In our last year together lots of odd little jobs got deferred. Unfamiliar people coming and going made Russ anxious. Spending money hiring someone to do a job Russ had always done made him anxious. Fixing something that got broken or scratched because of his mobility issues made him anxious. The 'out of norm' distressed him and I certainly did not want to add to that. He worked so hard at dealing with a degenerative disease with grace.
My job as his care person was to find balance. If something was not an emergency, it could wait, be put on hold. It is those things that have waited this past year that I am now tackling.
It's hard to move out of a black cloud, to allow yourself to see light, to be in the light. People keep telling me I am 'doing great' whatever that means. I still have to work diligently to think beyond the next hour or past the next appointment or phone call or company connection. To think about next week, next month, the next task or how to be the kind of person I would like to be is proving to be very uncomfortable. Just when I think I can make it through a phone call without crying or talk to a workman, the hiccup comes and tears come with held breath; how do I hide the fact that I am still inside that black cloud, should I even try?
With the death business nearly done (as I said, my sister coined that phrase which aptly says what the person left behind has to tackle) I now need to consider the tasks left undone so Russ would feel at peace in his own home.
One such task is redoing the back of the kitchen island.
I have been thinking of a plan and today I will finalize it. I have an appointment with Jay, the kitchen and bath guy, to talk cupboard doors. I will have them mounted on the back of the island. As there is little overhang (more room for Russ to navigate), I will have Peter, my favorite metal guy, make an industrial 6" foot panel for the base and then the doors can be placed above. What I am trying to decided now is plain like the cupboards or painted. I am leaning towards blue... After discussion with Jay, I am thinking to paint the back of the island in preparation. That way I solve the question: do I like the color? For the money I will spend buying a pint of paint it seems a prudent expenditure before ordering the panels.
I hope Russ felt at peace in his own home. Many of us are uneducated about neurological illness and so it was with Russ and me. We had to be creative problem solvers, we had to choose to dig deep for ways to do life with some semblance of normalcy. I think we did a pretty darn good job, prioritizing the musts vs the needs; finding balance. One of those peaceful, uneducated solutions was to defer maintenance, but I'm on it now, knowing Russ did not have to deal with workman doing jobs he had always done himself. Oh how I miss him, crashes and all.