Money Money Money Money

I was surprised Bill had put me as the beneficiary for the tax shelter I had just transferred to him. $81,000 had been given to him approximately twelve weeks before he passed away. I had been told there was $79,000 left. The second weekend I was at Bill's helping Laura and Kyle pack, a statement from the investment company arrived. It showed only $65,000. Reading through the papers I learned that he had received a distribution of $4500. But where was the other $10,000+? I called the financial adviser when I got back home. He told me that even before he had a chance to get the spousal rollover going, Bill had contacted the parent company for the funds, faxed them a copy of the dissolution papers, and got them to cut him a check for over $10,000. For some reason that made me feel better. That was the old Bill. True to form, grabbing that money as fast as he could, and making it vanish faster than anyone could imagine. If he had been well during those last months, there would have been very little left. I know his ultimate goal was to buy a house or a duplex, and I think he would have wanted to leave about $50,000 to cover that, but he was bad with money and addicted to gambling. Who knows how much would be in that account today if he had received it several months earlier or if he had stayed healthy just a couple more months?

A Letter I Received

Hi Cindy, I was over at the High School Class of 1963 site and saw the notice you posted that Bill had passed. I'm so sorry for you and your family and also for me as I was looking forward to seeing him at the 50 year reunion. My name is Daniel and I grew up with Bill, we were good buddies in elementary school/junior high and friends in high school. I really liked Bill and as kids we played a lot together. He was definitely one of the "coolest" kids in school and of course looking like Ricky Nelson certainly didn't hurt the attention girls gave him! When I told my wife (also a Cindy) about his passing, I had to explain who he was, and started telling her stories about us. I thought maybe you'd like to hear a couple of them. One is the "great adventure" we had when we were around 11-12. The other happened a few years later. Maybe I should start by telling you a little about growing up in our town in case you aren't from the area or Bill didn't tell you. People make jokes about the "perfect" families and strife-free life of the 1950s television shows like "Ozzie and Harriet" (the Nelson family) and "Leave It To Beaver." But for me and most of the kids I grew up with, that's pretty much the way it was...well, maybe not quite so perfect or strife-free, but it was a great era in which to grow up. Dads worked, moms stayed home and the kids, like me and Bill, roamed and played until darkness signaled it was time to go home. The town was in the citrus growing area. The air was clean (we didn't start to get any smog until around 1960) and the town was surrounded by orange and lemon groves. In the late 1940s the town had a population of a few thousand which had increased to over 10,000 by the time I left home in the mid-1960s. It was a college town having, in the early 1950s at least three private colleges. It was a safe (people left their doors unlocked), educated, affluent town of mainly professional people, middle-class businessmen (who commuted to downtown) and college professors. There were no liquor stores or bars allowed in town (I suppose because of the colleges) and no overnight parking on the streets. Almost everyone had a mom and dad. Although I knew a kid who's father had been killed in WWII, I only knew of one who came from a divorced (single parent) home, and I thought that very odd and felt sorry for him. We kids spent our time building forts and playing "cowboys & Indians" or "Army" in the orange groves, playing pick-up baseball games at the park, roller-skating around town or riding our bikes to the foothills to shoot at birds with our BB guns. The wonderful thing about the area is that living here is a year around outdoor experience. So as kids, we were rarely forced to stay inside...and we rarely were. In the 1950s the uniform of the day was a striped T-shirt, a pair of blue-jeans (usually patched at the knees), a pair of Buster Brown leather shoes or canvas sneakers and we were off for the day. If we couldn't find someone else's mother to feed us at lunch (which was unlikely), we might drop by the house for a sandwich and then off again until dinner. Or, if we were going off on an "expedition" we'd have Mom pack us a sandwich. As kids, our free time wasn't regimented into courses of activities by our parents as happens today. We basically entertained ourselves and found things to do, I never remember being bored. Of course during the school year we were confined from 8am to 3pm, after which we'd pedal our bikes home, announce that we were going to play with some friend and were off. Homework was done and inspected in the evening before we listened to the radio or watched our 14" screen television that we got in the early 1950s. I guess there were rich kids in town, but no one in my little play group had money to spare. I remember on hot summer days when Bill and I wanted a nice cold Coke (.10 cents + .02 cents bottle deposit), we would ride our bikes around town looking for empty bottles to turn in for the deposit money at the Market. Often if we could only turn up 5 bottles (a total of .10 cents) we wouldn't have the deposit money so we would stand at the counter, share drink it there, and leave the bottle! Of course even if we did have .12 cents in our pocket, it was better getting the drink for free! Although