Well, I found the things I had to have for my taxes and got them filled out and ready to mail. Just in time. Now I just have to sort out getting to the post office to get them into the mail.

As I had figured, 90% of the “how can we help?”’s faded away back into the woodwork soon after the memorial. It is ridiculous, people are fawning all over themselves to help in the days following something like that, then when you have your wits back about you and can think about how someone might be of help they’re gone *poof* back into the void they had come from.

I’m not about to go into specifics on any of it, not even the ones that are still here helping. You don’t need me to anyway, you and anyone else who really has any business knowing specifics already know the details and this is such an open medium that I am not going to go into any kind of specifications.

Oh how I owe those who have continued to help me and dad, I’m still sort of teetering on the edge of sanity at the moment and trying to pull together everything like my taxes, bills that have to be paid, funeral expenses (you knew I was going to need to pick that one up), trying to get the heater fixed before winter sets in :::wince:::, and all the other chaotic stuff going on — oh, and figuring out how to keep dad’s blood test appointments when I am not an experienced enough driver to safely drive him to them in a car with bad brakes. Like the heater repair fund, the fix car brakes fund went straight out the window in the aftermath of ….

I can’t write anymore at the moment.

I miss you so much mom. I love you!

Sandra
~~~~~

I was sitting here trying to think about what all I needed to get done and realized that my taxes need to be to the IRS by the start of October.  ::cringe:: The extension I had got last April is about to expire and I am so not in a mindset to be working on taxes.  Where the heck did that copy of Turbo Tax I got go?  When my computer malfunctioned on earlier this month and I had to reset it to factory standards, I lost the copy of Turbo Tax that was installed on it – now I need to find the original program so I can access the work I had already for finished on my taxes.

I soooo do not want to have to restart that all from the beginning.  Particularly not when it has to be finished within the next few days.  :::wince:::

I’m so going to fail getting those back in time.  Tonight and tomorrow will be spent working on my taxes, getting everything I can done.

I love you, Mom
Sandra

I don’t know if I am suffering a flu bug or if it is stress and lack of proper diet and lack of rest, but today my stomach has been nothing but a tight painful knot. It seems like some kind of stomach flu, so that is my assumption for what it is. I suppose it could be having made myself eat yesterday after not having ate more than a couple bites here and there since the 14th.

As I write this it is 12:12 am going into Thursday morning and I am debating on if I stay up all night again, watching over dad as he sleeps, or if I should try to get some sleep. That dang sleep apnea he has makes trying to sleep impossible. It was much easier when you and I could take turns, you staying awake to keep an eye on him, then me staying awake while you got some rest. Now I find myself trying to pull off double shifts and it is so difficult. The others were coming around and that let me sneak off to get a few hours of sleep here and there, but I know they will all go back to their own lives before very long and I’ll need to settle into some kind of balance point on when I can sleep and when I can’t.

The exhaustion does make trying to work hard. I got some stuff done this morning, but nowhere near enough, and nothing that actually resulted in my earning money. I stare at my work ledger and can see the sickening trend it has taken.

July $45
August $61.50
September $87

It was actually starting to go up in earnings, but that last entry was for earnings before the 14th… While the first half of the month was good, I have been unable to work since that day. Unable to even think about trying to work. It don’t matter I suppose. The work is not there. I have been looking, but there simply is nothing to earn money from.

I cringe to think what stress and my inability to focus is going to be doing to what little I was managing to make. And yet, I need to remind myself once again, we’re the survivors. We’re the strong ones. Aren’t we mom?

I miss you so very much.

HUGS!!!!!

Love,
Sandra

I keep finding myself wishing that you were just in town, or took a trip down south leaving me here to take care of dad until you get home.  I think that is the only way I have managed to hang on how I have.  I don’t think the others realize just how difficult it is for me, forcing myself to stay strong because of dad, unable to let the reality of everything fully sink in during the few hours that they are here to watch dad for me, because I know that if I did – I would not be able to stop crying any time soon.

