Pat Bertram's Blog, page 104

So it Goes

Updates!

Tomorrow the concrete truck is coming to pour my garage foundation. Yay!

It’s been rather warm lately, so I connected my hoses and watered the bushes that were transplanted. (The guys who dug my garage foundation were very kind and transplanted the lilacs and native roses they had to dig up to make room for the garage. Service above and beyond!) After all that, I certainly don’t want the poor shocked plants to die, so I watered them again today. (I watered them when they were replanted, but not since then.) Then I figured I might as well water the still inert bulbs. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do, but since they are not yet established, I figure it couldn’t hurt. Maybe they’ll think (to the extent that plant matter can think) that it rained.

I did find another blooming snowdrop, as well as two or three green tips poking out of the ground. Considering my success rate (a whopping 1% so far!), I ordered some summer bulbs, including a few for a moonlit garden. I hadn’t planned on ordering more bulbs, but the company kept offering me free shipping, and free shipping is a terrible thing to waste. I also ordered a frog to bring me — or rather the poor plants who have to depend on me — good luck. Besides, a friend said I needed to buy my house an anniversary present every year (which is what she does, and she’s my house-owning hero, so I like to follow her suggestions) and I figured the frog, being so frivolous, is the perfect celebratory gift. I suppose the garage would have been an adequate anniversary present, but okay, I admit it — I just wanted the frog.

[image error]

I considered having a party to celebrate my house ownership anniversary this Saturday, but I don’t do well with groups — I tend to feel superfluous, and I certainly don’t want to feel superfluous in my own home — so I invited my neighbor for tea, then got the courage to invite another friend, and then a couple more, so now I have . . . not a party, since they will be coming one at a time, but perhaps an open house. So, if you are in the area on Saturday, stop by for tea and maybe even some cake and ice cream.

In honor of this anniversary, a friend sent me a house. Actually, a room in a house. Well, actually, a room in a virtual house. It’s Jackie Lawson’s curio collection, and oh, such fun!

[image error]

There’s all sorts of puzzles and trinkets and things to click, including a mandala maker. And now I have a new obsession (as if I needed another one!). Making mandalas online is such a kick. There’s no such thing as an ugly creation.

[image error]

And just an aside — at a meeting today, we were told the guidelines for avoiding coronavirus: “wash your hands.” Um, really? Why aren’t people already washing their hands? Soap and water help prevent all sorts of diseases, including the miscellany of viruses included in “flu.” 200,000 deaths from flu doesn’t worry people, but 2,000 from this new disease does? This is at least the fifth would-be pandemic I’ve lived through. Maybe because I always wash my hands. And since I’m griping — the CDC says to wash your hands with soap and water, so why are stores running out of hand sanitizers and not soap?

But so it goes.

Maybe I’ll go make another mandela.

[image error]***

[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Small Town Encounters

When I was at the post office yesterday, I noticed my mail deliverer working the window. “So this is why my mail is always late,” I quipped. She explained they were shorthanded, so she was basically working two jobs, but that she’d be by later with my mail. We chatted a few minutes, then, as I headed out the door, a woman I didn’t recognize walked in and said,  “Hi, Pat.” I stopped and studied her for a second. Before I could come across as rude, I said hastily, “I’m sorry. I don’t remember your name.”

She smiled. “I only remember your name because of the hat.” She then told me her name, which didn’t ring a bell, but when she mentioned her affiliation with a local church, I finally remembered meeting her. At a pie auction at a local church, she’d stopped me and asked, “Why do they call you Pat in the Hat?”

“Because I always wear a hat,” was my answer. So apparently, not only am I easy to remember because of my hats, so is my name easy to remember.

[image error]

Although I make is seem as if this is an ideal small town, it isn’t, though some things truly are ideal. A library within walking distance? Priceless!

