The husband of one of Jim’s friends passed away recently and he asked me to go with him to the calling hours. I had only met his friend once and only in passing, but I went along to provide a little support.
When we got to the funeral home there was a short line to speak to the widow – she was seated in a chair off to the side. In a few minutes we got to talk to her and I was struck by how terrible our funeral practices can be. Here was this poor woman, forced by convention, to be “on” for a crowd of family, friends, and in my case – strangers. She was visibly tired and struggling to remember names – and even the kindest of words couldn’t balance out her loss.
I wanted to clear the room, help her to a more comfortable chair, and just give her a little peace and quiet.
Instead, I tried to be kind and told her I was sorry for her loss. We didn’t linger long and Jim promised to keep in touch.
I hope that the days and weeks ahead will give her the time to slowly come to terms with her loss. There were a lot of people saying really nice things, but I wish she hadn’t had to go through that.
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It’s tax time and that meant an email from H&R Block to make an appointment for me to get my taxes done. They picked the day and time and it was fine with me. I got 3 more emails indicating my appointment for 2/18 at 1:00. Then I got 5 text messages – including one that asked me to reply to confirm the day and time. Which I did. And then another to confirm my confirmation.
The day of, about an hour before my appointment, I got a call from the Tax Expert. She said she had me down for an appointment the next day (2/19) and would I mind changing that to the following Thursday?
I replied with some confusion and told her that I thought my appointment was for that day at 1:00. She apologized, told me that would be good, and said she’d see me soon.
A little puzzled, I gathered up my documents and headed out.
When I got there, she explained that they had a new appointment system that nobody knew how to use and they’d been calling and confusing people since the start of the year.
I recalled that they had the same problems last year – but kept that to myself, After all, I was relying on their Tax Software – not their appointment software.
The actual tax prep went easily and quickly. I could do this myself, but I get so worked up about it that it’s better if I just pay someone to deal with it on my behalf.
When we were done I paid my bill and headed out. I got a couple text messages later in the day to say that my Federal and then State tax returns had been accepted.
Then I got another text message telling me that my appointment was for 2/17 at 12:30. I thought that was the day before – but it was really the appointment reminder for… next year.
Yeah, that’s going to help.
Sigh.
I hope I don’t get audited.
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Jim has to do some projects for class that involve actual art therapy. He’s got a friend of a friend that he’s using as his official subject for the class project, but he asked me if I would do this as well – unofficially.
He gave me three pieces of paper and some colored chalk – not my preferred medium – and sat back with a pad of note paper.
The first assignment was to draw anything I wanted – so, I drew some pine trees from a forest near where I lived when I was a kid.
Mainly because I know how to draw pine trees.
For this one, he asked me a lot of questions about that place, where I would be if I was in the picture, and my memories of it.
Next I was supposed to draw a tree. I made it too big to really fit on the paper by accident and so I drew a close-up tree with a few small branches and new growth. Apparently, that means something. The tree made me a little sad because it reminded me of the trees at work – and those little starts would be clipped off to make the tree more aesthetically pleasing. Seemed unfair.
The last picture was about how I was feeling. And since I was feeling overwhelmed at work, well, my brain just dumped out onto the page. I drew a little blue cube in the corner of the page that was me with a dark cloud over it and a sunny sky far away. The cube ended up having a fragile scaffolding under it and just making the picture made me start to tear up.
We talked about the colors I used, what the cube meant, and all the little elements of the simple picture.
I was, well, a little raw at the end of it. And I wanted to cut out the little blue cube and take it with me – but settled for taking a picture.
I don’t know how much this helped me – I usually sort myself out from situations if given some time – but it did make me see things in a starker light.
I’ll do the next one for sure – but I’m glad I’ve got a couple weeks. Took a lot out of me.
The only kinda bogus thing was that he couldn’t really tell me much about what it meant since it would impact how I approached the other sessions. And I can’t help with proof-reading his papers since I’ll learn way too much about the class and how the sessions go.
It was interesting and I’d recommend anyone with a lot going on in their head to talk to someone with some training. Even though this wasn’t official I still think I learned something about myself.
And I’m not too worried. If he saw something really wrong or off in my drawings that pointed to a serious problem, he would have stopped what we were doing and had me speak to a licensed professional.
Hoping we can skip the chalk next time – I thought it was too messy.
Wait, does that mean something too?