Things past and present

I haven’t had a lot blogging mojo lately so hence, it’s been quiet.  My father’s passing has made it a busy time, for as much as he tried to simplify things, settling up all the accounts and such has been a lot of work.   My brother and I made another trip to Florida last month to take care of a number of things that could  best be  done there – transferring the car title, visiting the tax assessor, the lawyer, the condo association, various insurance agents, etc.  It’s all on track but, like I said, very time consuming.

My father had made arrangements to have himself cremated and I brought his remains home on the plane.  We are going to have a family gathering for a small ceremony at the end of the month and we will inter him in a plot not far from mine.  Once we do that, I think I’ll feel a bit more like moving on.  In the meantime, to distract myself from the mundane paperwork of the estate, I spent some time looking into the family history on Dad’s side of the family.  His mother was orphaned as a young child and raised by an older brother.  I had always kind of wondered what the story was behind that.  It turns out that I found a wealth of information in a database of old New York newspapers (and with the help of some of my mother’s prodigious genealogy skills).  Of course, answering one question often just leads to another so now I understand how genealogists can become so obsessive about it!  FYI - the orphan story is that her Mom died of kidney failure in 1909 (at age 48) and Dad of food poisoning (bad clam chowder) at age 49 in 1910.  My grandmother was 6 at the time, with older siblings who were 11, 15, 18 and 22. It’s also quite a trip to read some of the articles in these old newspapers – the ones I read are from the 1850’s to about 1920.  For example, there was a piece on a woman who was convicted in 1889, and fined $25, for being “a common scold and a nuisance.”  The judge lectured her and told her that some of her neighbors were just as bad!  Can you imagine being convicted of “being a nuisance!”

On the health front, I have had three rounds of chemo and one CT scan since I last blogged.  The treatments are going well and my scan looked very good.  I had some significant pain problems in January and February for which I was taking more oxycodone than normal, but those have abated.  David suggested that perhaps, instead of “growing pains” I was having “shrinking pains” from the treatment.  In any event, I’m doing very well.  The treatment this week was the 49^th of my career as a cancer patient.  I wonder if they’ll give me a merit badge next time for my 50^th!

I hope you are all doing well and thank you to everyone who sent condolences….here’s a picture of Dad with his Mom – Grandma Agnes – in 1938…BB