Pat Bertram's Blog, page 67

Fixing the Foundation

We’re having a spate of warm spring-like weather (complete with high winds!) in between the winter storms, so the people working on and around my house took the opportunity to fix the foundation — fill in the cracks and seal the concrete.

The foundation was white, and now it’s not. Like the original Model-T’s, I could have any color I wanted as long as it’s black. That’s the only color available for the sealer, an asphalt emulsion similar to that used to seal parking lots and roads. I wasn’t sure I’d like the dark foundation, but it really seems to define the house.

It will really look great once the ornamental rock is in place around the house. Not only will the rock be attractive, but it will further protect the foundation.

As usual, though, there is a weird problem. Nothing anyone has done around here has been easy; even a simple job turns out to be an arduous task, such as having to build a garage from scratch, rather than simply being able to fix the foundation of the old garage. (The ground under the garage was too wet to pour a foundation, in even the middle of a drought summer. We never did figure out where the moisture came from, though we did surmise the garage had been built over an old septic system.)

The current problem isn’t as drastic, but it is as mystifying. In one place on the foundation, something ate through the newly applied sealer. It looked like it could have been some sort of alkali, which would be no surprise, since the soil around here is extremely alkaline. On closer inspection, it seemed to resemble a mold. They’re going to try to putty over the mold with the same substance they’ve been using to fill in the cracks and hope that seals off whatever it is that’s eating the asphalt. It wouldn’t matter so much except that the weird spot is in the front rather than on a side where it wouldn’t be noticeable, but if it can’t be fixed, I’ll get used to it. It’s not as if this is a brand-new house (it was built in 1928), or as if the discoloration would bring down the value of the property (and if does, it’s not an issue I will have to deal with because I intend to stay here until my end if at all possible.)

It’s just nice seeing things take shape again, nice seeing work being done. And if it snows or rains later this week, well, that will be nice, too.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God. 

4,000 Days

This is the 4,000th day since Jeff died. That’s a lot of days, taken one at a time.

I never used to count days or months or years. Well, my birthday, that’s the one count we all make, though after I reached adulthood, the number of years I’d lived became a curiosity rather than celebration, a number to acknowledge and then move on.

After Jeff died, counting became a part of my life, of my grief. Surprisingly, I’m not the only one who counted the days; most of us who have been left behind count at least for a while.

When we lose a significant person in our life, one whose death rocks us to the very depths of our being and changes us forever, it’s as if we are born into a world of grief, and our internal clocks reset themselves to that moment of birth.

At first, we count the minutes and hours we’ve lived, then after we’ve survived twenty-four or forty-eight interminable and interminably painful hours, we being counting the days. Eventually we move on to counting weeks, months, years, and even decades. To the uninitiated, this counting seems as if we’re dwelling on the past, constantly reminding ourselves of our sorrow, but the truth is, counting is a way of helping us survive this new, alien world.

Grief distorts time. Sometimes it feels as if time stops, but simultaneously it feels as if it speeds up. Seconds seem like hours. Hours can feel like days or pass by in seconds. We lose track of what the date is. The past and future might become so entwined that we can’t always be sure if we’re going forward or backward. A particularly strong flashback to the days before our loved one died can make it seem as they are still alive, in another room perhaps. An especially serene moment between grief upsurges can catapult us to a future world of possibility, a world without pain. Counting the days helps put time back into perspective.

Mentioning that this is the 4,000th day makes it seem as if I am still counting, but the truth is, I stopped counting days, weeks, and months, a long time ago, though I still count the years. (On March 27, it will be eleven years.) During research on another matter, I came across the number 4,000 and I put in on my calendar, otherwise this day would have passed without a comment. And maybe it should have. After all, what difference does it make how many days he’s been gone? He’s gone, and no amount of counting will change that.

Still, I did survive all those days, too many of which were pain-filled and angst-ridden, so that’s something worth acknowledging, I suppose.

***

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

Workers!

I had a lovely surprise today. I heard scrabbling noises around my house, and when I went out to see what was going on, I found a worker preparing the cracks in the foundation so he could fill them in. He’ll have to let the filler harden, and then he’ll come back and paint the foundation with a sealer. The sealer is black, which I’m not sure I’ll like. If not, I can paint over it with a lighter color. Or I could wait until I got used to it.

But that’s an issue for another day. Today, I am delighted to see progress being made.

It’s funny how so often, one job depends upon another, sort of like a reverse of the nursery rhyme “The House that Jack Built.” The workers have rock to put around the house, but they can’t do that until the they put down the weed barrier, and they can’t put down the weed barrier until they build up the dirt around the house, and they can’t build up the dirt around the house until they seal the foundation, and they can’t seal the foundation until they fill in the cracks, and they can’t fill in the cracks until they dig out the dirt that’s around the foundation.

