What a day. Of course it started at 2:30am with Dixie passing away, but just seemed to all run together after that. We met the funeral home man at 6am and handled all the business. From there, Lori went home and I headed straight to Denver to pick up Ty. Lori decided to go into work for a while, (not sure why, maybe as a distraction) while I went to get Ty. She wanted to get a jump on things with us leaving today for Arizona. I was in Denver by 8am and had Ty and was headed back up the hill 15 minutes later. I had to tell both boys on the phone and they took it pretty well. We were home by 10:30 in the morning. A few minutes after we arrived, Lori called in tears to say she was overwhelmed, couldn’t focus and was heading home. I knew it was only a matter of time before it would hit her.
She made it home 30 minutes later and was fine. Just part of the process. We had Ty hang out and wait for UPS who was bringing James’s birthday present from our leather belt maker in Cody Wyoming. Lori and I headed down to clean out Dixie’s place. It went pretty fast as when we moved in it was mostly furnished. We also gave a ton of stuff to some of the workers there who were thrilled. The new manager, who is a dick, told us there’s a 30-day notice required and that we’d need to pay for another month. Now this didn’t sound right to me as how do you give 30 days’ notice that you’re going to die? We headed back upstairs and kept packing and purging. An hour later he came up and said he was wrong, and we didn’t owe as long as we got EVERYTHING out today! If anything was left, anything at all, we’d get charged by the day. So Lori and I looked at each other and said “let’s do it”. By 3, we were done. Jessie the manager came back up and said “what about all this furniture”? We happily told him, it was all his and was there when we moved in. He said, “it’s going to cost a lot to remove all this stuff” and we said “yup, probably so” and that was it.
Thes rest of the day was spent on paperwork with the funeral home, which was another rip off. They charged $1100 to fill out the death certificate. We of course had no choice as they picked Dixie up at 6 in the morning. After a bunch of other add on fee’s, the bill was about $3K. I told Lori, forget about it, water under the bridge and let’s move on. Lori talked with a bunch of people throughout the day and we spent the early evening packing for our flight this morning. We’re off at 7 for Boulder and take off at 11. Marty and Melanie are now not coming as something came up at work, so we basically have this killer house to ourselves until Jag arrives tomorrow night.
That’s about it, time to get going. By the time we went to bed last night, it had felt like it had been three days or more. Funny how in 12 hours from Dixie passing, we had everything moved out and gone erasing any trace of Dix at her home for the last 2 1/2 years. Lori looked at me and said, “wow, I guess that’s it, 12 hours and you’re pretty much gone”. I reminded her Dixie was gone as soon as she passed, and she’ll live on in the memories of all those who she touched and who loved her. That made her feel better as she knew that was right. So off we go, more tomorrow, God Bless.