Jeffreys Ruminations

This is just a quick posting that I have made the weather website live again…  This is the site I used to have up a long time ago and is still very beta and needs to have many more improvements made, but for those of you in the local area who need access to the current data on this side of New Braunfels, please have at it:

New Braunfels Weather

In case you haven’t seen my Twitter or Facebook postings, I picked up my 7-week old chocolate lab puppy named Rudy (after my grandfather Rudolph Jaks, and also my father’s middle name - Wilburn Rudolph Randow) from a former co-worker last weekend.  This has been an interesting experience due to the fact that this is:

1.  My first indoor dog.  Well, let me rephrase that.  He stays inside with me at night.  He’s outside while I am at work.  And that is probably how it will stay.  I eventually would like him to sleep on the foot of my bed, but I am a LONG way from that right now.

2.  Caregiving.  The thoughts of almost everyone who knows me has been that I need a puppy to keep from dwelling on the past.  This ALMOST worked..  I’m not dwelling as much, but when I do, it goes very deep.

We’ll see how things progress.  I love the puppy.  I wish he would stop using my finger as it’s own personal chewing toy, but I’m starting to break him of that habit.  I took him out walking in the neighborhood in front of my house tonight (I walk with him nightly, but have been varying the route to let him see more) and he got a lot of socializing.  I think that we had about 10 children of various ages come to pet him, three parents, and two other families.  I was getting a bit concerned about finding children for his socialization, but when he is at the “cute puppy” age, I guess that isn’t an insurmountable problem.

In other matters this past week:

1.  I went to church with Stephen today.  I go to church every weekend, but this is the first time I actually went with somebody.  Actually, I picked his church today since the Comal Community Band, of which I am a member, had a “thank you” concert for the church for using their facilities for our weekly practice this past month.  Nice service.  Methodist churches are not too bad, but they take a while to get used to.  Also, the fact that we were singing patriotic hymns was also a pleasant experience.

2.  After church, I attended the band wrap-up party for this season.  We do have one more rehersals and two more performances on Friday (July 4), but it made sense to do the wrap party on a non-holiday weekend.  In the past, I wouldn’t have attended.  However, in an effort to make myself do more, I am forcing myself to leave my comfort zone and do things.  I still need to do more and my to-do list for the summer and fall is still very very long.

3.  Work sucks.  I’m sorry to be so blunt with that statement, but it’s the unfortunate truth.  We (me and Stephen) have so much work piled on us between now and August 8 and it will be a daunting task for us to actually finish it all.  So as you can surmise, the stress level has gone up considerably, which is exactly what I do not need at this time.  Oh well…  I’m starting to run a countdown clock to August 8 and then want to take a trip after that time.  Plus, I have so much unfinished business that I need to take care of, like probate and other legal matters.

4.  Friends rock.  Another short but profound statement.  I’m afraid to think of what type of shape I would be in at this point without the bedrock of support from others.  I feel so small, though, in that I haven’t been the person that I could have been in the past.  I consistently concentrated on issues around me (and my family) and generally ignored everything else externally.  That needs to stop as of now.

In closing I want to add a reminder that you can also keep track of me via Twitter, Friendfeed, or Facebook.  On Twitter and Friendfeed, my alias is JeffreyCentex and you can find me by my name on Facebook. 

Thank you for reading and may God bless you and your family!

I have now completed two months since my own D-Day.  I’m still grieving, hurting, in pain, and suffering.  I fear that I will for some months or years to come.  My biggest problem is one that I wasn’t expecting, but I guess that I should have - GUILT.  I have found the following article on the internet - “Guilt after caregiving for a spouse” that has described in detail exactly what I have been going though.  Although my situation wasn’t that of a caregiver of a spouse, the points still apply to me because I was in the surrogate role of a spouse during the caregiving process.

Now I just need to get over this guilt.  Yes, I even made a promise two days before D-Day to not be sad or guilty.  It is just hard to follow through on that when guilt has been ruling my life for years in almost everything I do or have done.

OK, I thought about having a bit of brevity here..

This is a picture Stephen and Jason took that fateful night a few weeks ago…

 That was a hat I picked up from my last trip to Seattle….

Well, I’m quickly approaching the two month anniversary of my mother’s passing (one week from today on Father’s Day).  I have had my ups and downs.  Some days are incredible.  Some days involve me dwelling in places so horrible that I can’t believe my mind can conjure them.  I know this is a process and that everyone has to go through it.  When my dad passed away a bit over ten years ago, the grief process wasn’t as involved.  It was there, but was abbreviated since I wasn’t that close with him over the years.  Living the past six years as a caregiver, especially the past four years has made me have an attachment to my mother that basically borders on co-dependence.  The normalcy of my life has disappeared.  Cope, I have.  I still have outbursts of pain, sadness, and dejection that border on depression, though. 

This past weekend was one of the times when I searched the depths of my soul.  Today, I spent about three hours crying and yelling and about seven hours total this weekend.  To quote Thomas Paine, these are the times that try men’s souls.  Although I am not undergoing the struggles that Thomas Paine meant in The Crisis, I am fighting my own internal war.  I see a light at the end of the tunnel, but the journey there is fraught with difficulty and pain.  I realize that this is therapeutic and I will end up being a better man for going through it, the process still is extremely painful.

