 40 minutes nonstop and felt fine) I spent some time trying to master this WordPress blog’s styling. Ended up using the WordPress online chat for help, which was quite helpful. But I really would like to get an archive of prior posts in the sidebar, similar to what Blogger offers, and it doesn’t seem possible.

New Gig

At 1pm I went for my first volunteer gig at FOPAL. This was quite enjoyable. I’m going to like this weekly 2-hour gig. What I’m doing for now is sorting. FOPAL has defined about 60 interest categories, like “computers”, “classic literature”, “travel narrative”, “movies/tv” and so on. Each category has some shelf space in the big Sale Room, where the monthly book sales take place. Each category has at least one volunteer “manager” who prices and arranges her category’s books on the shelf before sale day.

People come to the door with bags and boxes of books as donations, and of course these are not nicely categorized. The donation boxes and bags pile up in a small mountain in the center of the Sorting Room. Around the walls of the Sorting Room are shelves with boxes labeled for each category. What I and other sorters do is to open a donation box; look at each book; decide if it is worth keeping at all, and if so, into what category box to drop it. Then put the book in the box for its category. When a category box fills up, move it to the appropriate area of the sale room for the category manager to handle.

It’s a fun job, good mental exercise evaluating the books, and physical exercise as well, walking back and forth and carrying heavy boxes of books around. Nice people to work with, too, as one would expect at an all-volunteer outfit.

Haircut

Since the 1980s, Marian and I both had our hair cut by Chris Johnson. She gave Marian’s last shampoo and blow-dry the week before she died. On the way home from that appointment Marian asked what I planned to do about haircuts when she was gone. I said “Oh, probably stay with Chris, no point in changing”. So today was the appointment for haircuts that we’d made weeks earlier. I left early from the FOPAL gig to make the 4pm appointment. Chris and I kind of talked around issues, not doing a lot of reminiscing about Marian, so I only choked up a couple of times.

Home for a rest and supper, then I go out again at 7:30 to see Into the Woods at the Bus Barn theater.

Day 17, Shards keep falling

Tuesday 12/18/2018

I hit a couple of smaller instances today of the emotions triggered by the removal of “Beau” on Sunday, where the grief was not for the loss of my wife, but for the visible removal of a piece of the life I am leaving behind.

Similar thing today. I started by recycling a stack literally 6 inches thick, of paper transaction records and monthly statements from the early years of our managed accounts, and some other historical records dating back into the ’80s. When that wad dropped into the blue recycle bin it was like there was a mechanical connection to my sinuses. I just choked up. At old papers of no value, papers that we stopped accumulating over 15 years ago and hadn’t looked at between then and now?

Here’s another trivial trigger: the corkboard in the kitchen where we thumb-tacked things to remember. I started pulling irrelevant stuff off it. Out-of-date notes about museum exhibits to see, phone numbers of vendors I’ll never use again. Stuff. And I got to the printed list of the thirty-odd dishes that we liked to cook. It was a reminder list, so when we were planning the week’s menu on Sunday, we could look the list over and say, oh, right, I’ll do that pasta, you can do this stir-fry. Won’t be doing any of those dishes again. I know this, in fact I’ve been living very contentedly and healthily off meal replacement shakes supplemented by fruit and the occasional can of tuna, for two weeks. But to pull down this visible reminder of the old life was just — hard.

More and more I am coming to grasp that as a widower perhaps the least of my bereavements is the loss of my wife. With her went an entire, carefully-crafted lifestyle. It doesn’t go all at once; it peels away in chunks, or shards as I found myself saying on Sunday. And each shard that drops away is a fresh bereavement.

A more direct trigger came a bit later. While organizing the now stripped-down file drawer in the desk, I saw yet another folder labeled “Stocks”. What? How many stock broker folders were there, for pete’s sake? It turned out, this one was possibly the oldest. It contained Marian’s records of her IBM Stock Purchase Plan purchases. Heart of it was a small spiral-bound leather notebook in which were her hand-written records of employee stock purchases starting in 1962, and continuing to 1980. There were other papers as well, a printed spreadsheet showing the purchases and changes in value over time as the stock split and so on.

Historically and financially these are of no value. All those shares were accounted for and sold in ’95, the capital gains taxes paid, and the money pooled in our managed account. I recycled the papers but I could not bring myself to trash the notebook. It was so typical of her that she would, one, keep a record in a journal in her neat draftsman’s printing over twenty years of employment; and two, retain that in her desk, ready for reference, for another thirty years. I put the journal into the “Marian” folder. I’ll probably never look at it again, but it is just beyond me to discard it, at least yet.

Anyway the cleaning lady came and went, the house is all spiffy. I stained the two table tops, got the car washed, and faxed my witness report to the insurance company for the lady whose Prius I saw bashed the other day. Takin’ care of bidness. Gonna take a nap now; and then going out with Scott for the evening. Report on that tomorrow.

