[NTLK] Frank's still here, although but barely

[Laurence W Brown]

Please - take care of yourself! You won’t be able to put someone else’s oxygen mask on them if you haven’t first put yours on. This is not just a slogan, or just from me - it’s from a long line of people having had to deal with situations like yours…
-L.W. Brown
via 6s+

> On May 18, 2019, at 16:12, NewtonTalk <newtontalk at pda-soft.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> thanks for inquiring about me. That's what friends do, and it felt really
> nice. 
> 
> Pawel was right when he said that I'm very busy, but that's not the main
> reason for my silence. I've been very busy since I've started to think,
> which was about six decades ago. That never kept me from taking care of
> Newton issues.
> 
> The reason for my silence is sheer physical and psychical exhaustion. My
> mother died last December, and I was left with resolving her "legacy". I
> spent almost three months turning a 160 square meters hoarder household into
> something that might have a fraction of a chance to be sold without
> potential buyers puking onto the driveway when they see it. This house is
> still inhabited by my mentally challenged sister and my mother's mentally
> challenged partner, who don't have enough income between them to pay at
> least for the running costs. I spent almost 1500 bucks on having garbage
> disposed of. About 70 cubic meters of garbage, to be exact, every single
> piece of which had to be checked manually by yours truly before throwing it
> away because important documents and family pictures were all over the
> place. This family never really grasped the concept of organizing or filing
> things, or keeping one's dwellings clean, or throwing things away that you
> no longer need. I brought another 50 cubic meters of usable things to misc.
> charitable organizations. Not exactly an easy task, if one's car is the
> smallest model Toyota offers...
> 
> My mother's partner is a really nice fellow, but he's a bit like a child.
> You need to tell him what to do, and he does it. Sometimes. Sometimes he
> doesn't. Sometimes he does things you never told him to do, causing huge
> amounts of additional work you didn't expect and don't have time to do.
> Although this guy is only eight years older than myself, I had to find a
> retirement home for him that he can afford and that's nice enough to ensure
> a halfway dignified way of spending the last years of his life. 
> 
> My mentally challenged sister, unfortunately, didn't cope with her mother's
> death as well as I had hoped. When one day I drove there to check on them,
> she sat in her room, talked nonsense, didn't know when she had eaten the
> last time, and her personal hygiene left a lot to be desired. So I called an
> emergency doctor, who committed her to a mental hospital as an emergency.
> Visiting her there wasn't really fun, because in her world I was the one who
> brought her there. She's been released meanwhile, but nobody knows if she
> will be able to face life on her own. Will she be able to keep her job? Will
> she be allowed to continue driving her car? Nobody knows. The doctors in the
> hospital said that she will get someone assigned to her who has the same
> right of decision as herself, and who ensures that she won't do things that
> might harm her in any financial, medical or other way.
> 
> This stupid house must be sold ASAP to get the funds that'll ensure decent
> living for the two of them. Guess whose job this is...
> 
> I do have three brothers that could help, but they don't. I won't go into
> this here, but they simply don't. The majority of what they do doesn't
> really help. Sometimes it causes new problems. And I'm under the impression
> I'm about to make enemies of them because I try to handle all this
> thoughtfully, thoroughly, conscientiously and in a way that won't require
> doing it again in the future, keeping the long-term well-being of my sister
> and our mother's partner first priority. Sometimes I'm under the impression
> they had hoped to resolve all this within a week or so, and are really angry
> that everything takes so long.
> 
> Before all this started, my life was... well... not exactly without duties.
> I have two relatives older than 80 years that rightfully expect support and
> help. And the fact that I have a wife and a child, who all live on 2000
> square meters property, in a house much too small and 110 years old, doesn't
> help very much, either.
> 
> My To Do list is getting longer by the minute. All this is exhausting both
> physically and psychically. My own health leaves one or two things to be
> desired at the moment, regularly requiring a lot of my time to keep me
> operational. Most times when I turn my computer on, I only take care of one
> or two of the ten million queued-up issues that absolutely MUST be taken
> care of. After that, I hardly ever find enough energy to address anything
> that has the word Newton in it. There are days when I leave my car and go
> straight to bed.
> 
> I sincerely apologize for leaving people who wanted to purchase Newton
> hardware or required other forms of Newton support out in the rain. I
> promise y'all that you're not forgotten. One of these days I will definitely
> get in touch again. But this might still take a bit...
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Frank
> 
> -- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de
> 
> 
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