Living in Limbo

Please don't feel bad.  I have dozens of unfinished projects.   I could list them all, but then I would get depressed.  The most current unfinished project is a photo album I wanted to make for my 15th wedding anniversary (October 22nd)  Every weekend I say I will work on it and every weekend I don;t.  Maybe this will guilt me into to doing it! 

But not too much.  I should have my current WIP out of here by Monday, after which I plan to do nothing for a least a couple of days.

After that, we'll see....

Don't feel bad, I have a whole room full of boxes that we emptied out of a storage building I've had for a while and now I have to sort through all of them because I don't even remember what is in them. Every time I open the door to go in there and get started I turn around and go out and close the door behind me. I just can't get inspired to get started.

Linda Henderson

My mother passed away in 1996 and since none of us kids could decide what to do with her things we boxed them up and put them in my spare bedroom with the idea that we would get together and go through them at a later date and there they rest just as they were when they were put there.  I have several times gone in there with the idea of going through them but the task is humongous and I chicken out.  Maybe if my brothers lived closer than 200 miles away something might get done.....but I doubt it.

My dad is now in a nursing home, and my DH and I go daily to his house to feed and love his cat.  We've also been going through paperwork, hoping to know where things are when the inevitable happens.  A couple of days ago, my DH found a binder and a journal my dad had been keeping that lifted my spirits a bit.

The binder was from a creative writing class that my dad took after he retired (senior citizens get free tuition at state universities here in KY).  His first assignment was about the Christmas when I made him, of all things, a suit jacket out of black and white houndstooth check material.  I was in my teens, and this was my first major sewing project.  Of all things to pick!

Anyway, he talked about getting his feelings hurt when I'd shoo him out of the basement (where the sewing machine was) and feeling sad when he didn't see a gift from me to him under the tree.  (That's because I was up all night finishing the suit coat, and just presented it on a hanger the next morning.)  Then he spoke of how proud he was of it and how he'd worn it to every New Year's Eve party he'd attended since then and expected to for every New Year's Eve for the rest of his life.  After reading that, I found the very jacket in his closet all these years later.

His journal was a bit more poignant in that, in 2003, he wrote that he couldn't remember to keep up his resolve to write in his journal each day, and the memory lapses disturbed him.  He said he wanted to attribute it to growing older, but, as we now know, it was the Alzheimers just beginning to rear its ugly head.  Still, reading what he wrote in his very eloquent style touched a tender spot in my heart since he now struggles for words to say what he wants to say.

It's especially hard right now.  In addition to the Alzheimers, he has prostate cancer that has invaded his bones, and he hasn't eaten in 2 days.  I had hoped to bring him to our house for the Thanksgiving holiday (we're only about a block away from the nursing home), even though I knew he wouldn't eat anything to speak of, just so that he'd be a part of the family gathering.   I don't think he'll be well enough to come now, and he's in so much pain.  In fact, I'm not sure he'll even make it to Thanksgiving.  He's so pitifully thin.

It really is sad to see a loved one slip away from you, in his case mentally as well as physically.  You feel so helpless and sad.  It's the good wishes of my famiy and friends at home and here on the boards that are keeping me afloat right now.