Conversations

I had an interesting conversation with my wife this evening. It was a little unsettling, and more than a little serious. I guess thats to be expected, since what we were talking about was money, and illness, and death.

She's really concerned that something seriously and non-correctably wrong is going to turn up with my mother. Over the past six months, she's gotten weaker -- almost feeble at times. She has surges where she is almost normal, but then she drops back down again. I get a little uncomfortable when I realize that my wife worries about this more than I do. (Each of us has sheepishly admitted that there are times when my mother can be quite a pain -- not as bad as many, from what I've heard, but bad enough -- the analogy my wife uses is that its like taking care of a two year old -- but she's better at being empathic with the situation.) I just get irritated. I think that I don't like the reminder it gives me that some day I'll be old, too, and feeble. I really hate that image, and being reminded of it -- going to yet another doctor, hearing her move around with her walker -- irritates me. I know how foul that sounds. It sounds foul to me. I told her that although I didn't want anything to happen to my mother, at some point something would happen -- and if I had to choose between death and continued declining health for her, I know which I'd choose. I know how that sounds, too.

When we were walking today, she asked me if, should the opportunity arise, if I'd be a techie again, and I said that I would, given the opportunity. Its not because I liked being a techie, though I did, and would do it again just for fun. Its because I'm worried about money. Now, if you knew how much we had, you'd say that we have nothing to worry about. We're not rich, but we are comfortably well off. We've had extraordinary expenses this year -- things that would not normally occur. The timing was poor, too -- if we'd suspected what the market would do, we'd have delayed at least one of them. ( My dental work, probably not. Thats a whole different train wreck. And the front steps really needed to be repaired. ) But the effect of that has been noticable, and I realized that the money that we have flowing into our various accounts from my wife's paycheck isn't enough to meet our normal monthly expenses, let alone these extraordinary ones. The good news is, we're aware of it. But now we have to think about how we'll fix it. We do have alternatives, we do have resources. I’m not panicking. But thinking about it? Yeah.

This all sounds very dire, I know, and it isn't, really. I just worry, sometimes. And when I start to worry about one thing, it propagates to others, pretty quickly. This appears to be one of those times.