I lived my whole life there, I think Bill came into town in the mid-1950s and I met him in 5th grade although he wasn't in my class...that would be 1955-56. He was in my 6th grade class and in many of my classes after that. We became instant friends (what wasn't to like about Bill?) and spent a lot of time together. We lived about two blocks away from each other so he was often over at my house camping out in the back yard (or in my tree house) or I was over at his place. Now for the first story (finally!). I've had a few adventures in my life (including a year in Vietnam as a US Marine), but I've always remembered and smiled about this one. Actually, this was my first "great adventure" and it probably whetted my appetite for future ones. It all started on a very windy day, perfect kite flying weather. We were 11 or 12 and were at Bill's house...it must have been around 1956-57. As boys, we were naturally in competition with each other to see who could get their kite the highest. As I said it was a quite windy day and we were amazed at how quickly our kites ascended. Soon we each had to attach another spool of string and our kites were so high that we could barely see them! It was absolutely the highest we either flown kites and soon we were out of string. As it was beginning to get dark and it was dinner time, we had the choice to either start the laborious chore of reeling them in, or (as Bill suggested) I could sleep over and we could leave them up all night! Choice? There was no choice, of course I'd spend the night. We tied the strings off at the front of his house and checked on them constantly until we were told by his folks to come in and "go to sleep!" When we went to bed that night we had every expectation that the kites would be flying high the next morning and were up early to check on them. "Oh, man!" the strings were limp and lay parallel to each other and at a diagonal from Bill's house, across 8th Street and over the houses on the opposite side. We looked at each other and said in unison, "we gotta follow the strings and find our kites!" Thus began the adventure! Of course we challenged each other to "truly" follow the strings. That meant if they went over a house, we would have to go over the house...I think this was a case of the dreaded "double-dog dare!" We started rolling up the string (after all, it cost .50 cents a spool or 25 empty Coke bottles!) but quickly decided it took too long to do it. Since the strings ran at a diagonal from Bill's house toward downtown, it wasn't a quick journey across two homes per block, a street, and then another two homes if it had run perpendicularly...we had to do at least four houses per block at an angle. True to our word, if there was access to the roof (a wall or trellis) we would go over the house and/or garage. We crossed many yards, scaled many walls/fences and on one instance dropped into a yard with a very ugly and bad tempered bulldog! Bill being thin (I was slightly chubby), was a faster runner than I, and was over the next wall as I approached it with the snarling bulldog in hot pursuit. Obviously involved with my own problem, I didn't hear the "crash" of Bill's landing and having escaped the dog was soon laying beside him on some over-turned trash cans (they were metal in those days and hurt!). A shout of "Hey, you kids...get out of my yard" hurried us along and over the next wall. Part of our route lay through a little community of retired China missionaries. To us kids the average age of the people there seemed to be about 80, but they did drive these cool little three-wheeled Auto-ettes (golf carts) around town. Although us kids were admonished to stay out of the community to let the old missionaries live in peace, we had to go where the strings went. Apparently neither the strings, nor Bill or I, were as respectful to their gardens as we should have been, which evoked several very non-Christian shouts toward us and threats of police involvement! Finally, after what seemed like miles (actually blocks) we found our kites (intertwined) on top of a garage on 6th Street. Taking the Pilgrims' threat to heart, we cut the strings, took our kites and found a big old pepper tree to climb up and hide it until the heat blew over! Our clothes were ripped and dirty and we were bruised and bloody (what else was new?). We sat up there for quite a while and went over every step of the journey. We laughed and laughed and decided that we definitely had to do it again! It was great fun! Bill and I had a lot of great times together growing up in the 1950s/early 1960s in our wonderful little protected town...we had a fairly carefree life compared to many others. Bill did mature faster than I did and by the time we were in high school he was into another group of friends which I guess you could call the "social/dating clique." How could he not be, Bill was so cool and good looking that the girls were always chasing him. I fought growing-up (my wife of 42 years is still wondering when I will do so!) and was in the "arrested-adolescence clique" in high school. Bill and I just kind of drifted apart but were always friends until we graduated in 1963. Then we all made new lives/friends, rarely thinking about the "old days" until now as we have grown old ourselves. I think more about our town and all the great kids I knew, and I am regretful that I waited too long to get in touch with Bill. I hope that he had the great life he deserved. Cindy, if you liked this story, I have at least one other I could write up for you. Let me know. I'd also like to know a little about Bill after he left town (and you of course). Best wishes, Dan S.

