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I haven't been very active here lately. Things haven't been going well with the job for the last several months, then in February, my father died, leaving me with a huge administrative burden, then right about the same time, things got horribly worse with the job. During all of this, it became evident that we had made a bad choice of high schools for my son, and we had to take measures to deal with the fallout from that. Through all of this, my wife and I were both driving incredibly long distances just as gas prices were peaking. I'm now in a different department, with an incredibly steep learning curve ahead of me, but still feeling a great sense of relief. My Executor duties are starting to wind down. I sold my parents' house last month, so I'm no longer spending my weekends crawling around in dust and cobwebs, sorting out the accumulated possessions of a 58-year marriage. My son will be going to a local school in the fall, which should remove another source of stress.

There's not much point in dwelling on events that were just plain hellish. I guess I never really noticed how much all of this was affecting me. Something interesting happened during my first week on the new job - I had a couple dreams. They weren't especially interesting dreams. They were neither pleasant nor scary - just ordinary dreams. But then I realized that I haven't had (or at least can't recall having) any dreams since at least the beginning of this year.

The truly educational experience was my role as an executor. Throughout my entire life, even when I got into my 50s, the topic of death was always whispered among the grownups. Whenever I got close enough to overhear the conversation, I was told "You run along and play. There's nothing for you to listen to here." But this time, I couldn't run outside and play; I was the key figure in the proceedings. My father's death was not unexpected. We knew years beforehand that it was coming, and things moved at a steady pace over the final months and weeks, so we were prepared. I knew I had been selected as the executor. If someone close to you has died, or if you have a friend who's lost someone close to them, you need to be aware of the distinction (unless you've already been there). You're either an executor or you're just a spectator.

Lots of people think that when a parent dies, you do the following (not necessarily in any particular order:
- Arrange the funeral
- Collect the inheritance
- Sit in a dark room and cry
Maybe it's that way in some cases. Most of the time, the deceased is either wasted away with Alzheimers in a nursing home, totally detached from the Real World; or they leave behind a healthy active spouse who just has to remove their name from the joint accounts and then get on with life. But what happens when it's someone who still owns a house and has a Real Life, but doesn't have a healthy spouse to pick up where he left off? Then the executor has to show up and reconstruct all his finances and routine administrative activities, get long-term care for his wife, and go through the legal papwerwork of settling an estate.

If you come across such a person, don't try to commisserate with their grief. Executors have no time in their schedule for grief. If you want to show support, the best thing you can do is to stay out of their way. They have deadlines to meet and a lot of bureaucracy to slash through, and the worst thing you can do is suggest that they stop and pull themselves together.

I'll post more when I have time. I'm back to my early morning hours again (still no time for hallwalking though) so I get quite tired at night.