Thursday

A man from the funeral home called me early yesterday morning; they needed papers signed to authorize the cremation and get the insurance company to pay for the services.

After I got there, it turns out there was one piece of paper that she'd filled out in 2004 when she prepaid the services that had never been shown to me. That named her son as the person who could sign to authorize the cremation. Ugh. We thought we had it all covered so he wouldn't need to be involved in the "business side" of all this.

Called Grand-daughter, she got him moving, and they both showed up within a half hour. I hadn't seen this man for more than 10 years. At one time, I had loved him madly. He looked so different; old and tired. He's only a year and a half older than I, but he has not been kind to himself.

I guess because of the unpleasantness that triggered my involvement in the whole Grandma Lee situation, he didn't know how I was going to treat him. He wouldn't look at  me as they walked toward the building from his truck. I just held out my arms to him and said, "Come on...hug me." And he did. We went inside, and the papers were all signed, including verifying the information to go on the death certificate.

We all drove over to the nursing home, where we very quickly went through Lee's things, donating clothing, shampoo and stuff, and packing up the rest.  Lee's son took most of it in his truck, and Grand-Daughter and I headed down to a mall in Tempe to see if we could find something she could use as an urn without having to shell out hundreds of dollars.

We shopped and talked, found some items we needed personally, and then finally found a lovely ceramic container to hold Lee's ashes until her grand-daughter is ready to spread them in the mountains. Once again, we realized that neither of us had eaten all day, and hit Joe's Crab Shack before I dropped her off back at her father's house.

Because he lives fairly close to our karaoke hangout, I stopped by to say hello to my friends for a little while. Drank water and didn't sing--it just felt good to be around friends.

Slept very well on Thursday night.