Okay, I'll admit it. This death has really shaken me. My reactions haven't all been negative. This cloud has a little silver lining. But the whole experience has turned my life and the plans I had for my immediate future upside down. Enmeshed into that are a variety of both expected and unexpected emotions. I have described many of my thoughts and emotions in the last few posts. Now I will describe my behavior. If my plan for the next two years is a whiteboard that has now been erased, then staring at a blank whiteboard is something I find very unsettling. I mean VERY unsettling. No longer is there the impetus to go out and beat the pavement because I need to meet a daunting financial obligation. That obligation dictated much of what I was going to do. I didn't see myself as having the luxury of going to the theater, buying any of the great deals I was getting daily on my email, planning vacations or looking for leisure activities I might find fun to do. My need to work ruled how my schedule looked. I had built my plans around that. I was focused on getting as many substituting days as I could, building a clientele of tutoring students, and seeing how many foreign exchange students I could house. The mandate to do that all was wiped off my whiteboard when Bill died. I didn't know how to handle it. The first few days after I arrived home from up north were vast expanses of nothingness. A day without a schedule? A day without plans? Hadn't heard of one of those in years, maybe decades. But it was more than days, really. It was a matter of an entire future lying in front of me saying, "What are you going to do now?" And I had no idea what I was going to do. The house seemed too still, too quiet. There were days I stayed in bed all day. There were days I didn't get out of my pajamas until after noon. It continues now. There are a lot of things I could be doing but I have also felt tired, listless, fatigued for what seems like no reason. I don't have any energy. I don't want to exercise. I don't want to take on any of the home improvements I had readied myself to do. And I ask myself, "What about Bill's being gone from this earth has made this change? Was knowing that he still existed have a role in my feelings of purpose? Did I think things would just always be a little tense as long as he was alive?" I don't know. All I do know is that since he died, things have become vastly different. Are they good? Bad? I think they are good. I also think I am having trouble adjusting to them.

Laura Deals With It

Laura and Kyle were gone for a long time. By the time they got back, I had met the neighbors, had one party interested in the van and another person interested in the Kawasaki. I had been through the refrigerator, most of the clothes, and all of the kitchen. I had packed several things and had run a couple of loads of laundry. They said the service was nice. Bill had been working with a Life Counselor and had been trying to become a better person, they said. The counselor had gone to Donna's house from 12 - 2 last Sunday and that when he left, Bill had been at peace. Bill passed away at 3:40. His counselor eulogized Bill at the memorial. Laura spoke with him afterward. He said he would talk with me too if I wanted to call him. "What did the counselor say about Daddy?" I asked. "Call him and he'll talk to you, Mom." "No, Honey, what did he say about Daddy when he spoke?" "He said that Dad was working on becoming a better person, that he felt bad about some mistakes he had made, and that he and Dad were friends as well." "What did you say to him?" "I said, it felt like they were all talking about a person I didn't know, that they didn't seem to know the person who had been my dad." They said one of the group members had shared how lonely Bill was when he first joined the group, that he had been in the desert for six months at that time, and he was feeling really, really lonely. What they never seemed to wonder was why he was so lonely. Kyle had spoken with someone who asked why Bill hadn't been invited to their wedding. Kyle suggested it would be better for them to ask Laura and then mentioned how they hadn't had a real wedding and there were only five us there. I like the way Laura expressed her perspective on her dad with the life counselor. She and I both cried a lot thinking that, if he had been making such a huge effort to become a better person, why had he not been making that effort with us? Why did he take the two people who, together with him, constituted a family, and treat them so poorly, only to go out to the desert and treat strangers so well? Kyle suggested that for Bill it was probably easier to start over and reinvent himself with completely unknown friends, than it was to try to make restitution to the two of us. It made good sense. I understand the concept. But it makes me want to scream.