Other things, not so much. Although I still have no problem with walking to do errands, I’ve developed an inexplicable aversion to walking just to be walking, Well, today I had a few graphic examples that helped explain why I don’t enjoy walking as much as I once did. For one, dogs run loose — not all of them, and not all the time, but enough to be a problem, and I definitely do not like encountering strange and hostile dogs. There is a leash law here, but apparently, the sheriff’s department doesn’t care, and neither do the owners. As one woman told me, “If I were a dog, I would prefer to run loose, even if I end up getting run over.” And, since the dog disappeared shortly after she told me that, I’m sure she, if not her dog, got her preference.

Another issue is the cars. I don’t think people here are used to pedestrians. Too often, if I’m crossing a street or cutting through a parking lot to a store, drivers will simply ignore me or mow me down as if I weren’t even there. I have to be extra vigilant because of those who aren’t at all vigilant.

And then there are all the young men of working age who apparently don’t work. I detoured to avoid encountering a couple of small groups of men and several single wanderers. Good thing I haven’t lost my big city wariness.

I sure do miss having a wilderness area to wander around without all the unpleasant encounters. (Well, there were a coyote or two, and an occasional snake, but I could handle those.) I suppose I could drive somewhere to walk, but really, where’s the sense in that?

Once the garage is finished and I can get my storage items out of my exercise room, I’ll be able to use my elliptical again, but that’s only for a few minutes at a time and doesn’t at all take the place of walking. I have been adding more time to my dance workouts, but even that doesn’t take the place of walking.

I often encounter neighbors walking around the block across the street, and I might have to do that, too. And there is a fairly safe, though rather short street I sometimes walk. Meantime, I try to do a lot of errands!

***

[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Rebar

[image error]The construction workers were here today to put the rebars in the garage foundation. I’ve heard of rebars, and I even know what they do, but I didn’t know what the difference between a bar and a rebar is, so I did a bit of research.

You probably already know, but the bar in “rebar” is a bar, as in a rod rather than as in a tavern (though in the case of a tavern, I suppose you could still re-bar, as in bar-hopping and re-bar-hopping). The “re” part in rebar is short for “reinforcing” or “reinforcement.” Aha! So a rebar is simply a reinforcing bar. That part I get. The explanation for why a rebar is necessary is what strains my brain.

The forces of compression and tension always work together within an object. The force of compression squeezes things together, while the force of tension pulls things apart. Concrete has a high compression strength, but it has weak tension. (Apparently, concrete can stand up to compression, as when a building is built on a concrete foundation, but it can’t stand up to forces of tension, which is why the walls of my old garage kept sliding apart and cracking the floor. Even though the foundation was shallow, the garage might have held up if rebars had been used in the construction. Or so I understand.)

Although I have never specifically heard of the forces of compression and tension (or if I had heard, I’ve long forgotten) and don’t really understand how they work, I am familiar with the concept of opposing universal forces. Yin and yang, which is the ultimate example of forces that work together to make a whole. The nuclear force, which keeps nucleons in the atom’s nucleus together at the same time it keeps them apart to prevent an implosion. The push and pull of orbits that keep the solar system and galaxy in order. The give and take of relationships.

[image error]

It’s not really important to understand the concept of rebars as long as the workers do, and as long as the work passes inspection, which it did. So, next step — concrete!

***

[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

A Taste of Spring

In five days, I will have been a house owner for an entire year. That year sure went fast! I came here just as spring was making itself felt, and today, as if in celebration, spring decided to make a visit. Sunny skies. Gorgeous weather.

None of my bulbs (except for that one intrepid snow drop that’s still hanging around) have put in an appearance, but if, as Aristotle says, “One swallow does not a summer make,” then I’m sure it also holds true that one fine day does not a spring make. So there’s still time for them to make an appearance.

[image error]

Still, bits of green are starting to peek above the dead leaves that didn’t get blown away last fall. Most of the green, I’m sure, are weeds of some sort, but until I find out for sure, I welcome the color. (And even if I do find out they are weeds, I am sure I will still welcome the color. I am a bit tired of the drab earthen tones of the winter, so new growth of any kind will be nice.)

