For the last ten years, more or less, my little Kathryne has had my back. Literally.  For most of that time, she’s been just a few feet behind me, seated at her desk in bookkeeping, entering bills, writing checks, processing payroll, and generally keeping me in stitches.  The funnest part (yes, I know that’s not a word) usually came when she would enter the contracts and the daily sheets or the bills to be paid.  On those days she would begin her list of people who were going to have to die (or at least be the victims of serious bodily harm) because they had done something that made no sense whatsoever or had failed to appropriately label a receipt (or even give her a receipt) and, therefore, made her job more difficult.  I loved listening to her as she talked to them—even though they were nowhere around—which was probably a good thing for them.

But I always knew she wasn’t crazy about her job. You have to be a special kind of person to enjoy inputting information into a computer all day long while dealing with the insanity that is swirling around you.  And we have our fair share of insanity at “the home”.  She’s more the artistic type with a beautiful voice and a flair for theater.  I love watching her on stage, whether she’s the doomed heroine of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” or Rizzo in “Grease”.  I especially enjoyed her portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz”, complete with witch hands and green skin.  Granted, they nearly set her on fire a couple of times, but I really thought I was watching Margaret Hamilton from the original movie version when my Kathryne took the stage.

So it wasn’t that surprising when she first started talking about quitting. I didn’t put too much stock in it; it seemed to be a passing notion and very little was said after the initial conversation.  Very little, that is, until right after Christmas.  She told me on a Monday, in the tradition of most Mondays being days from the flaming theological nether regions.  She would be leaving at the end of January . . . that would give me a little over a month to find her replacement and give her some time to train them.

It seemed like such a long time. A month can take forever . . . unless what waits at the end is not something you want.  Then it only takes about a day.  After ten years you kinda get used to things . . . and I really don’t like change very much as it is, especially change that tends to turn my world upside down.

She noted that I was very quiet on her last day. And we both cried a lot before she left . . . and after.  I was so afraid she would hate her new life and she was so afraid I would be disappointed with her decision.  We were both wrong in our fears.  But that didn’t make the transition any easier.

I walked in Monday and there was a stranger in her chair, seated at her desk. There won’t be any more goodbye hugs and I love yous come 5:00 each day, not unless I want to get sued for sexual harassment.  There won’t be any more insanity in bookkeeping so there probably won’t be any more blogs like “Snow White” where we discussed the disposition of my remains (if you’re curious, kindly see August, 2014) or “It Was Monday” from March of 2015 which detailed our plans for a cremation scattering garden at Disney World so maybe people would quit dumping the ashes overboard in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.  It’s pretty quiet in bookkeeping now so I’m probably getting more work done.  But it isn’t nearly as much fun.  I don’t get to hear what the dogs did to the garbage that morning or the latest escapades of the cats or any of the other little seemingly insignificant details of her life that, in the overall scheme of things, weren’t so very important until they disappeared.

So there will be a time of adjustment because loss is loss no matter the circumstances and all loss generates some form of grief. Please don’t misunderstand.  I’m so thankful my little one is alive and well and happy and that she didn’t leave the country or even the town—and I’m so proud of her ability (and that of her husband) to make the sacrifices necessary to allow her to pursue her dreams.  But I still miss her.  When you see someone almost every day during the work week for nearly ten years, it’s very different when that suddenly ceases.  And it will take some time to accept and adjust and move on.  I told her she couldn’t read this week’s blog but she assured me that she would, even if it made her cry . . . ‘cause she’s a grown-up and doesn’t always have to do what her mommy tells her to anymore.  At least I gave her a heads up.  And by the way, if you find any typos in future blogs, she was my proofreader, too.

The post My Little Kathryne appeared first on Shackelford Funeral Directors | Blog.