Back to the present...

Thank you, thank you, thank you, for all of your comments over the past week. They mean the world to dh & me.

I've been wandering around in a fog for most of the week. I think it's due to a combination of (a) this week's significant dates, (b) general vacation laziness (lol), (c) the blood pressure medication I started a couple of weeks ago, and/or (c) AF (!), who decided to pop in early (for me = day 29). Her last visit was late, so I guess she's trying to even out the schedule! I have been very crampy (more so & for more days than usual -- the bp meds, perhaps?) & very, very tired. I was feeling very fatigued the first week I started taking the pills, started feeling better, and then AF arrived & I'm back to feeling fatigued again. The whole week has taken on a sort of surreal aura. We haven't been doing a whole lot, but I'm very glad we took the time off & stayed close to home.

Phoebe was asking how it feels to write about all this now. It's been very cathartic. I honestly feel like the hard part has been writing it all out, and the rest of the day will be OK. Sad, but OK.

On Tuesday (the 5th), dh & I did something we have been talking about doing for the last 10 years. Ten years ago, we didn't have the money to buy the niche alongside Katie's at the cemetery (in fact, we financed her funeral on our credit card). Ever since then, I've been saying to dh that we needed to do this: "Some day, we're going to come here & someone else's plaque is going to be up alongside hers, & we're going to regret it."

So I called the cemetery office & said we'd like to come down that afternoon & purchase a niche for ourselves, preferably the one next to our daughter.

We were in for a shock. Not only is the one next to our daughter taken, in the cluster of columbarium structures (columbaria?) where her ashes are interred, there are exactly two spots left. Everything else has been pre-purchased.

They've built a new group of columbaria very close by, and the salesman (the same one we dealt with 10 years ago!) suggested that we could buy two niches over there & move Katie over to be beside us. But the idea of moving her -- opening up the niche, with her urn and all the things & flowers we put in with it, where we've visited her every week for the last 10 years -- bothered me a whole lot more than the idea of not being side by side -- so we wound up just buying a niche for ourselves in the new columbarium, & will leave her where she is. It's close enough.

Our traditions for the 7th (today) have usually included putting an In Memoriam in the local paper (done, although I'm not sure I'll continue that after this year), taking pink roses to the cemetery (later this afternoon), and ordering in Chinese food, since that's what we did when we got home from the hospital. Since we're going away, though, we didn't want to have to deal with scads of leftovers (their "dinner for two" easily feeds four or five people), so we're going out tonight to the Chinese restaurant we usually order in from instead.

Tomorrow we're headed out on the second part of our vacation, to see my family. I will have Internet access, & so will be able to access my blog & my Google Reader, although I probably won't be on the computer as much I usually am. Hopefully I won't get too far behind!