If Only . . .

 

            I recall reading years ago an article about the three major causes of stress. I do not, however, recall what those three causes are, so, instead, I will try to identify the chief causes of my current stress.

 

            Primary, of course, is a death in our family. The grief is intensified when it is your son or daughter, and in Scott’s case, there are lingering questions about the cause of death that stir anger into our grief load. On top of that, we are digging deep in order to support each other. So much of what the brain does is taken up with grief, or with speculating, “If only I had . . .,” that our thinking is often slow and confused – even more than we had been experiencing due to normal aging.

 

            Kim has realized that one way to lessen that grief-stress is to keep busy, and living here in the Bark House gives us – especially Kim – plenty of tasks inside the house and out to distract her from thoughts of her son.

 

            Another cause of stress, of course, is moving. As I write this the movers have hauled to the condo a couple of beds and a few pieces of furniture, and we have hauled many boxes containing kitchen stuff, bathroom stuff, and fabric samples as we try to decide fabrics for the couch and chairs we are ordering. All of the packing duties fell on Kim, with my main job being hauling stuff out to the car and then up to the condo. The drive from Bark House to Nut House takes about an hour, and this week we are making the round trip four times, with some medical appointments mixed in with furniture delivery and meetings with decorators.

 

            I have taken on two major technical responsibilities, and they should be simple, but I tend to use my down time to worry, and these are what I worry about. First, we had two beds delivered by the movers, but I fear that some parts of the bed frames are missing. So, we have a guy coming to help put them together, and I hope any missing parts can be easily found. For example, I noticed that the full sized bedframe was missing all the nuts needed to attach the side rails, but I found eight of the right side in my little jar of nuts and bolts. I’m hopeful that the new queen-sized bedframe, still in the box, will be fully equipped. Getting those beds assembled is a big deal, for it means we can sleep there and, with a few food purchases, spend the night there. Seeing them lying there unassembled makes me feel incompetent.

 

            My second major responsibility is to get the television and internet up and running. We have a television but no way to attach it to the wall. We see a lot of wires and cables heading toward the small hole over the fireplace where the television will go. This week I went to Best Buy to get the mounting frame and make an appointment go have someone from the Geek Squad come hook everything up. I have been a Best Buy member for years, and when I renewed this year I thought I was told that home service calls would be free. Nope. When Best Buy is done hooking up the television, I will call to ask Spectrum to visit our condo to sell or rent me some stuff so the right signals go to the right devices. I have to trust that these geeks know what they are doing and not ripping me off. I just want my Netflix and the evening news, and I long for a good distracting series to absorb my grieving time.

 

            Our third cause of stress must be the noticing of our entirely routine decline due to age. I’m in good physical health, though my memory lapses are troubling. (Kim and I decided that when we can’t remember a word, often a name, we find a neutral word to substitute for the forgotten word until the carrousel comes around and delivers the right word. (I would tell you what our replacement word is, but I forgot it.)). I get angry when I forget stuff, and Kim has to talk or laugh me out of it. Again, grief takes up a lot of brain space, so some stuff has to be crowded out or drowned out. Moving into a former mental institution helps with the humor and Google tells me that electroshock therapy is more benign than it used to be.

 

            So, that’s how it is.