Moved Out/In

Well, tonight I'll finally be spending the night in my new apartment, a little less than a month after I moved my things in. Monday we moved out of Fairfield, after a serious morning of cleaning, a pleasant lunch with Sarah's dad, and a supercool episode of mattress surfing down the stairs, which Carla missed because she was off doing serious things at the study abroad office. Our goodbye was in many ways sadder for me than saying goodbye to our general group of friends, or even to Fairfield itself; Carla was leaving for Italy, Sarah was going to D.C., and even though Meredith would be the closest geographically, it's not like living in a house with your friends. Townhouse 31 was also the last place I ever saw my mom alive, and where I was when they told me she was dead. Even though I felt like I didn't have a home after she died, the townhouse was another home, and I was sad to leave even that bit of security, small though it was, behind me.

Now that I'm here and really on my own, it's scary. It's amazing how many ways our parents are still taking care of us at an age when most of us assume ourselves to be completely independent. I went food shopping and had to buy everything I needed, because there's no one to remember to buy the ketchup or the butter if I forget, and there isn't a pantry at home over-flowing with stuff I can help myself to. I didn't know where the post office or the grocery store or any of that was until today (I did find that I'm a block away from the library, which ROCKS). Shelton seems to be a pretty OK town. It's not as pretty as Windsor, but it's a good deal livelier. Right now there's a carnival going on a couple of blocks away; the voices of people who parked on my street are drifting in the window and making Rocky bark--I'm babysitting him for a while until Sean gets back from the movies.

There are no streetlights on my street, which is weird. It's a very quiet residential road behind a school, but the JTD-voice in me is on high alert in these new premises. For example, it bothers me that there's a window in the den that opens directly onto the deck, which has stairs up from the ground. Someone could easily come up, spot my computer through the window and break in. I also have to break the habit, acquired in the townhouses, of not locking the door behind me when I come in. JTD definitely would not approve.

The End

I graduated college this morning. It seems freakishly surreal now, as if it already happened months and months ago. It was good, as ceremonies go, and the weather was cooperative. I had a tense moment after the ceremony trying to find my aunt and uncle in the crowd without the benefit of a cell phone, but we located them at last and had a great lunch with Sean's family. As casual as our family can often be, I was happy to have family members present. Of course Sr. Sally and Sr. St. Henry were there as well, as I couldn't help but feel that with them in attendance, my mom was really there watching.

Our house is in a shambles; we all have to be out by noon tomorrow. It's so strange to think my roommate is moving to Italy in three days, and I might not see her for years. Literally. Sarah's staying on the continent but she'll be far away in D.C., too. It's not really as sad as high school graduation was, because this time I have the benefit of knowing that you do stay friends with the people who mean something to you. Also, I'm probably in some kind of shock, because for the first time in my life this is not just a summer break I'm beginning; it's the start of 1.5 years of regular workaday schedule. Sean and I agreed that we have rather ambiguous feelings about it, because it's not like we're going back to school right away, but it's not like we're launching into careers we plan on continuing indefinitely, either.

Tonight we honored our group tradition one last time, and gathered in the Zen garden on Bellarmine hill for a toast. After our sappy individual toasts, we raised our glasses to "family," and I felt like I was in a Lifetime movie, for serious.

I can't believe it's time to say goodbye to Fairfield. What is there to say, besides 'breaking up is hard to do...'

End of an Era

The sale of my house closed on Friday afternoon. Sean went with me, and we sat there as the buyers signed a thick stack of papers. I only had to sign four, one of which was an agreement that no money would be exchanged between us beyond the actual terms of the sale--which of course was the entire reason for my presence at the closing! That bit of illegality took only a second, as I slipped the check into the buyer's hand after everything was signed, and then it was done.

Everyone else was in a good mood during the proceedings. The buyer's husband, who is a Nigerian immigrant who speaks eight languages, including French, engaged in a lively debate with their lawyer about things like the existence of happiness and of freedom--neither of which of the husband believed in. The lawyer was obvious a very intelligent and interesting guy, and under other circumstances I would have been delighted to listen to their conversation, but under the circumstances I just wanted everything to be over, and mostly didn't even look up. After all the time and energy and sheer frustration that had gone into getting this deal done, I hadn't anticipated how sad it would make me to actually sign the papers. I thought of my parents, and how that house was in many ways the symbol of their hopes and dreams, the place that they made a home for us, the place where we were all together...and here I was, having to sign it away to a new family. Once again I felt, hopefully for the last time, the anger and sadness that it was my responsibility to do all of this.

Despite all of my prior resentment towards the buyers, I recognized later, when I was calm, that they were very friendly and polite during these proceedings. I had to laugh to myself, though, when the wife mentioned to the lawyer that they would indeed be having a lot of big parties because they have a big family--the thought of my neighbors' faces when that happens! Oh, they'll be missing us even more that day. Of course I also thought of the paint cans, and laughed to myself again.

So here it is, a chapter that's almost closed. I haven't deposited the check yet. I still have to get in touch with the probate office and find out if it's OK with them that we skip this silly idea of a trust altogether. In addition to the sale price, there was a deposit check for $5k, and I joked to Sean that Jen would never know if...and then we dreamed about which country we'd choose to go to this time. Egypt is number one on our priority list, but since Sean is so firmly set on seeing Jerusalem and the other sites in Israel, and because they are so conveniently close to each other, we decided that our next trip abroad will be a lengthier combo tour of the two countries. Of course I'm not going to actually steal the 5k to finance it, however tempting it may be.

In other news, I'm into Churchill's third volume, "The Grand Alliance." It covers 1941 as things finally get into high gear after Russia and the U.S. are drawn in. In tandem I've been reading (sneakily, in Borders, because I don't feel like buying it) a book about the complicated relationship between Churchill and FDR, which provides complementary information about Churchill's psychology and the imaginative revisionism of his writing. Basically, it points out that no one is an objective chronicler of their own history. Churchill made his relationship with Roosevelt seem much more evenly balanced in terms of affection than it was because that's the way he wanted it to have been. Roosevelt was always the beloved and Churchill always the suitor, which apparently reflected Churchill's upbringing as the child of parents who neglected and ignored him. Pathos makes good reading!

Sigh

I'm still waiting for my house to close, days later. First they held it up over the pitiful sum of $210 because they forgot to add taxes onto the estimate for the repair of the deck, and then the bank decided not to let them have the whole $13,000 they asked for in closing costs, which would have then resulted in me receiving extra money in the final check and therefore somehow requiring me to send a check for $5700 ahead of time to the realtor so he could make the difference up to the buyer at closing...which is madness. I mean, yes, I do have that much money in my savings, so it wouldn't have been a problem, but most people in my situation probably wouldn't, and plus, who wants to send their money off into the ether on a house deal that has already been twice postponed with no guarantees? Oh yeah, and add to this that the lawyer can't be involved in this extra exchange of funds because that's not the way the contract is set up. Does it make sense to you? If not, don't worry. No one else seemed to understand the necessity for me to be fronting five grand in this deal, even if only temporarily. So after a period of intense drama this afternoon, which involved endless rounds of phone calls with Sean and his mom, my aunt, and my realtor, I decided to just go to the damned closing myself and hand over a check to the buyer at the same time as I receive my check for the price of the house plus the $5700 extra. It's an extra pain in the neck, but better than the alternative. I just want this done with.

In other news, I had my last college classes today. Anti-climactic, really. Actually it should have been terribly climactic because my very last class was History of the Third Reich, and we finished up with the Gotterdammerung, the Twilight of the Gods, when all of the Third Reich went down in an apocalyptic blaze. I knew how the story ends--I've read Speer, I've seen "Downfall," and in about five volumes I'll read it from Churchill's perspective as well--but who doesn't? Hitler goes batshit, everybody jumps ship except for Eva and Goebbels and his sorry brood, Goering tries to seize command and Himmler tries to negotiate a separate piece, then the Fuhrer goes 'poof,' the Russians take Berlin and his smoking corpse and Stalin gets to pretend for the next few years that maybe Hitler escaped and the Allies might still need him after all. It's a spectacular, operatic finish, but when it was delivered by Professor Rosenfeld at break-neck pace in a fifty-minute class, it lost a little of its solemnity. Oh well.

Out

I did it; seven months to the day after my mom died, I moved out of my house and into my apartment. The house is locked up, empty, and ready for the closing Monday. I didn't even look back when we drove away because I was too busy not crashing the Penske truck.

I don't have a home anymore. Funny how I spent so much time trying to get my mom to leave that house, and then trying to leave it myself these past months, and now I'm finally done. For better or for worse I'll never set foot in there again. I used to think, the way all kids do, that I'd always have a room there, that my mom would never make me pack up my things so she could turn it into another den or something. Now that's gone, and my grandfather's house is gone without me ever even having been inside it again, and those were the only two homes I ever knew. Sean promised me tonight that we'll have a home again together, and I know we will, but I can never get back the feeling of security that comes from being in your parents' house.

I won't even begin to catalogue the number of fiascos we had the past two days; they're all over and done with, thank god. Now all that's left is for everyone to inquire politely about how moving out went, and say "oh, good!" when I tell them everything was OK. Sean told me that I can't expect anyone else to understand exactly how hard this was, and I know I can't. I just hate the way everyone seems to think it's been so easy, like it was nothing I couldn't handle. I hate that I had to do this. I hate that I've spent so much time this year just being anxious about my to-do list. I hate that I had to be the one to handle everything because my sister washed her hands of it. I hate that I had to be the responsible one. I hate it that she died and left me here. Most of all I hate that I can't even cry about this in my own damn room, because here come Sarah and Carla up the stairs, laughing about some bollywood movie crap, and if they see I'm crying, I'm sure they'll be very concerned and ask what's wrong, but they won't understand, because they can't understand. And I'm tired of being strong and making it through. I want to be beyond this.