Luckily, I’m not the one having to do all this, and the person who is doing it doesn’t seem to mind the work.

Even luckier, the weather should hold for a few days until the filler has cured. It’s one of those projects that can’t be done in cold weather because the concrete filler would disintegrate, and all that work would go for naught.

[An interesting aside; interesting to me, anyway. Seeing the word “naught” made me wonder how it was related to the word naughty, since the two words don’t have much in common, and it turns out that “naughty” does come from “naught.” Apparently, in the fourteenth century, naughty referred to a person lacking in wealth, and over the years, came to mean someone lacking in morals. Does that mean back then that the poor were considered bad, perhaps poor because they were bad, as people so often surmise even today?]

But, neither naught or naughty have anything to do with the matter at hand, which is . . . workers (at least one, anyway) are here working!

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God. 

Happy House Anniversary to Me!

Today is the second anniversary of my being a home owner. The anniversary of when I first saw the house won’t be for another couple of days and will require yet another celebration. Today, though, is about the house.

I bought the house sight unseen, though I had viewed photos online. Oddly, I didn’t particularly care one way or the other about the outside of the house, though people who saw the photos all told me how cute it was and how it looked like me. I was more interested in the new kitchen, the walk-in shower with hand bars, the plethora of windows. Despite that, I have been eminently pleased with the house itself — the spooky basement and the now defunct garage not so much, but both those disappointments have been turned into . . . whatever the opposite of disappointment is. It should be “appointment,” shouldn’t it? Since it’s not, I’ll have to go with “satisfaction.”

Though the basement still needs some work, mostly cosmetic, such as paint, it’s not the spooky place it was at the beginning. If I had known I would only go down those stairs a few times a year to replace the furnace filter, I might not have gone to the expense, but it still makes me feel good to know it’s just a basement, not a horror show.

And the new garage, of course, is wonderful, functional, and attractive. It certainly adds to the joy of home ownership.

I never wanted to own a house. It seemed too much of a responsibility. The first time I ever saw the possibilities in owning a place was when I visited my sister a few years ago. Her house is a delight, with art and artifacts and artful displays wherever I would look. But even so, I didn’t want to own, which was good since there was no way I could ever have afforded to buy a place. At least, not then. The years passed and, as luck would have it, a house showed up in my life.

It has all worked out so much better than I could ever have imagined. Not only do I love my house, I love owning it. It makes me feel good, as if I were wearing a warm cloak on a cold day.

Adding to the luck, the town that came with the house has been a good place for me, complete with a nearby library . . . and friends.

There were several very long years where I thought I would never be happy again. There were other times I knew something wonderful would be in my future — since the universe is balance, I figured only something really special could offset the pain of losing Jeff and the horror of grief.

In twenty days, it will be eleven years that he’s been gone, and not only did I find happiness again, I found the “something wonderful.”

Last year, on the first anniversary, a friend wrote, “Happy house anniversary, Pat. And happy Pat anniversary, house. You make a great couple! Perfect together.” And we are perfect together. Other people sometimes suffer a bout of buyer’s remorse, but not me. I knew this was my house from the first time I saw photos of the place on the real estate site.

So today, I celebrate me and the house. Together.

***

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

If Doomsday Comes

I just finished reading a book where all technology, including power grids, were knocked out by a coronal mass ejection from the sun. Checking on the possibility of such a catastrophe, I learned that “scientists,” whatever that means, are concerned about such a possibility, and are trying to create systems that can withstand such powerful ejections from the sun.

Oddly, humans are not affected by any of these CME’s. Supposedly, if we are standing on Earth, within Earth’s atmosphere, we are protected. So if we were to be subjected to CMEs powerful enough to destroy technology, we would be safe. Safe from the sun’s emissions, that is. Not safe from each other.

You’d think that in a worldwide crisis, people would come together with a one-for-all and all-for-one attitude, but I don’t see it. In any emergency, there will be people who look for ways to help, and those who look for ways to capitalize on the mess.

Because of The Bob, and the resulting shortages, and because of the arctic blast we were subjected to, and various other emergencies, you’d think I’d be more concerned about stocking up, but I just don’t seem to see the point. If there were something that would knock out the power grids, the media, transportation, availability of food, gas, and supplies, there’s no amount of things I could stockpile that would get me through months, even a year, of deprivation. It’s a physical impossibility.

