Day Five

People are like jigsaw puzzles. Sime pieces are splashier than others, but they all are important. If even one piece is missing, the puzzle is incomplete.
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Her life is going to be different from now on. Fio has never been a widow before.
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Almost everything Fiorella does is is tempered by "will this be okay with Husband?" Before he died, it was because she wanted to please him, now it is because she wants to honor him.
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The insurance money is going to start rolling in, but it's not as much as Fio had thought it would be. Still, everything helps.
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Michael Jackson wanted to teach the world to sing, which Fio is all for, but she also wants the world to learn how to laugh.

Emotions

So much for the show biz portrayal of a new widow as being someone who sits on the sidelines and grieves. Fiorella is doing her fair share of the weeping, but even with all the kids gathered around, she is running the show for everything from the funeral to the financial arrangements to the state of the house.
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Sister-in-law could never have imagined what a wonderful gift that jogsaw puzzle was when she gave  it to Fio at Thanksgiving. Fiorella has it spread out on the dining room table and works on it a little each time she goes by. It's her anchor.
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Habits are hard to break. Fio keeps trying to mark the comics in the newspaper that she wants Husband to look at.
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Daughter was surprised that Fio had to buy a plot in a commercial cemetery because she'd thought we'd get a free plot in the State Cemetery like her grandparents had. Fiorella had hoped for the same, but she's never been recognized for her art or writing as she should have been. Yet.
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Is there anything sweeter than a large, loving dog lying across your feet to keep them warm as you wake up in the morning?

Untitled and Incomplete

Fiorella does not like change because she is usually still adjusting to the last one, but right now her beloved H-E-B is turning her world upside down. Nothing is where it used to be and another shelf has been added to the displays, making products even more unreachable. Also, shades of Walmart, it's installed four self-service checkout stations. Fio forsees the digitalization of the whole world, when we'll all have long numbers tattooed on our arms at birth. Hello, brave new world!

Fio is a relationship kind of girl, and she prefers person-to-person contact. A smile and a kind word go a long way with her.

Afterwards

Fio and her elder son spent most of the afternoon in the funeral home yesterday setting up the burial, which is so complicated by regulations that it won't take place for at least a couple of weeks. It was amazing how many services and trinkets the place offers--for outrageous prices.
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When Fiorella came home from the funeral home, she looked around at husband's precious possessions and realized that not one of them will follow him into the grave. He is dead, gone forever, and Fio is wearing his leather jacket because it is now up for grabs. In days to come, she will distribute his belongings and donate his clothing, put his old recliner out for the trash pick-up, and sell off his riding mower and power tools. She will also deprive him of his most private privacy, going through everything he owned, wrote, or hid in the back of a drawer. And the same thing will happen to her when her times comes--and to all of us.
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Fio has done a fairly good job of keeping herself under control emotionally because she has to be the one to make the hard decisions, but her stiff upper lip wobbles when people are kind to her, like when Mazda sends one of its guys over with the two large flower arrangements that sit on her mostrador de granito. Or her childhood best friend calls her long distance from California. Or her neighbor spends hours repairing her garage door.



 

Death

Fiorella's husband died last night, which caught her by surprise. There had been so many midnight dashes to the ER that she thought he was invincible. Yes, it was penumonia, but apparently, that was only a symptom. The cold virus, the lupus coating his lungs, COPD, and associated health problems were what did him in.

As you can tell, Fio hasn't fully processed the stiuation. Husband spent so much time in hospitals this year that she grew accustomed to being alone, but this time, there will be no one to welcome home.

The doctor and nurses were sympathetic, the kids have rallied around, and our neighbor totally rebuilt the garage door for us--or rather, for me. There isn't any us anymore.

Now to contact the church and hope our old pastor will be able to handle the service. Then Fio has to go through all the desk drawers and find all the documents she and Husband signed so many years ago. She also has to reconsider her budget. As she understands it, she will only receive half of Husband's Social Security check.

Wish Fio well. She's trodding into unfamiliar territory.

Husband, Grandfather, Husband

Fiorella thought she had lost the drone she bought Husband for Christmas and posted online that it must have flown off on its own of gotten mixed in with the laundry. The latter came to her strange and wonderful mind because it was so preposterous. In the meantime, she was frantically searching the house, the cars, and the the trash cans for the delinquent , finally giving up. Two days later she gave up and turning her attention to clearing the pile-up of clothes on her side of the bathroom. You you guessed it--there, in the center of the laundry pile, sat the drone.
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Mother frequently quoted her grandfather as saying "Feed your animals first and they will feed you." Obviously Fio's ancestry is not of the aristocratic variety.
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With Husband in the hospital, the house is unusually silent, which Fiorella enjoys to a certain extent, but she admits to turning TV on to a low volume every evening so she and Sonia Dog have some company.

Activities and Speculations

Fiorella restricts herself to one jigsaw annually, and this year, the winner was Sister-in-Law's Santa Claus puzzle, which is now spread out on the dining-room table. Fio's got the edges pretty well defined and is now working by shape and color.
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Okay, Fiorella confesses that she bought herself a cute little baby doll from the H-E-B Christmas left-over shelf the other day. It was a matter of love at first sight--the eyes, the soft skin, the sweet face. Odd--when Fio was a child, except for the procelin baby doll inherited from her mother (which four-year-old Brother deliberately dropped when she asked him to hold it for her), she characterized all her dolls as adults. PS: Baby Doll has told Fio that her name is Elspeth.
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What with Husband being in the hospital for the fourth time this year, Fiorella has decided to go through her desk drawers and pull out all the end-of-life arrangements to make copies of them for the kids.
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What if Fio's father had died before her mother? Mom would have been up a creek, with no way to get anywhere--to the grocery store, the beauty shop, the doctor, church, whatever--except by bus or taxi.
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While Husband is in the hospital, Fiorella is cleaning out her side of the long, built-in desk in the den. She's filled half a trash bag and still isn't finished yet. When he comes home, Husband will think he's in a new house.