Clematis

Wow-thanks! Here is a little info. These paintings show a really pivotal point in my career as an artist - the biggest pivot yet. The oil paintings came after a long spell of not painting at all. I had started out when I was young with oils because my mother did oils and wouldn't let me touch them. So, that was my first desire in my first apartment- painting in oils! Then, years later I started doing watercolors because that was all that was available at the Tucson Parks & Rec Center. I worked on that for several years and stopped painting because I was busy going to graduate school and developing my career. One day a close friend, a classical guitarist, said to me, "I know what you're thinking. You think that you're going to wait until you retire and go back to painting and it'll be really great. But if you want it to be really great, you should get to working on your chops now, or it will be too late to get the hours in for it to be great." I realized she was right. So I got off my butt and thought I'd go back to doing oils since that was what I really wanted to do since childhood. I had a really hard time with it, in some part because you have to use a lot of white, which is verboten in watercolor, where you just have the white of the paper. Also, the oil paint just sits there, whereas watercolor pigment plays and dances in the water. Somehow, I had totally fallen head over heels in love with watercolor and didn't even realize it! How dense can a person be exactly? One thing I learned from my mother was that it is way better to paint from life than from photos, which flatten the perspective. An experienced eye can pick this out in a gallery in a flash. So I was looking for things I could paint (repeatedly) that were alive. I painted some potted cacti, but tired of this quickly and it was - you guessed it - December! So I bought a bunch of poinsettias and got busy. By spring their leaves fell off, I went outside and went berserk over flowers. Still haven't recovered. So the two poinsettias show my feelings about the medium rather clearly. I really took off after I returned to watercolor with an insight and awareness of myself and watercolor as a medium. My mother liked the control you have in oils and she was afraid of watercolor, which always has a balance of control and abandon. But I like the struggle to find that balance between control and letting go. Her oils have an astonishing sense of light and her watercolors look like she was afraid of the paint. To me, my oils look I am trudging through thick paint and my watercolors actually breathe and make music. There are three kinds of ceramic pieces. The ukulele box I made a few years ago when I first started with clay. It is just a box, but the ukulele was my first instrument. The little panels came from an insight born of frustration. Any little thing makes an impression on clay and often you can't get it out. A hair can fall out of your head and make a mark that never goes away. It could even create a weakness that cracks the piece. So I figured that if I used the same pieces I had carved to make linoleum block prints and just pressed them into clay, I could make one after another. Great idea except I'm still trying to get it right...how thick to roll the clay, how much pressure, how long to wait, etc. One of the things that ceramics and watercolor have in common is that timing is critical. Some things you have to do at exactly the right time. Too early and you get a mess, too late and it is too late! Hahaha The pinch cats came straight out of my grieving. My cat Lena was absolutely holding me together. My ceramics classes are all day on Saturdays. From January into May, I would stagger in late and spend a few hours trying to escape reality by delving into inorganic chemistry by trying to understand glaze colors. The color of the wet glaze is unrelated to the fired piece - why? Dang! Then I would take a small piece of clay in my hands and wander around the room with it, seeing what my classmates were doing. It was like I was making a pinch pot, but it would gradually turn into a cat. Sometimes I would be crying as I wandered around with my clay. My classmates would watch me and make little comments. "I see ears developing...", "Oh look-it's a cat!", as if that were a surprise. They were very sweet and made me laugh. And I made a lot of pinch cats. It seems only right that four of them will be in the show.

I love the name tags.

Butch, I'm really sorry that you lost your dad. And right on top of losing your wife and mother - that is very hard. You must be very overwhelmed and I feel for you.

This makes total sense to me...It's hard to dismantle those spaces that seem like they could just walk back into them. I was living in my dad's house by the time he died, and stayed there with minor changes for six and a half months while I cleared out my own condo, painted it, had new carpet laid and all that. I moved all of his furniture, lamps, artwork, etc. from his condo to mine - all the stuff that made it look like his place. Our condos are the same, but one is a mirror image of the other. It was sad but somehow reassuring to be at his place with his stuff. Now I am at mine and it looks more like his but it's clearly mine. So it's disorienting to be here at my place, but it's terrible to be at his and it was really heart-wrenching to dismantle his place, even though it was all going to my place. I still find both condos to be disorienting and hard to deal with. His is just a mess, with left over junk from both of us, Mine looks good other than the usual post-moving mess. But nothing is the same, except the kitchen. When I am looking for something in either house, I will walk into another room expecting to find it on some piece of furniture that is not there. It's like the room is not there. Some other room is there instead. I think it's a huge trigger, and by saving the room as it was it is like saving a piece of them and having that to hold onto. So when you dismantle the room (or the whole condo in my case) it seems like losing them all over again. I sure was not ready to dismantle his house six months after losing my dad. But I had to...

