I've been among the missing again: I haven't posted here since August
28 of last year. A lot happened during that time. In
particular, my mother died. Her name was Cynthia Ulrich Edelson,
and she was ninety years old.
That happened on November 7, but between the emotional processing and
the practical things that must be done, I wasn't accomplishing much on
other projects for a good while after that.
My relationship with my mother was, distinctly, difficult. It's
been a long time since I even pretended, to much of anyone, that I
would regret her passing; that is, I anticipated that I'd be happier,
and better off, when she was gone.
But that didn't mean that I imagined that it would be easy. The
end of any important relationship, even a bad one, involves some
grieving; I knew that all along. If nothing else, you grieve, in
a more final way, the loss of hope that the relationship could be
better; I don't think, with a parent, that hope ever really
dies. Not until the parent does; then it becomes rationally
certain that, at least in this life, what you saw was what you got,
and all you ever will.
I am pleased to report that my predictions were fulfilled. Her
final illness was mercifully short: she had a heart attack on Monday
morning, and died, without ever fully regaining consciousness, on
Wednesday afternoon. I got a lot of grieving done during those
two days, and during the days and weeks afterwards.
The aftermath is not over. I still have things of hers to sort
through. And I've begun a sort of capsule biography of her,
which, when it's done, I plan to put on the Internet (probably on the
site at The Well, not here on the blog).
But the aftermath of my mother's death is no longer absorbing so much
of my attention that I can't make progress on other things. I've
been doing some programming, for one thing. I won't say much
about that here: just that it has to do with two of my long-standing
interests, namely, personal finance software, and the Scheme
programming language.
And I do believe that my other predictions are also being
fulfilled; that now that the hard part of the transition is over, I am
a happier person than I was before my mother died. I seem to be
having an easier time fully believing that I can trust my own judgment
about what's worth doing, for instance.
Anyway, I'm back.
Categorie(s) for this post:
About me.
2:54:05 PM 
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