Goodbye Goodbye Goodbye

“Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos.” - Snoopy

It has been a week of goodbyes. Yesterday I said goodbye to Sara and Jonathan. Today we brought Jacob to Guelph. I hate this part.

Last Sunday I went to Cath's lake house to spend a few days with Cath and our friend Geraldine. We thought it would help Geraldine to deal with the passing of Dora but Dora hadn't passed so she came along too. We enjoyed a couple of warm days, drinking champagne and sangria and eating a lot of food we wouldn't normally consume. Dora was clearly not herself but just the same, she made a half-hearted effort to chase the chipmunks whenever they were in range. On the way back to Toronto on Tuesday afternoon, Dora gave us all a scare. We thought she was going to die in my car. Geraldine gave her a dose of morphine and we hoped she would hang on long enough to get her to the vet or at least home. Apparently, once home she again rallied. Last I saw her (on Thursday) she was still on this side of heaven though Geraldine suggested today would be her last day. I have yet to hear from Ger so I suspect her passage has been put off yet again. As much as I love her, I hope that is not the case. She is clearly suffering and it pains me to see her that way. I'd prefer to say goodbye and think of her chasing chipmunks in heaven.

Knowing that Jacob would be returning to Guelph today, I tried to get him to attend to my technology support needs before he left. I've been asking him for more than a month to back up all my laptop files to an external hard drive so I can take my computer to Best Buy for repair without worrying that I'm going to lose everything. I asked so many times that he started snapping at me. But here I am, he is in Guelph and my computer remains without backup. I think I will be asking my friend Maurice for help. The one thing that I did manage to do, however, is to get a new blackberry. Jacob transferred all my data from my old system to my new system and then I spent the next two days on the phone with the Rogers help desk trying to figure out why it didn't work. All in all, I lost about ten hours of my week on the phone waiting on hold and then begging help desk employees who were sitting in God knows what country, to help me. The first three attempts were unsuccessful including the second attempt when a Rogers employee actually told me I'd be better off using some other service and then told me he couldn't figure out why I couldn't receive email messages on my blackberry so I should just suck it up and deal with it. It's been more than frustrating, more than aggravating and more than time consuming. But it is, fingers crossed, now done. I have a pretty white blackberry. Jacob synchronized it to the bluetooth in my car before he left this afternoon - a task I attempted multiple times yesterday without success.

So now here Merv and I are, back in our empty nest. It will be quiet. It will be lonely. We will miss Jacob and all his friends, like crazy. But on the upside, the house will stay a lot cleaner, my grocery bills will be a lot smaller and I will have a lot less housework to do. I'm sad but looking for the silver lining.