Another Day

Day 3 - and I don't know what stage of grief I'm in. I downloaded a few books from Kobo and it does say they don't necessarily follow a pattern. 

I did do some normal stuff today like take out the garbage/recycling, do the laundry and wash dishes. Peppered with teary moments. 

I also scanned through the bank history of Dad's account, which he added me to years ago, just to make sure I caught everything that needs to be closed off. 

Early in the morning there was a phone call from the Government of Alberta but they asked if it was my Dad's doctor office and then realized they phoned the wrong number. I knew it was the medical examiner. 

They did phone back later to tell me that the funeral home had picked up the body yesterday. She also told me they're calling the cause of death high blood pressure of course she used a more technical name for it plus she said not unusual as he was 90. He was on blood pressure medication. 

Tomorrow I go to the funeral home so I'm expecting a rough day. I'm taking a cab for that as I'd rather not attempt to drive. Thursday I'm taking a super quick trip up to site to pack my camp room and I scheduled that so I could just zip in and out without running into to many people. I continue to receive amazing messages of support but I know this can make people awkward and to be honest I wouldn't even be going if this wasn't supposed to by last week up there anyway. Plus I need the suitcase currently sitting in my camp room for next week. I'm on the uber early flight so I'll chill in my room until it's time to fly out which I'd have to leave by 1:30 pm anyway. 

On Friday I'm thinking about meeting my team for lunch or after work just to re-enter the world of the living. 

I'm making a list of supplies I need to take with me when I go back probably Sunday morning. I'm planning to rent an SUV for the week so I can haul the cleaning and odds and ends out plus take back anything I need to. 

I haven't run at all as I don't have the get up and go.I don't feel comfortable running at the acreage only because it's bear season and super isolated. I just want to get Dad taken care of, clean his house and then return to a more regular routine for awhile. I did get this though to go on my Pandora bracelet, while not Pandora I still think it's neat. I will get back at it soon as while I cancelled my trip to Portland for FitBloggin I'm still going to the Dumbo Challenge at Disneyland at the end of August. 

In fact the mention of high blood pressure today brought back my last physical where my doctor said mine was a little high so that's enough of a push to get back at it. I may run tomorrow to work out the emotions of the day. 

I've received a few flowers over the past few days and wanted to share them with you as they are beautiful. 

These are from my co-workers in HR, aren't pink roses amazing. 

These ones are from site, wowsers is all I can say. The roses are massive. 

This is from my boss, I laughed out loud when I received it as it's a tree. When my Mom passed I got loads of flowers but I admire the originality of this just no idea where to put it. 

I ordered pizza tonight as my desire to cook is nada plus this gives me something to reheat tomorrow and probably after I land on Thursday. I got a salad with it...plus cheesy bread o.k that was an emotional decision. 

Thank you for being patient while I work through this process. 

Thank you for your support

I have to say thank you for all your comments and messages.

It's all a little surreal still and I accept that. After my Mom passed 11 years ago I often say to people that the process of grieving is different for everyone. There is no right way or wrong way. It's an independent and personal journey.

Last night I slept on the couch in my Dad's house. I knew he hadn't been feeling well and let's just say I found the evidence in the two bedrooms. He did tell me he was using the room I usually stay in as he hadn't cleaned the sheets in his bedroom. The couch wasn't so bad it brought back memories of when we had a few cousins from Germany visiting and I got the couch then too.

When the Victim Services ladies were talking to me I told them how I had read the book "Facing a Death in the Family" on Saturday from cover to cover. As I told you I had a bad feeling all day Saturday.  I had originally bought the book when my Mom was ill but I never read it as my Dad took care of all the details after her death. I just had to close one bank account. I told them I had a notebook and was making lists. One of them asked me if I when I have a list and I do something not on the list do I then add it to the list. I said of course then I know how much I accomplished. She did too, a moment of levity from yesterday.

I was looking over my FitBit data and on Saturday I had a record of 65 awake times.

 Now this next part may seem weird to some of you but I take comfort in it. At one point I woke up around 1 am and saw a bright spot of light in my window. My curtains were just a little open. At first I thought it was a street light but there is no street light there. I now know that was around the time of death. I believe it was my Dad's spirit coming to say goodbye. When I got home today I went to that window to see if there was anything else that could cause that and there's nothing. Call me crazy if you wish.

I decided to come back early this morning as I wanted some space to sort through all that needs to be done and that's just easier in the city. My Dad had given me a copy of the will but it was not signed so one call was to the lawyer to see if they had a signed copy on file. Thank goodness they did. One thing I learned from the book is that it looks like a nightmare if there is no will. I don't have a will but you can bet once I have everything flipped to my name I'm doing that asap.

Now normally when I stayed at Dad's we'd only travel on the weekend. So I knew that this morning I would run into Calgary rush hour. Hey after driving for the first time in years why not go all in. I was trying to just hit the early start but again I made a few wrong turns. I bought a Garmin Nuvi a few months ago on the Shopping Channel as I knew it would come in handy. I was not familiar at all with route Garmin was suggesting but I've also never gone to the airport from my Dad's house. I drove on the Trans Canada highway, Coventry Hill Blv which I've never done today and lived to tell about it. When I did my license it was around my neighbourhood. Actually despite a couple wrong turns it was pretty uneventful. I even spotted 3 deers along the way and would chant "just stay there" as I didn't want them to run across the road and I hit or wind up in a ditch avoiding it. I passed a few road kills.

Called the funeral home and have a meeting on Wednesday, I'll bring loads of kleenex for that one. They were asking what sort of service I wanted. My Dad didn't want a service as he would say it's just a bunch of people saying nice things about that they never said when you were alive. I have to agree with him, that is something that's for the living not the deceased.

I had to cancel all my FitBloggin travel plans and found out that Air Canada will indeed refund your money in this scenario. Just need to send them a death certificate and the original itinerary.

That's one lesson right off the bat have many copies of the death certificate. Of course at this point the body has not been released. However the funeral people said they'd contact the medical examiner's office to let them know that they're involved.

Then it was dealing with the Canadian government. I called the Old Age Security and Canadian Pension Plan people to inform them. Super nice people and one reminded me of the GST credit but of course that was a different phone number. I called 4 1-800 numbers today. Got one guy who told me to send the death certificate and SIN number to the local tax office and reminded me I have to do the final income tax but that's not something I need to do now.

One of them needed my Dad's bank account number so I had to log into my bank to find it, and I notice he had written two cheques in early June, turns out to two life insurance policies that I didn't know about. Funny how things happen. Well I think I knew about one of them but the original policy was under a different name.

One of the amazing things my Dad did was add my name to the property titles and all his bank accounts a long time ago. Very smart move.

There's still a long list to take care of but I can't do anything without the death certificate and to be honest I just wanted to do what I thought was crucial today while I had a calm moment to deal with it.

I'm planning to spend the week up there next week to clean the house and go through all the stuff in a not hurried pace. My company is cool with me not coming back till July 2. I have a list of supplies to get but I think it will be cathartic.

Out of curiosity I stepped on the scale when I got home. Down 4lbs in jeans, yup that's stress and I have to say WW is not a huge focus for me at the moment. Though I still intend to go to weigh in this weekend to maintain regular routine.

In fact this is turning into one giant learning moment, not just about what needs to be done when someone passes but just what to do to not leave a burden on those left behind.

Once again thank you so much for your kind words, they mean so much to me.