We knew that we were counting the days that we had left with dad, but me and you had planned for you to live at least another 10 to 20 years — now… I wish you could just walk back in the back door, that the Wookie’s loyal waiting would prove to not be in vain and you would walk into the house from a long trip down south.I have found myself envying him more than a few times as he lay on the dining room floor staring sadly at the back door waiting for you to come through it once again.  I don’t want to know that you’ll never come home again.  I want to be as unaware of the truth of things as your little dog.  Loyally keeping things going until you get home, and laying watching the door, jumping up at every car I hear, waiting for you to come back home.

I have to remind myself that you and I are the strong ones, that we are the ones that can take what life throws at us and go on – survive.  What is going to happen if something happens to dad though?  Me and you had planned on having the house at least half paid back off before anything happened to you, now — what happens if I am left here with $150,000.00 to pay back suddenly coming due in full?  There is no hope that any bank will ever give me any kind of financing on picking up the mortgage on this place.  I spent my entire life taking care of you and dad and have nothing to show for it.  No work history, no Social Security to speak of – I think I have less than $100 in social security from when I was in Job Corps and the couple of months I worked at Burger King when I was 18.

We had talked about you getting life insurance, but… that was just a couple of days before…. I wanted to cry when I saw the envelope sitting beside your bed, your handwritting across it “READ”.  We were too late.  A few more days, a week…. maybe then we would have been better prepared, but now… what am I going to do?  Dad has a history of heart disease and stroke.  The small insurnce deal he has from the Army is only enough to pay funeral expenses one day… hell, I still have not paid the funeral guy the near $2,500 I owe him for you.  How the hell am I supposed to come up with the money I need to save you and dad’s home?

I just want to throttle those damn mortgage companies.  Why couldn’t the government have bailed out my siblings and neice the way they are the megga corporations?  Then you and I would not have been forced to get that damn reverse mortgage and I would not be looking at the cold fact that I’m going to lose you and dad’s home one day.  This was supposed to be the place I could grow old, my payment for having set my own life aside and taken care of you and dad.  Now… all I can do is cry, and it’s not even in mourning you, because I can’t let myself fall into that bottomless chasm.  My tears are from the impossibility that lies before me in trying to save your house with no way to do it.

What am I going to do?  I know I already said this, mom, but oh how I wish you were only on a long trip down south and would come home any day now.  I miss you, and I am not sure what to do.

Today, September 23rd, is you and dad’s 59th wedding anniversary.  Oh how I wish you were here in person to share this day with dad.  We know you are still with us in spirit, but words can never express how much we all wish you were here in person.

I’m not sure if I should hug dad and wish him a happy anniversary or not, it simply can not be happy without you here to share it.

We love you mom, and we miss you so very very much.

Billy and Virginia Fikes
September 23, 1949

Together
Then, Now, and Forever.

The woman that handles things out at the base called me a little while ago about the inscription on your headstone. She wanted to confirm the changes that Billy had made. Funeral home had 1937 instead of 1934 as your DOB, and they also had dad’s rank messed up. Seems people just don’t know what a Specialist 7 is anymore.

I got that all sorted out, but was not able to sort out the personalization inscription. Seems like the gal can’t understand the significance of “Together Then Now and Forever”. She wants us to make it something that anyone that looks at the marker will understand and know something about the person that is there, but I made sure that if we did not think of something that she would feel was more appropriate, that dad’s choice could be inscribed there.

As far as me and Dad and Lew are concerned, if someone does not understand what “Together Then Now and Forever” means, then they did not know you and your relationship with your family and in particular with dad. We’ll ponder it, however, and the gal is going to call back on Thursday and see what we have come up with.

I’ll write about the events at the funeral later – there were some spooky things there, but for now I want to point out that on Sunday Morning I got up and picked a bunch of very lovely nasturtiums that I placed in an oasis and took to the memorial services. The nasturtiums out front were lovely and looked very vibrant and picture perfect. On Monday morning I got up and stepped outside, every one of the nasturtiums had been killed by frost. The morning you were taken to your final resting place, the nasturtiums ceased to bloom in the front yard. It… it seems so very right.