Uplift

I wasn't wrong; it has been an extremely stressful period since my last post. I did find a new apartment last Wednesday, in Shelton; this past Sunday I went by to pick up my keys and put down a deposit. My roommate is in her 30s, I think, and a professor of counseling at the University of Bridgeport. Her name is Cicely. We haven't even met yet, but the landlord, Jamie (who's cute, but as his mom mentioned Sunday, has a girlfriend) said she's one of the nicest people he's ever met. I liked the apartment, as it was all recently redone inside when Jamie bought the house, and what especially drew me was the extra, empty room that Jamie said would work well as a den--which was awesome, because I have my giant desk plus six boxes' worth of books to put somewhere, and they're sure as hell not fitting in the actual bedroom. Plus this apartment is only 20 minutes from my place of work and $110 cheaper a month than the place in Meriden. I was sold.

Another huge point of stress last week was trying to figure out what I'm going to do with that damned dining room set. I put it on craigslist, but I could only be there to show it on Saturday, so even though I did get a few people who came over, no one took the bait. I wasn't willing to sell it for peanuts or split the set, especially for the guy who told me that $1000 was a lot to pay for something his kid's just going to beat up. Well, sir, that's why I'm not interested in lowering the price for a bumpkin like you. I had also tried auction places in the area, one of whom offered to come appraise it but only during the week, when I couldn't be there. Finally, I thought of offering it to the sisters to use as a big-ticket item at their yearly tag sale, the sale where I've always found such great stuff. So I called Sister St. Henry on Saturday and proposed the idea; she wasn't sure if they're still having one this year, so I also told her that if they'd just like to have it, maybe for one of the hundred sitting rooms they seem to have spread out in that place, I would love to give it to them. And she left me a voicemail this morning saying they'll take it!

Physically getting is there, however, is another matter, especially since that giant hutch has to be disassembled before it can be moved. I solved this problem by hiring movers for next Saturday, both to move me to Shelton and to drop off the set in West Hartford. If not for the set I really wouldn't have needed movers; I have a total of 24 boxes, a small bureau, my desk, my bedside table, my oriental cabinet, and a TV. Not even my bed is coming, since there's already a bigger one at my new apartment. But there was no way, even with help from the guys here, that we could have moved that set without damaging it, and it really is such a nice set. Everyone asks me why I don't want it "for the future"--well, hello, first of all, where the hell would I keep it, and secondly, if I have a dining room set, I want one that invites my friends and family to use it, not one that's beautiful yet untouchable.

Let's see....crisis number 3 or 4 was disposing of all of the furniture and household items that I'm not taking and which had not been donated to Betty and Alan in January. I was contemplating the ugly idea of making a dozen runs to Goodwill when, lo and behold, I did manage to find their number on freecycle. I marked all the furniture they could have, which included my bed and another of my grandpa's desks, along with that giant table with the bench that was our play-table years ago, and amassed a heap of items that covered the whole living room floor. Mrs. Long, busybody that she is, was very suspicious of them, since for two preachers who work as home health care aides, they drive a BMW wagon. In all likelihood someone gave it to them, but she remained sniffy. She wasn't there when Betty came back with her sister and two nieces, when they got ecstatic over the idea that they now had a coffeemaker, a telephone, and a VCR. That was no feigned enthusiasm--these were just people who hadn't had the things we all ridiculously take for granted.

So, as of 9am yesterday when they brought a UHaul for the furniture and Mrs. Long, against her better judgment, I'm sure, let them in, there is nothing left inside the house besides the dining room set and what I'm taking--not a plate, not a towel. Which of course brings me to crisis number 5--the garage. I had secretly planned to leave the garage as is and let the next people deal with it. I had even put in the contract that I was willing to leave everything there--of course the realtor put this in as "negotiable," which really means nada. I just dreaded the idea of having to clean out a garage, especially in the extremely limited time I had left, when I was still trying to figure out where I'd be living, what to do with the dining room set and my mom's van, etc etc. Unfortunately, when I met the buyer--and I did, although I never wanted to--she made clear that she expected the garage to be completely emptied.

Mind you, when I met this woman (and her three kids) I was trying to pack up all my belongings by myself, as plumbers and electricians ranged around me, drilling holes and making mysterious "upgrades" that my realtor had OKed but which Mrs. Long insisted--to the buyer's realtor's face--were illegal. I had planned on a stressful but calm Saturday of packing, and instead I got the Ringling Bros. Circus, and listening to this awful woman tell me that, oh no, we're just going to rip out all those carpets (OK, I acknowledge that I, too, prefer hardwood and would probably do the same when I move into a house, but it's different for me knowing my mom put those brand-new carpets in a year ago, and this little beast is just walking in and changing everything. Can you tell I hate her?) The other realtor knew all about my "situation" and I hated my realtor for telling him. Hello, then they had a giant green sign that said "SHE NEEDS TO SELL!" Of course they knew they could play hardball then. I wish we could have sold the house to Alan and Betty, even though I doubt they could have ever afforded it--they were always so openly admiring of how beautiful the house was, and even though I don't think it's such a prize, I was flattered. The buyers, they don't deserve that house. Sean and I were joking that maybe, if we're lucky, my dad will haunt them.

So now I've enumerated all the reasons that I wanted to rip my hair out this past week. Of course, in addition to all this house business there's always school work, too, and that only added to the insanity. But it's all looking up now. I'm done with two of three final papers, and tomorrow will present in Buddhist art class, thus officially ending my participation. Friday Sean and I are heading up to clean out the garage, take everything to the dump, pick up the moving van, and bring my mom's car to New Haven where we can donate it to the Easter Seals. Saturday morning at 8am sharp, two guys from "2 Young Studs Moving, LLC" will be moving my things and the dining room set. Monday the 30th is the closing--I've cancelled all our utilities for that date, and I'm evilly hoping they forget to arrange for them so that they have no power. Muaahaha.

Everything is working out. I'm thankful.

Everyone Makes Fun of the English Major, But...

Actually I don't have much of a comeback for that. Anyway, last night was the English Awards night. I didn't win either the poetry or lit crit awards (although I have to acknowledge that the girl who won the poetry award is an excellent writer), and for some reason I was about the only senior who was inducted into the honor society, Sigma Tau Delta (or STD, as Sean helpfully pointed out)this year instead of last year. That was kind of an embarassing oversight; it's supposed to be the top third of all English majors in each year, and I have about a perfect GPA in my English major. I didn't even think about it until they named all of last year's juniors who were inducted and I realized it was virtually everyone else. Embarassing.

Anyway, so yeah, this was all made good by the final award, which went to me and Lauren as "Best Senior English Majors of 2007." It wasn't the award itself, but what Dr. Bayer and Dr. Bridgford said about me that was a definite boost for a slightly deflated pride--my favorite snippet was Dr. Bridgford saying I was the "ideal student" and one of the best students she'd worked with in 25 years. I seriously considered asking Dr. Bayers for a copy of the remarks to read to myself when I'm depressed. Haha.

Oh yes, in other news, the housing deal is going through, but I have to move out by April 30th. Um, awesome, except that's two weekends from now, and I'm finding a different apartment to live in because the house in Meriden was going to be way too far away from my job. Sigh. Going up this weekend to work on boxing stuff up, but there's still the dining room set to dispose of, and the car, and all the furniture I can't take, and of course I lost Betty and Alan's number. It's going to be an extremely stressful couple of weeks.

Another Fifteenth of April

Here it is, year number seven; not much different than the others, really, except I'm more alone now than I was last year. Today is our induction to Phi Beta Kappa, and though I'm now not the only one whose parents aren't coming, due to the awful rain, I wish so much that I could look out at the audience and see their faces. Out of the wedding picture I keep on my desk, they're all gone--my parents, my grandparents, my nana that I never knew anyway. It feels like there's no one left to call anymore. No one to be proud of me who's not my friends or Sean. There's Jen, of course, and she tries, but it's not the same.

Today I miss them both so badly it hurts. It's just not fair.

Looking Back

Wow, I just looked at my posts for the month of April last year, JELOSO! April was such a fun month! Heather came, and so did spring, and the big cart blew up on Easter, and we went to Siena and Cortona and Ravenna again. God, it was such a good time. I miss the four of us cooking dinner in our apartment, the long, leisurely meals together because we had nothing else to do.

On a more ironic note, in one of my entries I mentioned how sad I was that my mom was alone around this time of year. Little did I guess that she wouldn't live to see another of his anniversaries. But they're together now. It's a happier thought.

Why Don't I Update More Often?

I always forget, or I'm too tired when I do remember. Luckily right now I feel perky and energetic--there's so much going on, but a lot of really good things have been happening, too. Probably most important: I got a job! The only one I had interviewed for, actually, at a law firm in Stratford. I'll be an administrative assistant. Not something I would ever want to do long-term, but it'll pay the bills until I go to grad school. When I applied they asked for a salary requirement and I said $32,000, because it seemed like an OK figure, and they said they'd pay me $33,000, so good deal! Best of all, besides the two weeks vacation, is that I don't have to pay anything extra for medical insurance. That'll save me a ton.

So I will be living in Meriden and commuting about 45 minutes to Stratford. I have to get rid of the Tahoe, alas...briefly I considered backing out of living with Rachel and trying to find somewhere closer to Stratford, but for $750 a month all inclusive, in a nice little house with friendly people, can I be sure I'd find anything that sweet in New Haven?

It's also award season, and everyone has been racking them up like candy canes around here. I'm proudly sharing the Art History award with Meredith! I'm also sharing the English award with someone, I don't know who, and I found out today I'm getting the Women's Studies Alumni award for a paper I wrote on why Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique idea really doesn't hold water. Sweet. This weekend is the Phi Beta Kappa induction, which I missed last year due to being blissfully abroad. Sigh. What a lifetime ago that seems.

Meanwhile, the deal on the house seems to be going forward; we're entering the final stages of haggling. Fingers crossed. Over the Easter break I stopped by to try to pack up some of my things, and it was just so ennervating to be in that empty, listless house by myself. My room is really the only room that still has much in it, and it was depressing to try and pack that into a box. But on the plus side, I spent a couple of fun nights with Sara, and had breakfast with her, Heather and Cody at Dom's (their first time)--the last time we'll see each other before emerging on the world as freshly graduated adults.