I’m striving to be strong through this experience.  I have some incredible friends who have done much to help me deal with all of these crises I am undergoing.  I can’t thank them enough for being there, for putting up with my stubborness and naivete, and for forcing me to push the envelope so to speak.  I may struggle and resist, but the experience is worth it. 

So, as I complete the second month anniversary this week, I must reflect on my experiences thusfar:

My promises and their Status:

• Try new things…  This one is probably my hardest, but it is one that I am actively forcing myself to do, sometimes with a bit of prodding by others.  I give myself a solid C+ here.
• Attend church weekly…  This one I have done…  I’m looking for a church to call home and have been “church shopping” the past two months..  I think that I may have a permanent solution, but it has to be right for me and my theological viewpoint.
• Exercise more…  I started well, but have back slid a bit lately.  I have been averaging about 2.5 miles every time I go out on a walk, but lately it has only been 3~4 times a week.  This is partially due to heat and also partially due to other problems.
• Take care of my health…  Like above, I’m trying to do this…
• Don’t dwell…  I dwell.  I always have.  I think I always will.  This requires a major change in my psychological makeup.  I’m better than I used to be, but most would say that I am a pathological “dwell”-er.  This is a solid D+ here.
• Reconnect with friends…  I’m trying here…  This is a bit hard because I burned quite a few bridges..  A lot of my problems relate to my naivete and I don’t realize that I may have offended or off-put someone and I don’t fix it immediately.  I’m working on this.
• Meet people…  I still chicken out way too easily here.  I need a “social security blanket” before I feel safe to go out and try.  So my likelihood of meeting someone and get into a real relationship is a bit dreary.

Other Thoughts

• My brain is the source of a lot of my problems..  I overreact and over-compensate way too much.
• I have a lot of work to do.  It will take forever to get everything under control.
• I’m too stressed out to be very effective.  I’m adjusting to stress and am trying not to force myself to do more than I can handle, but then I upset others.
• My temper is much shorter.  I seem to have no problem telling others who have pushed me too far.  This is new.
• I miss both of my parents very dearly and know that I will see them again in the future.

Thanks for listening and reading as I rambled on here…

I have update the Photo Gallery once again.  I moved the Friends section to it’s own category and added photos to the Family, Personal, and Friends section.  Most of the Family photos added will be on Page 2.  The “Personal” gallery updates are scattered on both pages.  The friends update are all at the end of the page and finally starts to show some of my post-college friends (i.e., Stephen).  I have more that I need to post there, but like I say, this is still a work in progress.

I added some additional photos in both the Family section as well as my personal photos..  My additions to the personal photo section chronicle more of my early youth.  Man am I getting sentimental these days…

I added an additional photo of my father to the Family section of him on his beloved Farm-All-B (sp) tractor.  This was a few years before he passed away.  I will have many more photos to post later this weekend and in the coming weeks.  I plan to digitize many of the photos that I have around the house and in the photo albums.  I don’t have much that is current, though, as we all hated having our pictures taken, so there won’t be much from later in my parent’s life or many that show me the way that I am today.  So go ahead and enjoy these pictures and I ask that if you have any other photos of any of us, please sent them and I’ll scan them in and post them.

Also, I have been using my Canon MP530 copier/scanner/fax machine to scan the pictures.  This device will allow me to scan several items at a time and then automatically crop out each individual picture for me.  I may tweak the settings on some of the future photos to increase the DPI somewhat, but for the purpose of posting them to the web, there won’t be much appreciable difference.

Again, thanks to everyone…

Yes, as I promised I have (or will have) posted more photos from my family - primarily of my mother and father - and most from before my time.  For the memorial service, I picked a smattering of photos for the viewing.  However, I missed the “treasurelode” of pictures contained in a different bedroom and closet that I think are much better.  So please reminisce over these photos and help fill in the blanks on when and where some of these places were.  I will cherish the memories.

The family photo album will be found here.  And if you have more photos, please forward them on to me and I will scan and post them for all to see.

Thank you.

As you may or may not have noticed, all of my old content here has been removed.  Just over a month ago, a traumatic event happened in my life - the passing away of my mother due to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).  As some of you know, I was her caregiver for the past six years since the first diagnosis of COPD.  This has caused many ups-and-downs in my life.  This loss has left a gaping hole in by existence - one that I am still in the process of recovering from.

As a result of all of this recent turmoil in my life, I have felt that it would be better to just start over and get a fresh perspective on everything - both in real life and in my online world. The road will be tough and long, but I feel that I will be better once I work my way through my grief and loneliness.

I feel that a fitting quote is one that I included with my sympathy thank you cards:

Life is but a stopping place,
A pause in what’s to be,
A resting place along the road,
To sweet eternity.

We all have different journeys,
Different paths along the way,
We are all meant to learn some things,
But never meant to stay.

Our destination is a place,
Far greater than we know,
For some the journey’s quicker,
For some the journey’s slow.

But when the journey finally ends,
We’ll claim a great reward,
And find an everlasting peace,
Together with the Lord.

As I follow the new pathways of life, I am a changed person.  So much in my life has changed considerably in the past month and a half.  I would like to thank you for your thoughts and prayers and keep praying that I find the right path to follow.