And so the work begins

After my experience when Dad died, having thrown myself back into work pretty much straight away, and not allowing myself the time and space to grieve his death properly, I have determined that I'm going to make sure I don't do that again. The therapist who I have been seeing gave me some very wise advice about doing whatever it takes to make sure I am emotionally ready to work, and be 'the minister', when I finally go back home.

So with this in mind, I have planned out a very particular process for dealing with all of the things that need to be done, and attending to my own self care along the way. (I have been jokingly referring to it as my 're-entry plan'). 

Since Mum died, I have been very deliberate about focussing on only doing one thing at a time: first on planning the funeral, and then taking some 'me' time out in Tasmania, and not throwing anything away, or packing any of her stuff up, and only making the formal notifications of her death that were absolutely necessary at the time.

But now the time has come in my plan for me to start attending to the practical things of sending letters to various organisations, clubs etc that Mum had dealings with, to inform them of her death, and ask for her to be removed from their membership/contact lists, and the packing up and chucking out tasks (although I am still awaiting the arrival of the death certificate, which is rather necessary for some of these notifications).

Today I have a couple of difficult phone calls to make. One is to Greenwich Hospital, to arrange for the return of the equipment we borrowed from them, and also the practical details of the donation of Mum's motorised lift chair to the hospital. That won't be so hard.

The second phone call is to an old friend of Mum's, who is one of the 'Christmas card list' people. I received a letter from this person yesterday, following up the Christmas card letter I sent in early December, asking how Mum is going. I have to ring and let her know that Mum has died, which I expect will be as hard for her to hear as it will be for me to say.

At the moment I am procrastinating... watching repeats of cop shows on Foxtel, pottering around with Facebook, and looking up cinema times for a movie this afternoon. But I probably need to make those calls pretty soon... or maybe I'll wait till tomorrow, when I might be able to trust my emotions a bit more, to be able to talk about Mum, or even think about her, without bursting into tears.