Elena 
Having survived our long weekend which included:
1. A stay in the honeymoon suite in a Best Western in Frankenmuth, MI, complete with heart shaped tub! (but with 5 of our kids…sigh)
2. Camping with the loud and lewd.
3. Camping without hot showers or flush toilets.
4. Going to a great family reunion and renewing family relationships.
5. Attending my great-uncle’s memorial service and burial.
6. Swimming in Lake Michigan
7. Taking down our campsite in record time to keep ahead of a thunder storm!
I am now sort of ready to get back to real life.
Cross country starts this week. I’m looking forward to that. We have our big review coming up with our portfolio evaluator next Friday. I am secretly dreading that. We missed a good chunk or our homeschool year with my mom’s illness and we have been playing catchup ever since. We will not be caught up by next Friday, but I hope she can at least see the effort. Luckily, one of my transcription clients is still gone.
But next week I will have it all, homeschooling AND all my transcription work. I’ll just have to grunt my way through it. And then after our portfolio evaluation there will be NO Homeschool for three weeks while I prepare for next year, clean the house, keep typing and try to finish up the stuff for my mom’s estate.
Speaking of estates, between my father’s mess with my EFC in the southeast, my mom living with us here in Ohio but having a little piece of property in another state, I now have lawyers in three states! Ya hoo?
The last six weeks since my mother died have been very busy. I have been working hard all day so most of my thoughts about her are at night and unfortunately early, early in the morning. I really missed not calling her before we left, or calling her when we got back to let her know we were okay. I called my sister instead who obliging took on the role of taking the “We’re back” phone call.
My kids seem pretty unscathed by the whole thing, except for Rosie who tells pretty much everyone she meets within the first five seconds that her grandma died. She says it pretty matter of factly. “I’m Rosie, I’m four, my grandma died.” Since Rosie also attended the ceremony for my uncle last weekend which included burying his ashes, she has also taken to asking other people about death. For example, a sweet 80-something-year-old couple came over to our campsite to introduce themselves. They said we reminded them of how they use to camp with their five kids. So Rosie asked them if their kids were dead. They looked at me as if that were an odd question and it was. I explained that Rosie has been to too many funerals of late.
Speaking of ashes and cremation, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to going that route vs. burial.
The pro for cremation is that it is clean! You heat anything up to 1800 degrees and you’re killing all the microbes that could be living on it! The idea that mom’s cremation destroyed all of those cancer cells inside of her was very satisfying to me in an odd way. (I know cancer cells aren’t microbes, but still…)
I also like that with cremation you have a lot more freedom on when to do the burial. My mom was inurned a month after her death. My Uncle’s ashes were just buried months after he passed away. Ashes are also portable. Before grandma was taken to the cemetery she spent a few days here. My father’s ashes were shipped across the country at the same rate as a regular package! So I like the convenience.
But there are some things I don’t like too. Did you know that usually with a cremation they burn the body and the casket if there is one. So you get wood ashes in with your people ashes. Also although they scrape all of the ashes out of the oven (that’s not the technical term) they can never get every single microscopic little piece, so you some of the very small pieces get left behind. On the other hand, you get some of the very small pieces from bodies that have been cremated before! I don’t care for that too much.
Also, not all of the body burns down and the bone pieces that are left have to be ground down. Yuck. It reminds me a lot of going to the dentist or having a root canal. I just don’t like the idea of it. I was also surprised to discover that cremains are NOT like a fine powder. They’re a little chunkier. Don’t care for that either.
And as far as cost goes, it seems to me that it was pretty much the same. Mom didn’t save a lot by going one way over another and I found that to be surprising.
These are the things that I think about at 4 in the morning while my mind whizzes around. I am so looking forward to the busyness of fall…
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