Actual Easter was a great time too--I spent Saturday and Sunday nights at Sean's. Saturday we went to Linda's friend Phillip's condo, which was absolutely magnificent: if I ever had lots of money and a decorator that's what my house would look like too, except I could never keep it so neat. Phillip is gay, I'm sure that has something to do with it. :-) We played an interesting type of poker where every hand was dealer's choice, and Gary seemed to know every game ever invented. Surprisingly, no one really was familiar with texas hold'em, which is the only type of poker I know, so it was a learning experience for all. We played with quarters, and yes, I lost. Easter dinner was a good time; Sal and Alice, Gary's parents, were there, along with his brother Joe. Sean has such a mixed family, whereas mine was always just DiMarzos...there was just a certain flavor about our family get-togethers that I really miss.

Last night in the mall I mentioned to Sean how much I missed my mom, and he said that he really misses her too. It's so comforting to know that he knew her, the real her, like I did, and that even when I forget he'll be there to help me remember.

Backwards/Forwards

On Saturday I found a place to live after graduation! I'll be moving into a little white cape house in Meriden. I met the owner, Rachel, and looked at the house, which is great. My room is on the ground floor, definitely bigger than the one at my house. She has three dogs and one adorably fat cat. Two of the dogs are teensy lapdogs, although admirably well-behaved ones, and the third is a placid labrador that reminds me of Heather's Bailey. Their current fourth, Greg (who had the neatest room of any male I've ever met outside of Sean) is moving out in April. This piece of information became even more pertinent after yesterday's events, when I tentatively agreed to sell my house--the potential buyers want to close by April 30th if everything works out. My fingers are crossed, I know real estate deals are never sure until everything's been signed and sealed. Apparently they're first-time homebuyers, currently renting somewhere in Windsor. I'm happy to think of my home becoming someone else's first home.

Sean reminded me yesterday that tomorrow it will have been six months since my mom died. Six months, and the world's still turning. Meanwhile, this Saturday, the day my sister incidentally flies to Aruba for vacation, would have been Captain Donut's 57th birthday. And of course, April 15th, the day of our Phi Beta Kappa induction, will be his seventh anniversary. My parents got a shout-out in my bio for the ceremony. The least I could do.

Amusing recently: Sean and I contemplating what would happen if people could meet the younger versions of themselves, and laughing imagining little Mrs. D. speaking of her enemies: 'What do you mean we haven't danced on their graves? What do youMEAN we went first?!". And little JTD: "Hm, so you say all those Table Talk pies were a bad idea? What about our nightly Haagen-Daz?...Ah...I see." Hahaha. If only they were around to see the way we make fun of them.

It's a beautiful day outside. Perhaps spring has come.

Revisited

So I had originally started posting my diary entries from our Greece trip onto this blog, but I decided to delete them. I am way too lazy to transcribe the thirty-or-so pages I've got written down, and honestly, twenty years from now, what's more likely to have survived--pixelated text swimming out there in the ether, or the hard-bound journal that will shortly find a home in a storage container? I ask you.

Anyway, Greece was fantabulous, driving around was a blast, Sean and I didn't kill each other, and seeing the Parthenon was much like seeing the Colosseum--bigger than it looks in pictures, but somehow anti-climactic. Climbing around Mystras was much more exciting, even if it lacked the cache of visiting the Acropolis.

I just spoke with Rachel,a 24-year-old who owns her own house in Hamden and is looking for a roommate. Her email said the rent is $750 with all utilities, including cable and internet in the bedrooms. She has a fenced backyard with a pool, plus a finished basement with a built-in bar and a big-screen tv. All this sounds amazing, and she even said she was willing to wait till May for someone to move in if she clicked with them. Originally, though, I thought it was just her in the house, which does in retrospect seem ludicrous considering the price of the rent. As it turns out, she shares with three other people, and I would be replacing the lone male who is moving out. The house is four bedrooms, and I would have one on the ground floor. There's apparently a full bathroom on each floor.

So we chatted, and I said I would drive up this weekend to check out the house and meet her roommates. Part of me wishes I could just be moving into a place with only one other roommate--fewer toes to worry about stepping on. At the same time, though, this house does sound like an incredible deal, and if they're nice, it could be a great opportunity. Rachel manages one of her father's insurance-business offices, another girl is in a master's program, and the third is a waitress. Rachel also mentioned she loves movies and isn't a huge party person, so that's encouraging. The last thing I'd want to do is move into Animal House.

However, I've gotten some other messages from Rent.com, including another woman with an apartment in Hamden, and the girl from Minnesota who's flying out here to look for apartments in April--we agreed to meet up if neither of us has found a roommate or apartment by then. So we'll see how it all goes.

Hm

Blogger Dashboard has informed me that one of my blogs, 'veritas,' has been moved over to new Blogger--that's cool, except I never had any such blog, I can't find it by searching, and when I try signing into New Blogger it says it can't let me yet because this blog is too big. Wtf.

Sara just left on the train a little while ago, back to the W.H. for her spring break. So much fun having her around. I love my Fairfield peeps (yes, I am legit using the word), but four years of college...it gets a little old after a while. Sara and her roommate Jen bought tickets to Europe for their 42-day monster excursion, which starts the week after we graduate. I am jeloso, indeed.

But on the plus side I'm going to Greece in four days. Hah. I still can't believe that we're going to drive around the Peloponnese, just the two of us in our little Hyundai Accent that cost a ridiculous amount of money to get the automatic version of. Greece has the highest rate of car accidents of any country in the EU--whoot! We're still debating over who gets to drive where, because he thinks I drive too cautiously and I think he drives like a crazy person.

And now for our itinerary, because ten years from now I probably will have forgotten where we went if I don't have copious amounts of photographic and written evidence (as we know, this blog serves as my alternate-memory source, replacing the faulty parts bestowed upon me by Nature):

Friday: we land in Athens, pick up the rental car, and drive about 90 miles to Nafplio, a cute port town in the Peloponnese. Crash from sheer exhaustion.

Saturday: Visit Mycenae and Epidavros, both nearby.

Sunday: Pack up and drive down to Sparta, except we're not going to Sparta because it's lame (being "spartan," they failed to decorate in a way that would actually survive the millenia). We're going to Mystras, an abandoned Byzantine city on a hilltop near Sparta. It's going to be supercool unless it rains, and then it will be supercrappy. After this, we drive north to the little village of Dimitsana, where I hope to God we actually have reservations, because I had to call and talk with someone who didn't speak English, and as you might guess my Lonely Planet phrasebook Greek is not all it should be. They certainly don't have my name right, because I kept repeating "Michelle" and she kept saying back something else. So we'll see how that goes.

Monday: Visit the famous water museum that is the reason we're staying in Dimitsana on Dr. Schwab's advice. After that, we're driving west to hit up the Temple at Vasses, which is apparently one of the most complete Greek temples left around, so complete they built a giant tent around it to protect it from the elements. Finish in Olympia on the coast.

Tuesday: Check out Olympia, then drive up and cross the water at Patra to get back on the Greek mainland and to get to Delphi.

Wednesday: Poke around the Delphic oracle, treasury etc etc, then head towards Athens, possibly visiting Marathon, and drop off the car.

Thursday: visit the Acropolis so that when we meet up with Dr. Schwab for dinner we'll actually have stuff to talk about.

Friday: I hear they have ducks in the National Gardens.

Saturday: Departure, alas--we get back to JFK at 9:30 at night, and Mike, Meredith and Sarah get back from their Mexican cruise at 9:50, so we may be traveling back together, which would be one big jet-lagged bucket of funness!

So as you can tell, I am both excited and well-organized. We're talking Excel spreadsheets, people. And yes, I am an early packer, having already done a dry run to ensure that I can get everything I need for eight days into a carry-on suitcase (no checked luggage for me, bitches!). Everyone makes fun of me for this, but hey, screw you guys.

Randomly, I did make a will before I went to Italy, just in case I sort of died there, which I knew to be unlikely but I wanted to be prepared for contingencies. It was a valid will at the time because I signed it in the presence of three witnesses (Sara, Heather and Rae, naturally). Ironically I left everything to my mother, so not only is that moot, but also since I now actually have assets (read: her assets) a homemade will doesn't cut the mustard. In the absence of one Jen would get everything *gasp* Talk about unfairness. :-)

NYC

I spent a few days in New York this past week to see Heather and attend a day of the 2007 College Art Association conference, the annual meeting of all the art history professors and graduate students. It was held at the super-fine Hilton in midtown Manhattan, and I went the day after the snow had left incredible amounts of slush and mud all over the city's sidewalks, which meant I had to wear crappy sneakers on the subway and in the streets, only to change into my heels inside the building. Which was fine, until I had to wait around in the main concourse for Dr. Escobar before we went to lunch; having already put the ugly shoes on, I got quite a few looks of "oh, dear" pity from the well-heeled attendees. Nothing like a little soujourn in New York among the Carrie Bradshaws to make you feel completely rustic and unsophisticated.

Dr. E had recommended I go to the conference just to see what the field is like, to view "the madhouse," which was by no means an exaggeration. He estimated about 3,000 people attend every year. It was definitely eye-opening--in more ways than one, at $150 for a single-day ticket! At least I didn't stand out when I was actually wearing the right shoes. I talked to a few people who assumed I was a grad student, including one very nervous girl who was interviewing for a job teaching painting at some college and who thought I was an interviewee as well (Dr. Escobar later observed that she ws probably thrilled to hear I wasn't competition).

I was most nervous about going out to lunch with the members of the panel on Phillip IV that Dr. Escobar was going to be chairing in the afternoon. It was strange to see him there; he's on sabbatical and will never be my professor again, so there was less of a teacher-student thing going on. Before the conference he had given me his cell phone number in case I got lost, and while we walked to the restaurant, a Spanish place called Tintol, he told me that the reason he had warned me not to give the number out wasn't that he was worried about crazy college kids pranking him, but that he didn't want the other members of the department knowing he had a cell phone. Apparently he's kept its very existence a secret, which seems almost impossible in this day of constant connectivity.