Mostly, I don’t care. I’ve lived through a lot of crises that didn’t actually happen. Too often, news folk and politicians titillated us with possible doomsday scenarios that went nowhere. Even with The Bob, even considering as many problems as there were, the end result was nothing like the original projection of 80% of people on earth dying from the disease. (It’s this projection that panicked the various politicians and made them close down cities and towns. I’m not sure what they would have done if they had been given a truthful scenario. Probably shrugged their shoulders and continued as usual. Unless, of course, their reelection was at stake; then we’d hear from them.)

I suppose if I really believed in a massive doomsday rather than a personal one (after all, each of us does have a personal doomsday in our future), I might be more concerned, but even then, I’m not sure what I could do. I am set up for a week, maybe two. I have camping equipment, including a solar cell phone charger, that would help make things easier, but beyond that? I’m not sure it’s worth it. Do I really want to survive in a society that basically has to start over? That’s assuming I could survive. If I had stocked up on anything, chances are, someone with guns and a driving need for survival at all costs would have taken them from me.

I’m sure I’ve talked about this same subject — survival — too many times, but it’s one that seems to come up again and again, either in books, on the news, or even in conversations with people.

If I were young, perhaps I would feel differently, but from what I remember back in cold war years, nuclear threats, Asian flu and swine flu seasons, terrorist attacks, and all the rest of it, I didn’t feel any differently.

Then again, who knows. None of us truly knows how we will act when doomsday comes. Perhaps I will be the one with a shotgun, desperately running around stealing people’s carefully hoarded stocks.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God. 

Becoming the Matriarch

Getting old is a weird thing. When you’re very young, the old seem to be a fixture; after all, you never saw them when they were young. As far as you know, they were always old. Oh, you do see photos, perhaps, but those photos seem to have little to do with the old folks in your life. All you really know is that you are young and they are old.

In fact, it often seems as if they were born old, as if old is what they were supposed to be, when the truth is, you were born young. Still, despite what we learn of history, whether our personal history or world history, it seems as if the world begins when we are born.

As time goes on, we do get a sense of the progression of life. We grow older, learn to walk and talk, and eventually we go to school. Sometimes we get younger brothers and sisters, and we are puffed up with our oldness. We try so hard to grow up, especially if we have an older sibling, because we want to be as old as they are. We want their privileges, such as they are. And then, the big birthday comes, and even though we are a year older, so is the sibling.

And so the years pass.

Then one day you wake to the realization that you are the old generation. In the back of your mind there’s still the image of the world you were born into, where you were young and the old were old. So how is it possible that the world has suddenly become inverted?

After Jeff died, I was afraid of growing old alone, but now I’ve gotten used to the idea, and although the thought of being old doesn’t worry me, being old and feeble does. Luckily, I have been able to bypass the feebleness for now (though with my wonky knees, sometimes I sense a less than active future).

I am confused, though. How can I be the matriarch of my family — the oldest living female? There are cousins somewhere who are older than I am, but for the most part, everyone who is older than me — parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, older brother — are all gone now.

And I am now that old woman who so mystified me when I was young.

To be honest, many of my youthful years seem to have disappeared, not just out of sight but out of mind, so perhaps the truth is what I once sensed about other elders — that I am a fixture; that I did in fact appear on this earth as an old woman. And there’s no one who was alive when I was born to tell me otherwise.

With any luck, I will continue to grow older, and if enough years pass, I will look back to this time as a relatively youthful one. The ninety-year old woman I sit with says I am just a kid, so perhaps I really am still relatively youthful.

But none of that mitigates the very real fact that I am not only the oldest living female in my family, I’m also the oldest of anyone, male or female.

Does this blog post have a purpose? None that I can see. It’s just that once I was so young that everyone in my family (and the world, too!) was older than I was. And now?

Maybe it’s best if I stop thinking about this.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God. 

Feels Like Home

Someone asked me today if it were a cultural shock for me living here in this rural corner of the state after growing up in Denver. I told her that it felt the same, that it felt like home. If I had moved here directly from Denver, it might be a different matter, but I left Denver when too many people from out of the state moved in and immediately tried to change the slow-moving town to a great city. When I was growing up, Denver was a cowtown without a skyline, and fabulous views of the mountains from wherever I stood. Each neighborhood was a town in itself, with churches, schools, stores, a library, all within walking distance. The political bent was . . . well, there was no bend; beliefs seemed to hover right about in the middle. People tended to vote their beliefs rather than follow the party, and overall, it seemed to be centrist. There was some crime and some poorer neighborhoods, but there were no gangs or gang-related activities.

