Coming Out of the Fog

When a family member dies, you go on with living. But everything is affected by the loss of the family member. You don’t realize it at the time, but it is.

A year and two months after losing my older sister, I am finally getting back to normal, or the new normal. It’s weird to have her gone, yet I know that she is. I don’t see those last minutes of her life as clearly as I did, when I had planned to spend the night since the care giver just couldn’t give her morphine. She’d known her too long.

I thought my grieving was over, and then I found a bunch of her belongings, things I couldn’t part with a year ago, things that have to move on to make room for a second adult child coming home to stay for a while. A purse, a jacket, some knick-knacks. I’d farmed out some of the stuff to nieces a year ago.

The five and a half years of being in charge of my sister’s life put a stop to so many things: training my dog, keeping my front yard mulched and beautiful, trimming my forty- foot long unruly hedge. The HOA president got on my case about my front yard. I hadn’t really looked at it in a long time.

It’s natural with native plants and no grass. He mentioned that it doesn’t look like a two-million-dollar front yard, the going rate for tract homes built in the 70s in my neighborhood. The market is crazy, and the Silicon execs who are buying next door want us to keep our yards as fancy as theirs, which have been staged by realtors. It’s a lot to ask of retired folks who’ve been here for decades.

I promised new mulch. I moved the antique plow and took down the wire fence in front. Surely that will help with curb appeal. At first, friends said to check my CC & Rs to see if I really had to do something. Actually, if one of my new neighbors is complaining, rather than digging in my heels, I’ll do a show of good faith that I’m listening and working at being better.

Why? Because for five and half years, my front yard wasn’t that important to me. I was all about doctor’s appointments, lab work and prescriptions for my sister, keeping track of her bills and getting them paid on time, making sure that she had cake and ice cream and a rat-free board and car home. Oh, the stories I could tell you.

Anyone in charge of another person’s life can relate to all that I say. The young HOA president cannot relate at all. He wants the 121 front yards in our HOA to look as spiffy as his does. He said so during the 150-minute meeting I attended in July to get some “dogs on leash” signs for the park next door. He was ready to put liens on people’s properties. By the way, those signs have been thrown away, stolen and vandalized. People don’t like to be reminded that they are breaking the law by letting their large dogs run loose.

But I digress.

The front yard will get better. I am coming out of the fog.