Lunch was good. When you go to a tapas restaurant with a bunch of Spanish history, art and literature scholars, you can rely on them ordering up some good stuff. I had lamb meatballs, real tortillas made out of potato and egg,and croquetas, which are like a spicy fish stick without fish. The two eminent scholars who were joining us, Jonathan Brown and John Elliott, arrived late, and being older gentlemen were fairly quiet. The other members of the panel were all female, as well as Dr. Escobar's co-chair Amanda--who I realized was the friend he had mentioned as being a historian who focused on costume when we were in our Mannerism seminar. The youngest woman was from Puerto Rico and didn't yet have her doctorate; she's studying at the IFA under Jonathan Brown. Another woman was from Bilbao and moved to Dublin fifteen years ago, so she had a really interesting accent.

The Phillip IV panel was very interesting, since the four papers presented covered a range of topics, not just contained to the art itself, but also exploring Spanish Golden Age theater and the role of Phillip's wife Isabella as a patron. After the panelists finished, Brown and Elliott discussed the joint project for which they both received wide acclaim 25 years ago, "The Buen Retiro: A Palace for a King." Luckily I had read the first few chapters of this book before the conference, so I wasn't in the dark.

I could have stayed for another evening panel and crashed the grad student reception, but I'd been up since 6:30 in the morning, so I said goodbye to Dr. Escobar, who I won't see again till graduation, and peaced out back to Brooklyn and Heather's comfy apartment.

And then we went to have fondue with two of her friends from Paris! My time with Heather is always so lively. I'm still not quite sure if going to the conference was worth the $150 bucks, but I got to spend a couple of days with Flanny, so it's all good.

Sad

I got a thick envelope from my aunt's attorney this afternoon regarding the sale of my grandfather's house. Apparently my aunt Janice accepted an offer for the house on Thursday from a neighbor--the address said Neponset St, which is right next to East Cross. I was really surprised and moreover, sad that no one called me to tell me that the house had been sold. The cover letter of the package wasn't even addressed to me, it was just copies of correspondence between the lawyer and realtor. I had to go through and find the contract to find out exactly what as going on. The lawyer assumed, probably, that someone would have let me know in advance.

It was sad enough knowing his house had already been emptied, that I would never get to see it the way I remembered it from my childhood. Now, depending on how quickly the new owner takes possession, I may never see the inside of it again at all. Somehow I guess I had thought the house would take longer to sell, maybe until Easter when I could go up there, or even summer. I wish my own house would sell so quickly.

Everything in the estate splits among the three families: Donna, Janice, and in the absence of my father, the final third gets split between me and Jen. So, since the house sold for $325,000, that means Jen and I each get about $54,000. I don't even know how I feel about all this money business. I guess I think more calmly think about what I inherited from my mom, because I'm her daughter and that's what children do, inherit when the parent dies, but with my grandpa it's weird--my dad should have been there to inherit his money, or even my mother, but they both went before him, something I knew he never saw coming. Is it strange to say that I feel a greater emptiness from that inheritance, even though I feel the greater pain from my mom's death?

Now that I think about it, according to the terms of his will (which dated from 1987, way to update the legal documents, Pops) if he had died before my mom did, she wouldn't have actually inherited anything. It would have gone right to us. I wonder how that would have worked out? Would I have given her control of the money to put into an investment account? Would she have automatically assumed she would have control? I know my sister would have probably relied on her to figure out what to do, but what about me?

With my mom, these things are never clear. Sean and I like to joke about what she would have done in one situation or another, but in reality it's hard to pin her down. There was definitely a sense of autocracy there, the old "you do this because I said so" attitude. Sean finds all my memories of her ruling with the iron grip hilarious. For example, he's always amused by the story of this frequent occurrence in our household when I was a kid and my mom was cooking:

Me: What's for dinner?
Mom: Food.

I miss her.

One Month and Two Days and Counting...

...until Sean and I leave for Greece! Whoot!

Money Matters

Today was an accounting/bill-paying day, exactly the sort that gets me completely depressed and wanting nothing more than to run away to some tropical island where there's no such thing as a cell phone and gas heat. Among my lovely obligations: a bill for $2,000 to the Probate Office in Windsor, one for $350 for engraving my mom's name on her tombstone, a $70 AT&T bill,a $139 Verizon bill (two months' in one, as somehow I didn't receive my e-bill last month), a gas bill for $190 and $46 for the privilege of being elected into the Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society. Good Lord.

Let's Try Zen

Wednesday night Sean and I made our first foray into Buddhist meditation at a Zen center in New Haven, housed on the second floor of a charming old-fashioned house near the hockey rink. The school is a part of the Korean Buddhist tradition (I'm learning in seminar just how different Buddhism can become as it moves among geographic regions in Asia) and its founding teacher, a monk, lives in Rhode Island but travels about to the various centers so that he can speak with people looking for guidance.

I was quite nervous when we arrived, because it seemed suddenly very foreign and uncertain. There was only one woman there, an older, gray-haired woman named Mary, who was very pleasant. She took us into the teacher's room--which definitely had the air of being inhabited only rarely, and then by an ascetic--and we settled onto some cushions for a general introduction to Budhhist meditative practices.

When meditating, you sit on a small round or rectangular pillow that is placed on top of a larger cushion. You can sit cross-legged, as I did, or with your legs tucked under your as you sit on a pillow or a small stool. You can sit in a chair, too, if you want--it doesn't seem to matter exactly how you sit as long as you sit.

A certain kind of body alignment is also advised: back straight, but not rigid; head up, earlobes centered over the shoulders; hands in the lap, palms upward, left over right (the right hand is considered to be the more "discursive" material hand and is therefore being silenced by the left, which doesn't really apply in the case of a lefty like me, I should think) and the thumbs meeting about an inch below the belly button. A feature of Korean Buddhism is that its adherents keep the eyes open, cast down on the floor in front of them, rather than shutting them.

After the physical orientation came the mental. Mary advised us either to count our breaths up to ten, starting with one again any time we found ourselves distracted, or to use a mantra. As you breathe in, in your mind you say "Clear mind, clear mind, clear mind," and as you exhale it's "Don't know." Every time you find yourself drifting, which she assured us we would very often, you have to bring yourself back. I was interested to learn that meditation doesn't involve blocking out the sounds that are going on around you, but rather welcoming them; Mary said that when she meditates, she listens to the sounds outside the room, then the sounds inside the room, and then the sounds directly around her as a way to focus.

So after we've been sitting with Mary for about forty-five minutes, we put on robes of pale gray and go with her into the meditation room, where the rest of the people who have come for the evening have already been chanting for a while. The room is completely different from the rest of the apartment, obviously redone with light, highly polished wooden floorboards and columns. A gold statue of the Buddha, to whom you must bow as you enter and exit this room, stands on a pedestal at one end. On the floor in front of it are a circle of cushions with pillows. Sean and I sit down and try to make ourselves comfortable, one of the others knocks a wooden bell, and for the next half-hour we're in silent meditation.

When I say silent, I mean silent. You could hear every tick of the clock, every person swallowing, breathing, and making other bodily rumbles, every rustle of fabric. Er, well, I was actually the only person rustling. Mary had told us if we got really uncomfortable to get up and stand for a while, but I was too embarassed to do so even after my left leg completely fell asleep. It hurt like a bitch. Up until that point, I was doing fairly well, despite having chosen the seat facing the window, so that the movements of the people in the window right next door kept attracting my eye, despite my attempts to keep it focused on the floorboards. I couldn't tell how much time had passed, but I was sure it wasn't longer than fifteen minutes--then the bell was struck again. A half hour had actually passed. Sean's legs had been so uncomfortable that he actually had a little trouble standing at first (at least he didn't rustle in vain to relieve the discomfort!). After 30 minutes of sitting meditation, there's a short period of walking meditation, during which time Mary drew us into the kitchen, as she had only indicated we should stay a half hour our first time.

Meditation is really, really difficult, both physically and mentally. Mary advised us to try only about five minutes a day at home, to get your body used to the idea of it. She also stressed that regularly joining a community is important, because sometimes you don't make room in your daily life for extended meditation. Joining is free; you can leave donations if you want to. When we left, I was immediately resolved to come back the next week; Sean a little more hesitant, but he promised to try it at least once more.

The past few days I've done little five-minute sits in the morning. I need to try out more positions and find one I can comfortably maintain for more than fifteen minutes. It makes me feel good, though, and I want to keep going. Fingers crossed that I won't rustle so much next time.

Sigh

The couple who looked at our house left me a voicemail this morning to let me know they decided not to put in an offer for it; the wife said she decided it was too much to take on a new house when their daughter will be going to college soon. I can't pretend I'm not disappointed--it would have been such a relief to be able to sell the house so quickly--but it really was almost too much to hope for that they would take it off my hands right away. However, I'm glad I signed up with the realtor, rather than waiting and hoping on these people. Also, I'm a little relieved that I won't have to handle the deal myself when it does happen, even if I do have to pay the realtor a commission.

It's ironic--now, when I'm close to selling the house, as has been my objective from day one, I feel rather wistful about the prospect of keeping it.

Signorelli, Lorenzetti et al--

What is this sudden distinction between "New Blogger" and "Old Blogger" one is now forced to make when logging in? Apparently it's meant to make anyone who hasn't switched over the the 'new' version feel like they're sorely missing out...but I like the simple format blogger has. I'm not really interested in dressing up my posts with any fancy-pants-ness, anyway.

Today marked not only my first day of classes, but also my return to working in the slide library after a whole year's absence between Florence and then being Dr. Escobar's nominal research assistant. Filing the 15th and 16th century slides was particularly depressing, since a year ago I could have been standing in the Brancacci Chapel, or in front of Donatello's David instead of squinting at it on a scrap of plastic. I could have wandered into San Marco or the Accademia on my way home this afternoon, instead of fighting the wind up past the townhouses--dull, dreary, homogenous things! But, as I often chide my roommate, dwelling on past glories doesn't help any; it just makes the present seem that much less livable.