More Emergence

Sunday was the day of the memorial. Laura had checked with the person hosting the service and I had been told that it might be a little 'uncomfortable' if I were to attend. We went for breakfast at the nearby hot springs resort. When we got home, there was a knock on the door. It was a guy named Jeff. He had been Bill's first landlord in the desert, at the clothing-optional spa. He owned the spa too. He was looking for Bill. He said that they went riding on their motorcycles together. Kyle gently broke the news of Bill's passing to him. He was very, very sad. He started talking about what a great guy he thought Bill was. He said that Bill had had to move out of the place he rented from him because he wouldn't allow Bill to keep the dogs there. But they still went on motorcycle rides together and he had considered him a friend. In fact, he said one day Bill called him and said, "Jeff, I am sitting on the motorcycle you're going to buy." He was all the way out in Harbor City. Jeff went there and bought the bike. He loved it and named it Mr. Bill. Kyle let him take a picture of Bill's urn, which he said he was going to post on Facebook. He broke down and cried. Laura and Kyle both said to me, "How can we go to this memorial service and listen to people talk about what a great guy Bill was?" It was to become the theme of the day. They left for the service and I stayed at the apartment to clean up. Bill's place was one half of a duplex. I started emptying out the refrigerator and taking the old food out to the trash can. In the driveway were three people. One person was one of the guys who lived next door, the other two were his parents. They starting asking me about Bill's van. They were thinking of buying it for their church. I suggested they ask Laura and Kyle about it. More of the fellows came out from inside. They told me how much they liked Bill, what a great neighbor he had been, how he had helped them fix broken Nintendos and cars. He had always lent them tools when they needed them. WHAT???? He NEVER lent his tools to anyone! Then the fourth guy came out and told how the first time he had met Bill he had gone over to tell Bill they would be celebrating his 21st birthday that night and hoped the music wouldn't bother him. Later that day Bill came over to their place with a 24-pack of beer and a beautiful (he said 'awesome') picture frame. The guy was so touched that this stranger would do that, that he cried. "I'm not from around here and to have a complete stranger be so kind just blew me away. I couldn't believe it." Neither could I.