That's a good idea...I'll ask a friend. I haven't been to synagogue in a long time and so don't really have a connection there. But I do have several friends who wouldn't mind that. Unfortunately, the ones closest to me aren't too crazy about the phone, so I'll get someone else. I used to put my sister on those things when I was out here by myself, even though she was across the country. But now she is not very friendly. It was so great when my dad was here because I had family nearby for the first time since I was a child, a good friend, a companion for almost anything I thought up to do, and someone to rescue me if I ever needed it. (I rescued him too.) It is hard losing all of that once one has had that kind of support in the world, to find oneself all alone. You know. You all know.

I am applying to be a hospice volunteer and am filling out a LOT of paperwork. One of the forms is an emergency notification form. I have no idea what to write on this. My dad is gone, my mother is long gone, and my sisters are not particularly concerned. My cat and my cello - well neither of them will pick up the phone. In fact most of my friends don't answer the phone, but do respond to texts. Most of the time. What do I put on there-the police? That seems kind of smart-alecky. Lena's vet? My dad's attorney? Randomly pick out somebody I play music with? It makes me feel sad and alone...

This looks like a good one, but I can't get the link to work. I tried to see if I could find it online by searching for it by title, but no luck. I did fine another interesting article while hunting...https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/tech-support/201304/daughters-unloving-mothers-7-common-wounds... I think that's part of my problem, having an "unloving" mother. She wasn't just unloving; she was narcissistic and cruelly critical. And she had my dad as a total satellite, revolving around her and doing her bidding. It was a brutal way to grow up, and if my sisters were people I knew elsewhere, I would be very empathic and understanding about how they got to be who they are. But since they are my sisters I find it hard to cope with the damage that was done to them that causes them to hurt me the way they do. But after my mother died, it became apparent who he really was underneath. Although he missed her horribly, he was a much kinder and gentler person without her. My sisters didn't see it and couldn't get beyond the past - they wanted little to do with him (aside from his money). But I was wild to get him to move out here so I could really get to know him. We had a great decade together, even though he was going downhill. And it was SO good for me to finally have someone who really had my back...someone who was always on my side and believed in me no matter what had happened. It was such a healing thing for me. I came to have more confidence and better self-esteem than I had ever had in my life. And now it's all over and it's gone and I really have no idea if it's possible to get any of that back.

It's really infuriating - the things people say, and because they are usually passed off as "condolences" the recipient of the remarks tries to give a polite response. I think they are usually trying to make themselves feel better, even if it is at your expense. After my dad died, his former next-door neighbor Mimi told me over and over that "he's in a better place now". Once she said this to me four times in one short conversation, and I finally asked her if she had his address at his new place. Then I kind of felt bad and told her that I really don't know where he is exactly but I do hear him talking to me and told her some of the things he had said. She basically told me that was in my imagination. Who is she to tell me my dad is in a better place than on earth with me, and that she has exclusive knowledge about spirituality and the afterlife - so I should just accept her statements at face value! My dad and I were really close and I took care of him for ten years as he declined from Parkinson's. Mimi had rather minimal contact with him. To me it seems insufferably arrogant of her to presume that it's ok for her to impose her beliefs on me as I am grieving. Realistically, I think she doesn't have much insight into herself, what she is doing, or the impact it may have on someone who is really suffering. The same is probably true of the widower you write about. These platitudes with a little "positive" spin, like giving you permission to be happy - so you don't smack him - are hurtful and irritating. I looked up "platitude" and this is what I found in Wikipedia: "A platitude is a trite, meaningless, or prosaic statement, generally directed at quelling social, emotional, or cognitive unease. Platitudes are geared towards presenting a shallow, unifying wisdom over a difficult topic. However, they are too overused and general to be anything more than undirected statements with ultimately little meaningful contribution towards a solution." Much more eloquent than my wording, which is more like, "they feel uncomfortable and so they say some stupid thing they heard somewhere so they can get you to shut up so they can feel better". Grrrr...it really makes me angry. However, I am trying really hard to keep my mouth shut so I don't totally alienate everyone I know.