Sean remarked a while back that this is our first spring semester spent jointly at Fairfield since we've been dating: sophomore year he was at UMASS, and last year I was gone. Now that we've been triumphantly reunited in the January deep-freeze, we celebrated by entertaining Popham with a grade-A faux-squabble in the cafeteria--he compared me to me a buffalo, I destroyed his new paper airplane, and it all ended in detente when I had the salt shaker raised and he the pepper. Hahaha. Love is grand.

Nerves

In a few hours I will be returning to the house I just recently left, in order to show it a second time to a couple who just may, god willing, want to make an offer for it. They came on Friday and did seem interested, but when they hadn't called me back by Sunday morning about seeing it with their kids--as they knew I was going back to school Sunday--I kind of decided they probably weren't interested. Then they called in the late afternoon, and we arranged to meet today so their kids can see the house.

Seeing as I've never sold a house before, I'm a little nervous. I don't know if they'd make me a verbal offer today, or maybe one in writing once they've talked it over privately with their children--I'd hope for the one in writing, because it would spare me having to negotiate a price immediately and in person. I feel at a disadvantage with the wife, who is clearly the one in command, because she knows, obviously, why I have to sell my house, and that I'd like to do it as quickly as possible. She also knows that I'm younger and have no experience with this. Linda warned me that buyers usually try to 'lowball' the seller at first to get them to come down a lot in price out of sheer surprise and panic--another reason I'd prefer a reply in writing. Gives me time to think.

I'm crossing my fingers that everything goes well. If I sell the house myself to these people, I don't even have to pay the realtor anything, which would be sweet. He tried to convince me over the phone yesterday that he could handle these people for me if I would agree to pay his commission as though they were buyers he found himself, and I declined. A few trips up to Windsor in gas money is much less than the fee I would have to pay him.

The New (and Last) Semester

And so, quicker than I ever would have thought possible, my final semester at Fairfield begins. Winter break terminated a day ahead of schedule for me; Heather couldn't make it up to hang out with Carla and I tonight after all, so we decided to come back to campus early. We ended up going to the community theater to check out Stranger Than Fiction (not half bad) with Mike, and afterwards enjoying some amaretto sours safely in the embrace of our wonderful little townhouse.

It was very bittersweet, closing the door of my house when I left this afternoon...The past three weeks have been a frenzy of cleaning, as I emptied out and shined up the house to put it on the market. Before I went home, I had accepted that there was simply no way to get the house in shape in less than a month, especially while working forty-hour weeks at StubHub. I surprised even myself.

It turned out that returning to customer service was hell, especially when I went home every night to the thousand responsibilities and tasks that needed to be done with little energy and even less optimism. So, I told them them I'd only be staying two weeks, not three, and then I proceeded to vigorously not care about my performance the second week of my employment. (I correctly figured that since a., I was only staying a very short while, and b., I had been previously acknowledged as an extremely good employee they were always happy to see back, that no one would really be checking up on me and how much work I did. Bingo!)

Ridding the house of excess furniture was much easier than I had expected, thanks to a little divine intervention that brought us to Betty and Alan, a pastor and his wife living in Manchester in an apartment with no furniture and only a blow-up bed to sleep on. We had everything to offer and they needed everything, so they took a great deal: my mother's bed and furniture, my sister's bed, tables, recliners, a couch, the kitchen table, the dishes and cups, the towels and sheets, an extra TV and phone. They came to the house on a Thursday evening to look at everything, and Alan returned with a UHaul the next day while I was at work, with Sean deputed to stay at the house. In under an hour it was done, and the house was eerily bare.

As unsettling as it was to be in such a stripped environment, to not even have a kitchen table to eat at nor anywhere really to sit besides my own bed, it made cleaning a lot easier. Once the furniture was gone and I had left StubHub for good (thank god) everything proceeded at an amazing pace. By the time I left home, I had had the house appraised, shown it to a couple who knew my next door neighbor, and signed a contract with a realtor to put the house on the market. As of today, my house is up for sale.

When I stopped by the convent to see my mom's coworkers yesterday, Sr. Sally and Sr. St. Henry asked me if Jen knew the house was up for sale; "hmm...I left her a voicemail about it, I think." They were a little surprised that this wasn't a collegiate effort, but Jen has proved to be a little less than helpful in the cleaning department. She was mainly concerned with getting her own things organized and moved to New York rather than actually being of any use. I asked her to do a few things, like take a carload of trash bags, most of which had emerged from the cleansing of her own room, to the dump--she not only complained, she demanded I reimburse her for the ten dollars she had to pay there. Two days before I'm ready to leave home she mentions over the phone that she is not, after all, taking most of the furniture she had previously laid claim to--furniture I didn't let Betty and Alan have because it was for her. It gave me no small amount of satisfaction to warn her, upon her final departure with her loads of junk earlier this month, that I would no longer feel compelled to consult her before disposing of anything in the house--it kind of lets me understand why our dear president finds unilateral action so appealing.

But that is all behind me for the present, and with the house on the market, the keys in the realtor's hands, and my mail forwarded to school, I won't have to be running up to the house every weekend like I had unpleasantly anticipated. I can enjoy my senior year for a litle while, before I get to start the usual freak-out over a place to live and gainful employment.

Think--I may never spend another night in the home I grew up in, the home where all my memories live. It's a vague sort of pain, but there nonetheless.

The New Year

I haven't posted here in almost a month. Things got fairly crazy at school as the semester came to a close; however, after a particularly harrowing week that saw me racing to finish two ten-page papers while prepping for the modern art exam that our teacher decided to hold on the last day of class, the actual two exams I had to take, in women's studies and physics, seemed somewhat less daunting.

I did find myself stressing about the results of both the art and women's studies exams, though, something I almost never do--art because I knew I had gotten one ID wrong out of six, and I wasn't certain of my final essay, and Women's studies because I needed the final exame to make up for the C+ I got on the disastrous two-question midterm. After the exam, Dr. Hohl told me that if I got an A on the exam she'd discount the earlier test, which both relieved and terrified me--what if I didn't ace it after all? As it turned out, my worries were unfounded. I got an A in modern art, an A- in women's history, and an A in everything else. At first I allowed myself to be a little disappointed at seeing the "minus" sign next to the A for women's studies, but then I recognized that even with two A-grade papers and a hopefully-fabulous final exam, a professor can't outright ignore a C+, no matter the circumstances. Therefore, I'm very grateful that I managed to get the A-.

My grade-craze this semester had a couple of motivating factors. This was one of the first semesters where I had more than one class that I was a little uncertain about--my internship, for one, where I worried not about my workplace evaluation, but about the stupid paper we had to turn in about our new-found wealth of experience. The C+ in women's studies was the first I had ever gotten on a college midterm, and it really freaked me out. Plus I just hated modern art, and I worried that that would show through. Mid-December also witness me undergoing the realization that I DO want to go to grad school--just not for English--and hence maintaining my GPA took on a further importance.

Underneath it all, though, was the desire to prove to myself and, I suppose, in some supernatural way, to my parents, that even under the stressful circumstances in which I found myself this semester that I could still maintain the kind of grades that they had always expected of me and which I have long since come to expect of myself. In this I can say I succeeded; I'm very proud of everything I was able to accomplish this semester, including some papers that, I feel, rank among the best I've ever written.

The end of the semester brought new challenges, naturally--my painful return to employment at StubHub, for example, which thankfully ends this Friday, as well as the depressing tasks associated with emptying out and cleaning out a houseful of memories. Not that there haven't been bright spots--my first Christmas with Sean and his family, exchanging gifts with my friends, New Year's celebrations in New Haven, and, this upcoming weekend, my two-year anniversary with Sean!

In the midst of everything, there are always blessings.

After a Bad, Bad Day

Sister Rosalie sent me a Christmas card today, and wrote at the bottom:

Your mom and dad keep all of us safe now,
and I dance with them on earth for the day when!"

The last line only makes sense if you heard her memorial service at my mom's wake--she pointed to my parents' wedding picture and said she envisioned them dancing together forever in heaven.

That helps, a little.

Ahhhhh

So some jerk just decided to prank call our house, and being the only one home I picked up and heard, in a weirdly distorted voice, "What's your favorite scary movie?" Creepy! However, I kind of automatically assumed that it was Sean or TJ, even though moments later I realized they would never, ever do that, because prank calling just isn't their thing--so I just replied "Oh, shut up!" and he hung up. Once I realized that wasn't one of my friends, then I got creeped out, because I WAS all alone and Katie had left the front door unlocked when she left in the afternoon, so I had to go down to lock it and then pelted back upstairs and locked myself in my room. Rationally speaking, I know it's just some jackass on this campus a little tipsy early in the evening, but it frightened me nonetheless. I almost had Sean come up, but then I called Meredith and found out my other housemates were like ten minutes away. So now I'm just waiting till they get back, with the door locked, even though that wimpy hollow-pine door wouldn't stop a housecat if it really wanted in here...

Long Time

I haven't posted in quite some time, a fact stemming from a frustrating incident involving the loss of a very long post at the beginning of November concerning my grandfather's funeral, combined with an increasingly hectic schedule as the semester draws to a close. Thanksgiving passed largely without incident, although the two-hour drive up to and back from my aunt's house with Jen riding copilot was a none-too-pleasant vision of what winter break will be like (hint, lots of squabbling, some crying--on her part, not mine). The dinner itself was fun, and I think I've decided to go back up there for Christmas. I had previously considered going to Sean's, but then my sister morbidly announced that she would stay at home alone for Christmas if I did so...yeah. Plus, I realized I do enjoy being around my family. It's a good feeling to remember that there are still some flesh-and-blood relatives in this world, and better still to hear stories of my dad and grandparents that I've never been told.

