word after word after word
May & June 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
noon
It's been a long winter, in many ways. No hiking, very little writing. But there are signs of spring. I live to write again. And on Saturday I went hiking with my daughter, and this is where we ended up.
From on top of the Stawamus Chief, outside Squamish, BC. Click on the picture for a larger view.
I am not in any condition (or wasn't) after a winter that did not include much exercise, for a hike this strenuous, and as a result, I'm pretty sore today, two days after the hike. Getting up there was relatively easy (though people seem to find it necessary to utter encouragement to me, perhaps because of my hugely advanced age of 57). But getting back down is the hard part. One of my knees objects to this kind of activity, first time out, and so I was hobbling by the time we got back to the car. When only one knee wants to bend, you do take on an interesting shuffle going down. The soreness in my knee goes away quickly, but it seems I have a lot of other muscles that weren't ready, and they're telling me today. So now I do feel like an old woman. Except that, hey, I climbed up the Stawamus Chief.
natural bonsai
(Again, click on each picture, if you want a bigger image.)
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A waterfall on the trail up -- not quite as spectacular as nearby Shannon Falls, but impressive, nonetheless. |
hungry wildlife |
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
10 am
Office work consumes me, though it's all in my home office, so I don't necessarily have to dress for it. But last month, on my birthday, my sibs and I dressed up respectably, and presented a pile of carefully constructed documents to the probate office downtown.
Besides shoveling through the piles of papers and books and dust at the old guy's house, there's also been figuring out the legal wording on affidavits and statements of this and that, in order to "do probate." There are three of us involved in this project, each with useful skills. Turns out I have the nit-picky, aka latent OCD, tendencies (perhaps bested by my brother, who makes a fine editor) and the computer formatting skills to get a document to look good, and voila, we had our application for probate. It sounds very arcane, this probate business, but all it actually means is proving that the will you have is the right one, ie valid. The concept of hiring a lawyer comes up, but the bulk of the work is in gathering information, which the lawyer can't do, and my guess is that then the actual work on the documents is done by a secretary, and as I'm kind of de facto a secretary, the choice was easy. If our situation were complex we'd have decided otherwise, but it's not.
Anyway, filing the papers required a small fee, then after three weeks we were asked for a Supplemental Affidavit, and a vast sum, the probate "fee." (It's called a fee, because there is no tax on inheritances in this country. The fact that the fee depends on the value of the estate, makes that seem like semantics, but whenever someone challenges it in court, the rules get changed.) But it's a small tax, er I mean fee, relatively speaking, so who's complaining? The significant point is that being asked for the fee meant we'd done it right. The supplemental affidavit was just paperwork (confirmation of how we'd arrived at a value [educated guessing -- no, no, we had a legal document] for the house.)Then a week and a bit passed by, and voila, yesterday I picked up the probated will, and for some more fees got certified copies too. You get very little paper for the money, but it's significance weighs heavy.
So now I see light at the end of the tunnel.
Things seem to be unfolding well; my sister needed more time with the belongings in the house, as it's also full of her mother's belongings, so has more heart-work in it (sorry dad, but it's true) and I've used that time to back off and get other things done. Much of the other bookkeeping work (commonly referred to as a job) had become irrelevant to me, delayed by my focus on my father's illness, death, and the flurry of activity that followed, but recently it has been nagging at me, bumped into my consciousness as urgent. So I've been bingeing on spreadsheets for the last week, and have almost got it to the point where I can refocus on my dad's house.
My sister's almost ready to let it all go (yes, we've all taken things home from the house) my brother's ready to move on, and the real estate market seems to have revived somewhat, as it usually does in the springtime, so miraculously our timing is pretty good. Thanks to Dad I guess, who chose when to vacate the world.
Also, as it turns out, Dad, who didn't like paying taxes, picked a tax-efficient time to die. There may not be inheritance taxes, but besides probate fees, the government collects quite a handful from people who die late in the year, because any contents left in an RRSP or RRIF is deemed withdrawn the day of death. That can add quite a wallop to your annual income, putting you in a higher tax bracket, and letting the two levels of government scoop more of your carefully saved money into their coffers. So do remember to factor this into your own planning. Dying early in the year saves money for your heirs. Tax planning is important. You are welcome.
Monday, June 8, 2009
11 am
Lately, it's been all about stuff. We had a lot of stuff to do, and a lot of stuff to clear out of my Dad's house, before we could do anything with it. Stuff that piled up in his life, and he couldn't deal with, so now we had to. A week ago we had a huge yard sale, and cleared out some of this stuff.
I did sell a set of four math books to one man. I told him why we had so many math books on the lawn. "Math is beautiful," I said (this was my father's mantra as a math teacher) and so the guy asked what school, and of course he was a former student. That sort of thing made the yard sale a success, as much as selling off some of the piles of belongings that we don't need. There were neighbours who bought things as mementoes really, of the old guy who'd been such a character in the neighbourhood for so many years. He had a way of touching people's lives; people liked him, even when they picked up on some of his orneriness. Must explain why we care too. He certainly wasn't boring.
But still, lots of stuff came back into the house.
After the sale I filled my car with all the unsold books and dropped them off at the Sally Ann (except the math books, no one wants old textbooks). Next day I came back and filled my car again, with boxes of old high school annuals from one of Dad's old high schools. I dropped them off at the school, then came back and loaded up with all the obsolete textbooks. Sometimes books are just waste paper, so, though it was heartbreaking to do, I dumped them all at the Kent St. transfer station. I lifted up the boxes to the edge of the bin, and tipped them. Whump, whump, whump, and a mountain of mathematics bit the dust. It's funny the things that can make you sad.
