Thank you, everyone, for your kind words. It's been a rough day. It started out with that terrible, 6AM phone call--"Your Mom is dying; if you want to say goodbye, you must come to the hospital now; she will not last an hour..."
Death brings out the kindness and nastiness in people, I've just learned: everyone here, and my friends, have been so kind; but I had 2 incidents today on the phone that made my blood boil. Three hours after Mom died, I got a phone call. Normally, I screen them (phone sellers abound here), but I was expecting personal calls, so I just answered it. It was a woman, who I thought was from the hospital or funeral home or something, so, when she asked how I was doing, I mentioned that my Mom died 3 hours before. The woman was actually collecting for a charity:"Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Well, anyway, I just want to tell you that we're having a collection event on June...blah blah blah." I said, "My Mom just DIED 3 hours ago! I can't deal with this now!!!" And she was still blabbering on when I hung up on her.
The second rotten jerk was, believe it or not, the funeral home. My brother called to tell me that I needed to call them to give permission for Mom to be cremated tomorrow. "Hi, I'm Marge, and my Mom died this morning, and your funeral home is handling the arrangments, and.." (I was interrupted here.) "Your name?" "Your phone number?", as if I was ordering a pizza over the phone--no compassion, nothing. She just snapped questions at me, then put me onto the funeral director--who had a pleasant tone, but no, "I'm sorry for your loss"--nothing. I swear, the guy who delivered our pizza tonight actually registered more of a sympathetic response than these morons! What part of "My Mom died today" don't people understand?
The above people make me even more glad that I have all of my friends on the Cat Site. Thanks again for being there.