I also found some green shoots that look as if they might be from bulbs, but I never planted them, and there weren’t any blooms in that part of the yard last year. Maybe they are a house anniversary present from Chloris, the goddess of flowers.

[image error]

The gift of greenery wasn’t the only present I got today. The contractor came to frame the foundation for the garage and he brought me some farm eggs. Such lovely colors!

[image error]

Whatever the coming weeks hold, I certainly enjoyed today’s taste of spring.

***

[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Author Dynasties

[image error]I don’t particularly like Sue Grafton’s books, but I do admire her — she left her legacy as is, her series unfinished, and would not allow anyone to step up after her death and keep her characters alive.

Too many authors didn’t make that decision before they died, so their heirs made it afterward. For example, some classics are being brought back to life when authors today write unsanctioned sequels to beloved favorites, such as those who pretend to channel Jane Austen or Daphne Du Maurier. 

One of the few times posthumous writing was warranted was when Robert Jordan died before he could finish his modern classic, the fourteen volume Wheel of Time series. Another writer was hired to work with Jordan’s wife and Jordan’s copious notes to finish the series. Can you imagine going through decades with all those thousands of characters and millions of words only to be left hanging on the wheel without a resolution? So yes, it had to be finished. But once it was, it was done. There will be no more Robert Jordan books.

But some stories and authors’ names that do not need to be kept alive are still going for no other reason than to milk the money machine. 

Some fellow is now writing Michael Crichton’s books. And another fellow is keeping Robert Parker’s Spenser alive. Who needs these books? They are not the author’s words, not the author’s vision — just some pale vision of the vision.

A new thing now is for the literary name is passed to the next generation. Michael Palmer’s son is now writing Michael Palmer books. Lee Child’s son will be taking over is father’s series.

And what the heck is going on with James Patterson? The way he’s spawning co-authors, his name will be one of the last words uttered when the earth falls into the sun.

This is what happens when an author’s name becomes a brand. I never used to pay attention to authors’ names except as a way of finding more books to read, and neither did anyone else, at least not to the extent that holds true today. The title was the main thing; the author’s name almost an afterthought. But branding and modern publishing changed all that. Now it’s the author who’s paramount, and no one cares what drivel is passed along to the reading public under the famous brand. (I got caught with a Michael Palmer book written by his son because the famous name was in huge letters, the title in a smaller type, and the writer’s name all but swallowed up in the graphic on the very bottom. So not nice!)

It used to be as one author’s star waned, another’s would rise, but what’s happened to all those non-rising stars? What will happen to readers when the brands finally are laid to rest? Not that it matters. There are plenty of books for me to read, and when there aren’t any more books that I like, I’ll write more of my own.

***

[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

 

Virus!

With all the talk about corona virus and how it’s probably a man-made (or woman-made, for all I know) organism that escaped from a lab, it would be remiss of me not to mention my own organism, the red death. The red death only resides within the pages of A Spark of Heavenly Fire, so it cannot harm you (though it might scare you), but it’s deadly for all that. In fact, it’s so deadly and spread so fast from it’s origins in Colorado, that the entire state is quarantined.

You don’t think that’s possible? The technology already exists, and where people manage to break out of the quarantined area, you better believe that people from the surrounding states would not hesitate to shoot an escapee.

Inside the quarantined state, hundreds of thousands of people are dying in Colorado this unstoppable red death, and though many people have given up hope, insomniac Kate Cummings struggles to find the courage to live and to love. Investigative reporter Greg Pullman, is determined to discover who unleashed the deadly organism and why they did it, until the cost — Kate’s life — becomes more than he can pay. This is a story of survival in the face of brutality, government cover-up, and public hysteria. It is also a story of love: lost, found and fulfilled.