I will plant them again in the spring, and every spring for as long as I own this property, but for this year, the few I had brought inside are all that remain of the nasturtiums we planted this year.

Love,
Sandra

It is September 18th, 2008 and I have decided that writing letters is the most therapeutic way there is for me to deal with things.  I know that you would approve, you always understood my need to write.

Remember when we took dad to his blood test on September 3rd?  We were talking about my ability to make money online and dad made the comment about how the other kids needed to figure out what I had figured out.  You laughed with me when I laughed and agreed when I explained that I had something that they don’t, I have an addiction to writing.  I have to write, it is … it just is.  I tried to explain it, what words and their ability to convey things means to me.  I was not sure you really understood until that day, when you explained that you had just finished watching something on TV about people that can not stop writing.  You said how you thought “That’s Sandra!” when you saw it, that you nearly woke me up so I could watch it with you because of just how much the person reminded you of me and my compulsion to need to write.

I know you will understand that writing is the best thing for me now.  You would approve of my writing.  I think you also would approve of me writing this out onto the Internet.  I remember when I was starting up Family Caregiver Info I said that I had no idea what to write about on that blog, and you said “Write about being a family caregiver, about what you do.”  I cringed at the thought of that because I knew how private of a person you are.  I did not want to put personal stuff on the Internet, but… I think I understand now what you had meant, what you were saying to share.  You wanted me to write about my life, trusting that I knew you well enough that I would know what did not need to be shared with strangers.  You knew that writing is therapy  for me, you knew that this – the world of the Internet – is my world.

You understood my friendships, even when others would belittle me that the only friends I had were “not real”.  You defended that my friends who I talked to online were real, that they were as valid as any friends I could walk down the block to visit.  When people scoffed that all I did was sit in the office and “play” on the computer, you believed in me, you told me not to listen to anyone else and to keep right on with what I was doing.  You understood, and I never really understood just how much you understood it.  I know that you would approve of my writing this, of my sending it “out there”.   I know you would most definitely approve of me finding some way to support myself by doing this.  You simply understood, and you were not concerned about how anyone felt about what was being said, so long as what was shared was considered before it was shared.  I never really understood that before.

There is a line between what is shared and what is personal, what is no one else’s business.  That is why this is going to be divided. As I write this I am going to pour my heart into it, I am going to say everything that comes to mind, everything that happens, everything I want to scream about… then I am going to place that into my personal journal here, for you and me alone.  The second version, the version that you would approve of being shared, that one will go out there.  It will go into the Internet, into the world for others to read.  I am a writer, it is what I do, it is what I am… you knew that, you nurtured that love in me, you wanted me to be a successful author.  I will be.  I may not make millions, although you have always said that I had just as much chance as Stephen King and JK Rowling and anyone else that has ever made it big as a writer.  I will be successful, I know that because you showed me through your support long ago that as long as I am happy with what I am doing, I am successful.  You showed me through your pride in my ability to make money through my online work that I had already succeeded as a writer in your eyes.  I am a successful writer, and I will do nothing but grow more successful.

Thank you, mom, for giving me the gift of having the courage to follow my dreams. The resolve to let nothing stop me from following those dreams.  And the determination to make those dreams come alive, no matter what it takes or how many pots of beans I have to suffer through surviving on to attain those dreams.

I love you mom, and I always will love you.  I promise, as I promised before, that I will take care of everyone for you, so… Good night, and sweet dreams.  Rest well knowing that I have everything under control and that me and the Wookie will guard you as you sleep and we will, as always, protect you from any and all nightmares.

Love, Sandra