TEARS

Peg can't stop crying (she says). Sleeps, cries. Sleeps, cries. Sleeps some more. Cries some more. I didn't expect her to be like this. I knew she'd miss him, how could you not, but never figured she'd collapse so. Thinking now of all the years she spent being infuriated at something Daddy did or didn't do or should have done or wasn't doing. The overseas phone calls that began:

"I'm so goddamned mad at your father---". I'd hear again and again about how he "never picks up after himself" or leaves a pile of slippery magazines on the floor that she could "break her neck on" or how he uses too much toilet paper or leaves his clippers outside to rust or--you name it, and especially always giving him a hard time about having a drink. Christ, I'd think, I'd drink too with someone constantly yapping at me about everything (in fact am happy to have a drink anyway).  The tirade would almost invariably end with "---well he can just move out, that's all! He can just go live in the goddamned garage, I'm sick to death of cleaning up after him!"

Of course, by the end of our conversation, by which time we'd moved onto other subjects, she'd forgotten how pissed off she was. 

"Hey!" she'd suddenly say. "What time is it? Cripes! I better go make some soup for your father! He likes to eat at noon."

"You're making him lunch? I thought he was off to the garage."

"Oh. Yeah." She'd laugh. "Well, he has to eat---it can be a take-out."

Anyhow, now she's missing him, big time. At least, at the start of the phone call. By the end of yesterday's though she'd segued from possibly scattering Daddy's ashes around the garden to organic meat, raving about her new shopping discovery, Burgner's Farm, how it's just marvellous and she's doing a leg of lamb for dinner (for herself?) and do I want one on Tuesday when I arrive. 
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I was about to write how lonely it's going to be there this trip, just Peg and me and legs of lamb, when yet another email came in from more friends of hers wanting to come and visit. Becket B & B it's turning into. Non-stop sheets and towels and dinners. Perfect. Plus the mountain of administrative tasks that keeps mounting: meeting the elder services lawyer who costs $4,000,000 per second, getting Odd's Social Security re-figured, his Beloit (work) pension signed over to Peg, his Prudential Life Insurance (not fortunes but it'll help) sorted, plus some complicated stock whatevers connected to it or no longer connected to it or merged or--anyhow something complicated (to me) that requires me tearing the house apart trying to find certificates and documentation and marriage licences and--thank God for Bonnie, who's done  the initial phone calls and all the hanging on listening to crap music for twenty minutes.

Plus must solve the bloody boundary dispute. The guy who's caused all this, Michael Sanders, who I'm starting to loathe, sight unseen, because it's One More Thing To Deal With, has emailed again. And I have now been in touch with a surveyor, Russell someone in Pittsfield, who has been recommended by the real estate guy, Henry. Everyone's email starts: "Once again let me offer my condolences in regards to the loss of your father…..but by the way, regarding the northern boundary.." It's like that joke DK tells, which I think came from Dudley Moore. Doorbell rings. Door is eventually opened by a woman weeping uncontrollably. "Is Stan home?" says a guy on the doorstep. "He died this morning at eleven o'clock!" the woman sobs. Pause. "Did he say anything about a tin of paint?" the guy asks.