at loose ends

i have this week alone at home before school starts with lots of tasks, some tedious and some not, but all requiring focus, but no clear starting place, plus m.o.p.s. at a conference, so not even at his house in his new city, and everything is so up in the air.  i'm getting used to doing 100% of the housework instead of 50% (or, let's face it, maybe more like 40%), and trying to not repeatedly play out one million different scenarios of where he and/or i may be working, respectively, a year from now.  i am desperate for company but also needing to be alone.

and now my grandmother died, dammit.  she just died last night.  it was fully expected if not overdue--  she's been incapacitated since a stroke 22 years ago, unable to speak or walk (or make her intentions known re: end-of-life stuff).  she has suffered multiple health problems over those two decades, problems associated with not having control over your muscles and with sitting your whole life.  as far as people know, she was comfortable in these last several weeks of her final decline.  

i barely knew her, since i have not heard her speak since i was thirteen.  my memories of her are not really happy and they're not really sad either, and they are all from childhood: resentment about being forced to wear a dress that i hated because she made it, or treats like her house being the only place on earth i could eat a twinkie.  for some reason, she had like twenty years' worth of Reader's Digest, which archives I read in their entirety, and from which i think i first palpably learned what a cliché really is.  i don't know that her life before the stroke was particularly joyful or difficult; my cousin and i occasionally try to piece together her personality, etc.  in any case, i am glad that her ordeal is finally over.

RIP:  Kathryn B., 1918-2008.