Glad to hear you're doing better, Kay!

I drove to pick up my father's ashes when they were ready. I thought I would be relieved to have them with me, but it was devastating and I could barely drive due to crying. I talked to a friend afterwards she said, "Why didn't you call me? I would have gone with you!" From hearing other people's experiences about it after that, it seems like people find receiving the ashes to be a wrenching experience because of its finality. I guess I still had trouble accepting it, because for months I kept thinking that maybe it wasn't really him and maybe it was someone else's ashes and he was alive but couldn't get to a phone for some reason.

I think you're right in that they are unhappy with their lives, for lots of different reasons. I also think it is a thorn in the side of both of my sisters - and was to my mother as well - that I earned two graduate degrees with which I could earn a living, and they never did. My mother was well taken care of by my father, but my younger sister had to go out trolling for a second husband when supporting herself and her children alone was too much after leaving her first husband. My older sister went to art school after divorcing her husband, to get an MFA in painting. She thought she could make a living selling paintings and she never wanted to do anything she didn't want to do. Who does? But most of us get to a point where we know that we have to do things that aren't fun. I have had a lot of jobs that were dicey or dangerous or they were in a treacherous environment where I had realistic concerns about being stabbed in the back by coworkers who were nice to my face. But I learned to go to work with a good attitude, do the best I could, and try my best to improve the environment for everyone else. She could have done the same...not my fault that she didn't...

Kay, your cat loves you. Cats aren't stupid... My cat definitely loves me - they totally are capable of it. Lena crawls into bed with me every night at bedtime and first thing in the morning, drooling and purring. She doesn't do that (drooling and purring) for anyone else, although she will lie or crouch on the lap of a "client" even when she looks really uncomfortable, because that's her job, being a therapy cat. She does a lot for me - wears a harness and a leash, scratches only where she is supposed to, faithfully uses her box regardless of its condition, goes to work as a therapy cat, driving around town to get there - because I want her to. People say she's spoiled and I say she has a "reasonable compensation package". But ultimately she does it for me. I realized at some point that she really trusts me - not only to not hurt her but also to make the world safe for her. It is such an honor to earn the trust of an animal. I think she is special, but the truth is that all cats are special and magnificent beings. We don't credit them with or expect of them anything near what their true capability is...Your cat too, Kay. They are just good at playing hard to get, manipulating us for power and control, and holding out to gain the upper hand. Anyway, think about it...we all love you and have never laid eyes on you (most of us anyway), and that cat lives with you! She knows who you are and that she's got it made...

That's funny, Marg. I used to think that, but when I was about 20 or so I figured out that when it came to pure strength, the men had more of it than I, and so since I had more brains than braun, I should figure out how to make a living using my brains. I read the things you guys write about your amazing spouses that you lost and I always think you all were lucky to have found and captured these remarkable people you married, even though I know that is one of the top things that you do NOT say to someone who las lost anyone. Still I wonder...what if--for me... It didn't take me long after getting married to Alan to figure out that charming as he was, I had picked out Peter Pan as my spouse. We both worked for a company that ran river trips down the Grand Canyon, and the guides used to say that Alan "rowed like a woman". This was a compliment, because he weighed about 135 pounds, which meant that he had to row smarter, start moving his boat sooner, and basically be smarter than the water because he couldn't muscle his way through it. Anyway, he got a job in management in the company, we bought a house, but then then he decided he would rather go back to rowing a boat and work four months a year and we would live in a teepee so he didn't have to work too much or fight his way in the world. He thought I was going to have babies in the teepee and raise them in the teepee. I figured I could take better care of myself, and I learned to. I never found anyone else. But from my dad I learned how to fight my way in the world, and eventually I ended up fighting for him because he wasn't able to do it. Sometimes I felt like his pet Rottweiler... I'd realize he was struggling with someone, like some company that was taking advantage of older people with some scam. I'd ask him he wanted me to help him, he'd say yeah, and I'd sit down next to him, take his phone, and go after them until they wish they had never tangled with me. Ad where did I learn to do this? Yeah, dear old dad. He taught me so so much and I sure miss him. He was my guiding light, even when he was falling apart. I was luck to have those ten years with him and honored to be able to take care of him as he had taken care of me, and to be able to protect him like he had protected me. I still just can't believe it's over.

