Year End 2024

 

     Here we are at the end of another year. This is my report on happenings and activities for 2024. One big (for me) event overshadowed everything else. Death crept into my life. My dear Pete left this life quietly on his 82^nd birthday, August 10.

     Pete and I had wonderful times together for nearly eight years. He was good, caring, generous, smart and never argued, although we would disagree sometimes. I loved it when we were together. He was the introvert and I am the talker; he was the scientist and I am the liberal arts person. It all worked out very well for us while it lasted, for almost eight years.

    He was a great fan of plays so we continued to watch local professional productions. We also sat in his living room in front of his oversized television screen and watched dramatic series. We sat at my kitchen table and played Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit; usually I won Scrabble and He won Trivial Pursuit. We played a card game called Nerts that is big in his family. We didn’t have as many trips in the first months of this year as we had other years because he didn’t feel quite up to par as time went on.

     Pete and I enjoyed the first half of the year doing all this, and then summer came. Big change. He went to the hospital in early June, was diagnosed with bladder cancer and some infections, stayed most of the summer in the hospital and a few days in the nursing home, and faded away. I sat there with him every day except the times when I had visits to Washington Island as I do every year. The day he died I was away at the island. I called his nursing home to wish him a happy birthday, but a lady who answered told me that he could not speak but could hear me so I hung up; ten minutes later the same lady called back to say he had died. Our time together had ended. Alas.

     Life went on for the year. I went to Washington Island several times during the summer and again enjoyed the rustic cabin on the campground. Daughter Dori and her family of Steve, Robbie and Dhyana were there with me one of the times as we walked and sat in the woods; we were when I got the call about Pete’s death. I love being on the island. This year I did not exhibit my art there as I have in other years; the Art and Nature Center has good exhibits every summer, and I have participated in past summers.

     Other things happened. Tom and Carmen Colburn, lifetime family friends, came to Viroqua,Wisconsin, in October where Carmen had medical work done by her favorite doctor there. Brother David and Marcie live there so I went to Viroqua and we all visited and ate dinner in a local establishment, after which I drove Tom and Carmen back to Madison to catch their plane home to Texas. It was very good.

     I showed my colored pencil art in the annual exhibit of the Wisconsin Regional Art Program in March in Madison; attended my 64^th reunion of the Sturgeon Bay High School class of 1959; hosted our annual family get together in my back yard in June; continued with my volunteering at the local library and a few other places; and continue to have dinner weekly with John and Sherry. I took a day trip via tour bus to Chicago in August where I spent time at the Art Institute.

     The last few months of 2024 have been quiet and less active as I have learned once again to be alone much of the time. My friends at St. Dunstan’s Church have been a plus as I have lived with the big change. I am blessed with John, Sherry. Laura and Ian, nearby in Madison, are doing well, and Ian is graduating from UW-Madison one of these days with a degree in computer science. Congratulations to him. I wish I could be with my other adult children a bit more. I love our family.

Stormy weather

 Here is a piece of writing that I did for my writing class. Read on...

Stormy Weather

The lights went out at 8:30 pm on a Tuesday night last spring. They stayed out until 12:50 a.m. Thursday. Thunder, lightning, strong winds and lots of rain invaded our space and surrounded me in my small city home. Occasionally a crash and bang nearby assaulted my senses, but it didn’t bring any tree limbs onto the small house.

The disruption lasted for a long time. Sleep was nearly impossible that night. Weather reports on television had told us we would get a storm, and they were right. It was very black everywhere. I found two flashlights and my camping lantern in the basement, and they provided a small amount of lighting in my living area.

Wow. No television, no radio, no electronics except a cell phone.  And tablet. Probably I could have used the Internet via phone, but I didn’t try. I sat and looked at a book with the help of a flashlight. I was alone in the darkness. This was in the city, not in the woods.

What was a person to do? I have been a camper for many years, but now I was not in the woods. I opened the book and tried to read. Maybe a novel would have been a better choice, but this book was about food politics. With flashes and crashes invading my concentration, it was not interesting.

Ok. How about audio? The tablet was somewhere in the darkness. My subscription to Audible might work. The next hour and a half found me absorbed in Great Expectations. Listening to Pip tell his story with Miss Havisham in the background occupied my time until 10:30 pm. Then finally sleep.

This was not camping. It was darkly quiet and brightly noisy, in the city with thousands of people nearby, all in the black night. They were there; I was here.

Daytime arrived with the storm gone but still no electricity. That was better, but the outage prevented work around the house including issues with cooking and dirty laundry. Today’s living requires electric power. Just manage, I told myself all day; eat something from the dark refrigerator without cooking. Find some food in the cupboard. I asked the neighbor to open my garage door manually to enable use of the car. That helped. I could go somewhere.

How much do we assume in our daily lives with power enabling living? Television tells us what is going on. We have electric stoves, microwave ovens, vacuum cleaners and plenty more. It’s not the campground. At least we had running water. Scary stormy nights will disturb us, but light awaits at the end of the tunnel, whether from the sun or human technology.

Then, when June came, I went camping in the woods of Washington Island and spent the night in a cabin during a tornado. No damage for me. What’s next?

Pete Weiler Tribute

 The world lost a good man a week ago. I did too. Pete Weiler was the best. He died of cancer on his  birthday, August 10. We had a relationship that lasted almost eight years. Here was a man who was good, honest, caring, loving and smart. And he refused to argue. How about that? We did well without arguing. Old people can do that.

 Pete and I met in October, 2016, at a speed dating event held by the Madison Senior Center. It didn’t take long for us to get acquainted. He was quiet and not inclined to talk about his long life, and I managed to talk too much on our dates. That was just one of our non-essential differences. Pete had a PhD in physics and loved science. He spent many years working at writing software for the University of Wisconsin. I used to say that his computer was his other girlfriend. My English major and librarian background didn’t match his, but it didn’t matter. We were great.

 Who was planning on dating through a pandemic? Covid 19 arrived in 2020. We had been going to plays at Overture Center and American Players Theater. While we skipped a lot of plays, we watched programs on his very large screen in his living room. We brought carry out food to my kitchen. We played Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, and Nerts, a card game he taught me. That’s activity for people who can’t go places for fear of spreading disease. As the pandemic seemed to diminish, we went back to the plays.

 Pete has a loving, wonderful family. He has no children, but enjoys two brothers and a sister, plus nieces and a nephew and their spouses and families. They get together for birthdays and other events, and I have been included happily. Every year Pete treated them to dinner and a play at American Players Theater in Spring Green, which was well attended until this year when Pete was sick and the others went to the play that was rained out. It was part of the ending of his life.

 Pete went to the hospital where he was diagnosed with stage four bladder cancer and some infections. He was in the hospital for two months and then days in the nursing home at Oakwood, and never went home. His life ended. This wonderful man was gone. I will miss him for a long time while being happy for the good times we had together.