So, if you wish to take a break from talk of the rather tepid coronavirus (the “normal” flu is much deadlier) and experience what a true epidemic would be like, you can read an excerpt of A Spark of Heavenly Fire here: https://bertramsblog.com/free-samples/a-spark-of-heavenly-fire/ and you can buy it from Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1630663662/

[image error]

***

[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Inane Things to Ponder

Most of my life, especially after Jeff died, I pondered the big questions about life and death, love and grief, but recently, I’ve been pondering more inane things.

[image error]

I don’t watch television, so my life should be commercial free, but unfortunately, I sometimes play a particular game online. Supposedly, the game is free, though the site does exact the “payment” of watching commercials, and sometimes the commercials “cost” more than the game is worth. The worst, of course, are the drug commercials, which are often longer than it takes to play the game. And oh, are they creepy! They show happy families doing happy things, happy couples doing romantic things, happy individuals doing fun or challenging things — all accompanied by huge grins. Meantime, the crawl on the bottom of the screen lists ghastly, and occasionally life-threatening side effects. I wonder if anyone has done a study showing an increase is dissociative personality disorders since the onset of such commercials. For an extreme example, let’s say the side effect of an allergy medication is bleeding to death from internal meltdowns, and yet the person taking the drug is grinning, grinning, grinning as if being able to die in such a way is a glorious ending.

Then there’s a Home Depot commercial where a little girl can’t reach the top shelf of the refrigerator, so her mom goes out and buys a new refrigerator. Huh? Who puts drinks on the top shelf anyway? Why not put them on a lower shelf? And then, to make matters worse, they get the refrigerator and all the little girls reach in their arms and pull out plastic bottles of water. Um. Not cool. The whole thing smacks of arrogance.

In a commercial for the car Infiniti, the driver does not unsnap the seatbelt, but pulls her legs through the belt. This isn’t as horrific as happiness while being told of possible death, and not as ridiculous as buying a new refrigerator instead of moving the drinks, but still, I can only shake my head and wonder why.

Luckily, I have finished all the levels of the game I was playing, so I shouldn’t be subjected to these commercials anymore, but there are always other things that show up to baffle me.

I recently read yet another article about Ted Bundy (everyone’s favorite sociopath). The author made a big deal about him being clean cut and attractive, and yet what is the alternative? If guys who troll for female bait dressed to match their psychopathic selves — dirty and unkempt — there’s no way they’d ever get to be prolific killers. Anyone who saw them would be leery of them. And anyway, they’re not really that attractive, at least not to my eyes. So is it that their looks are at odds from what we think they should look like, so they seem more physically acceptable than they are?

And speaking of serial killers — why is it that women’s author photos, even those of women who write gritty thrillers, always look as if they have just come from the beauty parlor and are so very happy about it, but men often look like creeps who want to whack off your head to make you read their books. They don’t of course, because whacked heads lose the ability to read. The men who don’t look like serial killers, look like stereotypical bums, and those who don’t look like bums scowl. Would a smile really kill them?

What about you? What sort of inane things do you ponder?

***

[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educato

 

 

The Winds of Eternity

In one month, it will be the tenth anniversary of Jeff’s death. I can’t even begin to comprehend what that means — is it a lot of time? A little time? It doesn’t seem possible that it’s been so many years since I last saw him, though looking back over the decade since he died, it’s obvious that a lot of time has passed. I’ve felt much, lived much, changed much.

My grief has changed over the years, too, from unimaginable pain to nostalgia, from angst to acceptance (not acceptance of his death — never that! — but acceptance of the reality of my situation). Grief now is the scaffolding of my life, forming the framework of who I am rather than being all that I am. (In the beginning, grief took hold, and it felt as if there was nothing else, would never be anything else. Grief is still there, deep inside, but is now only a piece of who I am, not all of it.)

The biggest change I notice is that the screech of death and the winds of eternity have receded once more into the background, and my life seems much quieter. When Jeff died, it felt as if part of me had died with him. A whole chunk had been amputated and I have never gained it back. For years, I felt as if I were standing at the edge of eternity the abyss yawning at my feet, the storms of time raging around me, one hand held out to try to grasp something, anything, to balance me and keep me from being pulled into the void where that amputated part had gone. I could feel the breath of the eternal, the awesomeness of life and death. I could feel—or almost feel—the driving force of the universe.