Then came the California invasions. Now Denver is indistinguishable from other major cities, with gangs galore, horrendous social problems, outrageous real estate prices, an agenda the rest of the state has a hard time dealing with, and no autonomous neighborhoods.

I am grateful to be out of that mess, grateful to have found a place that feels like home, that feels like the neighborhood “town” I came from.

The conversation, however, made me wonder why people leave an area they are dissatisfied with and immediately try to change their new location to mimic the old one. Although this is the current problem with a lot of immigrants — people want to change the laws in this country to make it more like the place they came from — it’s also a problem when large numbers of people move from one state to another.

I blame Californians for the change, but New Yorkers cause just as many problems in some areas. In fact, someone from New York recently moved here and is trying to steer this town toward being more of an artist’s colony like Taos rather than accepting it for what it is — a quiet, rather impoverished though congenial town with a lot to offer as it stands today.

I know people prefer what they are familiar with, but migrators — either internal or international — generally leave to go to a new place in search of a better life, so why try to make the new way like the old?

This isn’t simply a problem from state to state, but also from one area to another within a state. I spent some years in the high desert of California, across the mountains from the Los Angeles sprawl. At one time, it was a quiet place, but the state tried to break up the big-city gangs by getting families to relocate to the desert. Now, the place is rife with gang-related troubles, including drugs and crime.

It’s as if they (whoever “they” are) want to turn the whole world into a cesspool. Migrators seem to go along with this agenda because they believe in the rightness of their cause and the wrongness of people who want to live their lives by their own religious beliefs rather than the political beliefs of others. It’s not a surprise there are problems; there always are when the rights of the few are given precedence over the rights of the many.

But I’m migrating away from the topic of this blog. Mostly I’m trying to understand the mentality of those who leave one horrible area and immediately try to change their new environment into an equal horror rather than trying to fit in with the local culture. Though I suppose the truth is they don’t think of the change as horror. Nor do they see anything wrong with what they are doing. Many such immigrants I’ve met have a touch of arrogance about them, as if they thought they were bringing light to a dark area, and never realize they could be a dark bringer instead.

Luckily, this place is small enough and rural enough and independently-minded enough that it will be years before it’s changed all out of recognition. Luckily too, if it’s changed faster than I think it will be, I have my own place — my own personal gated place — and within this enclosure, I can still be at home no matter what goes on outside the fence.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God. 

Documents Lie

During my youth, my father smoked an occasional cigar, probably when somebody gave him one. That was back when a lot of babies were being born, and the new father celebrated by passing out cigars. Later, after we children were grown and he had a bit of discretionary income, he smoked more often, but always when he was out walking. The walk probably offset any effects of the smoke. In his middle nineties, he did start using oxygen, though it was more because of his heart than his lungs.

My mother never smoked. And because of my father’s tendency to enjoy a cigar while he walked rather than at home, she wasn’t subjected to second hand smoke. Still, she did have lung problems, and in fact, died of lung cancer.

Whoever filled out her death certificate, probably someone from hospice, never bothered to find out the truth of her disease. They took the easy way out and under the cause of death, wrote that she died of lung cancer due to being a lifelong smoker.

One of my siblings wanted to get the certificate changed, but not until after my father was gone because she didn’t want to upset him further, though, to be honest, I don’t know why he didn’t review the certificate when it was handed to him. After I got Jeff’s death certificate, I read every word, though in my case, in might be more that I couldn’t believe he was actually gone, and I was trying to make it more real to me. That, and because I always review documents.

After my father died, the sibling didn’t have time to fight the bureaucracy, so the years passed, and my mother’s death certificate still documents a lie.

I don’t really mind what her death certificate says. Changing it wouldn’t make her any less dead, and as another sibling commented, “It makes a good story.” Not only that, the certificate is proof that documents lie. If there was ever a need to show that she didn’t cause her death through life-long neglect (though I doubt that would happen since she’s been gone for fourteen years), then there would be no way to do so now. The document, even with the falsehood, is considered to be the truth. A legal truth, that is. It is in no way the “real” truth.

Sometimes it’s important to remember that even if a document is signed, witnessed, notarized, and filed with the proper authorities, it doesn’t necessarily reflect the truth.

Documents, like people, do lie.

