Pam’s Pictorama Post: When this posts on Saturday I will be making my way to the cemetery to see my mom’s mortal remains off. So I apologize that this will be another brief and Pam-centric post.

As I write it is a dark and damp Thursday morning. Coffee is perking, cats have been fed. I woke at 3:00 and two of the cats strolled into my room and onto my bed to keep me company and fight for my attention. It did distract me from my fretting. Gus had the temerity to chase Beau’s tail!

I cut up a watermelon which has been sitting since before mom passed. A friend had brought it by for her. It’s more watermelon than I can eat so I will share it with friends to take home to their kids. After cooking for large numbers of people it is mostly just me now and the food production and consumption is amping way down except when folks stop by to check on me.

The various machinations of the week have taken me to some locales that I haven’t visited in decades and occasionally requiring amazing feats of memory as I take on the role of navigator for the folks kind enough to drive me on my various rounds.

For example near the funeral home was an ancient poultry farm where my parents used to stop for eggs on our way to or from my grandmother’s house. The friend who was driving me stopped to look at the plants that are now sold outside and the childhood memories flooded back. I probably have not stood in that driveway since I was 12 years old.

Another night someone took me out to dinner at Bahr’s Landing, a waterside seafood restaurant of my childhood. My last trip there was with my sister for my birthday, the year before she died, but it was a family favorite for special occasions as a kid and my late teens and early twenties saw many a late night at the outdoor clam shack for a late night snack and a beer. A week of This is Your Life style fascination.

Some days have seemed long and others zipped by. Uniformly the nights and early mornings (mom’s best time in recent years) have been difficult. The house itself seems to be in a gentle form of revolt starting with a series of roof leaks (which left me facing a very young man who attempted to sell me a new roof, but instead agreed to just overcharge me for what desperately needed to be done to stop the immediate water incursion) and followed by water in the basement as the result of a broken drainpipe.

My bouts of manic energy have gone into cleaning and the redistribution of things no longer needed. It has also resulted in some gardening which seems to calm me down. Some of those efforts shown on the deck above, a new favorite spot.

After I get through tomorrow on Sunday I will head back to Manhattan and to the office on Monday. The shell will be thoroughly broken and back into the world I go.