[image error]

That seems fanciful, and I suppose it is, but it’s also how I felt. Looking back, grief seems so . . . noisy. Sobs and gasps and even screams came from my mouth, and loud questions and clamorous confusion filled my head. Death is shrouded with an element of blank. It is the great unknown and unknowable, and our human brains are not equipped to handle the immensity. And yet, when we lose someone important to us, the very fact of death is thrust into our lives, forcing us to deal with it the best we can.

How do we bear the unbearable? How do we fathom the unfathomable? We don’t, not really. We grapple with the conundrums and wait until eternity recedes and our brains settle into new patterns of thought.

I used to miss the feeling of significance grief gave me, with its great emotion, crucial questions, and the nearness of eternity, but now I am merely grateful for the internal quiet.

***

[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Small Town Living

[image error]Small town living can be such a hoot.

I spend most of my time in my back room where I read and work on the computer. Because there are a couple of windows that face my neighbor’s house, I can hear the mail truck pull up to her place, but not mine.

Yesterday was exceptionally cold with a few isolated snow flakes and a lot of biting winds. (28mph). So when I heard the mail truck, I hurried to the door to catch the mail deliverer, bundled in a parka, hat, hood, muffler, heading up my neighbor’s sidewalk.

“Did I get any mail?” I called out.

“Just a flyer,” she called back.

Postal regulations put into effect right before I moved here require new residents to plant a mailbox along the street, though no such regulation targets those who lived here before the rule. Hence, my neighbor gets her mail delivered to her door. I have to walk out to the street. It’s not that long a walk, obviously, but it does entail putting on shoes and a coat and fighting the wind for possession of my storm door.

“So it’s not worth it for me to walk out the box?” I asked.

“Definitely not,” she answered.

We talked about the weather for as long as it took her to stuff my neighbor’s mail in the box, then she said, “You be careful. Don’t go for your walk today.”

I had to laugh at that. Yep. Small towns.

***

[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

 

Reflections of the Past

[image error]After Jeff died, I was sorry that I didn’t have a current photo of him. The one I do have had been taken ten years before, and it didn’t even look like him. Or at least not the “him” he was at the end. (It was a perfect image back when the photo was taken.) I refused to look at the photo, afraid I’d only remember him as the man in the photo, not the real person, but as the years went by, I realized that neither image — the one I had nor the one I didn’t have — told a greater truth. He was both. And neither.

Although we always feel like us, that “us” changes over the years. We adapt to how we feel, and it’s only later we get a glimpse of the changes we have gone through, whether physical or mental, spiritual or emotional. The person we are at the end isn’t more real than the person we were at the beginning. Each is a facet of the whole shimmering being we are.

Some people theorize that since time is mainly a construct of our minds, each of those people we were all exist at the same time, and it’s our brains that divide time into past and present.

Others theorize that time is a matter of distance. The earth hurtles around the sun at 67,000 mph. The sun hurtles around the galaxy at 140 miles per second. The entire universe is also moving and expanding, so today we are a very long way from where we were 9 years 11 months and 18 days ago when Jeff died.

But whatever the truth of time, for the purposes of our life on earth, the past, whether near or far, is always the same distance from us. We can no more touch yesterday than we can touch a hundred years ago or a thousand. It’s all just out of reach. Gone. Past.

So does it matter that Jeff’s been gone one year or ten? It matters to me of course, since it’s been ten years since I’ve seen him, but he was just as gone the moment he died as he is today. So any photo of him, no matter what age he was, is an adequate image.

Although he and I weren’t picture takers, never liked having pictures of us (or anyone) hanging around, I am grateful for that photo on my bedside table. He might be gone, far out of reach, but I take comfort in having this reflection of the past.

***

[image error]Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator