I made it through Alan’s birthday okay. I put my phone on “Do Not Disturb” and locked myself in my office for the day. I did some photography work in the studio, and relaxed. I took a nap. And it felt like just another day. I certainly acknowledged that Alan would have been 89, but I was also grateful he passed while he was still able to live on his own terms.<\/p>\n
I’ve been feeling a shift taking place. I feel as if I’m moving into a place of acceptance. It is what it is, and I am what I am. I have stuff to do, and I’ll keep doing it. Yes, I have things I’m trying to figure out, but that’s just life. In due time, I’ll figure things out, do what needs to be done, and move on.<\/p>\n
And just as soon as I feel that shift, it slips out of place, and I’m back in despair mode. I can’t seem to shift this gear.<\/p>\n
Despite “shifting” challenges, I believe I am making progress in answering the question about what my new life is meant to be. As far as I can tell, no dramatic shifts. I’m not a radically different person. Before I retired, I got up, went to work, came home, talked to Alan on the phone, went to bed, and got up the next day and did the same thing all over again. I was generally at work or home, and the only social life was a required work function. I was actively writing fiction in the evening and on weekends. Sometimes I would take the laptop to Panera and work there.<\/p>\n
That’s pretty much my life now, minus phone calls from Alan. That’s more significant than it sounds. It’s doable. It’s me. It is what it is.<\/p>\n
The burning question is, “How do I honor his desire to sell the 46 Mercurys and their parts?” A year of Hemming’s advertising resulted in nothing. I don’t believe the desire to sell everything as a package is going to fly. I contacted parts dealers last week. One looked promising, but I’d be surprised if anything positive came out of the effort. It’s a place to start. I’m still contemplating the next steps in this area.<\/p>\n
A final note for this month, my perception of time has changed. Whenever I’m thinking about when something happened, I evaluate if it happened while Alan was still alive or since he has passed. It’s a mental process I’ve noticed in the last several months. I guess it could be called With Alan or After Alan.<\/p>\n
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I made it through Alan’s birthday okay. I put my phone on “Do Not Disturb” and locked myself in my office for the day. I did some photography work in the studio, and relaxed. I took a nap. And it felt like just another day. I certainly acknowledged that Alan …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,461],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1946-mercury","category-transitions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16561"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16573,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16561\/revisions\/16573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}