My executorial responsibilities continue to be a rather onerous burden. I finally got control of my mom's bank accounts and made sure that the house had mortgage insurance, so that's taken care of. I haven't paid off her credit cards yet, but today I mailed out a check for $400 to Metlife--the last installment on home insurance that I have to pay till next April, whoot--plus one for $250 to the Hartford Courant for her obituary because yes, they make you pay by the line or by the word or some such crap. Ripoff. I finally had to realize that there's just no way that I'll be able to get the house into any condition to sell in the brief three weeks that I'll be home over break--especially considering that I'll be working full time at Stubhub starting the 26th. I wish I didn't have to work--really, REALLY wish--but the reality is that someone has to quite literally put food on the table this time, and I can't in good conscience make my sister, who doesn't have a job in New York, pay for it. (She will, however, be the worker bee when it comes to the incredibly long list of tasks I've got written down, since she won't be working and won't have a car, at least not after I've sold my mom's van). It's hard to look forward to the end of the semester when I contemplate everything I've got waiting for me at home. It's depressing.

A lot of the time I find myself with less interest in other people's problems, at least the problems I hear complained about over and over again. Sometimes I look at them and think, do you even know how hard this has all been for me, how hard it is every day, and yet you want me to sit here and listen to this and pretend like I feel sorry for you?

It's easier to be happy in the daytime because there's so much to distract me, always so much to be done, but at night I lie in bed and I think about everything I've lost, I think about my mom, remembering the things she did and the way she talked, the way she laughed or scowled when I made her mad, the gleeful grin she'd get when she tricked me into something like forcing me to come along tag-saling, and I feel so alone. And the worst part of it is that I can't even cry like I'd like to because Carla's there trying to sleep, and I don't want to wake her up and make a fuss. I miss her at night most of all. The strange thing is, I don't feel the pain of my grandfather's death at all; or rather, whatever pain there would have been has just been completely eclipsed by the grief over my mom to the point that I have to remind myself that he passed away, too. A month ago tomorrow.

I know it's only time that will make this better, I know it because it was true last time and will be true again. I rarely cried for my father in the past few years, even when I thought of him with sadness. It's only been two months since she died, two months! Time passes so slowly.

There have been bright spots, of course. Sean, my eternal knight in shining armor, has been the mainstay of my support, even though he himself is struggling under heavy burdens. We had a great time at Thanksgiving weekend participating in the Richardsons' scavenger hunt, and our team (Richardson, Kim, Pinto, and us) actually won! This past weekend we went into Brooklyn, visited Heather's apartment, met her friend Melissa, and then went out to dinner in my sister's neighborhood with Heather and almost-genuinely-old-man Cody. My sister's apartment is really great, despite its complete lack of decoration and smell of fresh paint. Plus, I got to see my cat, Sapphire, dear old Fatty Lumpkin, and she recognized me and purred, and I petted her and it reminded me of all the old times. I wish I had her to sleep with these days. So many things can be eased by a happy cat purring next to you.

Sean and I spent whole days recently on the cat-after-marriage debate, which is based around a. Sean's allergy and b. Sean's hatred of cats in general. At first, it appeared Sean would only permit me to have a cat if I took his name, which I refused out-of-hand; then, he tried to compromise and offered to let me have a cat if I hyphenated my last name. I was tempted, I tell you, till he re-entered the caveat that it would have to be one of those new, $4000 hypo-allergenic cats they've recently come out with. Ha! I'm not selling myself so cheaply as all that, especially for an investment that could be destroyed with one quick trip in front of a car's tires. Pffffft, I say.

Again

Yesterday morning, as I was zooming along I-91 headed home to collect my mail and visit Rae/Cinnamon, I flipped open my phone to see that I had two missed calls, from my grandfather's house and from Jen. My grandfather has never called me, nor do I think he even had my cell phone number, so my first thought was, "Oh please don't tell me something happened to him." My aunt left a quick voicemail asking me to call her back at Poppa's, but my sister, ever-tactful, left a sniffly message telling me he died in his sleep that previous night. So, Death strikes again.

I pulled the car over, and cried for a while. There's something strange about sobbing in a car, because the closeness of the space amplifies the sound, it sounds very alien. (The day I went with Sean to pick up my mother's van from where she'd left it on Palisado Ave in Windsor, I drove it home and I don't think I've ever cried so hard in my life. I'm amazed I didn't get into an accident).

After a while I called Sean, who was resting at home, woke him up and told him the news. I called Carla, too. My aunt I saved for last (I couldn't even think about talking to Jen, not till I had ahold of myself), and talking to her I was just so reminded of how similar she and Janice are to me and Jen; she said Janice hadn't stopped talking to the policeman who'd been there for an hour, but that she needed to DO something so she'd been cleaning and doing his dishes. Exactly how I felt when I got to my house that day. She said she'd told Janice that they had a hard act to follow after the way Jen and I handled everything, and I laughed. I don't know what other way we could have done it than the way we did; if we hadn't been able to, who would?

She said that Janice had gone to visit him that morning around 9, and when she saw his paper still outside she knew something had to be wrong. The man was always out of bed by 6am. She found him in his bed. It's amazing that after having had a wife, son, and daughter-in-law all die of heart attacks, he got to go out the way everyone dreams of--peacefully, in his sleep. It fits the pattern of his life, because he was a man who never really worried about anything, who went with the flow and let himself be borne up and over the storms of life when others, like my father, worried and went under. It figures that he of all people would be granted the easiest of deaths. I have to try living life his way. I'd like to die his way, too. Four months shy of 90, no alzheimers, no cancer, no real physical debilitation--what a record!

Tomorrow night Carla and I will drive up to Massachusetts. We're not going to the wake--I'm so tired of wakes--but we're going to the funeral Mass on Wednesday. We'll be staying in my grandfather's house. I can hardly bear to think of that house having to be emptied out and sold--strange, that I can more easily countenance the idea of getting rid of my own home, but not his. That's where my dad grew up, where my grandmother cooked us animal pancakes and told us stories that were mostly lies, where I explored a thousand illusions and adventures in my childhood. My grandfather designed it, built it, filled it with the products of his crafts. I can't imagine never seeing that green shag carpet again, never pressing the button of the intercom that ran to the basement just to hear its fragile "beep". I think I have more beautiful, happy memories of my childhood in that house than in my own, if only because there was always so much to stimulate a child's imagination.

Part of the reason I think I've dealt so well with my mother's passing is because I recognize that my sadness is purely selfish, and that she must be so much happier in heaven with my father than she could have been alone on this earth. I want my mom back for my sake, not for hers, because I want to still have a mom and not be so alone. The same with my grandfather; can anyone begrudge death to an old man who's seen his wife and his only son die before him? He had such a full life, so full of stories and love, and it was just time for him to go. So the tears I cried were only for me, because his was my last grandparent and now that he's gone, I feel more alone than ever.

That said, I'm really goddamned tired of death. I'm tired of being a victim, someone everyone has to feel sorry for. I'm tired of having to carry the bad news to people like Dr. Bridgford and see their faces fill up with pity at the girl who's just losing everyone. How come no one else loses anyone? Why does this always fucking happen to ME? I've had enough. The next time condolences are in order they damn well better be for someone not myself. I always say that I wouldn't wish the death of a parent on anyone else, and I still won't, but I'm wishing that Death will just pass me and my family over next time and alight on one of you other people. Let other people see what it's like. I KNOW; I don't need any further reminders, thank you very much.

Reminisce

I've been rereading past entries from this journal and oh, how I laughed at some of them. I've been such a silly goose at times, such a drama queen at others, even while I was trying to hide it behind my words. I was gratified to read entries where I was purposely obfuscating (there I go again) my real subject, probably because it was Greg or Sara or Meghan and I was worried they'd read it, and still be able recognize exactly what I was trying to say. Example, the entry where my friends and I had decided we would try kissing girls, that was a laugh.

There's just so much life in all these pages! And there must be literal tons of them, there's been 806 posts by now and some of them are long, long, long. So many emotions have gone into this, so many choices have been chronicled here--and not all of those I'm proud of, either. Certain entries make me wince, whether at my immaturity, sheer stupidity, or just an unfortunate inability to see what was coming. Other entries make me fondly nostalgic; most of the ones about Greg do, and probably always will. Greg-the-person aside, Greg-the-symbol has become for me emblematic of a simpler, pastoral-idyll of a time in my life, where we're all shepherds and shepherdesses and the sun is always shining. I think it's because the other major figures from that time, except Meghan, have remained with me, and I've seen them change and grow, but since Greg was never really part of my life after coming to college he stayed behind in my memory, preserved like he was then.

My entries the past few years have certainly seemed more calm and less hyper-enthusiastic than they used to. I'd like to credit that to growing up, I suppose. I do feel so much older and more stable than I did the first two years of college. Being with Sean has aided that a great deal; just like our relationship profiles said, I need him to keep me grounded, he needs me to rock the boat. Haha. Oh, I love that boy.

I'm glad I started this journal, and even more happy that I've kept it up. I need to be reminded sometimes of where I've been, both the good and the bad. But the good feels so much better to remember.

Halloween

Today is my mother's birthday; she would have been 55. It's such a small number when you think about it. If you average my mother's and father's lifespans together you only get 52. If I hypothesized that that was to be the extent of my life as well, which is improbable but certainly not impossible, then the midpoint of my life will be reached by the age of 26. My sister is 24 now, two years short of that imaginary mark, and she tells me that she is very worried that she'll die at 40. I'm sure she does have that fear, but she was also trying to make the case for using as much of our inheritance as we want right now, since who knows if we'll be around for our retirement. She gets upset thinking that our mom saved and economized a lot, and was always working, and here all the fruits of her labor are left to us and not to her to enjoy. I pointed out that a., if Jen dies young and unmarried I get all her money, and b., if she dies and has children then she'll have provided for them just as well as our mother did for us, which is no mean thing. Perhaps the first option sounds cold, I meant it jokingly and she knew that, but she also knows that right now she would inherit all my money as well, so it goes both ways.