***

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

The Tarot of the Stars

The tarot deck I am using this month is a collector’s item: La Porta Celeste — I Tarocchi delle Stelle. The Tarot of the Stars. It was one of the first in my deceased brother’s collection that caught my eye. It’s a beautiful deck, and large — 6″ X 3.5″, and seems as if it’s the sort of deck one would use to do readings. It also seems more mystical than some, since this deck supposedly has its own cabalistic and alchemical system which is unique when compared to western tarot decks. The artist, Giorgio Tavaglione, integrated copious symbolism into his designs, particularly the astronomical information illustrated above each image. The problem with this deck (and the reason I never used it before) is that the book that comes with the deck is written in an archaic Italian dialect, very difficult to translate because it is loaded with magical and alchemical double entendres.

This is from the introduction:

“Tra le piu antiche immagine-peniero, la Spirale e una delle piu profonde e misterose. Nella Spirale vi e il concetto del Lairinto, con la sua entrata e la sua uscita. Nel Labirinto, con la sua entrata e la sua uscita. Nel Labirinto vi e l’idea/senso della Vita, del”evoluzione individual e di tutta la Societa Umna. Dalle inciscioni megalitiche dei Celti a quelle dell’Africa Nera, dalle decorazioni Mayaa e Azteche a quelle Indu, Deva e Asura, sino all doppia spirale Cinese dello Yin-Yang, la Spirale ha expresso ed esprime l’esensione, lEmanazione, la sviluppo nella continuita, ciclica in una Rotazion Creativa. Qesta meravigliosa immagine Cosmica e simbolo del E’quilibrio nello squlibrio dell Ordine all ‘interno del Cambiamento, della Mutaione. Nella Spirale logritmica si ha la permanenza della forma nonsante la crescita assimetrica.”

The following is more or less a translation, via Google and Word:

“The Spiral is one of the most profound and mysterious images. In the Spiral there is the concept of the Labyrinth, with its entry and exit. In the Labyrinth there is the idea / meaning of Life, of the individual evolution and of the whole Human Society. From the megalithic incisions of the Celts to those of Black Africa, from the Mayan and Aztec decorations to the Hindu, Deva and Asura ones, up to the double Chinese spiral of Yin-Yang, the Spiral has expressed and expresses the extension, the Emanation, the development of a continuous cycle of a creative rotation. This is a wonderful cosmic image and symbol of balance within change. The spiral stays formed, notwithstanding its asymmetric growth.”

It would take me forever for me to retype the book and try to translate it, though I might do a bit here and there. This deck is supposed to be similar to Papus, Wirth, and Cagliostro, all of which conform with the scholarship of Eliphas Levi, whoever he is. I do have both a Papus deck and a Cagliostro, which might help. I imagine, if I continue my tarot studies, I’ll eventually be able to figure out some of the symbolism on my own. If not, I can simply use it like I do any tarot deck, referencing my own collected meanings for each card. (I’ve been keeping a notebook where I keep note the meanings of the cards from various sources, sort of a personal key to the tarot.)

Beyond the ludicrousness of including an instructional book that purportedly even modern Italians can’t read, there is another problem: the large cards make them difficult to shuffle, and the matte finish makes it hard to fan out the cards on a table to choose each day’s offering.

It’s still one of my favorite decks, despite all this, mostly because it seems like a quintessential tarot deck. Too bad it’s not going to be one I use frequently, because I have a duplicate deck in case I damaged the cards. Or perhaps I can sell the duplicate; after all, it is a collector’s item.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God. 

The Cycle of the Seasons

Despite all the snow that fell here this winter, we’re still in a drought situation. The snow was the light, airy kind that couldn’t hold together to make a snowball. Not that I wanted to make snowballs, but a couple of people in snowless country wanted me to make a snowman or snowwoman or some kind of snow creature. Apparently, the sort of snow we got didn’t hold much moisture, hence the lack of snowballs.

I don’t imagine the lack of winter moisture will make much difference to me and my garden. When the ground dried between storms, I made sure to water my greengage plums and a few other prized plants. I’m hoping that will be enough to give them a good start this spring.

Spring? Wow, that’s not so far away — only nineteen days! We generally have late snow storms and late frosts, so planting time isn’t until May, but maybe I should start thinking about what I want to plant when the weather becomes optimal. Or not. Since I don’t want to drive a long way, and don’t really have much luck with mail order plants, I’ll be at the mercy of the local hardware store. I suppose I could buy the plants early and keep them inside to give them a better start, but that decision is still many weeks away.

Meantime, I am enjoying the sun and the warmer weather. And I certainly will appreciate the lower heating bills!

One of the odd things about having lived so many years, is that time moves faster in relation to one’s time here on Earth, and so it’s easier to feel the seasons cycling from one to another. Which, of course, is a good reason to enjoy whatever the day brings because before you know it, arctic temperatures will return. But perhaps, with a bit of luck, not until next year.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.