Hallelujah!

Hallelujah!  Bill arrived this afternoon.  Perfect timing.  I awoke this morning feeling low for the first time since I arrived on June 17.  I’ve been stretched physically, mentally and emotionally throughout this time but never felt that the whole thing was futile until today.  I went to the old place to pick up some final things and was feeling a bit more positive as I drove to Shannon Oaks but when I entered mom and dad’s apartment and saw they had done nothing, I dropped again.  But then a wonderful woman at the front desk helped me connect the television and get rid of the pile of empty boxes and scrunched newspaper.  Now we could see the place for the first time.  It’s quite spacious.  I helped mom and dad get used to the remote.  Dad was not able to concentrate; he drifts off more and more these days.  I hope that once the level of stress is lowered he might be less agitated and more able to focus.  Mom was a better pupil but I went one toke over the line with her when I tried to show her how to use the remote guide.  She’s used to getting a written guide in the ‘Times Colonist’.  She tried to pay attention to me but when I got her to push the buttons she was even worse at it than I was when I was trying to learn how to text on the iPhone Jay gave me at Christmas.  I’m a passable one-thumb texter now, but I don’t think mom has the same incentive to learn that I did.  She remains happy punching in the numbers for her favorite channels and watching the shows she knows at the times she’s used to.  But things were looking up.  Then the phone rang.  It was Bill.  I hadn’t known when he was coming, so when I heard he was just east of Hope my spirits soared. 

I returned to mom and dad’s old place to have lunch and a rest as I waited for him.  He arrived with 2 cold beers in his cooler.  We opened them in unison, and he proposed a toast to Jim who would have found so much humor in this episode of the Boyce family soap opera, in which people who are better at thinking and talking about possibilities, the fewer actual facts that are possessed the better, try to fumble their way into action and do something that people usually do as a matter of course.  We drank our beer, talked and wandered around the apartment like kids happy to be alone at home without parents setting the tone.  Then I dropped him at Shannon Oaks to have a first visit with the Ps alone.

As I drove to Vic West, KD Lang was singing Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ on the radio.  It brought tears of sadness, joy and relief to my eyes.  Now I will spend a quiet night and get up early to watch Eugenie Bouchard in the women’s finals at Wimbledon. Bill and I will meet at the Oak Bay Starbucks tomorrow at 9:00 to continue the soap