I do have to update the will which I created prior to going to Italy. Jen tells me that it was only valid because I had no estate to speak of; now my will would require an actual lawyer and witnesses, not just Rae, Heather and Sara signing their names. Also my mom was the executor and I left everything to her discretion, though I did have Jen and Rae as co-executors if she had predeceased me. I joked at lunch the other day that I would leave Sean as co-executor with Rae, but he pointed out, sensibly if a little less than romantically, that if we broke up for some reason, it would be really weird years down the line to have to go deal with his college girlfriend's will. ! Of course we both know that that's not how things are going to work out; the recent instability of my life has left me even more convinced that Sean and I can make it through anything if we're only willing to work at it. We haven't shied around long-term discussions for a really long time now, although it still becomes a little awkward to do so in front of others. Privately, though, we talk about what we want to future to be, and it's each other.

It was a beautiful day today, though Daylight Savings meant the day was much shorter. I'm in my empress costume as I type, for I'm shortly headed down to Barone for dinner with my friends and then out to see The Prestige (I hate Christian Bale! He's totally unattractive! There, I said it.) and then back here for a Halloween party.

I love this Yeats quote:

"I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams."

Another

The other day I realized that I could remember the day I first became truly conscious of my mother's mortality. It was the summer after sophomore year, she had a night off and wanted to go out to dinner, somewhere other than the three usual places we would go, so we decided to try this restaurant she'd heard about near Enfield. It turned out to be on the road to Popham's house, I don't remember the name of it, but it was pretty much crap. I was bubbling over with Italy plans at the time, and I remember that evening because I had been trying to convince her that if I went, she would come over to visit me and we'd travel together. Somehow we got to the topic of her recent checkup and she told me about her cholesterol level and triglycerides and how the doctor really wanted to get them down, he was worried she'd get diabetes. At that time she was still borderline. For the first time I really felt this kind of fear, one that was related to but separate from the frequent worrying about her getting into a car crash or being mugged or having some kind of accident. I realized then that she could get sick, and ever after I made sure to ask questions after every doctor's visit; of course, not that that helped, in the end.

It's somewhat easier to comprehend her having a heart attack now that I think back on her years of being an anorexic, from when she was a teen up until she met my father. Anorexia does a real number on the heart. Maybe hers just wasn't very strong anymore. Yet every once in a while I just look around me and think, how the hell could the same thing happen to me twice? I see all the people with two parents and I can't help thinking, couldn't fate find someone else to pick on for once? Most people never even have to make do with one parent at my age and here I've gone and lost two. Sometimes I could just scream from the sheer unfairness of it all.

On Saturday it'll have been just a month since she died. Sean and I are going into the city to see Heather and then to have dinner with Jen and Bill. My dad was right all those times when he warned us that we'd only have each other someday. I just never really expected that having no one else would come quite so quickly.

Three

Three weeks now, and it gets easier, superficially at least. Still the awkwardness of unsolicited, but well-intended sympathies, advice, offers of counsel by professors and acquaintances. Still the shock that comes back at least once a day when I remind myself sharply (lest I forget) that I have no parents anymore.

When I took my senior pictures on Tuesday the woman guarding the front desk wanted my parents' phone number. I gave her my cell, and she interrupted me with "no, your PARENTS number"--and so, with two people standing behind me I had the joy of telling her that they're both gone, so no, there is no applicable phone number anymore. Maybe I should have just given her the home number. A sad image--the phone ringing in an empty house, then the interminable beeps that remind no one in particular to check the messages. Naturally she answered me with the requisite "ooh, I'm sorry", but then decided to continue with that "yes, that's hard" speech, as if she really knows me or has any reason to give me advice. I momentarily had the urge to slap this woman across the face. A few minutes later, waiting for my turn, I saw Dirk coming down the stairs from the top floor and looking in my general direction, and the situation just became funny/embarassing (funny how seeing Fusco or even Deconti never inspires that kind of feeling; only thinking of Tommy and Dirk, because those are the only two times I've really been ashamed of my foolishness after the fact. At least I never owed Tommy an apology).

I finished reading "Inside the Third Reich" today; it's the autobiography of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and later Minister of Armaments. He was one of the only Nazi officers to accept responsibility for the administration's crimes at Nuremburg, and spent 20 years in prison. It was a really good book--one of the few recent reads that I wanted to spend every possible minute reading, even between classes.

Days

Today it is only two weeks since my mom died. How can that be? For six years I've been wrestling with a sense of relativity that made my father's death seem alternately recent and ancient, but no matter how I felt, it had been six years, and the immediacy of the loss was dulled. Now of course it's back twofold, and once again I have moments of feeling that it all happened so long ago, when it's only been fourteen days in a world without her.

In terms of separation I guess my mom made it as easy as it could have possibly been. We were never 'friends', never chatted daily on the phone, and she was never one of those moms who was really involved in the day-to-day of her daughter's life. She trusted me to be OK and to do my best, without feeling the need to check up on me or tell me what to do, so I don't feel as at a loss as I might if I had been more dependent on her companionship. I wasn't even very financially dependent on her, besides trips to the grocery store and to Walmart. As my aunt said of my cousin Sara, a sophomore who always has her hand out, if this happened to her she'd be in all kinds of trouble.

Despite all this, despite knowing she's in a better place, despite no longer having for fear for her (last night there was a terrific thunderstorm and I knew that a couple of weeks ago, I would have been watching the clock until 11:30, when I could call the house just to hear her pick up and know she got home safely), the loneliness of it all is immense. Every time I have a funny story to tell or a little something I'm proud of, I realize there's no one to call. Of course there's people, there's my friends, my sister, my aunts, but no one listens to your stories and your minor triumphs like a parent does. I would always feel so proud when I could point out some accomplishment to her, even though I knew she was proud of me all the time. Yesterday, for example, I called Dr. Bayers from work to discuss the draft of my paper which I had to finish up for today, and the first thing he wanted to know was if I was planning to go to grad school after college. I explained my situation and he understood, but he said he thought I definitely had the skill to succeed in a graduate program. It's not that he's the first person to encourage me in that direction, but I was still flattered and proud, and then I really wished I could call her and tell her, even if she didn't really get how much it meant to me, because I don't think she really ever understood the whole grad school thing. And I was sad. I still have people I want to be proud of me, but none of them are my parents, and never could be.

Dr. Rose sent me a very nice note today. She said her mom died directly before her senior year too, and that it was hard for her especially because everyone was in a celebratory mood. Her advice, handed to her by Schwab and Eliasoph years ago, was "don't forget to eat" and "throw yourself into your work". Well, there's not much chance that I, of all people, would forget food, and as for work, I don't need to throw myself as much as it's hurling itself at me. It was a kind note, all the same.

In the Swing

I'm only the slightest bit overwhelmed today, despite having two exams tomorrow, only one of which I have prepared for. I haven't been able to do any research for Jesus this week, I've been so swamped with catching up with work and dealing with the estate. However, yesterday I attended a lunch hosted by Phi Beta Kappa for a professor who lectured on campus last night, and it was a lot of fun even if I could have spent that time working. I turned out to be the only PBK student who showed up, so I shared a table with the professor, three of the art history faculty, and our president Father von Arx. I managed not to embarass myself, despite being forced to eat a concoction of shrimp and mushrooms over a bed of lettuce.

The other night listening to Sean's friends talk about spring break I realized that not only do I want to go somewhere, thanks to my mom I have the financial wherewithal to take us somewhere--so we're going to Greece together! I'm so excited. One of the art history professors, Dr. Schwab, is a Greek art specialist and she travels there frequently, so she said she'd be happy to help us figure out where we'd want to go. Athens is of course a must, but we also want to go to Mycenae, to Delphi, and to Crete. It'll be the end of their winter season, so it shouldn't be too cold, but it won't be Bahamas weather either. That's OK, because I prefer a brisk temperature.

I'm going to GREECE! Wheeeeeeeeeee!

More

This is the first weekend Jen and I have spent in the house by ourselves. I had to escape to Sara's yesterday afternoon because she was driving me nuts, and then thankfully her friend Kristin was here when I returned. My sister has always grated on my nerves, even under the best of circumstances.

I hate bills. Just gathering up all the utilities that have to be paid, including cell phone, lights, heat, water, and insurance, totalled over $600. Sigh. I'm in charge of paying all of these, which I'm glad for because if you've ever seen my sister's organizational capacity you would fear for us. Fear for us greatly. Her system consists of pulling absolutely everything from every drawer, shelf, and compartment, and piling it in the middle of the floor. This pile can be expected to remain for several days before being shifted into smaller piles which may or may not disappear. Last night, she took everything from my mom's room and piled it in the kitchen. This morning, every one of her perfume bottles is still in front of the (unplugged) toaster.

I saw one of the grief counseling services people the other day, more because I knew I should than because I felt I should. With two parents down, I've got to need some kind of therapy. After listening to me talk for an hour, she said that it sounded like I was one of the kind of people who just need to tell stories about the person who died. I do like telling stories about her, because she was a character, just like my dad.

Among my mom's things we found a tape labelled "Michelle and Jenny, 1984-1986". I'm only 1 year old on this tape, and my dad is patiently encouraging me to say "Papa" except I'm just making these gurgling sounds that my sister commented sound like they caught me hacking up a furball. The strange thing was, when we turned the tape on, neither of us recognized our dad's voice, and barely our mom's. Maybe it's that this tape was made 20 years ago when they were younger and stress-free, maybe it's that my mom didn't have it in a case and it deteriorated and changed the voices slightly, but suddenly I had the fear that I'll forget her voice like I've forgotten his. On a happier note, I watched the video I had made of my grandfather last winter (when I worried that he might die, what a laugh! The man will outlive us all), and aside from "Joan, you think you're homely", there's my mom, laughing and hiding her face behind a Coke bottle. I never thought that video would be a record of her.

Night

Last night I had my first dream about my mom. I was surprised it took this long; somehow, the nights after her death I slept very soundly and dreamlessly. Unlike so many dreams about my father where he never really died, just went away for a long time and then showed up again, my mother had already died in my dream. Somehow, time jumped backwards a few days and my whole family was there partying it up at a place that was half our house, and half the weird, creepy mansion where I had been having a horror-movie style dream right before this one (the ghost of a little girl was murdering people, don't ask).

