Which costume do you like better?

Well, it is finally full-on Autumn. To match the intensity of the blue Fall sky, so go my emotions at this time of year. I welcome the cooler weather and changing colors. My birthday is in mid-September. Then, September 29, is the anniversary of my brother David’s accident, followed by Bob’s birthday in mid-October, and then the anniversary of the day David had to be extubated/removed from medical support following the accident – so the day he died. I am not going to lie, it’s a lot. This year, on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, I thought I was going to be off to a rough start when I stepped into my laundry room and heard a slosh under my shoes. The floor was covered in water! Wah! Boo! These are the types of events that can send widows into a frenzied, poor-me, grief-state that is rather paralyzing even years after their person has died. I didn’t say it was logical, I just said it happens.

Not me. 😊 Because Bob and I downsized and moved from a 100-year-old house to a condo as part of our preparation for his death and my survivorship, I simply called the 24-hour maintenance management number. Within an hour, Jeremy, our building’s trusty facilities staff, arrived. He brought a fan to dry the edge of the wood floor that had gotten soaked and told me I needed a new water heater. Not entirely surprising, the water heater was at its end of life. But on the Sunday of a holiday weekend in the middle of a pandemic with worldwide shortages and supply chain delays?

Jeremy called and secured one for me, it was installed on the same day. So Happy Birthday to me, I got myself a shiny new water heater and yes, paid extra to have it installed on a Sunday. Had I still been in that big old house by myself, without the buying power of my building’s management company, I might still be taking cold showers, and I might have had to replace some wood floors. Yikes.

Once again, as difficult as it was at the time to make all of the preparations for Bob’s death and my life without him, it proved invaluable both financially and emotionally.