Dinner with Donna

Laura told me that the woman who had been caring for Bill, Donna, wanted to go to dinner with us and wanted to meet me. I was almost ill. I think I had been dehydrated during the night on Friday and felt flu-ish Saturday. I decided to try to flush myself with water. The plan was working, but slowly. I was working slowly on packing and cleaning out Bill's things. I was sluggish, not myself. Meeting a woman who had basically replaced me and who had probably heard horrible stories about me was not what the doctor ordered, I was sure of it. There was no way I could imagine getting out of that dinner. If I had said I was feeling ill, the kids would have thought I was having psychosomatic pain because of the situation. Donna might have thought I didn't want to meet her. I didn't want to cancel the dinner because I wanted to get past this mental image of a confrontation with a good person who was convinced I was an evil wife who divorced her husband because he had cancer. I went to dinner. We arrived at the restaurant and a woman came out the door and wrapped her arms around Laura. She was obviously open and loving. That didn't mean she was going to like me. She was very friendly as we were introduced. We shook hands. We sat down. I was across from her. I was fairly quiet for the first half hour. I had a terrible time deciding what would be the safest and tastiest thing for me to eat. As the meal moved along, I engaged more in conversation. Donna gave the latest news on the circle of friends Bill had made through his cancer connections. There was to be a memorial the next day for a close friend who had died on July 9. It had had to be postponed for two weeks, and during that time Bill had passed. Bill was such good friends with the couple, the surviving spouse had decided to include him in the memorial. Donna spoke of how upset the circle of friends had been at learning of his passing. What was beginning to emerge was a picture of my ex-husband as a 'nice and well-liked' guy. Donna thought the world of him, said they had had a 'heart connection'. They spent all kinds of time together. She would sometimes stay at his house with him. She is 75, tall, slender, and full of energy. She said Bill was always kind and always a gentleman with manners. Were we talking about the same person? After a while she took my hand. "How are you feeling? This was probably upsetting to you." I spoke honestly about my shock and sadness. I told her Bill had been the love of my life and, that despite the horrible events during our divorce, I was remembering a lot of good times now, a lot of adventures, travel, and fun. Then she said, "You can ask me anything." Ok, I thought. "Wha....what did he tell you about me?" I was suddenly a little choked up. What had he told her about his wife and why he was suddenly single with pancreatic cancer? I wanted to get to the part where he said I divorced him because he was ill. I couldn't leave that lie out there. "Well, he said he was deeply in love with you. That you were very, very bright, and that he was proud of you. He told me he had been really proud of you, and particularly when you got up and sang." All I could figure out was he was talking about when I sang in a production of Godspell. Apart from that, I don't think he enjoyed much of my singing. "He said he loved your home and he loved the work he had done when he was remodeling it, that he had taken a lot of pride in it." At that point, Kyle and Laura were getting up to leave the table. They had told me they would do that when Donna and I started talking together, that they wanted us to have some privacy. But by then it was late, the baby was cranky and Laura and Kyle both had fatigue etched deeply in their faces. Donna was sliding out of the booth and I was concerned I wouldn't get to tell her why we had divorced. As we were walking out, she said, "Bill and I were not romantically involved, you know." I said, "Thank you. I understand. But I have had a heavy burden on my heart because I had heard Bill had been telling people I divorced him because he had cancer, and that is not true. We had been married for a long time but all through the marriage he had had a gambling problem. We got divorced because one day he told me he was gambling and he wasn't going to stop and there was nothing I could do about it. I loved him. I would never have left him if he had been willing to protect me from his gambling." I think she believed me. But I didn't want to give too much more information. I added only, "He never understood how his gambling and lying about it destroyed the trust in our marriage and kept it from being rebuilt." That's when Laura came over and asked if she had known he was bipolar. She said she had and that there had been times when she could see a change in him. She had also known he occasionally went off the meds for it, and that there had been a couple of incidents where she could see the effects of his mental condition. Donna invited us to come to her house to talk which Laura sweetly declined, saying the baby was too tired and she and Kyle had a lot to do the following day. Donna gave us big hugs and said something to the effect she was so glad she had met me and that she liked me. The next day at the memorial she told Laura she had felt she had a heart connection with me.

Arriving at Bill's

When we got to the desert Laura had to make a couple of payments on the Acura and then we had to go to the crematorium to pick up Bill. Laura had found some things I had never heard of. She got a beautiful white opalescent necklace in which there was a tiny compartment where the crematorium had placed a bit of Bill's ashes. She got a small blue cloisonne heart for me. The rest of Bill was in a beautiful brushed steel urn. She used good taste and discretion in her choices. The mortuary was kind and caring. Kyle said that instead of taking Bill's body away in a bag, they wrapped it in a quilt. Then we went to Bill's place. This is where it started getting difficult for me. It wasn't the messiness. Bill was always pretty messy. It wasn't the nostalgia either. Despite having a great floor plan, lots of amenities and space, it was dark in there. Bill always liked to keep his places dark, but this was getting to me fast. It didn't look like he had made it a home. His furniture was randomly placed, I never did find his dresser, and he was using two plastic storage containers as night stands. Our couch was in front of a new TV, as was the hound end-tables and the lift recliner. Laura and Kyle's old dining set was in the dining area and there was a rocker recliner right smack dab in the middle of the kitchen. One bedroom was all boxes and another held a single bed and the empty box from his giant flatscreen. In the garage were the bulk of the boxes I had packed and sent to him as well as his Schwinn, his electric bike and a big fire-engine-red Kawasaki Ninja. Bill had always loved the power and speed of Japanese superbikes. One trip around the block and Kyle knew it was too much bike for him. What to do with the motorcycle??? We found the bill of sale and accompanying loan papers. He bought the bike last July, and had financed the whole thing. What is paid off on it so far? What is it worth now? Will the dealership just take it back and write off the remainder of the loan? Loan on the car, loan on the motorcycle, some credit card debt.....there are a lot of details that need tending.