My dad's ashes are up high on a shelf with some Talavera pottery and some other ceramic pieces. He is supposed to be in PA with my mother, but then at the end he said he wanted to have her exhumed and brought to AZ so they would both be with me. I don't think she would want that. My sisters are not making any efforts to facilitate my bringing his ashes to PA. Last conversation I told the younger one that since they couldn't figure out a time last summer, we'd have to do it later. After making it clear that she did NOT want me coming out there at Christmas (which I never mentioned), I suggested that we try for next summer. Of course we can't finish settling the estate until that is done, since it's in his will. I figure that eventually they will get motivated on it. Eventually getting their money will probably seem more important than being icky to me. Meanwhile, I hope he doesn't mind his ashes staying out here with me. I'm thinking what he was saying in the end was that he wanted to be with her but not leave me. Truth is, I think his spirit has been with me and isn't leaving me, but I don't think he really thought a lot about any of that when he was alive. I think my dad is that voice telling me to go get the fire extinguisher, buy gas so I don't run out, fix the airbag in the car, be careful with my money since he can't help me any more, and telling me that he's really sorry that he had to leave me because he just couldn't do it any more. I don't think my dad is in that blue and white urn, although I do plan to facilitate his wishes and get his ashes in the ground.as soon as I can.

Losing a beloved pet is just horrible. The worst pet loss I ever had was my cat Mitten about 20 years ago. Not only did I lose her, I had become catastrophically allergic to cats and was not able to have another cat - or even a dog (I tried) - for 15 years. I thought it was forever, and I was envious of everyone I knew that had any kind of fuzzy pet. Just the sight of a pet store would make me wince because I was positive I would be pet less forever. It is a pain like no other. I used to keep dog treats in the trunk of my car because every dog (friends' dogs) who had ever met me was happy to see me, even if it was only "That woman=white car= car trunk=treats". Maybe I didn't have my own cat or dog but I could have a little snippet of the happiness an animal can bring. A cat or a dog finds their way into our hearts in such a magical and intimate way... But ultimately, even though no animal or person can ever replace another, there are other animals that need homes. After 15 years with no cat, I would have gladly taken any cat on the planet - blind, ill, disabled, missing limbs, anything - just to have a cat. And to end up with my lovely Lena - and being able to tolerate her - is beyond my wildest expectations of all those pet-less years. But in the beginning after losing Mitten, I would have never believed it would be possible. I was ripped in half. I think the more you love, the deeper you feel the loss. Conversely, I think the more you suffer loss and deprivation the greater is your later capacity for joy and fulfillment with what may come to you later. If it weren't for those 15 years, I don't think I would have ever been so ecstatic with a pet I wanted to share her with the world. Lena is a therapy cat and visits people who love cats but are unable to have one because they live in a place or with people who do not tolerate cats/pets. She just got her new tag from Pet Partners

Rylee, I really feel for you...it sounds like our families are doing much of the same things. When my mother became ill, went downhill, and died everyone was very involved. My sisters visited her frequently, along with my dad, and my older sister did a lot of cooking - she is a great cook and would make something, divide it up into smaller containers and bring it down frozen so that it could be heated up a meal at a time. I think she intended it for my mother, but she would hardly ever eat anything, so it ended up being a really nice bonus for my dad that he had all that fabulous food he could just heat up. But it was a totally different story with my dad, I coaxed him out to AZ, took care of him for ten years and they just left me to it. They wouldn't do anything, and what I was asking them was very little. I had a week of vacation every year or two and I would ask if between the two of them work it out so that one of them would be calling him on the phone every day, and I could really have a vacation, knowing that someone was checking on him and I would hear about it only if something was wrong. This would mean that each of them would have three or four phone calls in a year - but not every year, because sometimes I went somewhere, like a cruise, where I could take my dad with me. They always said yes, but I ended up calling him anyway, which was kind of fun to tell him about what I was doing and share that with him. I'd ask him if he heard from them and he would say that he got one call the entire week. They never denied this, just said they were busy. Everybody's busy, but they don't have jobs aside from parenting teenagers, and while teens keep you hopping, it's not like they are sitting on your lap 24/7. My sisters didn't care about him and they don't care about me. I suppose that it's good they They are both just waiting for the money, and are not wanting to have anything to do with me in the meanwhile. Unfortunately, that may end up boing a problem for them because my dad stipulated that his ashes be buried with my mother's remains. That will require my coordinating a trip back there with them. Therefore the estate will not close until they get to a point when they can work that out with me. I may disburse some of the money in the trust later this year, but my financial advised me to make sure to leave enough in there to motivate them to do what they need to do in order for it to close. I can understand that people get upset with each other and things can be dicey in families, but why can't people be decent and do what's right, even if it's just marginally so?

