Met with the new lawyer - seems nice, seems competent, seems willing to return phone calls. Also has a secretary and partners, which I've put on a list of requirements for any lawyer I may need to engage in the future (well, a secretary, anyway). And an office. Not sure how exactly everything's going to go, nor exactly how much it's going to cost us to deal with Jerry's "estate," such as it is, and winding up the business. But, foolish as I may be for this, I feel more confident we're actually dealing with a professional now. Still a lawyer, though. So I shouldn't get too far ahead of myself.
The previous lawyer actually called this evening - I let the answering machine pick up. All sorts of excuses - was out of the office - apparently didn't have her cell phone all this time, I have to guess, since I left messages there too - apparently also didn't check her office messages for a couple of weeks. Not that I think she really has an office, since when I met with her, it was at the offices of a title insurance company. But anyway, no matter how you look at it, it won't wash. Plus, her cell phone rang a few times during that one meeting I had with her, and I saw her look at it when it rang and let the call go to voicemail - so I've seen her modus operandi with her phone. Anyway, she said a bunch of other stuff, but the upshot is, she doesn't sound like she's going to be surprised when I leave her a message saying I've found another lawyer. (Definitely plan to make this call when I'm pretty sure she'll be out of the office - she doesn't have time to talk to me, I certainly don't have time to talk to her.)
So anyway, slight progress, I guess.
I keep looking at the photos of Jerry I've been posting on this blog. I don't quite get how posting these photos works - sometimes they can be enlarged by clicking on them a couple of times, I've noticed, and sometimes they can't, and I suppose it has something to do with how they're uploaded, but it seems to be random. Anyway, the ones I can enlarge, I keep enlarging, so that Jerry's face is almost life size on my computer screen, and I can see the details of the hairs of his beard, his sweet blue eyes, his adorable happy smile. It almost feels as if you could reach in to the screen and touch his skin. Looking at these photos again and again might be crazy. It often makes me cry. Then again, lots of things do that, every day. Some of them I probably could avoid, if I thought ahead more clearly. But I'm going to cry - I've been crying since January, and I know I have lots more crying to do. And I can't stop looking at the photos. I miss him so much. I want to see him, hear his voice. I keep watching videos of him leading at Sacred Harp singings. I listen to the tracks on Sacred Harp CDs where he's leading, to hear him introduce the song, even if it's just his voice saying the page number - except this is Jerry, the professor manqué, so in several of the recordings he doesn't just say the page number, but adds a dedication or a comment. I used to just think it was one of his quirks and smile at it. Now I'm so grateful he did that, so I have those recordings to listen to.
This all seems so unreal. So unreal. I wish it were. I want him to come home.
Hi Karen, hope you're getting your comments via email or something since I'm commenting on something from nearly a week ago. I've been reading your blog and not managing to comment because I usually don't have free hands but I've been wanting to let you know that I'm reading and thinking of you a lot.
ReplyDeleteI'm commenting here because this post just made me think about how for quite a while after our first baby died I used to carry the photo album of the pictures we took at the hospital everywhere because I was SO afraid that if I left them at home the house would burn down and I'd have nothing left of her (since we were the only people who had photos of her of course). I think I may have made Matt burn a CD of the digital photos to keep at his parents' house because I would get seriously panicked if I realised I'd gone out and forgotten to pick them up. I looked at those photos so often for a long time, obviously my life looks a lot different to me now than it did then and I don't spend as much time looking at them but we have a few pictures up in the house that I look at every day still sometimes as part of the landscape, sometimes to cry and usually somewhere in between those two. It was such a huge part of processing and grieving and all of that for me.
love, Rosie