I am to the point in my grief journey that name calling feels appropriate. During Covid, we ran across a Shakespeare Insult Generator that has provided much amusement during the last 5 years. So if you feel the need to hurl insults and can't think of anything beyond the usual, general profane ones- might I suggest "dissembling, beetle-headed maggot-pie" or "lumpish, boil-brained apple-john" or "churlish, onion-eyed miscreant" or "rank, tardy-gaited ratsbane." Two of those may have found their way onto the binder holding my dad's paperwork. His paperwork used to reside in a leather (or leather-like) black binder, but the papers were sent binder-free and I found a used school binder to put them in that serves its purpose. I'm still waiting on death certificates to arrive before I can do much more to see if he can pay off any of his debts. He has roughly a quarter of a million dollars owed to one hospital alone. So "pay off" might be stretching it a tad. It might be more along the lines of "here's a death certificate and I'm sorry."
I had two boxes of his belongings arrive at my house. I knew his bills, phone, and ID would be coming, so the rest has been a surprise. I'm trying to see the humor in what came, but I'm really struggling to find any. I've already mentioned the box with the baggie of nail clippers and pictures of his karate friends. The second box arrived Saturday. In it was the following: a wifi booster, a usb wall plug, a knife with a roughly 6 inch blade (ish? I'm guessing here), a large pocket knife, two pairs of binoculars, old ear phones (nothing nice- just wired ones you can buy for cheap), two western belts (one being the one he gave me as a teen and then asked for it back), a really ugly bolo tie, a shoe horn, his scriptures, and some other odds and ends. Inside the scriptures were more pictures of his karate buddies from years ago. I am logically trying to understand why the karate friend pictures. One was a really good friend of his who died several years ago. I guess he didn't feel abandoned by the karate friends? But why no pictures at all of his children? For someone who "loved his children so much" isn't that odd? Is it because he didn't have any pictures left because he was angry at us? Did his sister just not send those? Am I being punished for not taking care of him in his hour of need? But then why did she send all of those weird odds and ends? A shoe horn? Really? What am I supposed to do with those things?
I've been thinking it is time to get a new set of scriptures. I'm still using my old seminary set, and there have been updates made since then especially to the D&C which we are studying this year. I tried to tell myself it could be a fortuitous landfall. I told his sister I didn't want his scriptures. I still don't. Looking at them, I feel a sense of revulsion. I can't use those. We had a missionary correlation meeting at our house yesterday and Ryan tried to get 3 sets of missionaries to take them and give them to someone. Surely there is someone out there that could benefit from a full set of scriptures. My dad didn't believe in marking his scriptures, so they look very nice. We had no takers. I just want them gone and out of my house.
I feel the same sense of "get that away from me" with his key chain. I saw him use that for a lot of years. I am less repulsed by the USB wall plug and could probably find a use for it. I am going to send my sister the items she thought her boys might like. She said her boys (she has two boys and two girls) were the closest to my dad and they are taking his death hard. My kids aren't seeming very affected by his death. They aren't sad. They saw my tumultuous feelings regarding my father so maybe between that and not seeing him very much, they just didn't attach at all? Or, and I'm wondering if this is a big factor, my children are not boys. My dad put in more effort to have a relationship with his grandsons. My dad gave me money to buy gifts for my children most Christmases, but would actually buy gifts for my sister's boys. I remember him being pleased with himself- finding baby boots and little boy toys for my sister's first born son. Sexist pig. Whoops sorry, time for the Shakespearean insult generator: lumpish, clay-brained lout.
The memories just keep assaulting me. A game we used to play growing up was the tickle war. I thought it was maybe because he thought it was fun to get us to laugh. He told me he started it because he could get us to use our stomach muscles and keep them strong, so we wouldn't have childish round bellies. He started that when I was 2, maybe 3 years old? That was the reason behind "I'm going to tickle your spine through your belly button" game. The goatish, crook-pated barnacle.
Ryan used his Spanish branch clerk powers for a somewhat good, somewhat nefarious purpose one last time before he was released yesterday. Ryan looked up my dad's church records. He hadn't been moved from his ward in Spokane, from over a year ago. Rather than leave him on the ward's roll and no one knowing where he was, Ryan transferred my dad's records into the Spanish branch and then marked him as deceased. It makes me a little happy that his membership records were last in a Spanish branch, somewhere he would not have willingly gone. He did ask a number of times if he could move in with us, so.... maybe were giving him his wish for about 3 minutes? Ok, not really. It was more selfish than that. It was much easier to do that than track down his old bishop and call to inform his change of living status.
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