Sunday, June 18, 2006

The Best Laid Plans ...

I really CANNOT BELIEVE that it is now July 14. This is absolutely impossible.

Actually, it cannot be July at all, since I decided that the months of May, June, and July for the year 2006 had to be stricken from the calendar and replaced with Ozzie (the month formerly known as May), Harriet (the month formerly known as June), and Little Ricky (the month formerly known as July. The former months of May, June, and July of 2006 have been quite possibly the worst of my life.

Since I firmly believe that bring things into the light can be very healing, I will tell you why, and I will begin way, way back on May 1, 2006.

On that day DH and I received a telephone call telling us that his very dear mother had just died. She was just 2 months shy of 101, so she had had a good, long, and very eventful life. Since DH has severe gout and arthritis problems and his mother lived in a thiird-floor walk-up apartment and, anyway, he does not DO funerals, and since I loved her like my own mother, and since I had already promised that I would do this, I left everyone behind and flew to Hamburg, Germany, on May 9.

The funeral was really lovely and touching (and very different from those I have attended here), and she is finally resting beside her beloved husband who passed more than 60 years before.

Rest in peace, Herta Klara Wilhelmina Hetzer, nee Koppers.

After the funeral, I tried to assist my sister-in-law with the final details of cleaning out the apartment where MIL had lived since 1952. This process took the entire week of my stay. Here is a picture of her building; her flat is the entire top floor. I think that the saddest part was driving away in the taxi at 5 AM, looking up, and realizing that I would never see the apartment again.