I am still pregnant. So far as I know. Another ultrasound, nominally for nuchal translucency purposes, in a week.
Cornell told me to start tapering off the PIO after the 9w1d ultrasound, but wanted a level check before I went off entirely. I went in live (well, to Mount Kisco at least), since I was in New York anyway. Came back at only 16, but they told me to stop. I did.
I am having a lot of trouble keeping up with life. Midterms! Advisees! Recommendations! I am too tired to knit, or to read anything more taxing than Agatha Christie or Talking Points Memo. I'm getting a lot of mild migraines, which I didn't at all last time. With each one I wonder if there's been a sudden homone drop.
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I had trouble keeping up with life when I went back to Weatherwood, too. No panic attack on the Whitestone Bridge (last time I drove myself over it was... well, it was 11 years ago, and that's a whole 'nother entry)! But I didn't even start to cope with replacing the marker (the fucking cemetery needs two rounds of notarized correspondence, from my uncle, not me, before we can do anything) or with tracking down a moving company for the furniture that's coming back to Ohiodinois. Nor have I made much progress on figuring out what I owe my uncle, after all.
I did get him up to the right county office for the paperwork to get into Nana's tiny bank account. And I packed up, or brought to professionals, a lot of small objects. We brought in an appraiser; nothing is worth anything, of course. (All the furniture, all the things on the walls, had been Nana's mother's -- they came to New York from Ohiodinois in 1954.)
So: I'm giving Ricky $1000 a month for a year, nominally for six or seven pieces of furniture I want (the will leaves all "tangible" property to me -- and the funeral expenses, which I paid, can be taken out of the estate -- and the cash is about three times the value of the pieces, which are both unfashionably dark and heavy and in poor condition -- so legally, legalistically, I really don't owe him a fucking thing), but mostly because I can't see any way for them to stay in the apartment long-term. I tell myself it's to help make the transition out easier -- or at least a bit later and more predictable. I worry that he'll think that this is setting some kind of precedent. But I want to feel like I've done enough for them that I can say "no" next time with a clear conscience.
There's a china cabinet that I want, that Beaker loves, that Marina says my grandmother told her she should get. There's no way to know if that's true; my uncle had thought my grandmother meant one set of dishes in the cabinet. There's an edge of true bitterness as Marina talks about it. I don't want to make her truly bitter. I am leaning towards letting her keep it -- so that I can say "no" when I need to.
The will leaves Ricky all family pictures and records. Does he give a flying fuck? It's hard to tell. They are still in deep grief. Marina told me to take two oil portraits -- both ripped -- because "your uncle will never have any children, but you, you have a legacy."
I went through what papers I could find, photocopied a bunch of birth certificates and old newspaper clippings, and scanned in about a third of the photographs from the only remaining album. I'll do more at Thanksgiving.
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Am I sad? Yes. But it is hard for me to catch myself at it. It is going to take time to sink in. There is too much. My mother's death was, in many senses, a liberation. But Nana? It was her time, God knows -- but she carried so much more with her. And that's gone for me now.
We took Miss T. apple picking that Saturday, the weekend I didn't go to New York. The light in the orchard was exquisite. It's really hard to get pictures of Miss T. smiling, but I did -- and there are also several gorgeous ones of her pensive, with luminous gray eyes focused out of the frame. Nana would have loved them.
This and this made me cry. There are just a lot of parallels, even dumb little ones -- like going back to an apartment his grandmother has been in for decades.
So did this. I go over and over my two final decisions to stay. I didn't know how sick she'd gotten on Friday night. I didn't talk to Ricky between Friday afternoon and Tuesday morning. Then I didn't drop everything and fly out on Tuesday because by the time he called, the doctors said she'd be dead in a couple of hours -- no time. But she hung on for another day -- but I wasn't there.
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This is one of the first pictures I scanned:
My grandmother and me, in the yard at the House, presumably in the winter of 1970-71. Notice that it's been torn in half, right between the two of us, then taped back together. There were several like that.
I'm guessing that my mother tore them up, and my grandmother saved the pieces.
How was the NT scan?
Posted by: Elizabeth | Tuesday, November 11, 2008 at 07:21 PM
that is a powerful photographic commentary.
i do hope you're ok. i've been on pins and needles, having been through the too-low heartbeat (which the RE interpreted as likely meaning an extra chromosome), followed by a normal heartbeat (which she thought meant my miscarriage chances were down to just average). it was an extra chromosome, sadly, as the genetic analysis showed after the miscarriage. i was thankful i got the results after the d&c, so that i knew definitively that my child would have otherwise experienced great pain from the defective organs that would have developed had it lived. small comfort, but helpful for healing.
the sample size in the heartbeat study you cited was far too small for my taste.
Posted by: ivfcycler | Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 03:57 AM
Just wanted to know I'm thinking of you. And I've been in the "do more than I think is necessary now so I can say no later with a clean conscience" boat before myself, with mixed results. Once it worked beautifully -- when the time came, I was able to say "NO" clearly, firmly, and with a sparkling conscience, which almost never happens. The other time I felt significantly less guilty than I usually do, but things were messier and my conscience still plagued me afterwards (but to a greatly reduced degree, so it was still worth it in the end).
I wishing all the best for you and Beaker and Miss T.
Posted by: lurker | Thursday, November 13, 2008 at 08:03 PM
I wish I could bring you a casserole.
Posted by: E | Friday, November 14, 2008 at 11:10 AM