Sunday, October 12, 2008

Life goes on

There are a variety of ways to mourn the loss of a family member, but they generally involve getting together with or at least talking to family. And we have been doing that. Lots of long phone calls and visits from the only family in the area - the grandkids and their parents.

In The Boy's case, it involved changing a car's oil and air filters.


Here is the cabin air filter from Mrs Notthat's car - maybe we waited a bit long to change this. (This is the filter that all the air that comes out of the interior vents passes through. If you look closely you can actually see the stockyard smells that Mrs fears the most.)


Mrs Nothat chose to go ahead with a long planned neighborhood garage sale.


For her, garage sales, whether as a buyer or seller, are extremely therapeutic. The grandkids and their parents also brought over stuff and hung around.


We all had a nice dinner with chicken cacciatore and pumpkin pie (that I made from a pumpkin Darci picked out of the garden a few weeks ago). Since garage sales (at least as a seller) are the opposite of theraputic for me, I spent the day cooking and baking.

And maybe watching a bit of football.

In any case, this all seems to be helping the mourning process. There will be some tough times to come, but for now everyone seems to be getting on fine.

And now I think I'll go have a slice of pie for breakfast.

That's it - move along...

2 comments:

DAK said...

Many years ago,Barb's mom died. We had just gotten married, and the funeral was in Mrs. J's home town of Somerset, Kentucky. I will dig out the song I wrote about that week -- the experience really changed me, showed me another world, where people mourn death by celebrating life. Food helps for sure. Lots of food. Garage sales are a new wrinkle.

mary ann said...

I have saved all the condolence cards from when my parents died. I worry now that everything is email (and I am so guilty of that!) and grieving relatives don't have those sweet cards and thoughts.