Hi Rylee, it's good to hear from you. It's really hard to go through your parents' stuff. I started going through my dad's stuff right after he died in January, and was doing a LOT of it through the summer. I really wasn't ready but I had to do it because I was living at his condo at the time he died and I had to combine all of our stuff into one (mine) and then move back in. I am still going through his stuff that's left at his house. He left me all of his personal property and my sisters said they didn't want anything. They also weren't interested in helping either, of course. Well, I did give a few things to my younger sister when they came out to AZ for the service in March and my older sister insisted all she wanted was the banjo my dad had given me a decade earlier. Even though I ended up with the personal things our dad had at the end, my sisters were much closer to my mother and they lived in a town that was an hour away from my parents in PA for 30 years and were the recipients of tons of stuff over the years. Then, when my mother died 11 years ago and my dad moved to AZ, there was a huge downsizing from their large house to the small condo he moved into in Sedona. My sisters were both the recipients of lots more stuff over that year, and he said that the portion of out parents stuff he brought out west was much less than a third, but it was the part that he wanted; that would be my part. It might be the best part but I would have to wait to get it. Fine with me; the real treasure there was the ten years I got to spend with my dad! I have had the same thing as you, Rylee - people want to know about when I am going to sell his car. I'm not. My car is not that old but has almost 300,000 miles on it. His is old, but has very few miles on it. His car makes a nice backup for mine and I can make both of them last longer by keeping both. People ask me about every day about selling his house and selling his car and there is a lot of pressure and it's none of their business. It's really amazing that people think it's ok to pressure someone who is grieving about stuff like that. In my case, it isn't even relatives, but nosy neighbors and friends who are sure they know better what is best for me than I do. So maybe I did have a head injury in that May car accident, but I'm not incompetent and I need less pressure and not more... Hang in there, Rylee, and keep us posted. Laura

You're right. I just can't seem to let go. When I tell people the details of the things my sisters have done and said to me, and their total lack of concern, people all say the same thing - that I should just stay as far away from them as possible. I don't know why I keep trying and can't just let them go by the wayside. They didn't care about my dad and they don't care about me. Sometimes they give it a little "lip service", but they don't really care. They are happy with me when I am doing something that significantly benefits them, and the rest of the time they do nothing but throw toxicity at me...

Oh, the Sedona airport!!! I saw your pm about the airport and thought you meant the PHX airport... If you can come up here, that would be dandy, and I'd love to meet you. But not quite yet...I am perusing my collection for a few more things. I have some ceramics pinch cats (like a pinch pot, but it's a cat), and maybe something else. This is not the best week; I am back to work and am struggling to get stuff done without becoming overwhelmed. But that would be great if you could come up here! Also, there is an extreme overabundance of paintings here at my house, and quite a few of them have no chance of ever seeing any wall space, but they are nice paintings. I could probably part with a few that I am not in love with. I did a whole series of musical instrument paintings, many of which are in a permanent display at the Flagstaff School of Music, I have a few, and others seem less critical at this point. I also a have a few paintings from my flower series before it turned into the flower/cat series, and some of those I am not in love with because when I look at them I just get re-engaged with the struggle and what didn't work out. They could quite possibly find a better home than stacked in a corner at my house forever. The only thing I would ask is if you could get me a decent photograph of them if I let loose of them before I can get my photographer to do it, so I have a record of the image. Is that possible?