Suddenly I realized it was Thursday, the day she would die again, and this time we wouldn't be able to go back. I started crying, and she hugged me. She knew, in the dream. Then we're in my kitchen and she's slyly asking me if she should have another bag of popcorn. At first I say yes, because it's her last day and she should have whatever she wants, but then I see the box and it says each back has 130% cholesterol, and I try to stop her from eating it with a sudden hopefulness that maybe I can stop her from having a heart attack if she avoids it. But she takes the popcorn and leaves, and I'm left there with Carla, crying and complaining that it was the nightly bag of popcorn that was her undoing.

Then we're in a room with a table, and I'm there with Carla and my dad, who is yet again having a cameo as not dead. My sister is not in this dream at all. I'm watching the clock which is hitting 1pm, and I realize that I don't know exactly when she died; the death certificate called it at 2:13 PM, but that's probably only when they got her to the hospital, she was probably dead in the car before they found her. Then she comes in and hugs Carla and says something to her, I think asking her if she understands, and Carla nods. I'm crying and she puts her arms around me. My dad doesn't seem perturbed by this at all and he smiles. Then I woke up, just as she was going to have to go.

When I got up I went and looked at a box of her popcorn in the pantry. The cholesterol level was 0%. I'm not sure why I had this dream; maybe as a chance to say goodbye, except I never did say that.

Going On

The sheer mountain of tasks to be accomplished after a death is daunting. I didn't understand that when my dad died because I was only 14 and had no responsibilities. Looking back I can't even imagine how terrifying it must have been to her, trying to figure out how to pay bills and manage everything after my dad's income was gone, planning his funeral and all that with only my aunts to support her, not really any close friends like Jen and I have the benefit of, and the whole time just grieving for her husband being gone. My heart just hurt for her, thinking of how burdened she was, and how she had to hold up under such pressure for our sake. And she did, so very well.

The difference now is that we have no experience in managing bills and assets, but we've got to learn. Just obtaining her will was a trial because we had to get a court order to open her deposit box, and then we had to get it started in probate court, which can take up to 1 year. My sister is insistent that we do all things together, even though so many things would be much more easily managed if one of us (meaning me) took care of them. I mean when it comes to selling the house I'm deferring to her wishes, we're waiting till January to even list it because she "needs time". If I had my choice it'd be on the market tomorrow, because the housing market is only going to get worse, and it could take forever to sell. It's true we grew up in that house and, as my sister has weepily proclaimed several times, our father died there, but there's no way I'd want to live for any length of tiem in that place with my parents' ghosts. In a perfect world I would have been able to keep my childhood home for years, decades even, but that's just not how the cookie has crumbled.

Further

My sister and I are very different people; always have been, always will be. My sister's reaction to calamity is extremely emotional, and she prefers everything to move slowly while she grieves. I'm not a public crier in general, and when something bad happens I need to be on the go, keeping my hands busy. I didn't really want Jen's friends to help clean for that reason, because they kept trying to do dishes and run loads of laundry when really, I wanted to be doing those things. When my dad died we came home from the hospital and went into my parents' room and started cleaning out his things. We had all his clothes bagged up and donated by the next day. I must have inherited that kind of tendency from my mother, because Thursday night I was already bagging up her novels and her shoes, since Jen got hysterical when I went near her clothes.

My sister loves crap, and she quickly made it clear that she intended to save as much of my mom's crap as possible, including her clothes. When she had finally sorted through it all, she had covered an entire couch with the items she planned to keep and possibly wear. I saved one of my mom's tshirts and her work sweater. Her uniforms we bagged up to bring to the convent, along with some things she had stored up in our garage to bring it--a walker, adult diapers, two birdcages for her friend Lissette.

We brought these on Saturday night, when we had a meeting with Sr. St Henry, Sr. Sally and a few other sisters to discuss the funeral mass. They had called and told us that they would be honored to have her mass in the chapel at the convent, and we knew that would have meant far more to her than St. Gabriel's in Windsor. I brought Sean and Heather to the meeting, leaving Cody, Sara and Rae at my house (along with Jen's retinue of oh, about ten people). The nuns were wonderful. As we said later, it really reminds you of the goodness of people that exist in the world, even if you're Protestant like heather haha. After we decided the songs and readings, we sat there sharing stories about my mother and laughing, really laughing. Especially the bat stories! Oh man, nuns go wild when there's a bat in the house. They turn murderous. Of course my mom was the one to do catch-and-release rather than beating it with a tea tray.

We had met with the folks at Carmon Funeral Home on Friday to discuss my mom's burial arrangements. I was all for cremation, which is what she wanted, but due to some difficulties with getting the permits on a weekend, it wasn't feasible, and then my sister went into hysterics and started moaning "Don't burn her!" which really is just a little much, and then my poor grandfather who still thinks you won't be resurrrected if you get cremated is mouthing to me "No cremation". So we decided to bury her instead. I'm a practical person, as was my mother, and the physical arrangements of a burial don't matter much to me. The body in the casket isn't them any longer; it's a shell, and shells don't need to be interned in a $12,000 casket (which is possible, P.S.). Nor do they need a choice between silk and velvet lining, or an extra pillow. We picked a nice casket, a simple one. I liked the finish.

Update

I abandoned this thing for about a month, either because I had nothing to say or I was too lazy to come write it down. But boy, do I have updates now...

Thursday, September 28th circa 240 PM, a knock comes at our front door while I'm getting ready to go meet Sean for lunch. It's security and they ask if Michelle is home. I look past him to my car and immediately wonder if somehow, some way, I parked illegally. I ask if there's a problem and he says yes. He comes in and asks me to sit, I ask if it's my mom, knowing it has to be her or my sister, but not really expecting him to answer "yeah, it's your mom". Then I ask him if she's dead, and he he nods, and says she didn't make it. And just like that, I had no parents anymore.

The hours from there are a sort of a muddle. The school grief counselor and one of the priests came over, and when Sean called, answering my repeated dials, I couldn't tell him. I had to hand the phone over to the counselor to tell him she was dead. Sean came and we talked with the counselor for a while. I was crying with the big hiccuping sobs that prevent you from really getting out more than two words at a time. Then the phone calls began, endless calls to my sister, my aunts, the social worker at the hospital, the cop who found her. My sister was with a Brooklyn cop who said she was too hysterical to come to the phone. She'd gotten the news from our next door neighbor, Mrs. Long, who'd had two cops come to her front door looking for info on how to reach us. My aunts had been told by the social worker. The social worker told me that she had called my mom's work looking for information on us and that Sr. St. Henry, my mom's boss, and Sr. Sally the provincial were on their way to the hospital to be with my mom's body, even though she told them they weren't allowed to come. The cop told me they'd found her pulled over on Palisado Ave, in park with the engine running, unconscious and not breathing. He said they tried to revive her but they couldn't. They didn't know what it was at the time, but they said probably a heart attack.

It was decided that Sean would take me home that evening. Waiting around with my friends I alternated between absolute terror and normal laughter. I was worrying about so many things--what happens to the Tahoe which is in her name...do I have health insurance anymore...what are we going to do with our house...a million freaking-me-out-worries. Then I had to call my other friends. Sara and Rae got voicemails telling them she died (sorry guys) but I reached Heather, and she cried like only Heather can. I had to laugh when I remembered my father's wake--Heather had never met him and she cried more than I did. I didn't call my grandpa; my aunts said they were going to go over and tell him that his daughter-in-law was dead.

The ride home was pretty bad, I just kept thinking of thing after thing that reduced me to tears. Then the phone rings and it's the organ donation people, wanting to know if they can use some of my mom's tissue. I said yes, because she was a registered organ donor. Because she didn't die in the hospital, they couldn't use actual organs, but they took her bones, her skin, her eyes, just like my dad. We got a letter from them once about a woman in CT who couldn't see until they transplanted one of my father's corneas into her eye. The process of OKing the organ harvest took 45 minutes, answering every question from 'did she ever take money or drugs for sex' to 'had she been exposed to SARS'. Then we're home.

Going into that house was terrible for me. You wonder sometimes if the dead know it's coming, and seeing that house and the shambles she had left it in made me sure she had no idea. Everything looked as though she had briefly left--her checks on the table, her craft project by the chair in the living room. Her makeup left in my bathroom, her bed rumpled. Her teacups, her sneakers on the floor. And poor Rocky, so happy to see us and unaware that she's not coming back. My sister called, on her way with her boyfriend, and told us two of her friends were already outside the house. We let them in, which was kind of awkward because I'd never met them (one was Camilla, her old roomie, I forget the other) and the house was a mess, as my mom was prone to leaving it when we weren't around. They helped us clean up, and I tried to remove every sign that made it look like she had just been there; I didn't think my sister could handle it.

I don't remember my sister's arrival much besides meeting Bill, her paramedic boyfriend from NYC. For the next five days Bill and Sean were our lifesavers.

September

The school year is now in swing. It's nice to be back; I really like our house this year and Carla and I are in our biggest room to date. The campus is beatiful, the weather has been excellent, and even Sodexho seemed welcome. I'm trying hard not to be one of "those" people who come back from study abroad and think everything on this campus and in the country in generally is inferior to what they had before. There are perks on both sides. I do miss Italy. Sitting in my classes today, though, I remembered what it feels like to be academically challenged. And, better yet, to actually understand all the words coming out of the professor's mouth.

Tomorrow I start my internship at Greenwood. My boss told me I could wear jeans on Fridays, which means I only have to dress up once a week (this feels me with indescribable joy), and they're taking me out to lunch my first day as per their tradition. I'm excited to try it. Next week I start the graduate school process--I've put it off from this week so I can just enjoy settling in. I also started my job for Jesus as his research assistant--so far, I spent a couple of hours trying to track down biographical information on a Spanish bureaucrat who wrote an obscure book about Baroque Art in Madrid 1918. It felt like detective work--I found out he was the secretary of the Spanish Alpine Club in 1912, and wrote articles decribing the Los Gredos mountain range, but aside from that he's pretty much a cipher.