One Year Ago

I’m finding it hard to believe (on one hand) that a year has passed since my dad died.  A year ago Saturday.  I always feel his presence around me but I did particularly  this weekend and then remembered that date.  I still miss him so much.  Thinking of him gives me such comfort.  And I sure needed it this weekend.

We had this huge windstorm on Saturday and by noon the power had gone off.  It flickered on and off six times before it died.  Since I don’t go anywhere, I had no clue to the extent of the damage.  I did watch as this tree outside my window bowed completely horizontally at one point.  Freaked me out.  A friend of mine was over and she left about 2 because we had no idea how much worse it might get.  She lives about 30 minutes from me and I told her to call when she got home.  After close to three hours, I figured she had forgotten.  I had no phone either, except for my cell and I didn’t want to drain the battery just in case.  It’s not a smart phone.  She finally called and told me it took her all that time to get home.  Trees were everywhere, lights were out, stores were closed.  Because of the draught, the water doesn’t soak up as well and the oil on the streets makes driving dangerous.  I was hearing sirens of all kind non-stop for hours.  I gathered candles and my one flashlight (which I just bought batteries for a month ago, thank heaven) and got everything arranged “just in case”. 

Between my bad eyes and the darkness, reading wasn’t an option and the battery on my laptop drained pretty fast.  I had no service anyway, so there wasn’t much to do.  I had snack type food, but everything else needed to be cooked, which wasn’t an option.  Plus, I didn’t want to open the freezer even once if I could help it.  It can keep things frozen for 24 hours usually.  I went to bed, woke up a few times and saw that the power wasn’t back on.  By morning, I phoned a friend whose power was on and she checked online for me.  It read that power might not be restored until Tuesday or Wednesday!  So I called my brother, who had no clue about the outages.  Over 150,000 of us, but he lives 50 minutes from me and was fine.  So he was going to come get me and an hour later, my power came back up.  First thing I did was check the freezer.  The only thing that melted were my blueberries and ice cream, both of which could re-freeze safely.

I am lucky and grateful, because over 20,000 in my area are still without power.  They have to move the trees before they can fix the lines.  There is someone I need to call but her phone isn’t working yet so I’m guessing it’s the power.  We are so dependent on so many things out our control it’s beyond frightening.  And my UTI hasn’t left yet.  And the pain has been bad, the weather’s not helping.

I was able to listen to my bilateral music a bit before the batteries drained, so that was good.  But the pain was not happy.