Day 15, Highs and Lows

Sunday 12/16/2018

This day started out with

A High

which requires some back-story. For mumble-mumble years, every Sunday morning Marian and I walked about a quarter-mile to the coffee shop in Midtown to read the Sunday paper and have cappucini and sweet rolls. Late last year, some quite noisy groups of friends started occupying the place Sunday mornings. This particularly annoyed Marian, so we switched to the much quieter (in fact, so quiet one wonders how long they’ll be business) Baron Barista, about 2 miles away. That meant driving, not walking, which was OK because Marian’s walking distance shrank steadily over that time anyway.

Last week I mentioned how it was quite an emotional experience to go back alone to the P.A. Café Sunday morning. Today I had the notion to go to Baron Barista instead; and then had the sudden notion, “Wonder if I could walk that?” A quick check of Google Maps showed it was 2.2 miles and 40 minutes, which seemed well within my capacities, so off I went, paper under my arm.

Swinging along it dawned on me, with a real jolt of pleasure, that I was doing something that was only possible to me as a bachelor. Even a decade ago, such a walk would have been out of the question for Marian, and so wouldn’t have occurred to me as a possibility. Here I was, doing a new thing that was possible only in my new life. Trivial though it was, it felt good.

Later, the Downers

Forty-odd years ago, Marian brought home a “pony-tail palm” (beaucarnia recurvata) which over time grew and grew until “Beau” towered nearly 7 feet above the rim of the pot, and had branched out like a menora.

Knowing that my time in this house was limited, I have worried about what to do with Beau for months. I wanted to find a new permanent home for this plant, and hated the idea that it might end up in a compost pile. Fortunately, Liz Shaw, a niece-in-law of Marian’s sister Jean, is a landscape gardener by trade, appreciates plants, and agreed to take Beau into her own home.

The arrangement was for her to come today and at noon sharp, she and her son Spencer pulled into the driveway. They very professionally staked and tied Beau’s branches, moved him out to the truck, and wrapped him securely in a sheet. They roped him him securely into the bed of the truck and he was off to his new home.

I had not expected this to be an emotional event; after all this was exactly what I wanted to have happen, had planned for, and marked the end of my responsibility for the plant.

But it was emotional, very much so. I had a hard time controlling my voice saying goodbye to Liz, and for half an hour after they left I wandered around the house, sniffling and wiping my eyes — closer to actual tears than I’ve been since Day 2 — and mumbled a couple of times, “Just shards of the old life, going away,” which was the best I could do to sum it up.

Up a little

So I’d had the plan (since Dennis wasn’t able to join me for The Green Book) that I’d go see Ralph Wrecks the Internet solo. It was time to execute, so I blew my nose and acted. I love modern movie going. I bought my senior ticket for Century 16 on Fandango.com, had the ticket sent to my phone, walked into the theater 15 minutes before showtime to wave my phone at the scanner, sat down in my reserved lounge chair and reclined it. Aside from the fact that they showed twenty minutes of previews after the start of the nominal show-time of 2pm, it was a good experience.

Day 14: Basketball

Saturday 12/15/2018

I had conflicting feelings coming into this day. Stanford Women’s Basketball was a central part of our shared experience for the past 20 years. We attended every home game and quite a few away ones. Marian put thousands of hours into maintaining the fan website, with some help from me in the last two years. The team and their success or failure was always a good topic of conversation between us. And at least half the people we know to talk to are fellow basketball fans, met at Maples Pavilion or on the road.

So today was the first home game since Marian’s death. I had to attend — I’d pretty well promised her to keep following the team, and I would feel unfaithful to her memory to not follow through. On the other hand, I was getting emotional just thinking about going. The last time I was there was Marian’s last game; here’s a picture of us taken by one of our friends at that game:

I knew I’d have to be accepting of lots of “How are you” hugs and “We miss her” and so on. But as with all the other shared experiences, I need to re-inhabit this in my new person, or I’ll never feel comfortable.

So I went, and it was a pretty good experience. Our long-time seat-neighbor, Nancy (who coincidentally lost her husband to pancreatic cancer a few years ago) was kind and practical. Su stopped by and talk at half-time, and Don.

The whole experience was much improved by the team’s performance. On Day 1, in the afternoon, I listened to the audio stream as they lost ugly to Gonzaga, and actually thought, “Oh, Marian, I’m glad you can’t hear this…”; and this game was against Baylor, ranked #3 (Stanford is ranked #11), so it didn’t rate to be a win. But in fact the Cardinal took an early lead, stretched it to 18 points in the third quarter, and held on to win by 8. An exciting game in front of a large and very enthusiastic crowd. So it was a fun to watch and to cheer at, and people were very kind.

Before the game I walked to midtown and got some 9×12 mailers, addressed the packet for Via Benefits, and mailed it on the way to the game. On return I put a final coat of clear poly on that little table, and I think it’s going to look alright. If it does, fine, I’ll redo the tops of the two littler ones, which are also worn and stained. If not, I’ll have a judgment call as to whether to sand it down and try again, or give up.

Closed the afternoon watching Cardinal Women’s Volleyball in their national championship game. Did they win? I’m posting this now, before it’s over.