Friday

On Friday I was still stunned by my sudden life changes. I sat in bed watching TV. I laid on the couch with my coffee and studied French on my iPad. I have switched from studying Canadian French to French French. They're not the same and I find I like the voices and gentle accents of the Canadian speakers better than the French ones. It is, nonetheless, a good learning experience to switch over to the other kind of French. the lessons are different so it's like expanding on what I learned in the Canadian French. I am not savvy enough at this point to pick up on any other subtle differences between the two dialects. Even with my interest in learning a new language, I still couldn't shake the feeling of uselessness. I had no appointments, I had no job, I had no demands. At 1:00 I got out of my pajamas. I ran two or three errands and ended up at school at 3:40. I love the people there but still don't miss my job. Laura and Kyle picked me up at 6:15 and took me to their apartment for the first time. It's a good-sized one-bedroom with a great floor plan and good square footage. They still aren't settled in but there is great potential. They had several things from Bill's place there. We spent the first couple of hours cleaning up. That evening as we were talking, we noticed a foot-round wet spot on their livingroom ceiling. The pipes above were beginning to leak. They are old, the building was built in 1928, and I'm sure the lead is corroding. Kyle could stick his finger right up in the wet spot and make a hole. They put down a bowl to catch the drips. I hope the entire ceiling doesn't get so waterlogged that it comes crashing down in our absence. The next morning we left early for the desert.

Give Yourself a Break

I called a friend at 3:30 on Thursday. I was having a tough time. Could she and I go out for coffee that evening? She said she'd arrange care for her four children and would come to my house at 6:30. We went to the little french cafe we like where we listen to Edith Piaf, eat croissants and crepes, and drink caffe au lait. I told her how panicked I was that my life plan had suddenly been erased. My need to make money to support my ex-husband no longer existed. I didn't have to sub, tutor, and house foreign exchange students unless I wanted to. The pressure to earn was off. What am I going to do with the rest of my life? She said, "Give yourself a break. I love sitting around with no plans. Enjoy it. You don't have to have a plan right away. Pray about it. God will let you know in time what it is He wants you to do. Be patient. What's your rush? And don't get yourself in a situation where you end up stressed out. Don't do that."

Five Days

My family had a get-together at my sister's pool on Monday. It had been planned a couple of weeks ahead, before we knew Bill was so close to passing. I was glad I was with them when Bill went. They are my only family around except, of course, for Dad who lives with me and isn't really the same person he was even four years ago. My siblings were a good comfort yet I felt that they, too, didn't understand why I'd be grieving a man who had been such a poor husband to me and who had also embarrassed me so many times in their presence. The next day, Tuesday, I drove home. I met a friend for lunch about 90 minutes away. The drives up and back were good times to let out my feelings. I didn't want to be grieving. On an intellectual level, I know it's understandable to feel sad, but on an emotional level, I felt I shouldn't be grieving because Bill had caused so much pain. Wednesday I took care of the baby for Laura. He was very, very tired because he had been out in the desert until late Tuesday night. It was a fussy baby day. I was exhausted and he was wailing by the time I left for an appointment at 5:40. I came home afterward and went to bed. Thursday was a day without plans until 2:45. I sat around in my pajamas wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my life and coming up with no answers. My future was stretching out like a giant blank slate before me and I was forcing my self to fill it in. I got in the shower at 1:15. It was then I realized it was my first shower in five days.

Didn't Quite Make It

On Saturday Laura and Kyle watched Bill for five hours while he slept. He was no more than a skeleton and was being kept pain-free. Laura said she didn't know if they were going to be able to rewrite his will. As it turns out, he didn't leave everything to me, only the retirement account I had turned over to him in June. When he wrote the will he was probably thinking there would be very little money left in the account. He had planned on using the money to buy himself a house and that there would have been very little left in it upon his demise. As it stands, he only spent $2000 of it and there is quite a bit left. I don't know what else is in the will. On Sunday Laura called and said the air conditioner had gone out in Bill's apartment and could they use some of his money to stay in a motel. I said yes, because they were out there on his business and cleaning up his stuff. That afternoon I got a text, "He just passed....." I was sitting with my sister and her husband. I cried. They comforted me. Laura called. She had been on the way out to see him when it happened. It was sad, weird, relieving, freeing, surreal. Bill died. I just hadn't thought it was going to happen for a few years. That was five days ago, and my world is still spinning.