It’s Sunday in this here new life. Today will be fairly quiet. My goal is to spend some time researching Obamacare plans, with the intent of enrolling today or tomorrow at latest. I need to settle on a drawdown schedule from the 401k to cover me through Feb when I can start drawing SSA. It still feels weird to be doing this. I’ve never *not* had to work before, and while there’s a bit of a giddy feeling to it, it’s not all fun and games.
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| Not Club Med, but... |
Yesterday I went to the morning meeting at Bayshore Club, the big “recovery hub” here in Port St Lucie. It’s your typical AA meeting, people from all walks of life, men, women, young, old. There are true believers and cynics, long timers and white-chippers.
As always, there’s a lot of “God-talk,” but okay, whatever gets you through that white-knuckled craving pal. One thing I can say, this group is not afraid to get real. There are tears. There are painful silences. There are authentic stories. For now, it’s worth the effort of going a few times a week.
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As I was sitting in the meeting, I got a text from my nephew Zach. He was back in the area to pick up some of his things from storage, did I want to grab a bite? It was inconvenient timing (when is it not?) and so very, very typical of him to drop a one-line text with zero notice, demanding that I drop whatever I’d planned for that day to accommodate. I’ll admit, I felt churlish: Goddammit, Zach.
But he was moving soon, and this might be the last chance I’d have to see him before he went.
He’d moved here a few years ago after a messy divorce, and lived with my parents (his grandparents) and it worked out well enough until my parents died of Covid in 2021. It was a win-win for all of them at the time, even if the bitching started almost immediately. Since then Zach has met a great woman, a young widow with three kids, and he’s landed a great new job in North Carolina. He and his new family will be moving away soon to start a new life there.
I couldn’t be happier. Not that he’s moving away, although I think it sounds like a great opportunity for him. But happy because things are finally breaking his way. It hasn’t been an easy path for Zach. I’ve written about our unique relationship in the past. In most ways, Zach is more like my kid brother than my nephew. He was raised, in part, by my parents. Both his mother and father (my brother and his wife) died while Zach was in college. And now, thanks to Covid and the deliberate misinformation spread by the GOP, so did his grandparents.
We’re the last of our little family to survive. Zach and I are the only ones to remember our shared history, the good and the bad. He frustrates the shit out of me at times, but I do truly cherish my 38-year-old “kid brother.” And now he’s leaving. I think I actually cried a little.
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Which has been happening more often these last few weeks, the sudden and inexplicable crying jags. At the grocery store. In my car. Folding laundry. At first I was like what the fuck, dewd. Nothing dramatic. A few sniffles, a stray tear. But something is going on and I’m not sure what it’s about exactly. Crying jags are not my vibe, at all.
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| I've been a little emotional lately. |
I suppose this is grief. It occurred to me recently that I’d never really gotten the chance when they died. There was a surreal quality to my parent’s deaths, the bizarre circus that Covid had become under Donald Trump, the quiet, almost embarrassed way the ambulance came to take each of them to the ER when their respective times came. It was unnerving, having to slip past the nursing station and sneak into the waiting room to spend those last few moments with mom.
It was a stupid and reckless thing to do, I know. There were actual security guards looking for me as I huddled down next to mom. It was terrifying to see both of them swallowed up by an overburdened hospital system, and then be denied contact with them as they died. It was nightmarish, the 2AM call from the charge nurse who was caring for mom, asking me if she should be put on a ventilator.
And then those lost, shuffling weeks afterwards, quarantining, completely alone. I had just started the job that I’ve now just recently left.
Listen, I spent the first couple months of this dumb blog writing about that workplace. I won’t belabor it, I’ll just note for the record (again) the it was the absolute worst job situation I’ve had in the entire 40+ years I’ve been in the grown-up work force — and that’s sayin something. I’ve had more than one person point out that I may be suffering from real, actual PTSD, and it doesn’t seem that far fetched to me.
It occurred to me yesterday, as I was feeling annoyed with my nephew for no good reason, that I never really grieved them. Not really. I just went numb, put on my big boy boots, and for two long years I descended into the daily hell that was that fucking job. Now I have all this time, the pressure is off, the burdens are lifted.
And it’s only now that I’m allowing myself to feel the loss of them.
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That said, I’m very pleased with the necklace I was working on, with the 2,000-yr-old stones and the roman glass. I’m happy with the way it turned out and I’ll post some pics later today. Meanwhile, the Etsy shop is a mess. Need to get that cleaned up, and also need to find a better way of storing inventory once it’s listed. Stay tuned.
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