So long ago… and far away….

When I last wrote, I was with my brother, who was in hospital. I’m not sure I knew yet that he was dying – never going to leave the hospital again.  He did get to move into a palliative care unit in the same facility.  As bad as the medical care was up until then, his care from the move to his death (about five days later, once he stopped treatments of various kinds) was outstanding.  We filled his room with friends, and he was happy.  The night before he died, he did tell me that “the whole thing is weird, weird, weird.” I suspect he was talking about his body starting to shut down – but I’ll never know for sure.  I was with him when he died, less than a day after that conversation – and he had never regained consciousness.  That was just over three years ago – on his 68th birthday. I miss him. Of course.

It turns out that he had always assumed he would have to support me in my retirement. (And yes, I retired just under two years ago.)  I never thought that, but he was an accountant, and had socked away enough money to provide for his own care until he was 90. Too bad he never made it even close to that.  Consequently, he left a lot of money, and I was his only beneficiary (and the executor of his estate).  Having never been on the positive side of compound interest before, my life is infinitely easier because of his frugality and his sense of responsibility toward me. I am grateful for all that.

Some time before he died (like a few years), he was pre-paying his cremation. We had a conversation then about whether there would be a service (No, we agreed), whether there would be some kind of “reception” (no, we agreed – we’d have a party instead and drink his amazing wine cellar, which we did), and whether he wanted his ashes interred somewhere (no, scattered on water, he said).  He also said, “If I leave enough money, take everyone on a cruise.”  Well, he left plenty of money.  But who in heck was “everyone”?  So, I chose the two couples who had been his closest friends and greatest support for years, and they and I and my husband went to Italy and took cooking classes.  We’d been there for his 50th birthday, and the friends were all into food and wines, so it was a wonderful time.  We called it his “going away present” to us, after one of the friends described that party we had as his “going away party.”  I know he’d have been pleased. And we made pasta AND great memories, while we shared memories of our time with my brother.  It was lovely. And happened about six months before COVID hit, so we felt fortunate about the timing.

Since then – retirement, moving (same city, but from a house to a condo), and COVID.  Just emerging from the last of those – having been double-vaccinated, as have most of our friends.  We will be visiting the same friends we went to Italy with for the first time in more than a year soon, and had our first dinner party in about 16 months just last weekend.    So much has happened, and it takes so few words to summarize it all.  It would have been so much richer had I been writing all along, but so it goes, and I can only try to capture more of the richness of a privileged life in more frequent entries form here on out.

I am glad to be back.