Then this week we had an auctioneer come and take away a bunch more stuff. They rejected a fair bit, as not worth anything. So more filling up of the car and trips to Sally Ann, because really, there is some value to a lot of this stuff, for someone. We gave away some useable furniture to an organization, HomeStart, that sets up people with nothing. But there were also two loads of debris that were hauled from out back of the house; landfill.
We left some furniture in the house for 'staging', which in this case means distracting the eye for a moment from the sadness of an old and very tired house. Our father had decided that the house would be a tear-down, and so wasn't bothered by doing nothing to ensure it's upkeep. It's years since it was painted, things leak, there are holes in the walls. Now it's up for sale, and we'll see whether he was right. But I hope someone comes in and sees opportunity. The place is solid and it could be beautiful. Much more beautiful than another ton of debris going to landfill. I have hope, as renovators have been knocking on the door.
There's no denying though, that I feel lighter now, that the stuff is pretty much irrevocably gone, and the fate of the house is up to the market.
I kept two math books.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
8 pm
We sold the house last Monday. There may be a recession on, but in Kitsilano there are a lot of people looking for houses; well, actually, looking for lots to build houses on, and one such family bought our father's house. It will be torn down, so an era really will be over. We're again in a bit of a scramble, not as bad as it's been, to clear out the last few things in the house in order to hand over the keys.
The picture in my last entry shows a fairly hefty pile of stuff in Dad's house. Some of the pile has been moving to my place. I don't have much space, so there is some serious consideration going on about what to keep. Stuff just keeps being an issue. When I think, oh maybe I'll keep that, I have to remember that one day the weight of it could fall on my kids. If I don't get a grip, why, there could be even more. I don't really expect them to have to deal with this stuff for several decades, but who knows? My Dad was surprised by the turn of events, even though he'd lived a long time.
Do I want my children to have to shovel out my belongings? Do I wish my dad hadn't left so much for us to clean out, had spared us some of the insights?
You don't need to answer.
It is bittersweet selling the house. We are happy to have the proceeds. There is sadness in how we came to get them. But a definite lightening of mood over the lightening up of obligations coming our way. My sibs and I have gotten on remarkably well through all of this, but we look forward to getting together just to get together. A simple pleasure we used to enjoy but just may appreciate much more when all the dust (ah-choo) settles.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
1:30 pm, Father's Day
This is my first Father's Day sans a father. I am saddened to not have a father anymore. but I am also saddened by realizing how much of my life I didn't feel I had a father, even though I knew where he lived. We saw him on the agreed upon weekends, and there are good memories of outings, camping, hiking, but no memories of recognition, of oh, this is my daughter Shirley, and this is what she thinks, dreams; I am so glad you are here. None of that.
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Dad atop Mount Seymour, circa 1970. |
And yes it's true, I am like him in many ways (the good ones I hope; there were good things about him). I recognize some of my sense of humour, some of my writing ability, some of my, yes, math ability, comes from him. (But then my sense of humour, my writing ability, my math ability -- my mother too! How could they blend so nicely in me, and yet not be able to stay married? Mysteries.) If nothing else, he certainly infected me with a love of hiking, a preference for being in the forest.
He occupies my thoughts a lot, what with the past months of clearing his house of all his belongings, and thus getting much insight into the person he was, and the life he led. (I don't want my own children to have to wait until I'm dead to know me.)
This week has been full of articles in the paper about great fathers, and some about not-so-great fathers. My particular father won awards as a teacher, but as a father, he was an interesting man. Acutely intelligent, funny, gracious, and totally closed off. Contradictions, eh? He did the best he could, given the circumstances, I guess. It's funny how, as a parent myself, and aware of my own flaws as a mother, I wasted a lot of time being unforgiving about the flaws of my own father, and then I'd think, how unfair, so I'd try to be fair. I waffle between compassion, sorrow and anger. But in the end, he was just a sad old man, and except for the eensiest of glimpses, closed off to us. He wanted to be alone, and he wasn't kidding. Preferred cards and letters to company, with friends, and with family. Not the picture we want of good old dad, is it?
Surface and appearance were what concerned him, not substance. He personified rigid. Yet how could this be? His former students tell me he was a great guy, supportive, wonderful teacher. The best ever. Showed up for all kinds of extra-curricular events; I remember a Miles for Millions event he attended with a bunch of kids from his school. I remember, cue the violins, walking the first half alone, and my brother joining me for the second half. We had a good time, my brother and I, and I think Dad had a good time with his kids. Sour grapes, but that kind of thing, though hard to shake off, has to be let go too. It wasn't about me. Nevermind that maybe it should have been, in some ideal world of parenting. It wasn't. Stop whining.
His credo, as passed on by former students:
MATH IS TRUTH
TRUTH IS BEAUTIFUL
therefore
MATH IS BEAUTIFUL!
Trouble is, there is more to truth than math, however beautiful. His family didn't answer to mathematical formulas, not readily.
In the last few years I did start to like my father, but I had to work at it. Told myself I accepted the relationship, un-ideal as it was. I was, for my own protection, learning to let things go. He wasn't a bad father, so much as an unhappy man, contrary to outside appearance, that I now do see. And if I've got some idealized view of the father-figure, who can do all things, well, grow up; life's not a fairy-tale.
So that was the biggest and hardest thing for me to learn about my father, that he wasn't interested/wasn't able to know me well, and that it wasn't about me or because of me. That's a big understanding to come to, that it wasn't something I did, or some flaw in me. I wasn't a bad daughter, inadequate person. I do also get that he loved me, loved his children, as best he could. I won't go into a rant here about how love is felt in the doing...
And yet, in the last year or two I occasionally had this tiny glimmer that he had seen me, appreciated the person I am, recognized I was good at something, and that would make me happy. Go figure.
It's a huge power, the power of father. Men should not enter into it carelessly.
March & April 2009 entries
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