Some mechanics of it all

Called a lawyer yesterday - no answer, no secretary, just an answering machine, and I left a message and got no response. Answering machine was picking up again today, which was my cue to move on (I had gotten her name from a neighbor across the street). So today it was Googling, and I found a lawyer on Main Street in town who actually has a website and a secretary, which is an improvement. He's in court this morning and the secretary said he'd call me back.

Changing the name on some accounts, too. When we moved here, we sort of randomly set things up, such that I did the gas and water and Jerry did the electric and phone/Internet. I got the electric bill changed over, and the phone/Internet bill is now in my name, but I can't get the "Primary Account ID" changed from Jerry's e-mail address to mine without closing the account and starting a new one, which would result in losing Internet service for a few days. So I won't be doing that, not right now. I don't want to erase Jerry's presence, it goes without saying - but it felt like an attempt to face reality to get these things changed. The IPass was simple, just did it online.

Slept more last night than the less than three hours of the night before, but I don't feel rested. I'm on our air mattress on the floor in our bedroom, while our own bed is still up in a guest bedroom, where Seamus heroically moved it when we had to clear out the bedroom for the hospice hospital bed for Jerry. Possibly I'll have my parents move it back to the bedroom before they leave early Thursday morning, since Bill and Lynne are leaving Wednesday and my parents can have the futon in Jerry's "Buddha bedroom."

Another gloomy day. It was gloomy the day Jerry died and it's been gloomy ever since, which is entirely as it should be.

I noticed water stains on the kitchen ceiling yesterday; today my father was up on a ladder and found a few tiles have fallen off the roof and water is coming through some plywood instead of down into the gutter - possibly why the basement leaked the day of a very heavy rain when Jerry was in the hospital. Daddy put a big tile over it, but I'll have to get that seen to. Now Mommy and Daddy are out at what Jerry called "the Despot" looking into insulation for the two sweating toilet tanks. I sit around mostly dazed while around me my parents and Lynne and Bill get stuff done for me.

Any semblance of ordinary life for Jerry and me came to a screeching halt on 18 January, the day the sigmoidoscopy revealed the tumor, but in the past 5 weeks...is it 5 weeks, I'm not quite sure... since he went into the hospital, my life became entirely focussed on driving to St. Alexius, sitting by Jerry, holding his hand, dealing with doctors and nurses and PCTs, warding off people who counseled me to sign hospice papers, finally acknowledging that hospice was the path we'd have to take, being at home then every day for those less than five short days with a house full of people, loved ones and LPNs and CNAs and visiting RNs, and Jerry at the center of it all, lying there with his life slipping away as his body still fought to survive. I feel like Jerry and I waded into the shallows grasping tightly to each others' hands as the water rose and grew violent; we were tossed and thrown by the waves, and while I held on to him with all my strength and every ounce of will I could muster, Jerry was beaten and tortured until he had no strength left to fight, and, against every ounce of his own will, had to let go. And I was thrown up alone on this empty, desolate shore, left to get to my feet, pick up a few shreds of debris and wander off into the unknown and utterly terrifying interior of this new land where I'm no longer a wife, but instead a widow.

I've loved the pronouns "we" and "our." I don't want to go back to using "I" and "my."