Something to Look Forward To

In my last post, I mentioned a couple of things that I had to look forward to, so I wanted to mention them now. One of them is the memorial gathering my brothers and I are planning for my dad, and while you might think that'd be a somber occasion, it probably won't be so much. My dad's sense of humor was his biggest personality trait, so we're all looking forward to people coming and telling jokes and stories about him. Plus, we're holding it in a Chinese restaurant in honor of my dad's saying that "Jews can't eat pork, unless it's in Chinese food." He'd have loved this, so rather than being a sad thing I feel like it's going to be really wonderful. There will be tears, yes, but for the most part I think we'll be laughing through them.

The other thing that Chris & I both have to look forward to is our upcoming return trip to Italy. Yes, we're going back - and this time we're staying for six whole weeks. Chris will be teaching two one-day sessions (with the possibility of a third) at a business school in Milan as well as having meetings with headhunters and such. He was just planning to go on his own, but then I got an offer I couldn't refuse from my company - they're helping me to get over there and to get around, and in return I'll help flesh out the Italy section of the website with photos, videos and content for which I'll be doing loads of research during the trip. It's a test run in several senses. Chris & I will get to test what it's like to live in Milan for an extended period of time, I'll get to test what it's like to work for a US-based company from the other side of the world, and my bosses will get to test what it's like to have me working so far away. So yes, it's a test. But a damned fine kind of test. See what I mean about an offer I couldn't refuse?

Of course, there are a million things to be done before we can leave, not least of which is finding a place to live. Rather than stay in a hotel for six weeks, which would cost an arm and a leg even in the off-season, we're looking for a furnished short-term apartment rental. The good news is that those are a dime a dozen (not in terms of being that cheap, mind you, but in terms of being seemingly all over the place). The bad news is that one thing we absolutely must have in our apartment is making the available pool of flats a little smaller - we must have internet. We both have to be able to work, and this is one of the conditions my company has said is imperative for them to be supporting this test. So, we're looking for the perfect apartment that has internet already hooked up. We're hoping that our saving grace is that Milan is such a business-oriented city, with so many business travelers coming in for extended periods of time, that finding such a rental won't be impossible.

Then, after we get a home base in Milan settled, I've got to figure out what things/places in Italy I want to see during my six weeks and then plan how best to see them all. I realize this is hardly something to complain about, and I'm not, but it is another thing on the "to do" list. And the amount of time we have "to do" all the things on that list gets shorter as the list gets longer. Any minute now, I expect to adopt that pre-trip mentality I usually do - that the truly things will get done before we leave, and the things that don't get done must not have been that important. But I haven't gotten to that point yet. At the moment, I'm still feeling a little inner panic about the whole thing.

But enough about the panic part. Let's just focus on the part about me having stuff to look forward to, because that's what I need right now. So - I have a six-week trip to Italy, a country I love dearly, coming up. And that's enough wonderfulness for me right now.

One Month Ago Today

My father died one month ago today. His death wasn't unexpected, as you may remember he'd been battling cancer for some time, but the speed with which the cancer spread in the last months of his life was much faster than most of us thought it would be. When he was given a terminal diagnosis back in early October, the doctors then said he'd have between six and eight months. He died roughly two and a half months after they told him that.

It's been, needless to say, a tough month. The holidays came and went, and they sucked. I've been mostly reclusive since Dad died, because social situations aren't easy. I feel like I'm either put in the position of having to explain everything over and over again, or pretend like I'm fine and nothing happened. And I'm not able to do either one. So, I've just been avoiding people for the most part. I'm just starting to break out of that pattern, but I can tell it's just going to take some time.

Just before my dad died, a friend told me that the whole five stages of grief thing, the one we've all become accustomed to over the years, has recently been called into question. That while those five stages are generally common to all grief processes, going smartly from stage one into stage two into stage three, and so on, isn't usually how it goes. People move fluidly between the stages, and not always in numerical order. And they also move back and forth, so "progress" isn't always in one direction, either. In my experience with my father's illness and his dying process, I can verify that while those stages of grief look good on paper, the whole thing feels very muddy in real life.

There were tiny bits of silver lining that came with my father's death, thankfully. For one, Chris and I were scheduled to leave for the holidays on the 22nd of December, but we weren't yet in transit or on the other side of the country when we got the call that he'd gone into the hospital. We were able to cancel our travel plans, drop everything else and be in the hospital for two days. I shudder to think of the panic I might have felt if I were 3,000 miles away and unable to get back in time.

Related to that, I'm also incredibly thankful that my brothers were also able to drop everything and be there. My father died surrounded by his three children, his "favorite" son-in-law (that's what he always called Chris), and his wife. And as devastating as it is to lose a parent, I'm so proud of all of us that we were able to be there for him. My father, always the teacher, was giving us all life lessons up to and beyond the moment he died.

My brothers and I are planning a memorial gathering for Dad in early February, and as an homage to one of my father's humorous quips we're having it in a Chinese restaurant. See, he was a cultural Jew, even if he was an avowed atheist from adolescence onward, and he had a saying - "Jews can't eat pork. Unless it's in Chinese food." He loved his Chinese food with pork, so we're going to eat it in his honor. We'll be surrounded by people who knew and loved Dad, and who will have funny and wonderful stories to share. And, I'm finding, it's nice to have that to look forward to.

I have some other future-oriented good news which also makes "looking forward to" something easier, but I'll save that for another post. For now, I just wanted to take this moment to remember my father, who died one month ago today.