I think you're right, Kay - and I actually had a similar conversation with Diane in the few months after our dad's death, which was about a year after her diagnosis with PD. Someone she is working with said to her, "It's really remarkable-the nicest people get Parkinson's!" But were they nice before, or did they get nice after being humbled by the debilitation? In my dad's case I think it was some of both and became more so because after my mother died she stopped encouraging him to be mean, and his role as a satellite around a narcissist ended, revealing more of who he really was and forcing him to talk to people and have genuine conversations. My other sister actually credited me with some of his becoming nicer. Not only was I interested in and concerned about him, I didn't tolerate his being mean to me or making racist sexist remarks about other people (would just say "that's mean") and it got a lot better. Diane used to be married to a wealthy sociopath who was wickedly smart with a deadly sense of humor. He was also an alcoholic who got even meaner when he drank. I think he was a terrible influence on Diane, and she became really nasty. I suppose going through a divorce, having financial problems, and having to get our father (for whom she had no use or affection) for help was hard on her as well. And now she has remarried and her husband is taking very good care of her and also seems very sweet. It's probably been good for her. I think you're right in your other points as well. Diane and her first husband treated me like a country bumpkin for many years and were cruel and demeaning. Then my mother died, she left her ex, and got our dad to support her by misleading him about what he was getting into. My sisters lived about a block apart and were close, raising their kids together, but they had a big fight and S totally shut Diane out and so she turned to me and we became friends for the first time ever. I was astonished and delighted, but when they made up (sort of), Diane went back to being nasty to me but I thought we would still be friends. I thought we all three could be friends, even though that was totally against our upbringing. My mother pitted us against each other and it was always two were friends and the other was shut out. S was the oldest and she was never shut out. Di and I competed for her affections and so it was either S & Di or S & me. I would like to think we could move past that as adults. I think probable the only way to move on is to try to leave the past behind and not try to resolve anything because it isn't possible. Diane definitely has her limitations, but she seems to be making an effort to get along. I think she needs to set the terms and the limits, and if I want a relationship with her I have to just do things her way and leave it at that. I suppose any alternative is worse. Leaving the past behind is what I did with my dad, but that was facilitated by my being able to express my anger towards him and his apologizing. And then a lot of time passed. I think it's harder to put everything in the past and pretend it never happened when you don't get to process anything. But maybe it's possible...

I talked to my younger sister Diane today, the one I was never close to, but now she has Parkinson's and she seems to be changing. She seems a lot more approachable; she really used to be insufferably arrogant. I am very cautious nevertheless. She sent a picture message to my other sister and I; she and her husband were near the house we grew up in, which I haven't seen since 1976, and they went by and took a picture. So I took a chance and called her. It went fairly well. I told her about my brutal summer and recent financial issues as I struggle after the car accident but am working hopefully toward a more solid future. She was sympathetic. I updated her about the estate and she asked me how much is left in the trust account. I told her well, it's more than $X and gave her a kind of lowball number. She seemed relieved and I am relieved to know that she wasn't upset about that, and the actual truth is actually better than what I told her, so that is good. Better to have her pleasantly surprised later than disappointed. I told her that I really wanted things to be better between us and she said, "Well, if you want that, it will be". She also advised me that things would be better between us if I avoided ever saying anything that she might find upsetting, particularly about anything in the past, adding that it's not like she expects me to be dancing around on eggshells or anything. Huh. I think that's an improvement over her telling me once that if she ever felt like she did with our mother, who was cruel and destructive in her constant criticism of us, the only explanation was that I was behaving exactly like our mother did.

Stephen, I am not sure how and where to send the pieces I am sending to you...

Thanks, Kay.. I took care of everything I needed to with his phone and called Verizon to cancel it. I guess I thought this would be a relief, but I could hardly say "goodbye" at the end of the call due to crying. It will save me sixty something $$ I don't really have to let go of his phone, but it made me sad. I guess I could have done this earlier, but when my mother died, they wouldn't let my dad cancel her phone. I assumed it was still like that, but apparently it's changed. Or maybe they let me out because he he only had three months left by now... Anyway, it was sad. Something very final about it.

I think you are right, Marg. My dad is free from the travails of Parkinson's, but it has fallen upon me in a way. As I have gone through his things I have become increasingly aware of what he was going through in ways he never would tell me. In addition to missing him, of course...

I am going to shut down my dad's cell phone tomorrow, so as to stop paying for two cell phones. Then I'll have his phone as a backup in case I need it before I get my next phone. I was looking through his photos - most of which I actually took, but they were of him or of something that was going on when we were together, and it made me feel Sooooo sad. I will download them all to his computer first to make sure I don't lose them, but still... It's hard to believe that he's been gone for seven months now. It's also hard to believe that he was here in AZ with me for ten years; it seems like a flash and it was gone. It seems like I would feel better by now, but I still feel devastated and empty. Today I had a day when I felt better as far as my head injury, but worse about losing my dad. I haven't been hearing him talking to me much lately either. Just me and the cat here...