Almostgotit.com

One of my dear friends directs an organization that works with inner city youth. 

These young people are often battered with repeated failures, but Chris believes in them, even when no one else does.  He encourages them to believe in themselves, too.

“Always Begin Again,” he tells them. Over and over.
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I’m helping a woman finish her latest book.  She’s old enough to be my grandmother, but whizzes around the internet like a pro and still hikes in the Andes.  She sent me an email yesterday, along with the latest installment of her manuscript. 

“This is so HARD,” she wrote.

‘But I have a sign up,” she continued, “that says ‘Failure can not tolerate persistence.”  Got it from a wonderful book called The War of Art.’

—–

Andy is home.  He called me today, and he sounded much better.  People have taken good care of him, so he was calling around to check in,  thank everyone.  His client had paid his hotel bill last night, even though he hadn’t managed to finish their show.  He added that Phillip has had some good days while he was gone, but that he himself hit another rough patch,  coming home this afternoon to the empty house.  

But he already has lots of things set up, lots of meetings with lots of people, for his business and to go over the estate, legal and financial things.   A  lot of mail had piled up while he was gone, too.  I could hear him shuffling through it.  He listed some of it for me:  Paperwork about benefits.  Insurance information for COBRA. 

And the death certificate finally came.  

“And, maybe,” he paused, “a grief counselor or something.  That might be good.”
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There’s a quote on scrap of paper on my desk that I’ve been trying to decide what to do with. It keeps getting shuffled to the top of my piles. I heard it last fall from an arborist who was speaking to our group about how badly our area’s trees had suffered from a year of severe drought, last spring’s late freeze, and a summer of record-setting heat.

Then he smiled. “But,  enough gloom and bad news.  I recommend, as all of us do who have the perpetual gardener’s heart: replant next spring!”

Blogging may have to take a back seat again this week.

A friend of ours (I’ll call her “Joy”) died very suddenly yesterday morning. The married mother of 9-year-old “Phillip,” she was the parent with the steady income and the health insurance plan.

The family had many plans for the future, but this scenario wasn’t one of them. There was no will, few financial reserves, and though Joy’s husband “Andy” is a shrewd businessman in his own right, this hit him as an absolute broadside.

All he can do right now is weep or look stunned. And whatever he has left, his son needs it all.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are stunned too, and trying to put together the beginnings of what to do next for someone whose spouse suddenly dies.

Yesterday, amidst the busiest weekend of the church year, finding an available priest for the family was my first emergency. Today, between holiday celebrations, we’ve been arranging a funeral.

Everybody dies. And there are basic “death checklists” that virtually everyone will deal with at some point, given our universal mortality.

Most of these checklists assume a person is older, however, and without quite so many entanglements.

Where are all the other answers? (oh, help!)

And where’s the universal genius who’s supposed to be in charge of all of this, anyway?

Someone needs to reassure and manage Andy’s clients until he can do so again himself. Since Andy taught me much of what I know about webpage management, some of this may fall on me.

Andy and Phillip also need financial advice, legal advice, and health insurance. They need money and childcare and household management plans and community support. They need everything.

Nor are these homeless people, or hermits. They have friends, relatives and co-workers. They are “plugged in.” And we, the family’s network, are doing what we can.

What strikes me is how stupid, and helpless, we all still are.

Most of all, though, I vacillate between wanting to weep and wanting to yell, because God Damn it, Easter or no, this is all wrong, and Phillip needs his mother!